Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet

21st-Century Boy Band

“Maybe this is the begging of a chapter of hope” says Ville Haimala who, alongside Martti Kalliala, makes Amnesia Scanner. For the past few years they’ve been collaborating with French artist Freeka Tet on live streams, live performances, singles and now an LP. Their latest offering, STROBE.RIP, is a kind of snapshot into what could be a new era for the group.

In our zoom conversation, an internet lag causes their voices to converge in a surreal harmony that oscillates between temporal delays and shared laughter. But they don’t let it deter them. To Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet, technology is a tool to be tinkered with, deconstructed and recalibrated to create familiar yet uncanny results. There’s always a twist. Their live shows plunge audiences into smoke, sound and light, forcing them to partake in a ‘roided up sensory experience that fuses observer and participant.

The Amnesia Scanner project began online as cryptic videos and enigmatic songs sung by ‘oracle’ and produced by the ‘xperienz designers’. Now after almost a decade of building their labyrinth they’re knocking down the walls to reveal a harmonious exchange of ideas where even the crustiest sample plays a part in their audiovisual puzzle. The frictions of their past LPs have given way to something more rounded and smooth. The angst has been quelled and the group even go so far to envision a whimsical future as K-pop style idols.

Raudie McLeod: For most people Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet exist online through special URLs, streaming platforms, discord, even a local WiFi network etc. Where are you IRL?

Martti Kalliala:  Right now I’m in Berlin.

Ville Haimala: I’m in eastern Finland.

Freeka Tet: I’m in New York.

Raudie McLeod: You’ve recently played live shows in various cities around Europe and also two shows in Australia. How do you collaborate and practise when you’re in different time zones?

(The zoom called lags and FT, MK & VH all speak in unison, stop in unison, and then chuckle in unison)

Ville Haimala: This is how we collaborate… with a huge lag! Since the beginning Amnesia Scanner has never worked so much based on a traditional band or studio session format. It was a distributed project since the beginning and we’ve always worked with different people in different places. It’s quite an online native thing. I guess this is the way we also build our live shows. A lot of the work is done online before and then we convene and start putting pieces together.

Martti Kalliala:   I can confirm that. There is a group chat. There’s several group chats actually, with different collaborators and a lot of this happens asynchronously.

Ville Haimala: and a lot of chaotic folder structures of different medias.

Freeka Tet: Time for a little sponsorship with dropbox, I think….

Raudie McLeod: STROBE.RIP is a fairly stripped back version of your previous albums. It sounds as though Amnesia Scanner have been softened by the trauma of reality post-covid and the present living crisis. It’s an emo album in a way. Did you approach the songwriting differently?

Ville Haimala: Somewhat yes and somewhat no. I don’t think the songwriting approach is different other than working on some of the material together with Freeka. Songwriting for me is more like channeling. it’s not so much deciding ‘I’m going to make a song like this or I’m going to make a song like that’ it’s more so working on material and seeing where it ends up and I guess in that sense something has become more emo or more mellow. Or maybe the two previous records were so angry or loud and it felt good to have a bit of an oasis. I think STROBE.RIP is at the same time very soft but also very intense. There are sides to it. ‘Merge’ is probably the most distorted and loud song we ever made.

Freeka Tet: When we started to do music together during covid, way before the album, it was more band oriented. We spoke a lot about our beginnings when we all teenagers and started to do music. We were all in bands when we were kids. The emo came from that, the common ground of us as teenagers, so maybe it’s stuck a little bit.

Ville Haimala: Our first ever musical collaboration was a streamed performance that we did over 3 days where we arranged some of tearless and some unreleased material into literally unplugged versions and streamed them over this campfire setting. The seed for this collaboration was sown around that time.

Raudie McLeod: I’d been an amnesia scanner listener for some time, but my first introduction to Freeka Tet was the Unplugged: Part 5 performance at Terraforma 2022. The long prosthetic arm was spellbinding. You have a knack for mangling the expected, for example your piano keyboard software. How did you arrive at this point in your work?

Freeka Tet: The prosthetic animatronics is something in common with Amnesia Scanner. This absurd, almost dadaist vibe that I grew up with. I grew up watching Cunningham and Gondry. All that stuff, all the weirdness, I always liked it. As for the piano, my work in general is more performance based. I’m not a musician per se, as in writing music. I think I have always been really into making music with daily activities. My main performance before Amnesia Scanner was making music just with my face. I needed something very universal that I could play in Japan or Berlin or wherever and the reading would be the exact same. Very universal. The piano thing, there’s a performance I started to work on where I was thinking ‘I just wanna do music based on me reading and answering my emails’. They’re very mundane tasks but they could have a musical output. As for the prosthetic, I began to work with masks and stuff like that because making them is super interesting to me, the process is cool. When Amnesia Scanner asked me to join them for this performance I thought of what I could provide them. I thought back to this performance I used to do with a microphone and a remote to control my voice and the long arm was a way to hide this weird object. Also it’s a pretty iconic shadow to have a very long arm. It’s pretty easy to spot from afar.

Raudie McLeod: Your immersive live shows employ playful twists of the status quo, for example, Freeka’s microphone has a spotlight which points at the audience instead of the performer. The large screens feature fragmented text prompts and text-to-image jpegs. In the dark rooms where you perform I’m struck by the similar feeling to scrolling my phone in bed, illuminated by the screen, being presented whatever the algorithms decides. What are your thoughts on transforming viewers into participants?

Martti Kalliala:  we’ve always been very interested in taking the basic elements of a live performance, the visuals, the effects, and using them to the maximum or to the extreme. We force the audience to participate. You’re enveloped in smoke and it’s hard to orient, or you’re bombarded with strobes which have this hallucinagenic effect. In a sense we, I don’t want to say abuse the audience, but you almost have no choice.

Ville Haimala: It also seems like the music performance culture has this big pressure to be immersive and it’s fun to put it on steroids. To tweak the intensity so high that it’s like ‘Now you have the spotlight in your eyes. Now you have this bombardment of things.’

Martti Kalliala:  Amnesia Scanner started as this very online thing in the sense that we weren’t associated with it. The music only existed online. We thought it was very interesting to make the live counterpart as visceral and engaging as possible by pushing the physical impact of it to some kind of extreme. Now in some sense the live show has almost become the main medium of the project. All these different elements come together and it definitely has some primacy in our heads as the main output.

Freeka Tet: For the live shows, we’re trying to accentuate a band-feeling or a human-side of things, but when Amnesia Scanner is on stage, they have never really been in your face as people. The spotlight is pretty representative of what’s happening. It shines on the audiences’ face, and you can’t see our face. It’s not really clear what’s going on. On the other side, because it’s something that is mobile, the movement translates the human. It’s not a machine doing it. It becomes more organic, but it still anonymous. It prevents us from presenting our face.

Raudie McLeod: One of the comments in the ride film clip reads “finally, something to wake up to.” How do you feel that your new album together is giving people some reason to live in this confused post-modern society?

(silence for 5 seconds, then laughter)

Freeka Tet: We laugh about it. And all the different types of laughs you can have, the real ones, the weirder ones…

Ville Haimala: Since the previous two albums we’ve been going through some stages. There was anger, there was grief. Maybe this is the beginning of a chapter of hope.

Raudie McLeod: I read in previous interviews that creating your own music is about collecting all the sonic crumbs and making something unique from them, that your production process is kind of a secret. Is there anything you’d like to reveal about your process now that it sounds like it has changed somewhat?

Ville Haimala: It’s not that there’s some sort of secret formula. We have our ways of pushing different material through our processes and with the sausage at the other end we try to formulate something. We create sound as raw material and then sculpt something out of that. It’s always remained the same since the early days when the work was maybe a bit more collagey or less structured but I think it’s still in it’s core the same process. Now there’s maybe more of a songwriting angle to it but that’s been present since quite a long time. I personally feel it’s a natural continuum of things. As time goes by you find new tools and new ideas, but the basic process is still quite the same. There’s no secret sauce. It’s just our exchange and us bringing these different pieces to the table and planning something together.

Martti Kalliala:   All sound is equal in the process. Some crusty sample can play a part. Maybe it’s not 100% true but it’s mostly true since the beginning. In the beginning we were sampling stuff from surprising sources. I think now it’s very common. This non-hierarchy of sound is somehow the thing that has remained. 


Freeka Tet: The process is quite versatile. Sometimes a song can be really concept driven, based on the way the world around the music has been built, sometimes the music comes on its own and builds the world. It’s an eternal feedback loop. Sometimes a concept before can become music and sometimes existing music can bring more detail to the overall concept.

Ville Haimala: And that applies a lot to the project. On this album we’re working again with Jaakko Pallasvuo writing texts for us. We’ve been working together since the beginning of the project, almost 10 years. Instead of him writing particular lyrics for songs, he gave us a bunch of texts that ended up being the inspiration for a lot of visual and sonic stuff. The same with PWR studio who create a lot of our visual language, the briefs are never very clear, in that we wouldn’t go to Freeka and say ‘Hey can you build us this, or hey we need this visual’. This is maybe why the whole world can feel a bit random or incoherent at times, but that’s all really fun. A lot of stuff ends up being used in a very different way than it was intended. It’s an open project. I feel that it must be an interesting project to collaborate on contribute to because the end result is fairly open ended.

Freeka Tet: As a collaborator the way I would see it is this. Imagine walking into a teenager’s room. There’s a lot of elements. There’s visuals, there’s posters, there’s music playing. There’s a world they’ve been building. This is what Amnesia Scanner has been doing for a decade almost. You are free to look at it, take from it what you want and add to it what you want. That’s pretty much how it works. There’s a lot of freedom but the environment is set so you can’t be fully outside of it. There is already a direction.

Raudie McLeod: Back to the Ride film clip. What’s wrapped inside the black packages?

Freeka Tet: This is based on something Amnesia Scanner already did. When I started to work with them they had a lot of collaborators and a lot of details. I’m very detail oriented and there is one video they already did a long time ago which was just someone unwrapping objects and this stuck in my head. I like repurposing old stuff. I’m a big recycling guy.

Ville Haimala: Yeah it was the AS Truth mixtape video.

Raudie McLeod: I read a comment on the AS Truth video that said something like ‘this is what’s inside the ride packages’

Freeka Tet: Well I guess we will never really know what’s inside the package…

Raudie McLeod: STROBE.RIP might be the first album that lives entirely in the 21st century. Your press release states “amnesia scanner is now living in the world it built.” This world seems to possess a strange logic which sits at the limit of information and comprehension. My question is what comes next?

