This That and The Other by Philipp Condrau

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THIS, THAT & THE OTHER

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1 2 3

6-9

THE DARDENNE BROTHERS 10-13

D.A.N.G.E.R – VISUAL AND MUSICAL ARTIST 14-15

ELLE MULIARCHYK: THE ALLURE OF EXECUTING THE IMPOSSIBLE 16-17

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY AT ROUNDHOUSE

JAMES VICTORE: DON’T BE A DESIGN ZOMBIE

6 7

19-21

22-23

D^CHSTOCK: WILD WILD EAST – SHANTEL 24-25

D^CHSTOCK: MIDILUX – ISOLEE LIVE! 26-29

CHARITY WATER: MAKING TRADE-OFFS

10 11

30-31

32-35

FORGET YOUR PAST – COMMUNIST MONUMENTS IN BULGARIA 36-37

STAFF BENDA BILILI LIVE AT ROUNDHOUSE 38-39

ZAHA HADID

MAREK HEMMANN

14 15

40-41

42-45

LERNERT AND SANDER: IT’S TIME TO LEAVE YOUR COMFORT 46-47

FL SHB CK R M X

48-49

MY CV PROJECT 50-51

HUNDERTWASSER 52-55

PANTHA DU PRINCE 56-59

JAMES NACHTWEY 60-63

SPINE: IDEOLOGY AND PURPOSE. 64-65

ILLUSTRATION NEIL WEBB 66-67

AUTUMN BREEZE 68-69

ILLUSTRATION BENNET 70

ADVERTISEMENT 70

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

ARTICLE BY: ARISTON ANDERSON

THE

DARDENNE BROTHERS ///

HARD WORK PATIENCE

and MENTORS

NATURALISTIC

FILM

SOCIAL

CINEMA

The Dardenne Brothers on Hard Work, Patience and Mentors

DRAMA

Few things compare to the quiet, concentrated experience of watching a film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Amidst gritty landscapes, they track the day-to-day lives of working class Belgians living on the outskirts of society – a tenement owner, a carpenter, a petty thief – in a unforgiving, naturalistic style. In Europe, the Dardenne Brothers’ work has garnered the highest honors; they belong to the exclusive club of filmmakers who have won Cannes’ Palme d’Or, twice – once for Rosetta, and once for L'Enfant (The Child). By the time the Dardennes earned their first Palme D’Or in 1999, they had been honing their craft since the mid-‘70s – writing, producing, and directing more than 60 documentaries before they turned their attention to narrative film in the late ‘80s. During the Marrakech International Film Festival, I sat down with the brothers at Es Saadi Palace, where we conversed through a translator. Drawing on their 35+ years of filmmaking, the Dardennes shared their advice on why it’s invaluable to get another point of view, how to work with the sounds around you, and why every creative needs to have a spiritual father in their life. Do you have any specif ic rules you live by in f ilmmaking? Jean-Pierre: It’s not something mathematical. But during the shooting, one of us is on the set and the other one is in front of the video monitor and maybe after the first shot we change our roles. But despite all of that, sometimes we think if one of us is not there, we can’t do the movie, because I’m not sure that we can do the movie that we would like to make. I think that we need the point of view of the other continuously. There will be something missing if one of us is not there.

things that are changing. One of the big wishes of the human kind is to transform things, to work on things to construct, to destroy.Even if the change is internal in Le Fils (The Son), we showed a man that is teaching the boy responsible for the homicide of his kid. So we also shoot the work of a carpenter, and by shooting these little movements, we are shooting something that we don’t see necessarily, which is the transmission of a work profession. The kid who is learning this profession feels he’s becoming recognized, feels more important, he has more self esteem. He’s not only the killer, he’s also this kid who is able to work on the wood, etc. And then we shot Rosetta, which features a character looking for a job. I think she’s looking for some kind of dignity, and some critics of the movie said it’s too reactionary because dignity is not only found in labor. It is true on the one hand, but those who do not work today say they feel they’re completely put aside, marginalized, because they feel they’re not useful anymore to society. And maybe because we come from that region, we believe, that being useful through the work we do is very important. How is f ilm, for you, a conversation? Jean-Pierre: It only exists because you have people who come and see the movie and share that experience. When we make a movie, and when we offer it to the audience, it’s like sharing a journey or a trip where everyone is going to find his way and not necessarily just ours. It’s also an object of encounters, which does not mean that we all have to have the same opinion. But at least it’s exposed dialogue, and it helps you think and reflect and share with others and even to talk to yourself. It’s a quiet kind of conversation.

Why is there so much focus on work and labor in your cinema? Do you feel like this is an element that’s missing in art? Luc: Well, probably because work is enabling a body to live. Our characters are people who used to work and then they lost their jobs, are unemployed now, and this has had a great impact on them. We were raised in Seraing, a big industrial city at the time, a little Detroit. We manufactured lots of things that enabled the construction of the buildings of New York, with all this big steel equipment. We used to produce that in our city. So work labor has always had an important role in our cinema – the visible work, the manual work, it has played a role in our life. I think one of the big wishes of the human kind is to transform things, to work on things to construct, to destroy, to sometimes construct again. And not only to look at the world, let’s say, passively. I think that’s the aim of humankind, being a man, a woman, is to change things. And cinema is about showing

ARTICLE BY: ARISTON ANDERSON

Several of your movies, for example, L’Enfant (The Child), end very abruptly. What does it mean to you to end in such a jarring manner? Luc: In L’Enfant, we have a main character, Bruno, a man who cannot be a father, who is never able to be a father, and it feels like at the end of the movie he at last became a father. Well, I’m not sure things will be OK afterwards. But it seems like when they’re in the prison, where people can speak with their families, I think he says, “how’s Jimmy, how is he doing?” Well, he never said the name of the kid before. It means that he has changed. Because of the kid that he has saved from the water, Steve, he became someone else. It takes time. So we felt that it was the right moment to end the movie. Our movies are like portraits. Why don’t you use music or soundtracks in your f ilms? Jean-Pierre: It’s not a dogma. We haven’t found any place or room for music in our movies. Maybe because we are not able to find the right music, I don’t know. And when we’re shooting, I think that’s where things happen actually. When we’re building our plans, etc., the rhythm of that construction is partly based on the sounds, not only the dialogues, but touching the objects. And rhythm is based on the sounds that we can hear on the set, the noise of the bodies moving, the breathing of the characters, that’s our music. We just don’t see the need for music. When we’re shooting we just don’t think about it. Maybe it’s going to change one day, I don’t know.