Ville Haimala: We have some ideas of where it’s going. Building this story with Freeka is definitely not over, there’s already quite a lot in the pipeline. As it’s been communicated somewhat, STROBE.RIP is a piece of a bigger puzzle which involves us doing a lot more performance work. We mentioned already the live streams. There are different formats which extend the project. There’s many directions.

Martti Kalliala:  Referring to the cycle of work that STROBE.RIP is part of, it’s unclear how it will end or how long it will go on.

Freeka Tet: Because we’ve been working together with the live before we recorded any music, one of the conceptual directions we had with this album was that usually you release music and then go on tour to defend it, where here we were interested in, not so much releasing the music at first and touring but building music through the live performances. One big difference was that most of the songs were sketched as band songs first. We thought instead of sampling bands, let’s build a band for each song and then sample it. The raw material was made-up bands. This could be maybe a direction… What those made-up bands were before.

Ville Haimala: The first performance we did with this material sounded like what ended up being the samples for the album. It ends up feed backing into itself over and over again. We would love to retain some kind of freedom to continue developing the material on this album or somehow and not decide on definitive versions of things.

Martti Kalliala: One of these end games that I’ve thought about is that we might start an idol franchise. Amnesia Scanner might transform into some kind of idol operation. there will be more information later.

Freeka Tet: Franchising.

Raudie McLeod: Like how Daft Punk license their helmets to imitators around the world?

Martti Kalliala:  Yeah or more like a K-pop style idol thing.

Ville Haimala: We’ve had this long running joke but also a real fantasy of having a Las Vegas style show where we could get a hold of infrastructure and do a show that runs at the same venue for a season. Maybe now that this dome has opened in Las Vegas it seems like the fitting screen for an Amnesia Scanner performance.

Freeka Tet: We could be opening for Chris Angel.

Ville Haimala: Me and Martti are Penn and Teller and you’re Chris Angel.

Team

Photography · Kristina Nagel
Special thanks to Modern Matters

Ai Weiwei

Navigating Through Life 

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing) is undoubtedly one of the most influential and fearless voices of our time. In a world where the right to express oneself is often taken for granted, Ai Weiwei’s unwavering commitment to this cause emerges as a clarion call to create inclusive spaces where every voice is respected and cherished.  “Expressing oneself is a part of being human. To be deprived of a voice is to be told you are not a participant in society; ultimately it is a denial of humanity”. A statement followed through by the immense outspoken nature of what Ai Weiwei’s body of work testifies to be. As he beautifully puts it in this interview, without free expression, we lose our expressive uniqueness, “akin to flowers that fail to bloom, birds that cannot soar, fish that cease to swim, and clouds that no longer drift across the sky.” Ai Weiwei’s art transcends mediums, seamlessly merging with activism in works like Remembering (2008) and Human Flow (2017) where he sheds light on the plight of refugees, compelling us to take action and empathize with those in dire need. 

His exploration of cultural heritage, craftsmanship, and the value of everyday objects in his latest exhibition at the Design Museum in London serves as a testament to his enduring commitment to preserving our shared history. Our conversation with Ai Weiwei also delves into his relationship with technology and social media, illuminating the complexities of online engagement in a world marked by censorship and rapid change. He offers his perspective on the evolving role of design in contemporary society and reflects on his deeply personal connection to the objects he collects. 

In this interview, Ai Weiwei also delves into how his journey with his father, Ai Qing, not only shaped the man he became but also paved the way for the unique connection he shares with his son. Standing at a crossroads of generational wisdom and personal growth within the complexities of parenthood, identity and the world he envisions for the next generation, Ai Weiwei finds himself tasked with the delicate balance of imparting the lessons of his past without allowing them to cast a shadow on his son’s future.

Ai Weiwei shares not only his artistic vision but also his unwavering commitment to the values of human rights, freedom of expression, and the enduring power of art as a force for change.

Jade Removille: Ai Weiwei, it is a pleasure to be able to have you as part of this upcoming issue. Where are you now? 

Ai Weiwei: I am in London at the moment, but my residence is in Portugal.

Jade Removille: On your website’s homepage, the powerful statement “Expressing oneself is a part of being human. To be deprived of a voice is to be told you are not a participant in society; ultimately it is a denial of humanity”, urges society to create inclusive spaces where everyone’s voice is respected and honoured, reinforcing the notion that self-expression is not just a privilege but an essential aspect of our shared humanity. As an outspoken dissident artist and a fervent activist for human rights, could you delve into how significant self-expression is to you? 

Ai Weiwei: Thank you for your insightful interview question and for taking note of my comment on free expression. Free expression is often perceived as a core element of human rights. In a deeper sense, without free expression, each individual loses their unique attribute that belongs to them. If such circumstances prevail, our society would be robbed of its expressive features, akin to flowers that fail to bloom, birds that cannot soar, fish that cease to swim, and clouds that no longer drift across the sky. Such a world is indeed a daunting prospect.

Free expression facilitates our ability to perceive the world as an extension of our senses and emotions, enabling the manifestation of our unique perspectives. It is through this individualized articulation that we can truly appreciate the richness of human nature and the value of our shared humanity. 

In my view, free expression is not exclusive to artists or to those who construct foundational thinking paradigms. Rather, it is the most crucial element that defines us as human beings. Stripping away the right to free expression is perhaps the most damaging action against individuals, as it strips away their very essence.

Jade Removille: Has your sense of belonging to China been undermined since your exile in 2015? Have you found your oasis of peace? Do you see a future in which you would come back?

Ai Weiwei: My sanctuary of serenity resides solely within my heart. Much like a diligent gardener, I continually tend to my personal thoughts and expressions, nurturing them so they can flourish. It would be accurate to describe me as a person without a homeland. From my birth, my father was deemed an enemy of the state, so I grew up in exile within my own country during my early years.

Subsequently, I embarked on a journey abroad, having lived in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Portugal. None of these places can be referred to as my hometown. My maternal language is Mandarin Chinese, which makes my existence in these foreign lands akin to navigating life with a disability, relying heavily on body language and gestures to barely communicate. Nevertheless, I am profoundly grateful to these countries for providing me with opportunities to engage with issues that matter to me and to remain active.

Jade Removille: At 15 years of age I was introduced to your work through the Sunflower Seeds installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern (Kui Hua Zi, 2008), and it left a lasting impression on me. I remember my parents and I were utterly amazed by the meticulous craftsmanship of the seeds, their delicate nature, and the sheer scale of the installation, which was difficult to fathom.  In an interview for Tate, you mentioned that sunflowers symbolised the revolution, providing both spiritual and material support for the people. The immense quantity of seeds created for Tate Modern was unimaginable, yet you accomplished it. Witnessing such a meaningful installation also benefiting and providing employment for the hundreds of artisans involved was truly moving.  Could you talk more about this work? Did you plan on the installation to interact in a specific way with the location and the visitors? 

Ai Weiwei: Thank you for sharing your experience of encountering this artwork as a teenager. I must confess that I also first saw this installation in its entirety at Tate Modern. At that moment, my feeling was the same as yours. 

When an artist embarks on creating an artwork, it begins merely as a concept. The particular characteristics of this concept were its grand scale and voluminous nature. What is more important is that these 100 million sunflowers were each meticulously painted by hand by 1,600 women. These women, dedicating two weeks of their lives to this project, rendered it almost a religious activity of a kind of daily expression. The sunflower seeds are the embodiment of their craftsmanship.

In Jingdezhen, the town of these women, this is their tradition as well as a means of survival. Concurrently, their straightforward task of painting sunflower seeds encompassed a profound sense of interest and engagement. This imbued me with a feeling of the enduring power of art. It doesn’t simply draw people’s attention, but its creation is also a testament to the investment of time, the grandeur of volume, and the concerted labor of many hands.

Jade Removille: I would like to address your practice as an architect. You used to run FAKE Design with which you realised 60 projects. FAKE closed down shortly after the Olympic ceremony for which you had designed the Bird’s Nest’s stadium in collaboration with Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron. Your involvement in this project helped to shape its iconic and innovative structure. You brought to architecture, the humanity it needed but you have mentioned before that you had had enough of it. Why does this medium not suit you anymore? 

What was your very first architecture project? 

Ai Weiwei: My first architectural project occurred before I even recognized it as such. It was when my father and I resided underground, in a ‘diwozi’, devoid of electricity and water. Our bed was merely a platform left from the excavated earth, topped with straw. Our only source of natural light was a small window above. Occasionally, pigs would pass by, sometimes partially sinking through and hanging halfway from our ceiling before scampering off in panic. That was our reality.

Amid these circumstances, I needed a place for a lamp. We carved a small square hole, around 20cm high and 30cm wide, where we placed our oil lamp. This humble hole, dictated by the constraints of our environment, has left a strong impression on me. I hadn’t realized it then, but it embodied an essential element of architecture: providing solutions for our fundamental needs in the most basic ways. Such solutions can range from a modest hole for an oil lamp to a colossal stadium meant for an entire nation.

The year we completed the National Stadium was also when I decided to abandon architecture. I came to realize that the application of architecture wasn’t based solely on individual desires but could be manipulated as a tool for national propaganda. I felt a sense of regret for our work. Despite creating an ambitious and unparalleled piece of public architecture for Beijing, its usage contrasted starkly with our original aspirations. It became a symbol of power projection and a mechanism to sideline individual existence. That’s why I chose to step away from this highly politicized practice.

Jade Removille: Intensity, care, resilience, memory and recovery in the face of immense destruction are recurrent threads in your work. With Remembering (2009) at the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich, Germany, 9,000 backpacks were arranged to display a quote in Chinese characters that read, “She lived happily for seven years in this world. Each backpack in the installation represented a life lost in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, particularly the young students who perished due to the collapse of poorly constructed school buildings.

In your 2015 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, you had created a striking and thought-provoking installation using 90 tonnes of steel bars salvaged from the debris of the earthquake. Each steel bar was meticulously straightened by hand, a labor-intensive process that imbued the artwork with an additional layer of meaning and significance. 

Through your work I sense that part of your message is conveying the indomitable spirit of affected communities and their ability to rebuild. How do you think governments could be held more accountable on systemic issues and what is our role in this? 

Ai Weiwei: My focus on straightened rebars as artworks emanates from a deeply personal place, as they are connected to the lives tragically lost during the 2008 earthquake. Uncovering their names and identities became a necessity. Yet, such simple and concrete facts can often be brushed aside and forgotten in some societies. In my view, neglecting our shared memories and disavowing our communal sense of guilt for the disasters of the past render us accomplices in evil. Consequently, if we believe in our right to seek freedom, expressing human rights equates to our duty and obligation to remember those who have been hurt and forsaken. Such endeavors serve to constantly remind us not to devolve into beings devoid of feelings and a sense of justice. The recollection of past experiences, the understanding, and empathy require a language and means of expression. My artworks are an exploration for such a language.

In terms of whether my artworks strive to hold governments accountable for disaster management, I feel that I have failed. My artworks only represent what I, as an individual, can accomplish, in tandem with those who resonate with my cause. They do not appeal to the government, which is not a single entity but a complex mechanism operating on the principles of bureaucracy and power. More often than not, the governmental understanding of human life and rights stands in stark contrast to our own. This dichotomy underscores the necessity for every individual to voice their perspectives.

Jade Removille: You touch upon interconnectedness of life and art, how art is about life and its reality. Art becomes a means of activism. Human Flow (2017) your film about the refugee crisis is a poignant call for action. Had you always thought about the role of art or the role of an artist in this way? How far do you take art as a means of activism?

Ai Weiwei: My interest in the refugee crisis stems not from the principles of activism, but from my desire to comprehend the world more deeply. When I left China in 2015, my understanding of global issues was rudimentary, superficial even. I needed a pressing international event to deepen my insights. Consequently, I immersed myself in the refugee issue over the following years.

I traveled to numerous countries, visited countless refugee camps, and conducted interviews with hundreds of refugees and the volunteers aiding them. These experiences culminated in several films and provided me with an understanding of the political landscape in the context of globalization. Whether as an individual, an artist, or an activist, the labels don’t matter. What truly counts is how I use my limited time to acquire a comprehensive and balanced understanding of humanity as a collective and the world in which we reside.

The formation of such understanding requires the assistance of both activism and art. Without activism, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to engage firsthand and experience these situations deeply. Without art, my involvement wouldn’t find an adequate channel for expression and release.

Jade Removille: You place great value in the past and artefacts and throughout the years you have researched history, ideologies, materials and artistry. Within your work there is an embrace of the handmade and reverence for craftsmanship in an era in which automation and mass productions are revered.  What does destruction of cultural heritage mean to you?

Ai Weiwei: Humankind is hurtling at an unprecedented pace towards accepting new realities, a process that demands the hefty price of forgetting our roots and striving to erase our most innate attributes. These original attributes encompass our need to employ our hands in work and our feet to gauge distances – aspects now largely replaced by technology. Consequently, we no longer actively use our hands as we once did. Our hands, once vital and irreplaceable extensions of our creativity and thinking, thus becomes disconnected and irrelevant to our struggles and understanding of the world.

In this light, human nature is evolving because the functions of the human body are changing. This leads to shifts in human logic and language. It is why I persist in believing that we must retain these basic abilities – not only do they ensure our survival, but they also imbue our thought processes with meaning.

Jade Removille: Your new exhibition Ai Weiwei: Making Sense at the Design Museum, London explores the value of everyday objects, from ancient stone-age tools, fragments of pottery from your Beijing studio (which was demolished by authorities in 2018), as well as an impressive collection of approximately 100,000 ceramic cannonballs and 200,000 broken spouts from teapots or jugs. You have said we are products of our time, giving new interpretation based on their own knowledge. What does design mean to you in relation to our time now?

Ai Weiwei: Whether intentional or not, design has always primarily been a reflection of one’s identity, and subsequently, it communicates our collective identity to others. To truly comprehend who I am and who we are, we must delve into our understanding of history, our origins. It is only by acknowledging where we come from that we can grasp our present state. As for where we are headed, that remains uncertain.

What we possess are the history and memories that have shaped us, the processes that have defined our identities. Our understanding and recollection of history, our awareness of various conflicts and contradictions, these are indeed what will form the foundation for who we might become in the future.

Jade Removille: What was the first object you consciously decided to collect and why?

Ai Weiwei: In fact, I’ve never regarded myself as a collector. In the society where I grew up, there was no private property or personal ownership; everything we possessed, including our thoughts and individual actions, belonged to the state, to be assessed by its standards. The only possessions I could call my own were my early memories.

Upon my return to China, I found many items that I deemed valuable casually for sale in markets and on display, without anyone paying much attention. These items included Neolithic stone axes, spouts, and porcelain balls. My impulse to collect them stemmed from the belief that the sheer volume of my collection could serve as tangible proof of our collective disregard for our own history and the values it embodies. It reflects our blindness to the foundations of our existence.

Jade Removille: All this materiality and collectibility contrast highly with a sense of having survived at some point with nothing but yourself, your mind and your health. How has your self-perception in relation to the collective evolve after remaining isolated in secret detention for 81 days, in 2011?

Ai Weiwei: We arrive in this world bare, and equally bare shall we depart from it. All our collections merely signify our deep affection for the people and things in this world, or perhaps, a certain curiosity. However, these are attachments we can’t carry with us in birth or death. They are public resources, yet under many circumstances, they must be understood and curated by individuals.

When I was secretly detained, my loss was not simply of the items I had collected. Instead, I was deeply affected by the reality that everything lost its meaning because I was isolated and could not communicate or exchange with others. This included memories, which also lost their significance, as they are resources meant to be shared and utilized by the public. That’s why I embarked on writing my memoir immediately after my release, even though it took almost a decade to complete.

Jade Removille: Which specific places in the world have had a profound impact on you and left a lasting mark? How have these places helped position yourself in relation to the collective? 

Ai Weiwei: To be frank, my travels have taken me to many places, driven by work or personal curiosity. Yet, the place that has had the most profound impact on me is one I hadn’t appreciated for many years – the ‘diwozi’ where I moved in with my father as a child. Out of all the places I have lived, the ‘diwozi’ holds the greatest significance. It was there that I came to understand common human nature, the value of things and political idealism, which has enabled me to stay alert and aware to this day.

Jade Removille: As a keen user of technology and social media, to which extent do you think you are reaching a level of connectedness with your audience? Do you feel more free online? 
In these recent days we have been seeing the introduction of a new social media platform. Will you be using Threads?

Ai Weiwei: In my time in China, I initially believed that social media could help us overcome communication difficulties, censorship, and restrictions on expression. However, my experiences soon revealed the absurdity of such a notion. Today, social media in China operates under severe political censorship, leading to a limited form of expression. It manifests as a peculiar form of media—altered by power, favoring entertainment over depth, serving as a platform that lacks profound expression. In the West, social media isn’t entirely free either. It’s akin to a bustling disco, where the clamor, the overarching melody, and the rhythm still dictate the overall environment. I don’t perceive social media as a medium for deep thinking. Its real strength lies in serving as an information channel and fostering a diversity of expression. It enables us to experience a time, unimaginable prior to its advent—a time imbued with mythical connotations, feelings, and expression. As for its impact on societal development, I believe it merely accelerates society’s existing trajectory. Be it politically or economically ascendant or descendent, social media hastens the pace.

I’m not familiar with Thread; I’ve only recently heard of it. My requirements for social media are akin to my needs from a pair of shoes. I wouldn’t purchase a new pair simply because it’s available, not until my current pair is beyond use.

Jade Removille: Which other artists inspire you?

Ai Weiwei: In my younger years, I found inspiration in Duchamp, the artist who shattered the barriers of conventional thought. Alongside him, I regarded Andy Warhol as a pioneer in the realm of communication and artistic expression.

Jade Removille: What does process mean to you and what does the finalisation of a project bring to you? 

Ai Weiwei: To me, process signifies everything. Life, from birth to death, is a continuous process. The completion of one project merely marks the inception of another. Until our final breath, nothing is ever truly finished.

Jade Removille: Looking towards the future, which current projects are you working on? What do you wish to learn more of? 

Ai Weiwei: First and foremost, I don’t believe I possess a future. I don’t hold any grand ideals or ambitions either. My desire is simply to navigate through life with greater serenity and tranquility.

Jade Removille: Finally, the theme of this issue is Personal Investigation. In your memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, 2021, you delve into your personal experiences and shed light on the events that unfolded in your life and that of your father, Ai Qing, a significant figure in Chinese literature. Drawing parallels between your own journey and that of your father, who faced challenges in his time, you were also finding yourself a father to a two-year-old son. Considering this context, could you share your reflections on the intergenerational impact of personal experiences and how they shape your role as both an artist and a father? How do you navigate the complexities of your own life while also contemplating the kind of world you want your son to inherit?

Ai Weiwei: When my father was alive, our father-son relationship was largely unfamiliar to me. I bore the brunt of the calamities my father brought upon our family as a writer and thinker; these adversities were shouldered by us all. Our relationship was always fraught with complexity. My father never envisioned us becoming a thinker or artist, mainly because it was evident that such individuals often brought immense hardships to their families. As I strove to extricate myself from these political chains, my efforts persisted for decades. Throughout this time, I never considered starting a family or having a child. However, when my son turned two and I was secretly detained, I began to realize that my understanding of my father was quite limited. I also acknowledged the responsibility I had towards my son, namely, the obligation to pass on what had transpired between my father and me. This was necessary because there was always a risk that I could perish at any moment, and it would be a shame if I didn’t fulfill this duty. The relationship I had with my father shaped the one I have with my son. I don’t want him to be influenced by me at all, as he will face a time and lessons utterly different from my own. However, I also don’t want him to forget his roots. My son is now 14 years old, and I must carefully consider how to prevent my experiences from negatively influencing him.

Images

  1. STUDY OF PERSPECTIVE: TIANANMEN SQUARE, 1995-2011
  2. AI WEIWEI PORTRAITS Photographs by Luba Kozorezova
  3. WEIWEI CAM, 2012 DROPPING A HAN DYNASTY URN, 1995 (1)(2)(3)
  4. GLASS HELMET, 2022
  5. MARBLE TAKEOUT BOX, 2015
  6. AI WEIWEI PORTRAITS Photographs by Luba Kozorezova

    All artwork images courtesy of the artist

Denzel Curry

Fighting The Good Fight 

When some people hear the name “Denzel Curry,” they think of the explosive chorus of his high-octane hit “Ultimate.” Others may think of his viral music video for “Ricky”––which recreates the backyard brawls Curry attended in his hometown of Miami––or the fact that he toured with superstar Billie Eilish, who has proclaimed Curry to be one of her favorite artists. The rapid conclusion that can be drawn from his flashiest achievements––that Denzel Curry is a great rapper––pales in comparison to the one drawn by those who have dug deeper into his complete body of work. When you truly connect the dots of his career, you are confronted with a portrait of an artist who has made a truly massive contribution to the development of hip hop in the past decade. 