NATURALISTIC

FILM

SOCIAL

CINEMA

The Dardenne Brothers on Hard Work, Patience and Mentors

DRAMA

For you, what is the biggest challenge of being artists? Luc: You just have to maintain the same point of view, to keep on believing what you believed in the beginning. It’s not because someone says today cinema is this or should not be that. Today, we should shoot like this or that. I don’t think that’s how things should be done. It’s difficult because remaining with the same ideas can drive us crazy, remaining loyal to our ideas. But one day you say something, you don’t know necessarily why, but you feel that it’s right, it’s the right thing for you, for us, and that’s it, and you keep on working. Then the audience may come, may not come. It’s better when they’re there, of course. We do the movie for the audience, but at the same time, sometimes you have to admit and accept the fact of not having any audience. We may have missed something, but one should not say OK, because of that I’m going to change my style completely, or my way of doing movies. You have to wait. Sometimes it never comes, but that’s another problem. I think one should be patient and loyal to what you feel, to what you think, and to the message that you’d like to convey to your audience. Remaining loyal to our ideas can drive us crazy. Do you feel like cinema is a learning process for you? Luc: Maybe it’s easy to say that, but we learn by doing and we’ve always worked like that. He’s never had a camera before. I never had a camera before making our portraits of people. And we never wrote any script before. So we really learned by doing. People have been important, of course. We have had interesting encounters. We have met our spiritual father, Armand Gatti, a moviemaker, and we also met Jean Gruault, the screenwriter of Truffaut, and then we worked alone. Of course, we’ve read books on the cinema. We’ve been learning by ourselves. We have not been to any school.

ARTICLE BY: LUC NAISSE

PARIS

MUSIC

19H

ELECTRO

D.A.N.G.E.R – Visual and Musical Artist

EKLER’O’SHOCK

Franck Rivoire (known by his artist name Danger) is an electronic musician born in 1984 in Lyon, France, currently living in Paris. Influenced by video games and '80s movie soundtracks, he creates a distinct sound that characterizes his productions, both songs and remixes. He brings a strong visual appeal to his work, as shown in his promotional artwork and live appearances. He has claimed himself in an interview that "...my influences were generally quite visual influences and not really music" and that he focuses a lot on the narration of the music.

Franck was forced by his parents to start playing instruments including piano and saxophone at an early age. He got his first synthesiser after seeing a friend use one and started making loops and chiptunes, though he also had early interests in skating and metal music. Before signing to a record label, Franck Rivoire worked as a graphic designer and made chiptunes for years. In an effort to modernize the sound of his music, he uploaded some new electro house tracks onto MySpace under the name "Danger". This caught the attention of multiple labels, and after being offered many deals, he signed to Ekler'o'shock in 2007 because he enjoyed the music of its other artists, such as DatA. His MySpace tracks quickly reached one millions plays which gave him a "prodigious" reputation and before long a worldwide audience. Since then, Danger has released three EP's, remixed several songs, and toured internationally. Another EP and a full-length album is also in the works. Franck has given elaborate explanations to his name and the names of his EPs, tracks and the origin of his mask. Franck chose the artist name "Danger" for several reasons with one being that he had already been using it for several years on chats such as MSN and IRC and another one being he thought an artist named "Danger" would instantly get free advertising everywhere since "danger" is a common word these days. His EPs are named as dates following the first EP "09/14 2007" (September 14th 2007), which was named after the date that he finished the EP. His tracks are named after the time of the day when the track was finished such as 11h30 being named after 11:30, except for the track 88:88 which is a reference to an

ARTICLE BY: LUC NAISSE

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PARIS

MUSIC

19H

ELECTRO

D.A.N.G.E.R – Visual and Musical Artist

EKLER’O’SHOCK

ARTICLE BY: JOCELYN K. GLEI

Belarus-born artist Elle Muliarchyk was named a finalist for Miss Czech Republic at age 14, “discovered” by famed fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier at age 16, and disillusioned with her modeling career by age 21. Fortunately, reinvention comes naturally to Muliarchyk. When her fairytale dream of being a fashion model turned sour, she found a new outlet for her creativity: guerrilla self-portraits secretly conducted in the dressing rooms of high-fashion boutiques like Hermès, Prada, and Jill Stuart. The project caught the eye of the New York Times in 2006 (see “Pretty Larceny”) and Muliarchyk was on her way. Since then, Muliarchyk has reinvented classic saints and martyrs as pop icons for her “Begotten” project and created a Wim Wenders-inspired short film for T Magazine. She just wrapped a new “Psychics” photo essay for issue No. 6 of Dossier journal and will soon debut a video collaboration with Phillip Lim in Hong Kong. We talked with Muliarchyk via email about learning how to communicate your ideas (the hard way), embracing “lucky mistakes” (after you get mugged), and learning how to run on adrenalin.

What’s the most challenging thing for you, creatively speaking, right now? The more work I do the more opportunities come my way, and since I usually spend from four months to a year to complete a project, it’s hard to have several of them going on at the same time. I change my lifestyle completely according to the project I’m working on, it often requires me to live in a different universe surrounded by different people, the way an actor prepares for a challenging role. What role does your experience as a fashion model play in your photography? Does it give you a unique perspective? They are two completely different things. When I work I’m like a sound-barrier-breaking train, in a constant adrenalin-driven trance. Yesterday I had 4 hours to do an important shoot with a 35-person crew and 2 trucks of equipment. I had to attend to every tiny detail, treat every one of those people on the team with appreciation. Even when I work with a tiny team, I must be super-focused. Every second makes a difference. On the top of that, under all this pressure, I try to create captivating imagery. At those moments I have to “turn off ” my “modeling” part of the brain and tap into the part that is responsible

LIMITATIONS

PHOTOGRAPHY

BIAS-TO-ACTION

FASHION

Elle Muliarchyk: The Allure of Executing the Impossible

DERMARCHELIER

Tell me more about your new “Psychics” project for Dossier. I’m super, super excited about it! I spent two years doing research and laying the grounds for this project. I wanted to explore how our exterior, our outer “shell,” can affect and help us design our fortunes – but in a fun way. So I asked Meghan Collison to undergo a dozen dramatic transformations and pay visits to 12 psychics in NYC and Brooklyn. Polina Aronova, the fashion editor of Dossier, created the most iconic NYC/universal archetypes that a woman usually tries to establish with the clothing she wears. They were “Upper East Side lady,” “hippie,” “goth girl,” “stewardess,” “blogger,” “girl from MidWest,” and many more. And the trick worked!

for creating images. Modeling to me is a performance art, it’s very internal, it’s like your body is making love to the clothes you wear, or having a conversation with it. Photography is like hunting in a dangerous forest, or being in a combat. You mention the necessity of appreciating your crew members. Did you have trouble managing/leading people on some of your early big projects – after being used to working alone? Right now it’s super-easy and great fun. Even a few days ago – I had six 67-year-old men wearing black wool coats on the beach at 95 degrees, and they all came up to me and said it was the most fun thing they’ve done in years! But in the beginning I was a total disaster. If an assistant of basically anyone would ask me – “What do you want me to do?” I would say – “I don’t know!” I even had a super-embarrassing blunder of saying to the make up person that “I actually don’t usually care about makeup since I can do it on the model myself.” It was a ridiculous thing to say and the girl was crushed and angry for the rest of the day.

Each of the old psychic ladies saw only the “fake” Meghan in front of them. And they told her a different fortune according to the particular disguise Meghan wore. None of them could even tell she was a model! I was really fun and absolutely fascinating to witness! Poor Meghan, she was pretty freaked out by the end... They were all crazy characters. One of the psychics was the daughter of famous Psychic Marie, who was the subject of Bruce Springsteen’s ballad. According to legend, Marie was the one who foretold Bruce he would be a famous singer when he was only five years old! I shot the short film guerrilla style – with hidden cameras. (That’s why you almost never see the psychics’ faces. I got only one of them to agree to appear on the camera, and in exchange I had to give her the dress I was wearing! She loved fashion!) The “look” of my little film has a voyeuristic feel, since you are inches away from the girl, you are with her on this journey... It’s different from most fashion short films now that tend to be shot on Red and Phantom cameras (super-heavy, ultra-hi-res cameras). The photographic essay will be in the September issue of Dossier. You’ve done a number of photo projects without the proper permissions. How much does a thirst for risk-taking, adventure, provocation factor into your work? I don’t even think, “Oh, I want to do something dangerous.” It happens like this: I come up with a particular project, which seems to me super-easy to do, but shortly it turns out nearly impossible to execute. Like shooting secretly in 500 churches, or on the rooftops of highsecurity skyscrapers in NYC, or in the case of my recent “Psychics”.

“Photography is like hunting in a dangerous forest, or being in a combat.” I didn’t know how to communicate my ideas, since I don’t bring so-called “references” as other photographers do – pictures by other photographers. So I decided to make drawings for the model, stylist, and make-up artist. And in order to communicate my lighting idea to the assistant I did miniature light tests at home with Barbie Dolls. I learned that one should never show any insecurity about the shot, even when the shot is not working out, you need to appear as if you know EXACTLY what you are doing and that the things are going according to the plan. It’s like riding a bicycle – you can’t hesitate for a second, otherwise you fall down and bring the whole card castle down with you! I had to learn to be the General of my battalion.

ARTICLE BY: ROUNDHOUSE CLUB

Explosions In The Sky make their long-awaited return in 2011… The band are currently putting the finishing touches to their fifth studio album, due for release in Spring 2011 on Bella Union… In the meantime, Explosions In The Sky will play their first UK headline dates for over two years.

NIGHTLIFE

MUSIC

LIVE-ACT

ROCK

Explosions in the Sky at Roundhouse

LONDON

ARTICLE BY: JOCELYN K. GLEI

JAMES – VICTORE James Victore is a man of action. He believes that knowing about jazz and wine and autoracing can make you a better designer. That graphic design is about experiences and stories and using your hands. That the best designs punch you in the gut – or, at the very least, stop you in your tracks. When I visit his Williamsburg work/live studio, Victore is charming and humble, describing himself as still being “the unknown designer at age 50.” This is, of course, entirely untrue. (Aside from the fact that he’s not yet turned 50.) While you may not know the man, you very likely know the work. Once you see a Victore image – many of which live in the collection at MoMA – you rarely forget it. With the release of the new book, Victore or, Who Died and Made You Boss? (Abrams, $40), which collects 25 years of his work in a hefty volume designed by Paul Sahre and introduced by Michael Bierut, the name and the striking body of work should now finally go hand in hand.

DISCIPLINE

GRAPHIC DESIGN

ORGANISATION

ART

James Victore: Don’t be a design zombie

HABITS

On paper, Victore’s designs feel like muscle cars with a coiled charge concealed just beneath the surface. In person, he exudes a similar kinetic spark – affably skimming from topic to topic, as we talk about art (“Franz Kline’s work really blows my skirt up”), work (“I can’t pay attention to everything at once”), and life (“Ask for more. Always. Ask for more time, ask for more creativity, ask for more money”). What’s a normal day for you? I like to think we’re like the army. We get more work done by 9am than most people do in a full day. Chris [Victore’s sole co-worker] comes in at 10:30am or 11am. We decide on what needs to be done. We rarely work past 5pm. We’re pretty efficient. We make decisions. I look at the agency system, and it’s such a waste. That’s why people like Time magazine come to us. They know they can give it to us on a Wednesday, and it will be done on Friday. So how early do you get your start? ‘Early’ is a relative term. It depends. Usually between 4:30am-6:00am. It’s a good time for me to write, and to have some quiet time, and to catch up on emails and things that need to be done. Or get a lot of sketching done. We get more work done by 9am than most people do in a full day. So you keep to a pretty regular schedule. What do you do when a client emails you wanting something, and you’ve already knocked off for the day? Chris laughs about how we give them the ‘stiff arm’ – it’s Tony Heisman running through the crowd [Victore makes the sound of a football player knocking guys down]. This isn’t necessarily the word I want to use, but you have to ‘end train’ people. We know the difference between urgent and important and not everything is urgent. You mentioned “making decisions” earlier as part of the way you function efficiently. Do you think a lot of people get bogged down by that? Part of the problem these days is there’s so much choice. At some point, someone just has to say: We’re going to do it like this because I want to do it this way. Because, if you don’t, you’re going to be churning out oatmeal. You look at some graphic design today, and you can tell that nobody is in charge.