Curry, who began writing rhymes as a child, was still in high school when he became a part of SpaceGhostPurrp’s infamous collective, Raider Klan (stylized RVIDXR KLVN), whose gritty sound, gothic aesthetic and hieroglyphic style of writing influenced an entire generation of rappers and headlining acts. Curry was also a member of the creative cosmos who helped establish both Soundcloud and South Florida as one of the most exciting breeding grounds of underground and experimental rap in the 2010s. He helped transform a digital platform into one of the most consequential genres of its time: Soundcloud rap. 

On each new record, Curry reinvents himself. He evolved away from his original claim to fame, the aggressive, speed-rap of Imperial (2016) and into a more confessional and vulnerable terrain with Ta13oo (2018). Last year, he conquered boom-bap with Melt My Eyez and See Your Future––an album that revives the beats and politically minded rhymes of 90s hip hop. Even though Melt is his first record that actually sounds like Nas, De La Soul and Wu-Tang Klan, Curry’s high-level wordplay and amplification of social issues have long embodied the spirit and soul of “golden age” hip hop artists, who viewed their music as a means of political resistance. Critical issues like criminal justice reform, systemic racism and police brutality are deeply and tragically embedded in Curry’s life and creative output. Both his classmate, Trayvon Martin, and brother, Treon Johnson, were murdered by the police, in 2012 and 2014, respectively. 

The art of the battle is a theme that connects Curry’s childhood with his greatest sources of inspiration: anime, video games and martial arts. Conflict is at the center of his musical oeuvre, which sheds a powerful light on the harrowing realities of being Black in America––and the internal dialogues of someone at war with both the world and themself. And despite his many accolades, Curry’s status in the music industry today is the byproduct of a constant fight to be seen, heard and respected. With his pen as his sword, Curry has proven himself time and time again to be a formidable match for any opponent. Denzel Curry is, above all else, a fighter worth betting on. 

Cassidy George: I know that you’re really devoted to your Muay Thai practice. Is that how you started your day?

Denzel Curry: I can’t do Muay Thai today. I fucked my neck up yesterday doing calisthenics because I didn’t warm up. Now I have to chill.

Cassidy George: Is Muay Thai so embedded in your routine that not being able to practice makes you feel “off”? 

Denzel Curry: Yea, plus I get fat really easily! Normally, I spent most of my time on the couch and eating. I still plan on getting sweaty today though––but at the sauna. 

Cassidy George: Earlier this summer, you released a new single “Blood on my Nikez.” It’s a big shift in sound from your last album, Melt My Eyez and See Your Future. Is this the start of a new era for you? 

Denzel Curry: This isn’t a new beginning, I just wanted to have fun with my music. Melt is my perfect project. It’s the best thing I’ve ever put out, but I don’t feel like it got the recognition or appreciation that it deserved. Everyone is just concerned with numbers and what goes up at shows. So many other artists, like Kenny Mason, also came out with impeccable projects last year. I feel like they were swept under the rug because they weren’t “popular.” 

Cassidy George: Is that a difficult or intimidating place to be in, as an artist? What comes after a magnum opus? 

Denzel Curry: I plan everything far in advance. When I was making Melt, I already knew what the next project would be. It may not come out now, next week or next year––but it will be released at some point. I just need to flesh it out a bit more. Until then, I’m just dropping shit that’s fun. Melt set a really high standard for me and I won’t release another album until it’s 100% ready. 

Every track that I write, I write from my feelings. Back in the day, a lot of my feelings were just anger and sadness. When I came to LA and was making Ta13oo, for example, I was in a new environment and there was nothing around me. I experienced a little bit of depression. Making that album…it was very internal to external. I had so much more fun making Melt because the stuff I was talking about, like therapy, and just the soundscape I was going for––it took the burden off of my shoulders. Once it was well received by the public and critically acclaimed, people were like: “Wow, I didn’t know he had this in him!” The upside of that is that it caused a lot of new people to want to work with me because they saw a new side of me, beyond the “rah rah rah” of Ta13oo or Imperial

People are so wishy-washy though! When new things come out that they like, they go back into the old stuff and are surprised that it’s good. Many people didn’t even listen to those records because they expected just one thing from me. That’s the narrative I’m trying to change. 

Cassidy George: What was the narrative, specifically? And what new narrative are you trying to construct? 

Denzel Curry: That I was a one-trick pony and that I’m not versatile. I ended up proving on Ta13oo that I was hella versatile. My true fans know that in each project I do something different and that I always nail it. Of course, people will always choose not to listen––but that just comes down to preferences. I can’t let that kind of thing get to me…but I let it get to me. You know what I’m saying? I’m human. It is what it is. 

Cassidy George: I think one of the greatest pleasures in life is proving people wrong.

Denzel Curry: That’s my greatest revenge! It’s the best thing I’ve ever done and the only reason I’m successful. I get good at so much shit just to spite whoever said I couldn’t do it and all of the people who said “stick to one thing!” I’m like, “Okay, see you next year!” I remember there was this guy back when I was getting into rap who would always ridicule me. I just never stopped rapping. One day “Threatz” blew up and this man hit me up again and said, “let me get on a track!” I was like, “ain’t you the one who said I couldn’t rap? You wanna be cool now? Fuck that!” 

Cassidy George: Your parents supported your rapping from early on though, right? Who was it that didn’t believe in you? 

Denzel Curry: Some people thought it wasn’t possible because they didn’t see it.

Cassidy George: By “it” do you mean your talent? Or potential? 

Denzel Curry: Yea, but everybody sees it now because they can’t avoid it. People only see things when they’re unavoidable. 

Cassidy George: When I heard Melt and saw your music videos for “Zatoichi” and “X-Wing,” I immediately thought of the Wu-Tang Klan. In many ways, you are continuing a long tradition of rap that is influenced by Asian culture. Any thoughts about why there is so much synergy between those two worlds? 

Denzel Curry: Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers and Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… those albums were essential listening for me back in the day. As far as culture, I grew up watching Toonami. I also watch kung fu movies, but anime was what really did it for me. 

Cassidy George: Battles are an ongoing theme in your history, your hobbies, your music and your message. On Melt, the battles you rap about are both internal and systemic. Who or what, if anything, are you battling right now? 

Denzel Curry: The same thing that I’m battling now is the same thing I’ve battled since the day that I was born: my demons. I am always translating that into my music. I knew I had to take martial arts seriously because I needed to reach a level of fearlessness, where you can go up against anybody and be unshaken. 

Cassidy George: Even yourself? 

Denzel Curry: Of course. You can be your own worst enemy. 

Cassidy George: Is that what you were working on in therapy?  

Denzel Curry: Yea, but I don’t go anymore. I just want to live my life without feeling like I’m walking on eggshells. Therapy only increased my anxiety, funnily enough. It helped a lot, which is everything––but it felt like I was being told what to do. I just want to live my life with no ifs, ands or buts. 

Cassidy George: Wow. Eggshells? Really? Isn’t the whole idea that you are free to share and say anything without judgment? 

Denzel Curry: I didn’t feel it during sessions, I felt it when I walked out of them. I felt like I had to snitch on myself constantly. Now, I’ve done the work. I’m good with myself and I can make the right choices. I don’t want to go in there and get all of the answers. 

Cassidy George: You strike me as someone who doesn’t respond well to being told what to do. 

Denzel Curry: Shit, man. I’m an Aquarius! We’re known to rebel. 

Cassidy George: I’ve always thought of you as “my favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.” But which artists are you most excited about right now? 

Denzel Curry: Paris Texas, Kenny Mason, Destroy Lonely, Ken Carson, JID, Jasiah, Midwxst. A producer named Sophie Gray and an artist named Sherelle. Also Kaytranada, PLAYTHATBOIZAY, Amber London. 

Cassidy George: Is there anything that all of those people have in common?

Denzel Curry: All of them have this appeal that came from the underground. There’s nothing industry about it, it’s real. 

Cassidy George: That’s also been a theme in your career. 

Denzel Curry: Yeah, it’s a battle. It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. It gets exhausting because you think that these people should know by now what you’re capable of, but some people are scared to get outshined and others don’t see the value in helping you.

Cassidy George: Are you good at playing the game? 

Denzel Curry: No, but I always stay myself when I am playing it. I just think it’s best to treat everyone with respect and dignity. 

Cassidy George: What frustrates you the most about the industry in 2023?

Denzel Curry: Labels and the people that run them. When I say I want to work with another artist, they say “Sure, we’ll get to it”––and never get to it! It’s all fake. If they don’t see what you have to offer at that moment, they put you on the back burner. Everything I put out is quality and yet I am always questioned about the things I do. Right now, I’m focusing on getting my singles right. With albums, I’m playing the long game. I want to make sure everything I put out is timeless. 

Cassidy George: How do you do that? By ignoring trends?

Denzel Curry: No, you have to pay attention to trends. You just can’t ride them all the way. You take bits and pieces. Good artists copy. Great artists steal. But you can’t steal something new from somebody that’s newer––that’s fucked up. I’d rather steal from old shit and make it new. Think about it: you couldn’t have Jackie Chan without Charlie Chaplin and Bruce Lee. 

Team

Photography · Geray Mena
Styling · Sophie Gaten
Hair · Chrissy Hutton
Grooming · Alice Dodds
Location · The Rubicon London
Special thanks to August Agency

Eartheater

Pow(d)er

I sit outside a cafe in Ridgewood, Queens with Eartheater on a balmy day in July. Sweat lingers on hairlines and we sip spicy margaritas, the salt dissipating lip liner, a visual synonym for loosening lips as we go from pink to red, it all comes around, laced and flowing. The constant droll of children and families passing by jumbles with the sounds of a man drilling into the side of the cafe, sirens wail and cars boasting prodigal subwoofers leave fallout to linger. Ridgewood’s grit isn’t overtly special to the unbroken eye but what hurts so much is the gnawing feeling that maybe you just can’t see it, can’t see the way to let it inside you, lapsing. Yet for Eartheater it is home, oscillating between the starfall that comes with stardom, “staying” is indeed its own genre of romance.