You’ve been doing a few little films for the book release. Is that new territory? How did they come about? The publisher wanted a little flat, static image for the book for the website. We weren’t really feeling that. [He plays me the promo video that they made.] So this is a great example of how we work. We had 5 minutes to think about it. So we said let’s get out of here. Let’s go under the Bodhi tree where genius is. So we went around the corner to the Italian restaurant, had a pizza and a bottle of wine, and halfway through we said: “You know what would be really funny? A book with chickens walking around on it.” You look at some graphic design today, and you can tell that nobody is in charge. So we come back to the studio, and Chris calls Iowa. “Do you have chicks? Yeah, we have chicks. How much are they? $34 for a dozen. Excellent, we’ll take a dozen chicks.” So that’s Thursday afternoon. They say they’ll be hatched by Tuesday, and then they’ll ship them. The next Thursday I get a call from the post office, “You have a perishable package here.” So I’m standing in line, and I hear “cheep cheep, cheep cheep.” That must have been a neat experience. Yeah, and we have a story – more than just making some little thing. So I called Chris and said, “Chicks are here, we need a tripod, a video camera, and some barbeque sauce.” So we shot the thing in the afternoon. I kept them one more day, because I wanted to be with them. And we learned how to feed and care for them. Then Saturday morning we took them to McCarren Park and handed them off to a farmer who will raise them. That’s how we do stuff. You have this quotation on your book cover from William James, “Distraction is the most corrosive disease of the 20th century.” Why’d you choose that? Distraction today is this [points to my iPhone, which is recording our conversation]. I believe that these things are killing our discipline, killing our ability for solitude, and killing our ability to be bored. Children need to learn how to be bored. They don’t need to be entertained all the time. So you like time away from computers. Do you do all of your sketching and writing on paper? Paper, and not in the studio. I’ll go to a bar or a restaurant. When I did the book, I left the studio every morning and I went to the park and sat for an hour, hour and half. I brought an idea, and I wrote longhand in one of these big sketchbooks. Then I would come into the studio and work during the day. Afterwards, at 4 or 5 o’clock, I’d go to my bar, sit with a beer or two, and refine it. Or write on a new idea. So it became this really nice process of every day. And it became a habit.

ARTICLE BY: JOCELYN K. GLEI

DISCIPLINE

GRAPHIC DESIGN

ORGANISATION

ART

James Victore: Don’t be a design zombie

HABITS

I can’t do the think-work in the studio. The studio’s for putting stuff together – for work-work. And if we’re not doing work-work, then we leave. How many great architecture ideas have been drawn on napkins? Because they’re free, they’re not thinking about work. iPhones are killing our discipline, killing our ability for solitude, and killing our ability to be bored. And it’s fast, right? We’re obsessed with efficiency, and sometimes we forget how much faster drawing is. My third students [at SVA] aren’t allowed to use computers. It really frustrates them because they don’t know how to use their hands. But I say listen, I know how much time it takes to boot up a computer, and open InDesign, and you get a box, and you type a letter in it. And you make it this big. Then you make it this big. Then you make it this big. Then you make it this big. Then you move it over here. Then you make it red. Then you make it this big. And it’s like: You’re not designing! You’re organizing. That’s easy. Worry about that later. And this is stuff I learned from heroes. It’s the work you do before you ever put pen to paper. That’s the important part. Is there anything else you tell your students? Being conscious of your habits is one – and creating good habits. Being conscious of your peers, the people you’re around. You know, there are some people in your life who are like zombies [Victore raises his arms straight out, speaks in monotone] “Be like us…” and they are some people who are good for you. So you have to look around every once in a while and take stock. You might even be married to a zombie!

ARTICLE BY: D^CHSTOCK

WORLD

MUSIC

ROCK’N’ROLL

EVENT

DACHSTOCK: Wild Wild East – SHANTEL

EAST

DACHSTOCK BERN SAMSTAG 28. MAI 2011 DOORS: 23:00

bucovina.de

ARTICLE BY: D^CHSTOCK

TECHNO

MUSIC

MINIMAL

ELECTRO

D^chstock: Midilux – ISOLÉE live!

HOUSE

D^chstock: Midilux– ISOLÉE live!

Ihr habt sicher auch schon bemerkt. Die minimalen, knackigen Grooves sind immer seltener auf dem Dancefloor anzutreffen. Ende der Nuller-Jahre wars zu viel. MinimalerEinheitsbrei hier und dort. Aus dem spannenden puritanischen Konzept der Reduktion wurde Massenware. Dies eröffnete den innovativen Produzenten wieder neue Gefilde zu entdecken. Deeper und facettenreicher House zu Hause genausogut hörbar wie auf der Tanzfläche ist eine Erscheinung davon. Im Moment ist die Techno/Minimal/House-Szene so vielseitig wie schon lange nicht mehr. Rajko Müller alias Isolée verkörpert diese Vielseitigkeit wie kaum ein anderer. Schon vor mehr als zehn Jahren stand Isolée auf der Bühne unseres Dachstocks. Damals auf Tour mit seinem ersten Album „Rest“ auf Playhouse. Nun mehr als

eine Jahrzehnt später veröffentlichte Rajko seinen dritten Longplayer „Well spent youth“. Mit dem neuen Label Pampa, das durch DJ Koze und Marcus Fink betrieben wird, fand er dazu eine mehr als nur passende Heimat. Daneben werden die zwei jungen Götheburger „Genuis of Time“ unseren Stock besuchen. Auch sie verkörpern die aktuelle Vielfältigkeit. Auf ihrem Label Aniara veröffentlichten sie bisher zwei 12’. Die erste „same old place“ überzeugt mit kompakten Deephouse; die zweite hingegen melodiös und minimal. Der dritte Live-Act im Bunde ist Sonax400 vom MidiluxKollektiv. Sein riesiger analoger Gerätepark sollte noch den meisten Dachstockbesuchern in Erinnerung sein. Zu guter letzt wird Fabien, ebenfalls ein Midiluxer, die Platten zum drehen bringen.