While many interviews have referenced her upbringing in distance and isolation, a first kiss in a graveyard – to bring it back here where the circle itself feels refreshingly right, bare as if “x” still marks the spot. On the brink of releasing her latest LP Powders in September, Eartheater, a known creator of sonic and visual worlds, wants nothing more than to feel grounded and in turn, free. Despite the ways in which she herself has become mythologized, a story we tell ourselves through speakers and high-pitched vibratos, Powders is influenced by memory and its tone conveys an enduring ache. As ethereal as Eartheater seems, her continued work with Chemical X, the label she founded this year, alongside the relationships she maintains with her community, remain her main sources of inspiration and emotional fodder. In turn, the lyrics themselves are often anecdotal, reflective of experiences she’s had, heart full, head full, exposed. As she continues her ascent, it’s everclear that though she is winged, she remains down to, and of this earth. 

Eartheater: Do you think the album should be titled Crushing or Powders?

Lindsey Okubo: Even though Crushing is my favorite song on the album, I like Powders better as a title. Why are you oscillating between them now?

Eartheater: I get these moments where I get hit with an idea and a couple years ago, I knew I would make an album called Powder sand it was going to be about the process of breaking everything down to that state of being residual dust. Then all of a sudden, this always happens right at the last moment before putting something out, where I ask myself all of these questions. With Crushing it was about the action, the verb, the doing, which then made me think about what tool I’d use. I was up at six in the morning thinking of actually calling it “pulverizer.” 

Lindsey Okubo: But what I like about Powders is that there’s kind of an innate softness to it, an implied sense of being refined and pure. It doctors a sense of magic because it’s the eventuality of something and maybe it’s also kind of about you? 

Eartheater: And the synonyms are so vast. Powder is a spice, flour, salt, sugar. It’s makeup, it’s gunpowder, ammunition. It’s also liquid money. It’s cash. It’s soft and vulnerable but it’s also pigment. It’s powerful and transposable, it could be anything, turn into anything, it’s fairy dust. The verb “crushing” makes it more about what I’m doing now but powder is what it could be, it opens it up to the future, so yeah, it’s got to be Powders. I just turned in the masters and I don’t think I’ve racked my brain so hard with mixing. I don’t think I’ve ever talked through the process of it as much as I did. 

Lindsey Okubo: Right and how does this feel different as things grow? 

Eartheater: I’m obviously going to do what I need to do the way that I want to but as things grow, there’s more eyeballs. It’s a bigger thing with more pressure. I’m learning through every single album I make and am picking up where I left off. I’m learning the crux of engineering it all and understanding what it is to really make frequencies, emotions and ideas play. I needed someone who was not stressed in their life to mix this album because energy gets infused into it and I became very protective. It was an intense process but I am so grateful to everybody that put their blood, sweat and tears into this because I definitely was squeezing blood, sweat and tears from many, many a stone.

Lindsey Okubo: So it was someone new mixing for you?

Eartheater: This was the first time I had multiple mixers because I picked a specific mixer for specific songs. Before I would always have just one person do it all, which is what usually happens, but I really tried to be present, I sat there with them, talked to them and felt them. I’m really happy with the way I trusted my gut but it’s more than that, it’s following through.

Lindsey Okubo: How are you defining being present? 

Eartheater: I think a lot of it has to do with communication and also giving myself the time because I realized my ears are so volatile and I’m not a machine. I can’t just listen to a mix and give feedback in that moment. I have to be in the right state to absorb it and hear it properly. I’ve been pushing back this deadline, driving everyone crazy, but I don’t care because it needs to be perfect. 

Lindsey Okubo: You’ve spoken a lot about this sense of patience turned endurance you’ve cultivated across albums, communities turned collaborators that requires greater intentionality and nurturance because everyone exists in different environments and cadences. 

Eartheater: I’m just being protective of the essence that is there. The magic can be in something that may sound like a mistake but you have to just be very vocal about what’s true and what needs to be cleaned and what needs to stay scuffed.

Lindsey Okubo: Right it’s all about communication but we often forget that communication is a learned process, it’s subjective. Walk me through this learning curve through your own experience. 

Eartheater: Totally and it’s also about being open to learning in the communication because there were many times in this mixing process where I was getting way more in the nitty gritty of it to where I felt pretty tongue tied in trying to describe what I needed or what I needed to hear. Technically, because I’m a composer, arranger and songwriter, when it comes to the technicalities of frequencies in that world, I’m less versed. It was about being vulnerable, allowing the egg to be on my face when I’m trying to describe what I’m trying to say while knowing I might sound like a fucking idiot but pushing through it. 

Lindsey Okubo: For so many artists there is this expectation to explain one’s work through verbal language, an artist statement, press release, or whatever it is regardless of the work’s form. It often presents this conundrum when it comes to how the work is received or presented. Do you want people to receive your work in the way that you’ve intended or do you prefer them to take what they will?

Eartheater: I definitely want to shine light and illuminate certain things. I understand that I’m in control of the listener’s ear and that is absolutely part of it but at the same time, I hope that people see a million other things that I never saw. I do really think about the multiplicity, or the myriad of hypothetical ways that someone could perceive certain lyrics or gestures. Ultimately, I don’t give a fuck but I do like to cycle through and explore all the nuances because that’s what makes it fun. To me a piece isn’t interesting or doesn’t hold my attention if I don’t feel like there are many layers of meaning or ways in which it can be interpreted, it’s about the triple entendre. I just want people to like to feel something, not just to fill the void of sound, I want to pluck heartstrings, I want to make them feel alive. 

Lindsey Okubo: When do you feel most alive?

Eartheater: When I hear really good music from fucking legends! When I’m moved by art, when I’m moved by things that I feel like I want to be a part of. 

Lindsey Okubo: How much of that is also tied to extremes? 

Eartheater: I’m glad you said that because I think it is extreme. I think you have to go to extremes, you have to practice, you have to learn and you have to live your life and you have to be messy. It’s contradictions up the ass, getting chaotic, getting stupid – being very disciplined, being very hard on yourself, pushing, working hard, humbling yourself. It’s both sides of the coin and that in and of itself is extreme. I definitely drove myself insane, I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten so crazy. 

Lindsey Okubo: I feel like that’s also just being in New York, you know what I mean? There does feel like there is this chaotic energy that’s been fueling everyone right now that feels collective and I think that’s also what’s special about New York. I know you used to work at Happy Fun Hideaway and they just had their 10th anniversary! 

Eartheater: I was their first hire! I worked there for five years! 

Lindsey Okubo: Crazy how many bodies have moved in that space, how it’s nurtured so many and and I feel like you’ve carried that same conscientiousness through to your pursuits with Chemical X and everything. You have this nuance of understanding community and understanding people in a way that definitely influences your music and maybe that gets overlooked a bit? 

Eartheater: Well write about it, so they can read about it [laughs] I feel this album was a culmination of everything especially coming out of COVID and looking back on this crazy mountain that I built and climbed at the same time, I feel really proud of that. It’s hard for me to even adjust to feeling the magnitude of it because I do really just feel like a village girl being in this neighborhood. I know the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, I watched kids grow up on my street, taught them how to play the guitar and now they’re applying for college. I wanted this album to feel grounded. Trinity and Phoenix were fantastical, there was this sense of reaching out and Powders is about breaking things down, unabashedly using nostalgia and romantic memories, pulling them forward.

Lindsey Okubo: I feel like nostalgia has also become the buzzword that it has because of how quickly things move nowadays. The role of memory has become a lot more prominent for the same reason. 

Eartheater: Has it? We definitely want to feel more grounded because where’s the substance? What is the material? Maybe the memories are the powder and here I am with a butterfly net, trying to catch the powder. It’s like cultural compost or something. 

Lindsey Okubo: There’s a lot of duality in your work and it’s important to acknowledge that the things that seem, feel or look most obvious have an underbelly to them. For example, I’m curious what the role of innocence plays in your work? The loss of innocence seems like it mirrors your trajectory in a seductive way. 

Eartheater: Yeah that’s interesting, I have to let that simmer. I didn’t go to school, I have a weird upbringing and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am who I am. There’s a lot of ways in which I’m like, shit, I probably would be so different if I had been trained and put through the same sort of experiences that most people are and I feel very different a lot of the time. I just have to stay okay with not knowing what something is, saying I don’t know what you’re referencing. Sometimes it’s hard to admit that but it’s better than pretending. 

Lindsey Okubo: I almost feel like that’s a blessing because it warrants a sense of singularity to you. I feel like when you say you have different references, connection then more so becomes about emotional benchmarks. 

Eartheater: I’m glad you said that, the emotional alchemy is something I try to hone in on which is what I love to do with the lyrics. I try to express emotions that are difficult.

Lindsey Okubo: Right and how adjacent is poetry to it? I know I’m staring at your tattoo of it right now. It’s interesting to think about who you’re speaking to, who you’re writing about and how it all becomes abstracted? For instance, in Clean Break that’s seemingly such a strong visual cue but could also be an emotional one. 

Eartheater: I feel the poetry is what’s abstract, but if you really process it, the meaning is quite pinpointed. In Clean Break, I was actually just speaking very anecdotally and talking about what happened with that song. Lola came over and I just got back from tour in Mexico. Along the way, one of my bags that had my laptop in it went missing and my phone was pickpocketed. I got home and had no way to communicate with anyone, no computer, no phone but I still had to edit this video for Lola. I walked to my makeup artist, Nina’s apartment and sang to her window so I could call up MOSHPIT, who I needed to edit with.

Despite this involuntary isolation, I was able to connect with Lola to hangout and to comfort her as she was dealing with a breakup. My mom is English so making tea for these situations is like a reflex but I didn’t have a teapot but I had this cylinder glass vase. I filled it with tea bags and as I’m pouring the hot water in – boom! The bottom of the base drops off, a perfect, clean break. It doesn’t shatter and I’m exclaiming to Lola about how insane this is but she’s crawling on the floor and I’m looking at her like she’s crazy. She eventually leaves, I’m sobering up and I looked down on my coffee table and there’s a perfect pile of glass shards. In her stupor, she had noticed that it wasn’t a clean break. She has been crawling around picking up all the shards around my living room. Something about it just hit me and the song downloaded into my brain. I grabbed my guitar and lo and behold, there was no way to record it because I had no phone, no computer but I stayed up all night writing the song and it was heaven. It was paradise because finally I had the space to write. 

Finally, there’s time for the concerto without this technological fodder. Duality revealed itself in how annoying it was but also what a blessing, being a clean break, but not a clean break, what I’m going through and what you’re going through – and how we’re going through it together and it’s completely different things but there’s this spiraling magic to it. A concerto is when you have a soloist against the whole orchestra, right? It’s like our experience versus everyone else’s that we’re around. I decided to use the word concerto to reflect this sense of being closed-minded which we will always be to a certain degree. As much as we want to empathize, it’s like how concerto of me to not see, it wasn’t a clean break.

Lindsey Okubo: Just in hearing you tell the story, I know how everyone has mythologized you because you’re a world-builder but at the same time, it’s in these personal mythologies that the real magic lies. It’s being able to see the signs, being open to the synchronicities and connecting the dots. 

Eatrheater: It’s simple! The self-awareness oscillates, but it’s part of it. You have to allow yourself to plunge into things where you’re going to experience something, where you’re going to learn. That’s what I try to tell my babies, I think it’s really hard right now because people are really scared. 

Lindsey Okubo: You mean with Chemical X? What are they scared of? 

Eartheater: Of making mistakes. Yeah with Chemical X, but a big sis now for a lot of artists in the community.

Lindsey Okubo: Right and I think in not wanting to make mistakes, you realize that there is a formula for things nowadays. 

Eartheater: Well, yeah, but that’s boring! How are you going to make anything new? If it’s a formula, it’s already been decided for you.  

Lindsey Okubo: Yeah and for those that you are a mentor to, how are you helping them to achieve that? People don’t really see the difference between success and fulfillment nowadays and they equate one with the other but one feels totally different. There is no room for this sense of fulfillment because people want to be this person, they want to be this person, now. Agreed?

Eartheater: I feel a huge sense of fulfillment but a lot of people around me are telling me that there’s so much potential for ultimate success and I’m like, I feeI like I made it! I could have never imagined that things could have even gotten to this point. I’m so grateful every day but everyone wants more and more, but for me to do that, I actually need to sit back, collect and live. There’s an input and output to this process. I feel extremely fulfilled in the work and maybe I don’t have the numbers but I don’t care, the respect is there. Where I don’t feel fulfilled is in the part of my life that isn’t about music and I’ve been hell bent on it in my own way which is getting nitty gritty, staying grounded but I need to go out and see shit, I’m not going to be locked in my fucking tower, I’m ravenous. 

Lindsey Okubo: Right and that activates this awareness of time because time doesn’t stop for anyone and if you sequester yourself, when you come back down, you often feel this disconnect between the community you’ve built in lieu of the pressures of being an artist.

Eartheater: I just love shooting the shit with all the characters and all the people and reminding myself, what is more than this rat race? I think that’s where the romance is, that’s where I find so much material for songwriting. I’m definitely at this place where I feel fulfilled in the work and I’m excited that after this album and the next album, to reconstruct my mode a little bit. 

Lindsey Okubo: How would you go about doing that? 

Eartheater: I want to try some new things out like acting, maybe I make a fucking cookbook [laughs] There are so many things I enjoy outside of this. I want to ride, I want to buy a horse. I want to train, I want to do show jumping, that’s what I thought I was gonna do before I did music. I want to lecture, I want to teach, I want to learn, maybe I’ll go to school? I love that it’s opened up to the point where I can even think about that because from what I came from to be quite honest, for me to be successful this is the only thing that I could do. Otherwise, I would be mucking stalls or waiting tables. I’m doing this so that I can then have the freedom to then do other things. 

Lindsey Okubo: It’s refreshing too because I also feel like when certain people ascertain this level of success, they pigeonhole themselves into identifying with what they do. I feel like even if they have other interests, they feel like they can’t explore them. I feel like nowadays it happens too often because everyone wants to be “relevant”. 

Eartheater: I am bringing it back to farming, like, you can deplete a field of the nutrients of a certain plant if you’re always planting the same thing there. You have to let it  rest and plant a different plant there and then move the other one to another space. I need to redistribute my energy to be renourished. It’s a wonderful feeling, but I feel like it’s the last squeeze of a particular root. I make it difficult for the structures of industry in that sense because people just want a mode of product development and to create commerce around that, but I’m not a machine. 

Lindsey Okubo: What’s your relationship with time? 

Eartheater: I think I’m really rebellious. I remember when I was 18, I thought I had to put out my first album then but I didn’t, I put my first album out when I was 26. The pinpointedness of age and time and the expectation to deliver at a certain point didn’t help me at all. As I do in many aspects of my life, even in myself, if I see something being too much of a soapbox or godhead, I rebel against it. I decided not to give a shit about time and it’s definitely one of the motifs of my lyrics. In doing so, I gained so much more clarity to just do what I need to do. It relieves the anxiety because that thought process is just a feedback loop. Despite the world being topsy turvy right now, I feel more wise, acute in what I need to do and more strength in my voice than I ever have. What a gift that is! It makes me feel youthful. I want to exist there. 

Lindsey Okubo: Right and even in just being a woman, we do have to more or less face the realities of the biological clock at the same time which creates this whole ageist attitude. So much of age is more so just solidifying how you personally define things like trust, hope and faith and that only deepens through experience. 

Eartheater: Ageism is adjacent to sexism and it’s the power of mindset! The difference between faith and hope? With hope, you’re allowing there to be a possibility that it might not happen. Faith means I know wherever I’m going is gonna be cute. I’m gonna make my little adjustments to make sure it’s cute, but I have faith in myself to be able to do so. The glass is half full with hope but faith is the fountain. 

Lindsey Okubo: Ultimately I feel like it’s also something that reflects your personal power. You have your horse tattoos and I feel like it’s also that kind of iconography that embodies this idea of power. But again, duality, can’t have power without self-doubt. 

Eartheater: Power for me is knowing, no matter if everyone around me is unsure, I’m sure. There’s a spectrum of self doubt and you have to look at it and address it. Don’t immediately shun it because that’s being an ignorant, egotistical, balloon-headed asshole if you’re not actually asking, why am I doubting this right now? Because sometimes it’s right, maybe it’s actually correct but you have to dissect it. What voice is speaking in the microphone right there? Oh, it’s that little bitch that said that one little thing and what is she doing with her life actually? Or wait, it’s that motherfucker that has their shit together? I actually am gonna listen. It’s a process, it’s complex and that’s what we need to talk about more –  the complexity of our thoughts, the tree of association.

Lindsey Okubo: I was talking to the Paris Texas guys about safety and stability and they were saying that safety is about having the space to have those conversations with yourself, being able to sit down and think about things. As an artist or creative person, you’re constantly thrown into new situations with new people in new places and this notion of stability goes out the window but how do you maintain a sense of assuredness? 

Eartheater: Back to power again, there’s a lot of things we can buy to make ourselves feel better, but we also need to remember that we can do a lot for ourselves with nothing and that’s self love I guess. I think it’s about trusting your gut and not being afraid; and part of not being afraid is making mistakes and making a fool of yourself. I do think that this has to be an aspect of the identity of being an artist because right now with the exhibition of social media, people expect things to be so buttoned up and perfect, and that’s  so boring to me. 

Lindsey Okubo: Yeah, we crave rawness. What are some of the mistakes that you’ve made, if you want to talk about them?

Eartheater: Being so inspired by something and trying to do it without realistically understanding the amount of time it takes to execute it properly. It’s letting those dips happen so that you can rise in another way later.

Team

Photography · David Brandon Geeting
Stylist · Dominick Barcelona
Set Designer · Megan Kiantos
Hair Stylist ·  Shin Arima
Make Up Artist · Jezz Hill 
Manicurist · Mamié Onishi
Retoucher · Nikita Shaletin
Production · artProduction


Yuri Ancarani

Practicing Reality

I met Yuri on a warm morning of July in Milan, the city where we both live.

The original idea was to interview him with specific questions concerning his works, but it quickly became clear that our conversation would span way beyond the question-answer dynamic. 

Unpacking his extensive body of work means tackling a plethora of themes: from the idea of reality and imagination to the concept of truth, from language, symbols and the importance of sound to the overall theorization on aesthetics and the genre of the documentary. The core of his works lies, I believe, in his idea of reality, and the consequences that this vision entails.

In each of his films, from the oldest series Memories for Moderns (2000-2009) to his most recent work Atlantide (2021) Yuri’s depiction of the here and now is so dense in its realness that it manages to transform into its opposite: imagination.

Quoting one of his key inspirational filmmakers, Dario Argento, Yuri says that reality is the true source of horror. The horrific aspect of the everyday is, however, not always sinister.  The extreme simplicity of things, the daily life of the portrayed subjects, can be felt as scary if seen from the outside, but there is also an element of fascination, a strange allure to it.

Moreover,  instead of inserting imaginative elements from the outside, Yuri portrays things as they are, showing how it is precisely the ordinary that allows the otherness of things to emerge. Reality in itself is framed as intrinsically imbued with possibility: everyday working environments, with their specific set of rules and vocabulary, contain a certain mystery, a subtle touch of magic, which does not come from the outside but from WITHIN. 

The usual unfolding of regular practices, such as managing a marble quarry (Il Capo, 2010), the functioning of an hyperbaric room in an underwater station (Piattaforma Luna, 2011) or performative actions in a medical setting (Da Vinci, 2012) is filmed in its naked truth, each environment characterized by its specific language. The vocabulary varies, sometimes it’s gestures, sometimes it’s a list of orders, sometimes it’s silence. 

The construction of a world of symbols within the realm of the familiar is what generates this switch: a normal setting becomes fascinating, mysterious, not fully graspable. This lingering feeling is strengthened by the employment of close ups and camera shots that are carefully edited, delivering a strange dichotomy between the closeness of the subjects, whose gestures are filmed in detail, and the detachment of the viewer’s gaze, who observes as an outsider. Intimacy is suggested and denied at the same time.

In this context music and sound play a key role, carefully studied either as translations of the epiphanic moment partially reached (see the end of Piattaforma Luna, for instance, where the composition by Ben Frost represents a moment of freedom, an escape from the almost claustrophobic reality of the hyperbaric room), or as a suggestion, like the ironic employment of orchestra music in The Challenge (2016), hinting towards the classical pomposity of Hollywood Cinema. 

Some of his films, like Whipping Zombies (2017), a documentary on a dancing ritual in the tradition of a Haitian village, are entirely without dialogues. The faithful documentation of this cultural phenomenon relies entirely  on the registration of sounds and music produced by the local community. In his San Siro (2014) the stadium is filmed as a concrete entity that functions as the container of an almost mystical happening, its architecture framed in its curves and angles, inside and outside. The stadium is the protagonist, the game is never filmed. Here again the only sound is given by the footsteps and the roar of the exultant crowd, and the preparation towards the football match can be read, once more, as a ritual, punctuated by different practical steps.  