ARTICLE BY: EMILY HEYWARD

CHARITY WATER: MAKING TRADEOFFS 26

COLLABORATION

ADVERTISING

CONTRARIANISM

NON-PROFIT

Charity Water: Making Trade-Offs

CROSS-POLLINATION

One of the most crucial issues affecting the globe is something you encounter every day. It’s in your home, your place of work; it makes up most of your body and most of the earth, yet a billion people can’t access it. Yes, it’s water, and thanks to organizations like charity: water, it’s finally reaching our collective radars as an issue to which we must pay dire attention. In the past two years, charity: water has done a remarkable job in not only raising people’s awareness, but getting people to feel connected to lives that could not be more different from their own. We sat down with Director of Design and Branding, Viktoria Alexeeva, to learn how design and communications can ignite people’s passion for a cause. were as versatile a shoe as you can get. The point being: I knew I’d be doing every job under the sun. In my first few weeks working here, (back then it was just three of us), I helped put on an event, carried boxes around the city, edited a video in Final Cut, made a webpage in Dreamweaver, went to Liberia, West Africa for the first Conducting most of their fundraising through time and ended up in Lenox Hill Hospital three online campaigns, photo and video installations, weeks later with malaria wondering what in the and unconventional public awareness initiatives, world did I get myself into? Right now, I’m the creative communications are a key to their suc- designer, web, editor, project manager, producer cess. Viktoria explains, “When we started, we and creative director. And I clean the dishes on knew we wanted to do charity a little differently. Fridays. Doing jobs we are in no way qualified or trained for has been our greatest challenge. We wanted to ignite people’s passion for help- Every week brings new and exciting problems ing through photography, design and creativity. that we have to just figure out, do or die. But in We’d seen charity appeals that didn’t work, that this constant state of growth, it’s amazing how were made to guilt people into helping instead competent you become when there’s no one to of stirring the kind of connection that arises help you figure it out.” You really have to know when a person sees something differently for the rules first to be able to break them, or else the first time. When they finally get it. Perhaps your work will always look like an accident. it’s something they’d seen 100 times before, but the 101st time it was presented to them in a dif- Of course, such versatility demands a supreme ferent format, in a different light or context, and level of organization to stay functioning. Vikunexpectedly, they were fundamentally moved. toria tells us, “The demand at charity: water is enough for 30 people easily, and there are 7 of us And this is the true power of advertising.” on staff. We often get distracted doing things Of course, a non-profit environment is a far that are urgent, but not critical to our overall cry from a big advertising agency, and everyone mission. And if you’re not careful, those things must adjust accordingly. As Viktoria describes can consume your entire day. Many people, her new role(s), “When I left the conventional especially at startups, spend all their time reworld of advertising, my focus was narrow. I acting to demands that are not important but knew storyboarding and design. And I knew always feel urgent. A printing job gone wrong it well. Everything else was done by someone that consumes your entire morning, or trackelse and our trendy penthouse design firm was a ing a package that’s been lost in the mail. So, well-oiled, Henry Ford assembly line. The de- we’ve kept to-do lists, priority lists, and tried to signers designed, the editors edited, the produc- create systems and processes just to keep sane. ers produced and the 3D guys 3D’d. The day But when it comes down to it, there are only I quit my job to come work for charity: water, 24 hours in a day and a billion people without I remember buying a pair of black pumas that water. You have to make trade-offs. Water is a grassroots non-profit based in New York City, working to bring clean and safe drinking water to some of the 1.1 billion people on the planet without it. In two short years, they have funded freshwater wells and basic sanitation projects in 14 countries.

ARTICLE BY: EMILY HEYWARD

It’s really useful to create a purpose statement for your role in a company or an organization. Write down two-three sentences about where you want to go in your professional career if the sky were the limit. Then, evaluate your daily tasks and ask yourself what are the things you do each day that get you closer to that goal, and which in fact take you farther away. And then you can start wisely choosing which projects to take on, and which ones to pass off - if you have that luxury. If not, try asking your boss if you can find an unpaid intern to help - someone who can learn from you, and free up your time so you can pursue the big picture. For others, a purpose statement can reveal some sad truth as well. Perhaps you are in a limiting position that’s stunting your growth, and its time to go.” In such a small, intense environment, healthy collaboration is key to moving ideas forward. Viktoria describes their process, telling us, “In this office, we’re constantly yelling ideas across the room. About 80% of them get shot down the second they’re uttered, and the other 20% make it to execution. Sometimes the best ones get stolen and claimed by people other than their creators. And I have a piece of advice regarding that: Don’t’ be upset, because giving away your best ideas ensures that you continue to create new ones. Collaboration and group brainstorming provide a sounding board for your thoughts and the sooner you let your ideas be heard, the sooner you can know whether they’re worth pursuing or should be let go. But most importantly, you can’t allow your feelings to get hurt when your idea is rejected. There’s no room for that in collaboration, and picking your battles is key. There’s a time to fight for your idea, and there’s a time to let it go. Once you realize that delicate balance, collaboration can truly be a productive exercise.” Viktoria strongly believes one must be brave, both within collaboration and idea generation: “I know it’s scary, but get your idea out there. Don’t worry about having all your pieces in place - that will come with time. Many people wait years to prepare the perfect pitch, the perfect website and the perfect brand before letting anyone see it. This kind of thinking can intimidate and overwhelm you, and can sometimes cause you to abandon the project all together. I’m not saying make promises you can’t keep, but get your feet wet and test your idea on friends, relatives and

COLLABORATION

ADVERTISING

CONTRARIANISM

NON-PROFIT

Charity Water: Making Trade-Offs

CROSS-POLLINATION

co-workers. When there’s no one to hold you accountable, it’s easy to let other priorities get in the way. Let others see your idea when it’s just a sketch on a napkin, and it will create a sense of accountability for you. I know it’s scary, but knowing that there are people out there waiting to see your idea executed will force you to follow through.” That being said, forward-thinking endeavors require a strong foundation. Viktoria explains, “When it comes to design, rules were created to be broken. But you have to know them to break them. It has to be intentional, not accidental. My first intern was terrible at creating a layout, but she was genius at the big ideas. So I got her a book on grid systems and composition. Eventually she began to understand the fundamental principles of the invisible grid in layouts, and her work became professional, intentional and put together. The point being: you really have to know the rules first to be able to break them, or else your work will always look like an accident.”

At the end of the day, perhaps ideas are more likely to happen when you are motivated by a truly worthy endeavor. Viktoria’s passion for her work shines through when she explains what she’s working for: “In America, we’re among some of the most fortunate people on the planet. Food, clothing and water are abundant and always available. But in villages all across the African continent, mothers wake up before daybreak and walk two, sometimes three hours to kneel in an almost dry riverbed and scoop disease-infested water, knowing it will make their kids sick. They have no other choice. We, as Americans, use an average of 150 gallons of water per day to cook, clean and drink. The average person in a developing nation will struggle to find 5.” Hearing these troubling but inspiring facts, we are so grateful that talented minds like Viktoria’s are working every day to raise awareness and generate ideas that will make the world a better place.

ARTICLE BY: NIKOLA MIHOV

Many of the iconic communist era monuments in Bulgaria were dismantled after the fall of the totalitarian regime in 1989. Nevertheless, more than one hundred important monuments built between 1945 and 1989 remain standing. The majority of these sites are not recognised by the state and they remain ownerless. Their exact number is unknown and it is difficult to find information about their authors and their history. The graffiti “Forget Your Past” above the entrance of the Bulgarian Communist Party memorial demonstrates their faith. Situated in towns across the country, and once a symbol of pride, today most of communist era monuments are neglected and ransacked. Regardless of whether they were built to commemorate the Soviet Army or the struggle against Ottoman rule, they all share one and the same fate: to be a silent symbol of the forgotten past. Nikola Mihov’s photographic series “Forget Your Past” reveals 14 of the most significant communist era monuments in Bulgaria. This project is realised within the support of Trace, a platform that brings together artists and architects to consider the integration of the communist monuments into the present day urban environment.

nikolamihov.com

COMMUNISM

PHOTOGRAPHY

BULGARIA

ARCHITECTURE

Forget Your Past – Communist Era Monuments in Bulgaria

SOVJET

ARTICLE BY: NIKOLA MIHOV

COMMUNISM

PHOTOGRAPHY

BULGARIA

ARCHITECTURE

Forget Your Past – Communist Era Monuments in Bulgaria

SOVJET

ARTICLE BY: ROUNDHOUSE CLUB

15-05-2011 AT ROUNDHOUSE LONDON

STREET

MUSIC

CONGO

RUMBA

Staff Benda Bilili Live at Roundhouse

SOUL

‘Havana cantina, Kinshasa slum, or psychedelic club– this outfit would tear the roof off anywhere.’ The Independent Congolese super-band Staff Benda Bilili return to the UK this May to play a string of special live dates following the nationwide release of feature film Benda Bilili. Staff Benda Bilili’s inspirational live shows and extraordinary story have caused a stir across the globe. The band name translates as “look beyond appearances” - literally: “put forward what is hidden.” A group of paraplegic street musicians who live in and around Kinshasa zoo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they consider themselves the real journalists of Kinshasa. Their songs document and comment on events relating to their everyday experiences, and resonate with the pulse of Congolese rumba, of Cuban swing and, at times, even of the Godfather Of Soul himself. The core of the group consists of four singer/guitarists perched on spectacular customised tricycles, backed by an energetic rhythm section, and topped off with the infectious guitar-like sounds of a teenage prodigy, who plays a one-stringed electric lute he designed and built himself out of a tin can. The band triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival last year with Benda Bilili – a full-length feature film directed by Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye (aka Belle Kinoise). The film has been met with great critical acclaim and is will open in cinemas across Britain on 18 March, distributed by Trinity Films. The band’s acclaimed debut album Très Très Fort is out now on Crammed.

STAFF BENDA BILILI AT ROUNDHOUSE 37

ARTICLE BY: RICHARD OLSON

MASTERPLAN

ARCHITECTURE

STUDIO

DESIGN

ZAHA HADID

LONDON

Zaha Hadid consistently pushes the boundaries of architecture and urban design. Her work experiments with new spatial concepts intensifying existing urban landscapes in the pursuit of a visionary aesthetic that encompasses all fields of design, ranging from urban scale through to products, interiors and furniture. Best known for her seminal built works (Vitra Fire Station, Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art, BMW Central Building, Phaeno Science Center, and MAXXI: Italian National Museum of XXI Arts) her central concerns involve a simultaneous engagement in practice, teaching and research. Zaha studied architecture at the Architectural Association from 1972 and was awarded the Diploma Prize in 1977. She became a partner of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, taught at the AA with OMA collaborators Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, and later led her own studio at the AA until 1987. Hadid has held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois, School of Architecture, Chicago; guest professorships at the Hochschule f端r Bildende K端nste in Hamburg; the Knolton School of Architecture, Ohio and the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and Commander of the British Empire, 2002. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria and was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

ARTICLE BY: OLIVER MEYER

Marek Hemmann has grown into the electronic music as a hunter, collector and true connoisseur of tones and sonics. It all began in the beginning of the 90’s with a guitar whose sonic spectrum was far too limited for him. The discovery of the samplers and the synthesizers suddenly opened new possibilities where the acoustic world could be conserved; it was now possible with sound and noise on synthesizers to create what the human ear has never before experienced. The reason for the sonic passion was delivered to him via the techno parties late 90’s in his home area of Gera which was soon a weekly anchor for electronic experimentation. Here was to be found deep and delightful connections with people, rhymes, light and sounds. Until the first live gigs would come just a few years later, he made music for himself and his flat mates. This emboldened him to eventually begin to play his music live, leaving behind self-doubt and found with his first gig his calling as a live act. From then on he refined and improved his sets from which grew the distinctive Marek Hemmann sound; a sound with a minimum on technique but rather a very wide diversity of noise and tonal sensibility. The result is a substantially reduced electronic dance music which having a solid house foundation orbits its original state. Deep bass meets voice fragments, shakers, and percussion carry the rhythm; a funky minimal techno with plenty of space for other musical elements. Always on the search for the perfect groove and catchy melodies which fit snug and comfy in the ear. Since 2005 Marek Hemmann lives in Jena where his home, studio and label are in the immediate vicinity. Here he has the required distance for travel on the weekends, the locale allows for inspiration from the student life, and his creativity to flourish. After innumerable remixes and a handful of singles, in fall 2009 his debut album ‘In Between’ was published on the label Freude am Tanzen.

GERMANY

MUSIC

JENA

ELECTRONIC

Marek Hemmann

GEMINI

ARTICLE BY: ELIZABETH MCDONALD

Dutch designers Lernert & Sander create pieces that reflect on the remarkable, often messy endeavor of art-making. In their surreal, Pantone world, the creative process is always beautifully exposed: mundane everyday objects are re-imagined as elegant footwear for a series of Selfridges windows, the set for an eyeglass commercial is transformed into a magical pop-up book landscape, and wine glasses morph into a kaleidoscopic 18-century glass harp. Though not yet a household name, the Dutch duo have amassed a considerable body of work – including TV commercials, short films, print pieces, and art installations – that’s darkly humorous and eminently engaging. We first got hooked on their witty films series “How To Explain…” and “The Procrastinators.” In the former, Lernert & Sander film conceptual artists as they (painstakingly) attempt to explain their work to their parents. In the latter, a series of artists confess their struggles with procrastination. Further digging led us to “Chocolate Bunny” and their first “Revenge” film, which elegantly stages and then documents the destruction of a single, innocent egg.

LERNERT & SANDERS

COLLABORATION

DESIGN

RECHARGING

ART

Lernert and Sander: It’s Time To Leave Your Comfort Zone

NETHERLANDS

So what’s their creative process like? We chatted with Lernert & Sander about how their partnership got started, how bike riding relates to creative problem solving, and why you should always break the rules of the design brief. I love your film series on procrastination. I’ve read that Victor Hugo sat naked in his writing room with his clothes hidden to ensure he couldn’t leave his desk, and would have to write. On a given day, how do you fight the desire to put things off? For our new series “The Procrastinators” we interviewed 26 artists, writers, fashion designers, and comedians about their daily struggle against procrastination. To conquer this behavior many of them invented clever ways to keep them inside the creative process, or at least try. One of the writers had her parents come and pick up the television set and lock it in their basement until she finished her third book. Another writer had his publisher lock himself inside his writing room for each writing session.