This idea of rituality, seen as a constitutional element of any society and fundamental in the construction of meaning, comes back often in Yuri’s works. 

Its most blatant form is seen in the short film Séance (2014) in which psychologist Albània Tomassini entertains a spiritual conversation with the deceased Carlo Mollino. Fulvio Ferrari, tenant of Casa Mollino, serves the dinner to the two guests, one visible and the other invisible. Through the voice of Tomassini Mollino speaks about the sense and the aim of his passed life, as well as the direction towards perfection. This agonized perfection is reached, in Mollino’s view, through the conjunction of idea and realization. The projectualization of a work and its actual form become one, in what is beauty and truth at once.

This precise correlation was at the core of Yuri’s working method in his latest film Atlantide. While talking about this idea of truth he told me about his choice of not using any script for Atlantide, the dialogues in the film consist of footage collected during the almost four years of research, in which Yuri followed the protagonists in their daily life around the Venetian lido. 

The entire creation of the film was an ongoing process, in which also practical elements such financing was collected throughout and not entirely beforehand. This experimental approach allowed for a unique challenge, in an attempt of capturing reality ‘’as it is’’, reflecting precisely Mollino’s conception of perfection in the work of art.

After our conversation I left with different thoughts in my head and the belief that a lot had remained unsaid, but the overall feeling I keep to this day is the full comprehension of Yuri’s desire:  to create a work in which truth unfolds in its totality, in a temporal frame that is both process and end. For a brief moment, entirely real. 

Credits

ATLANTIDE (2021) Video stills
THE CHALLENGE (2016) Video stills
SÉANCE (2014) Video stills
PIATTAFORMA LUNA (PLATFORM MOON) (2011) Video stills

All images courtesy of the artist.

PPAA

An Open Process of Idea’s Rather Than Forms

PPAA Pérez Palacios Arquitectos is an architecture firm based in Mexico City that focuses on “the architecture of ideas and not forms”. Heavily influenced by nature, be it by inspiration or practical site locality, PPAA seek to create projects through an open creative process. Pablo Perez Palacios founded PPAA in 2016 after over a decade-long architectural journey. This journey began with an interest in architecture sparked during his time living in Florence. NR Magazine joined Pablo Perez Palacios in conversation. 

Nicola Barrett: You stated about Infinite Openness that architecture needs to recover the idea of presence, of being part of a place and time. What do you mean by that?

PPAA: When we do architecture, we really put it to the test. Once it’s finished, at least while we’re still doing architecture for humans, you allow the passing of time to become the real judge. The project only starts when it’s finished. So that’s what I meant by that. I have this saying that I believe that really good architecture is one that, with time, it dignifies itself. I always say that there’s nothing more horrible than a new building. You need to allow life to go through the building. It’s really about having an open process that allows multiple actions to happen inside that built environment.

Nicola Barrett: You also said with this project that architecture has lost its connection with nature. Do you think there are ways to regain this connection in pre-existing buildings/spaces/homes? 

PPAA: Architecture has become a fight between artificial and natural. What I believe now, especially for the new generation, is that architecture needs to connect with nature. A very simple example is, developing an office building that has a glass facade with an air conditioning system. It works because there’s the sun outside and you are cool inside. But that’s no longer the way to approach it, because if we keep doing that we end up with the issues we have now. So architecture needs to come back to the basic principles and a primitive way of doing things. That is what has been lost. We can still develop whatever technology we can, but in the long term, we’re messing up the natural environment.

 Also, one thing that I don’t know if I mentioned, as important as the space we build, is the space that we leave behind. The void, the empty space is even more important than the built one. And it was super evident during the pandemic, people were in desperate need of a balcony or a terrace. 

We have to come back to the primitive way of understanding that nature is always better than architecture or the artificial. The more we develop buildings around that idea, the more consciousness and the more sustainable they are going to be.

Of course, it’s harder to do with pre-existing architecture and it’s harder to adapt. But with pre-existing cities or structures that are already there, we can start thinking about the space between those buildings. I don’t think you can possibly change everything that is already there. But there are a lot of things that can be done in this empty space, the void between things. I would think about it as a way to connect things, rather than transform the things that are already there. So it’s more about the space in between or how you deal with the space in between the existing buildings rather than the buildings themselves. When you start connecting all the little abandoned spaces into something, that brings more value to the existing works.

Nicola Barrett: What were some of the challenges you faced when working on the Echegaray project and what was your process when deciding to flip the ‘conventional layout’?

PPAA: The biggest challenge was to try to communicate to the clients the idea that it’s on a rocky slope, it really doesn’t make sense to bring a machine and tear it down. It’s much more appealing than just getting rid of it. So once they understand that the rock has a beauty in itself, then the second challenge was to make them understand that due to the slope of the plot, it’s much cleverer to have the social area at the top. The house itself is in this black rock, then you discover this openness and this view for the social spaces at the top. I think in the end, they bought into the idea and were super happy with it.

Nicola Barrett: So the biggest challenge was getting them to agree with it, not the construction?

PPAA: Of course, if you don’t fight against natural elements, like you don’t need to get rid of all this rock, then it’s easier. Structurally speaking, you use the rock as a support. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But besides that, the social area at the top has this super light wooden pavilion and we just brought in the structure. Like it doesn’t weigh a lot. Everything starts to align once you understand the natural conditions.

Nicola Barrett: In Moliere the space can be divided by sliding doors. How does this work exactly with people living in this project, or rather how has it worked?

PPAA: You normally have this idea that, okay, this is a living room and this is a kitchen and this is a dining room or whatever. With the possibility of multiple configurations, there’s really something that happens in the natural way of using space. When we did this project, their children were very small, so the houses changes with the user as well. If you want to have an open kitchen facing the dining room, or you want to have it closed because you have small children you can do that with the sliding doors. That they really understood from day one because it just gives you a lot of ways to personalise the space. 

Also, something worth talking about, is that architects have this idea that we kind of control everything. We design and specify, from the door handle to the curtain or whatever. But in the end, people personalise houses, they end up doing what they want, so it becomes a home. In Moliere the possible configurations just give you multiple possibilities on how you make it your own. It’s a very simple approach because it’s just literally a sliding door. But with that simple gesture, you have a lot of ways to inhabitant that space. 

Nicola Barrett: In Las Golondrinas the house is divided into three independent volumes with free space between. Do you think this idea of separate spaces and then communal gathering spaces could really benefit people who can’t afford the current housing market?

PPAA: In that specific case, what we’re separating is the moments of how you exist in the house, like sleeping time or social. So that idea of configuring the house around how you use it, would be something super good to do on a large scale. You can definitely take advantage of sharing more of a public space. At the moment people cannot afford a house and it’s bad because developers are trying to squeeze everything that you need into a smaller space. Before you used to have separate rooms for everything. So the idea of separating the use of the space is much cleverer than rather than minimising everything into one single space. 

And I think that the way to approach the housing of the future should be, okay, we give you the essential spaces that need to be enclosed. Like you need a private room, of course, and a bathroom. But maybe the social area can be something that is shared and adaptable. So, yeah, I think people need to really understand, especially developers, that the answer to the housing problem is not just making everything smaller.

Nicola Barrett: Juan Cano I was designed to blend in with the environment. Do you think that this is something important to consider in projects, partially when building amongst older local buildings?

PPAA: I think this idea that it should blend with the natural environment is not very formal in terms of the way it’s done. It’s more conceptual. It has to be something that really blends not only in terms of architecture and what colour it is. If it’s in an urban location, we have to stop thinking that every single project has to advertise how new and extreme it is. The value is how it blends with the surroundings. It’s about doing an architecture that’s value is not in the formal aspect, but the concept behind it. 

Also, Cano is a townhouse and there were not a lot of townhouses in Mexico City. In the city, there were a lot of houses, the urban sprawl, all over. So they have these huge kilometres of city that is just single homes and then the nicest areas are starting to have flats, one on top of the other. A townhouse is something that is in between. People still want to have their own house with their own garden, but the point is maybe you cannot do that because there’s not enough space. But we can’t just have one flat on top of the other. So by introducing the townhouses in Mexico is something that we believe, in terms of urbanism, is a way of addressing this. It’s about being honest and doing architecture, and it’s about ideas rather than forms. The formal aspect of architecture is something that shouldn’t be the number one priority.

Nicola Barrett: What was the process behind building La Colorada?

PPAA: That’s a super good example for the previous question. La Colorada has this typical a-frame which is a structure that has existed throughout the ages. It’s a shape that is found in every construction from around the world The first part of this project was an a-frame that was brought to the site, and then our clients asked us to make it into a larger home. So we extended the a-frame and we created these covered terraces and put the rooms underneath. So basically here we really forgot about the architecture ego and said, we’re just doing an a-frame.

There’s no point trying to do something extreme in the middle of a nice forest. An a-frame made out of wood really blends with the nature. Forget about the architect’s ego. Just do something that really disappears. Of course, we needed to make the client understand that when you’re going down to your room, you go through an outdoor space. You’re going to go from inside to outside and then inside again. But it’s also a way to disconnect, you force the user to be outside, put on a jacket. It was a simple gesture that allowed us to create a space that really blends in.

Nicola Barrett: What are some upcoming projects you’re particularly excited about?

PPAA: We have a few. We’re doing this electric charging station for cars, like a system of gas stations for electric cars. It’s really interesting because we’re doing a system that can be replicated many times. It’s freestanding, and it has this solar-powered system. 

We’re also working on a project that’s kind of our first high-rise building in Mexico City, that’s actually a preexisting twenty-five-floor building. Instead of just pulling it down and doing another one with a glass facade and central air conditioning, we’re actually changing the concept of how we do something that is literally one floor above the other one. We are making it public so you can go to the restaurant on the seventh floor and the public bath house that we are doing at the top of the building, like old Russian public baths. We’re very happy to be working on that project.

We are also doing a project in Mexico that is made out of the earth from the site. So that’s really nice. It’s this compressed earth with very thick walls. And we have a lot of things going on.

We’re looking to get one amazing public project, that would be our dream to do. Something that really has a public character, like a library.

And the more we do things the way we believe it should be done, the more happy we are. We need to avoid trends in life. Because when you start doing things by a trend, it becomes almost like fast fashion. It gives a temporality to the architecture and it gives a value that is valid only for a small period of time. We believe there are people out there who value our ideas. I believe that the more time passes, the better the architecture is.

It come to a point that we avoid having architectural references or books or magazines inside our office because we don’t want to see them. Once a year we take all the physical models and break them. It’s like we can have a clear mind afterwards. 