ARTICLE BY: ELIZABETH MCDONALD

While these are techniques to fight the procrastinator inside them, lots of them clearly embraced the whole fiddling and doing nothing all day thing. It was quite liberating to hear Coco Schrijber, a documentary filmmaker, say she eventually gets up late in the morning only to set herself the daily goal of doing nothing. In this freedom she creates for herself, good stuff comes. Eventually. We latched on to the issue of procrastination because we thought ourselves to be guilty of it, too. We basically live on our computers: checking email all day, doing multiple vanity searches on Google – “Did this blog or that blog write something about us?” – and we feel we are able to do so much more when we go offline and approach the world physically. After this interview process though, we realized that we didn’t even come close to being procrastinators. When we look back on this year with all the work we’ve done so far, we think just the

effort involved in making this series alone proves we are cured of this self-diagnosed disease. Many of your pieces address the creative process directly – what’s that fascination all about? We made “How To Explain It To My Parents,” a series in which abstract or conceptual artists were asked to explain their work to their parents. In the series, we make use of the tension between artists and their parents. In their chosen surrounding – amongst friends, fellow artists, curators, gallery owners, journalists – these artists are comfortable explaining their art. They are essayists of their own work. But the language they have learned to speak belongs to the art world and doesn’t always help them connect with their mother and father.

COLLABORATION

DESIGN

RECHARGING

ART

Lernert and Sander: It’s Time To Leave Your Comfort Zone

NETHERLANDS

We’ve been active as filmmakers, writers, graphic designers, and visual artists for 10 years now, and we still find ourselves struggling to explain our work to our parents. So when we visit our parents our work is not discussed. We avoid it like we avoid politics, as these discussions always end in argument. Our mothers don’t like that: “Let’s keep things civilized, please.” How did your partnership get started? Do the roles you play remain consistent? Lernert worked for national television VPRO as a director and writer, working at the time on a drama series. When it came to the point of art direction and graphic elements, Sander was brought on to help. During this process we discovered that many of the best ideas came from the collaboration of art direction and graphics. Of course, it was too late to change ev-

erything [on that project], but that’s when we realized we needed to start working together. Only next time, from the beginning of the process. Our first project together was the film “Chocolate Bunny.” We are able to do so much more when we go offline and approach the world physically. We don’t have strict roles when conceiving work. An outsider might think that the idea of the story comes from Lernert, and Sander does the art direction or design, since that’s how our CVs read. But after years working together, it’s impossible to determine who does what. While Sander was doing the final design for the 8-meter x 6-meter pop-up book for Pearle Opticians, Lernert was feeding the designers at Selfridges the Pantone numbers for the windows. And while Sander was doing the graphic design for Madness and Arts Festival, Lernert was designing the Sikkens Prize shoot. It’s sort of a blend.

ARTICLE BY: JOﾃ記 KUHN

RETROSPECTIVE

FILM

PLYMOUTH

MEDIA ART

FL SHB CK R M X

ABSTRACT

323.joel-kuhn.ch

‘FL SHB CK R M X’ is a retrospective glance at my video projects in the last three years at the University of Plymouth. The result is a highly conceptualised minimalistic piece of visual rhythm based on 27 selected video samples out of 9 videos. ‘What you see is what you hear’ is the basic idea of ‘FL SHB CK R M X’. So every visual is connected with its original sound in a heavily abstracted way by reframing a certain part with geometric shapes and by minimalising the sounds to their core. The video reflects fragments of personal memories passing by in the black space of oblivion mixed together and continually repeated at a racing pace. The video is structured in a consequently linear way. From ‘Swissguys got the beat’ to ‘Linking Interfaces’ to ‘FF – a website collaboration’ it carries us from the projects in year one to the most recent ones in the final year from a completely different angle. Each year has its own shape and colour palette attributed to it which merge in the mix of each year as well as in the ‘final university mix’.

ARTICLE BY: PATRJCIA ZARIK

TYPE

GRAPHIC DESIGN

LETTERPRESS

CALLIGRAPHY

MY CV PROJECT

SELFPROMOTION

www.patrycjazywert.blogspot.com

I've created my CV recently as part of uni projects. I wanted my cv to be a simple and finished piece, showing my eye for detail. The book I created contains samples of my work and comes in a hand made envelope. The form of the outcome shows what interests me most: typography, especially letterpress and hand lettering and packaging design.

MY CV PROJECT 49

ARTICLE BY: BEATRICE HAGEN

NATURALISM

ARCHITECTURE

VEGETATIVE

ART

Hundertwasser

UNPRETENTIOUSLY

One reason why other people do not want to paint vegetatively or want to take to a vegetative way of life is because it begins too unpretentiously, it does not have great eclat or drum roll; on the contrary it grows quite slowly and simply, and that does not appeal to our social order, people want instant results based on the slash and burn principle. 51

ARTICLE BY: RYAN MCMILLAN

PANTHA DU PRINCE

SILENCE

MUSIC

ORIGINS

MINIMALISM

Pantha dur Prince

NOISE

ARTICLE BY: RYAN MCMILLAN

SILENCE

MUSIC

ORIGINS

MINIMALISM

Pantha dur Prince

NOISE

There are many theories about the origins of music. One such theory maintains that the first song was a lullaby for children; another, that men began to make music in order to please the women. Hendrik Weber a.k.a. Pantha du Prince does not worry about such genealogies. For music is always already there, even without humans. On his new album, the producer and DJ, who lives in Berlin and Paris, claims: music slumbers in all matter; any sound, even silence, is already music. The mission, then, must be to render audible what is unheard and unheard of: black noise, a frequency that is inaudible to man. Black noise often presages natural disasters, earthquakes or floods; only some animals perceive this “calm before the storm.” Black noise is something archaic and earthy. Some tracks on Pantha du Prince’s third album—the first to be released on Rough Trade—are based on field recordings and improvisations produced in collaboration with Joachim Schütz (Arnold Dreyblatt Trio) and Stephan Abry (Workshop) in the Swiss Alps. It turned out that the house in which they lived while staying there stood next to a pile of debris formed by a landslide that had buried an entire village. The cover of Black Noise recalls this history of loss. On his quest for the magical acoustic moment, Pantha du Prince burrows through the acoustic debris. He transforms the materiality of the fundamental sounds found or recorded on the Swiss Alp (natural noises and avant-garde folklore) into an expansive and highly speculative acoustic architecture. The music on Black Noise balances precariously on the slippery threshold between art and nature, between techno and folklore. That lends it a certain spectral and intangible aspect. Nature and technology become indistinguishable, all authenticity evaporates. Not unlike Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3, adapted for television by Rainer Werner Fassbinder under the title Welt am Draht, it leaves the question of what is artificial, what is real unanswered. Nature as a simulacrum: accordingly, Black Noise is not about an anarchical liberation of sounds or anything of the sort, but rather about how much alienation is possible before the listener loses his nerves and his orientation. On this album, rifts, fractures, and digressions are not flaws in the system but acoustic micro-vectors that drive the narrative. The intros serve to present the source sounds recorded “out there”—knocking, barking, ringing, tinkling which are then soon caught in the currents of vaguely psychedelic mutations. In accordance with the principle of morphing, main and subsidiary noises blend into one another, and the most diverse acoustic designs are in play: steel drums and marimbas as well as physical modeling. Although the music goes beyond the conventional techno format in a variety of ways, the dramaturgy always remains intelligible and physically captivating. An introductory phase that is on the somber side ends in euphoric relief with “Stick to my side,” a postmodern hymn, inimitably sung by Noah Lennox a.k.a. Animal Collective’s Panda Bear. Another guest on Black Noise is Tyler Pope of !!! and LCD Soundsystem, who plays bass in “The Splendour.” In addition to Detroit techno (thus in “Behind the Stars,” a made-for-Ibiza killer) and deep, stumbling house of the Theo Parrish variety, Weber’s introverted brand of tripping techno draws on traditions of British pop, including Durutti Column’s avant la lettre shoegaze and noisepop. Having played bass in the Hamburg-based band Stella, Hendrik Weber has plenty of indie rock experience under his belt. Influenced by electroacoustic neo-avantgardes (Morton Subotnick, Luigi Nono), Krautrock and deep techno, he shapes a novel kind of club music that is probably best described by the term “sonic house.” Black Noise blurs a whole number of antitheses: acoustic v. synthetic, powerful v. fragile, epic v. bashful, catchy v. mysterious. The most diverse acoustic sources and moods are folded into one another and bathed in an imposingly well-composed continuum. Pantha du Prince is still a Romantic Conceptualist. And the message we hear him murmuring: beauty is possible even after the disaster; where there was debris and noise, there shall be great art.

ARTICLE BY: JOHN SALANDER

ISRAEL

PHOTOGRAPHY

KOSOVO

WAR-PHOTOGRAPHY

JAMES NACHTWEY

BOSNIA

James Nachtwey

ARTICLE BY: JOHN SALANDER

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated."

ISRAEL

PHOTOGRAPHY

KOSOVO

WAR-PHOTOGRAPHY

JAMES NACHTWEY

BOSNIA

ARTICLE BY: ELIZABETH SWAN

MICHEL COMPTE

ZURICH

PHOTOGRAPHY

SWITZERLAND

FASHION

Michel Compte

ADVERTISING

Artist Michel Comte was born 1954 in Zurich, Switzerland. The professionally trained art restorer approached photography autodidactically. 1979 Comte received his first international advertising assignment from Karl Lagerfeld for the fashion house of Chloe and moved to Paris. Work for the American Vogue lead him in 1981 to New York and later on he took residence in Los Angeles. “I have always lived on the edge”, Comte states on his restless persona. “If I no longer have a sense of risk I immediately move on. I probably inherited that from my grandfather.” (Swiss aviaton pioneer Alfred Comte.)

ARTICLE BY: ELIZABETH SWAN

Within a few years, Michel Comte evolves to one of the most sought-after fashion and magazine photographers in the world. For Vanity Fair and Vogue, he portrays numerous celebrities from the world of art, movies and entertainment, ranking from Julian Schnabel, Jermey Irons and Demi Moore to Mike Tyson and Michael Schumacher. Comte's advertising clients include famous names such as Armani, Dolce & -Gabbana, Nike, Lancome, Revlon, Ferrari, Jaguar and Mercedes Benz. In addition to portrait photography and fashion Comte has also increasingly moved towards photo-reportage and docucumentary. On photo assignments for the international Red Cross as well as his own Michel Comte Water Foundation he has travelled war zones and unstable areas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan and Cambodia.

ZURICH

PHOTOGRAPHY

SWITZERLAND

FASHION

Michel Compte

ADVERTISING

ARTICLE BY: NEIL WEBB

ECONOMIST

EDITORIAL

TELEGRAPH

ILLUSTRATION

NEIL WEBB ILLUSTRATION â&#x20AC;&#x201C; SELECTED EDITORIAL

OBSERVER

Editorial work for clients such as; Caspian Publishing, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The New Scientist, The Radio Times, The Telegraph, The Observer, The Independent, Restaurant magazine, The Washington Post, Time Out, Time Out NY, Mckinsey, Design Week.

ARTICLE BY: CHRISTOPH JEHLE

The module Medi323 Individual Practice at the University of Plymouth runns all over the year and provides the opportunity to develop an individually focused programme of work to harness the skills, understandings and experiences. In my first two years at University I did two animation shorts: “Locomotion in Evolution” and “Radio Traffic”. For me it was obvious to produce another drawn animation in my third year and develope my skills in this field. Although we live in the 21 Century, surrounded by computers and other electronic devices with lots of possibilites to animate, classical or drawn animation has its own style and charme. Some classical animators even say that computer animated films have no “soul”, are not as alive as hand drawn animations. So I decided to go back to roots of animation and draw every single frame one after another.

MEDIA

FILM

DRAWN ANIMATION

Autumn Breeze

BARBICAN

christoph-jehle.ch

ARTICLE BY: JAMES BENNET

BENNET

CARTOON

ILLUSTRATION

CARICATURE

PAINTING

Paintings by Bennet

PROCESS

At the beginning of an assignment,my first step is to visualize exactly what the image will look like at its conclusion. The clearer I can see the finished painting,the faster I can begin collecting the important elements that will make it a fun and interesting process for myself,and a successful endeavor for my client. I try to think of the action first,which then allows me to see the primary focus from many different angles,then select the one that works best, and from a fresh perspective. Once Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m satisfied with the perspective and the composition,the details of characters and hand gestures are selected from a buffet of sketches,photos and carefully scripted reference shoots.When amassing these details,thoughts of light and color are always being presented and debated. Although constantly aware of my original vision of the final piece, I allow myself to look for pleasant surprises that I may have overlooked. Once the painting process begins,which can vary,depending on size and usage,I work as quickly as possible,eager to see the finished work. Starting thickly with oils,in a very limited palette,allows me to construct the basic framework,which can be decorated with light washes and fine lines. The intensity of color can now be added to enhance my intentions. In the final stages, I inspect each section to ensure that it fits with my original thought. richardsolomon.com/artists/james-bennett

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