Nicola Barrett: So where do you get your inspiration from?

PPAA: It sounds like a cliche but from nature. I still haven’t been in a place that can replicate having a nap underneath a tree in the park. Our biggest aim is to try to do something as nice as nature. And also to give the exact same value to the space that we left as to the space we built. A simple example of this is a house and a patio. The patio is as important as a house. The empty space or the void or what’s left unbuilt is really what gives value to what you build. We try to start from that openness. Forget about formal aspects, forget about if I want it to be round or square or black or white. It’s really about understanding that it has to be, ideally, similar to what you feel in nature and as open as possible.

Nicola Barrett: What advice do you have for young aspiring architects and creatives?

PPAA: Yeah, definitely do something that is personal. Of course, you need to read about everyone, but the more you try to find your own way of expressing yourself, the better. Of course, you need to learn basic strategies, but study everything else around it. Like, for example, if you study architecture, but at the same time you study medicine or anatomy, then you have a better understanding of how to do things. A very straightforward example, if they ask you to do an aquarium, then of course you need to know a lot about whales and fish. Don’t worry too much about trying to do something like someone else. If you try to get ideas from other architectural examples, you’re going to end up doing things the same way. Worry a lot about finding your own personal way of doing things and dedicate as much time as possible to reading, studying, and learning everything that is not related to architecture.

Credits

CLOUD designed by PPAA. Photography by Maureen M Evans
INFINITE OPENNESS designed by PPAA. Photography by Rafael Gamo
MOLIERE designed by PPAA. Photography by Rafael Gamo
LAS GOLONDRINAS designed by PPAA. Photography by Rafael Gamo
LA COLORADA designed by PPAA. Photography by Rafael Gamo
CLOUD designed by PPAA. Photography by Luis Garvan Located in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, USA

Vanessa Beecroft

Rules of Non-Engagement

Vanessa Beecroft (b.1969) discusses how her work serves as a form of therapy, exploring personal conflicts and universal issues within a group. Her exploration of body image and gender politics has influenced her perception of herself and society. 

Her performances are known for their powerful portrayal of vulnerability and invulnerability, creating a unique interaction between the audience and the performers.The intentional discomfort provoked in her performances pushes boundaries and stimulates thought-provoking reactions.

This interview offers profound insights into Vanessa Beecroft’s artistic journey, delving into her personal investigation and its transformative impact on her life and art.

Alexandre-Camille Removille: Vanessa, throughout your career, your work has been deeply personal and introspective. Could you tell us about a specific work where personal investigation was particularly critical to its development?

Vanessa Beecroft: The way I work is to live my life like an artwork in all aspects. The hard part is life. Once that is addressed, work comes as a consequence. 

A particularly challenging experience has been the project in South Sudan, which started as a personal venture and became an intricately tangled dilemma that compromised the stability of my own family. I traveled to South Sudan immediately after the war in 2005 in the attempt to shoot a documentary film on the presence of the Church and was invited by the bishop to the local orphanage where three newborns were unable to latch onto plastic bottles. I nursed them for two weeks and continued to return to South Sudan several times while in New York I was nursing my son Virgil. I developed a bond with the twin boys and wanted to adopt them, but in the end I was persuaded by my ex-husband that it wasn’t the best option for the children. I photographed myself breastfeeding the twins in an image that suggested a white Madonna with two baby black Jesus’s which became controversial. I was commenting on the new form of neocolonialism espoused by the Church, using myself as a symbol of white righteousness. The image was purposefully ambivalent—loving, maternal and confrontational. 

Alexandre-Camille Removille:You often use performance art to express complex emotions and concepts. How do you prepare for these performances mentally and emotionally? 

Vanessa Beecroft: I don’t prepare for the performance. I prepare by living a certain life, abstaining as much as possible from the mainstream, living my own version of a contemporary romantic life and always being alert. Many times, I am not prepared for a performance. I just hope that nothing tragic happens. Artistically, regardless of whether the audience is happy or not, I am never satisfied.

 The models are given “Rules of Non-Engagement,” simple instructions to follow during the performance: do not talk, do not smile, do not move too fast, do not move too slow, wait until the end of the performance, you’re like a picture, your action reflects on the others… etc.

Alexandre-Camille Removille: What role does vulnerability play in your artistic process, and how does personal investigation tie into the therapeutic aspect of your work?

Vanessa Beecroft:Vulnerability is in dialectic with invulnerability. Two parties, the audience and the performers, are confronting each other in real time, for the duration of a few hours, without a rational awareness of what is going on or the nature of the confrontation. They are both vulnerable from different positions. The audience is vulnerable in the face of their taboos and the women are vulnerable to the audience’s gaze.

I think the models in my performances express personal issues and these personal issues become universalised by being multiplied by the many women in the groups. What was a particular instance becomes universal by extension to a larger group. I handle my personal conflicts and investigations by projecting them into a larger group of individuals more or less similar to me (at least at the beginning of the work, in the 90’s).

Alexandre-Camille Removille:Given that your work often revolves around body image and gender politics, how has your personal investigation of these themes affected your perception of yourself and society? 

Vanessa Beecroft: I wasn’t fully aware of the themes of my work. I tried to approach my performances as a portrait of a large group of women, similar to how we painted the model in art school. While portraying this woman in the performance, many other traits emerged, mostly not formal, but emotional, social and political. That is when I started to push in that direction, regardless of how that would impact myself socially. Sometimes I went really far and got in trouble.

Alexandre-Camille Removille:In your experience, how has the art world responded to the type of personal investigation you portray in your work? Has there been any resistance or particularly impactful support? 

Vanessa Beecroft: I felt as if art world abandoned me after the initial success. The other worlds embraced me, but I didn’t want to be embraced by them so I tried to use those platforms to further the themes that I couldn’t otherwise investigate. The art world may come back. I became desensitised to these ephemeral worlds that are fundamentally false. I believe in addressing the art world in a historical sense. I had fun pushing my visions, while being financially depleted by these facts.

Alexandre-Camille Removille: In many of your performances, you seem to be exploring issues related to identity and body politics. How have these performances been a means of exploring your own identity?

Vanessa Beecroft: They have been means of exploring my own identity by studying other cases and relativizing mine. Externalizing these issues through my performances perhaps avoids a true healing of the self, which recalls the acts of a saint martyr, which is a hero of mine since a young age (Joan d’Arc, Santa Lucia, Santa Barbara etc.)

Alexandre-Camille Removille:Your work is often characterized by a strong female presence. Can you talk about your intentions behind this focus? 

Vanessa Beecroft: It is self-representation. A portrait. I couldn’t accurately depict anything other than a woman. By being a woman, I can push the subject further. Experimenting on myself first and the group second.

Alexandre-Camille Removille:There have been debates about your work from a feminist perspective, with some critics arguing that it reinforces harmful stereotypes of women. How do you respond to these critiques? 

Vanessa Beecroft: By presenting a group of women naked in front of an audience I am not objectifying the women, I am showing the audience a group of naked women, which triggers them—their beliefs, self-perception, anger, prejudice, and more. The women are placed there for this reason and until they cease to provoke this reaction will continue to be exhibited. The fact that they’re exhibited as art makes them “intellectually safe,” like being on diplomatic ground.

 Alexandre-Camille Removille:You’ve spent a significant part of your career in the United States. How do you navigate your dual sense of belonging to both Italian and American cultures in your work? 

Vanessa Beecroft: I never felt as though I belonged somewhere since I was a child. I relocated to Italy when I had already learned English in London and from that point on, I felt displaced. So what I do is to assimilate the elements to which I feel closer in every culture. Italian language and artistic heritage, music, architecture, landscape. American contemporary spirit, ethnic diversity, power, politics. I absorb culture from other countries too. My work is where all of these elements converge.

Alexandre-Camille Removille: Have you ever felt any tension between your Italian roots and the global, often American-centric, art world? If so, how have you navigated this? 

Vanessa Beecroft: I am probably considered an immigrant. I will never completely adapt to the new country as I don’t need to, and I like to be alien in all countries. The proliferation of my work is probably compromised by this, but I am not running a business. As long as the work itself is not compromised I am happy with the discrepancies. 

Alexandre-Camille Removille: What learnings or insights have you gained from projects that didn’t materialise as planned?

Vanessa Beecroft: Many projects didn’t materialise as I’d hoped. The learning is that certain topics are untouchable politically and that the wider world is one. And it is all connected and self-sustaining.

Alexandre-Camille Removille:How do you decide whether to persevere with a difficult project or to let it go? Are there specific factors or considerations that guide this decision?

Vanessa Beecroft: If I decide that a project is worth pursuing, I will continue until it is completed. Unfortunately the project sometimes gets artistically weakened by complications and adversities. 

Alexandre-Camille Removille: What role does your family play in your creative process? Do they influence your work in any direct or indirect ways? 

Vanessa Beecroft: As they participate in my life, they influence the work too. They humanize me and therefore indirectly affect my perception of the world, of other human beings and my life experience. My son Dean, for example, helps me in the creation of music and photography, I photographed my daughter and in general I created a large photo album of them which isn’t public.

Alexandre-Camille Removille: Many of your performances are known to provoke discomfort in the viewer. How intentional is this in your work? What do you hope the audience gains or learns from this discomfort? 

Vanessa Beecroft: Initially I sought to apply the Brechtian idea of staging the drama, giving clues to the audience from which they might come to their own ideal conclusion or synthesis. As the audience resisted, I started pushing harder. Developing concepts to provoke a reaction. Making them graphic. I could only present the problems with paint or mise-en-scène. I thought the audience to be educated and righteous. I didn’t think the art audience needed to learn anything, but they did. I want the audience to go home touched and to think about what they saw as if it was real.

Alexandre-Camille Removille: Vanessa, looking back over your career so far, what impact do you hope your work has had?  

Vanessa Beecroft: It is almost like a dream. Today I see the world I was dreaming of as a child, visualised. Many ideas and images I had in my mind are now current. Aesthetics mostly, but also fashion and images of women, colors, patterns. Many times they appear differently to how I envisaged them, but now they exist so that I can move forwards towards new dreams.

Haley Josephs

Glowing Underfoot

Painting is not easy. In fact, “It’s hard to make paintings”, says Haley Josephs. (A painter.)  Josephs is not wrong. Art is old. It has survived time and has broken ground longer than civilization. From the Kununurra petroglyphs in Australia to the Chauvet Caves and Fayum mummy portraits, art has grown old, and painting has grown up. But it has never been easy. No matter how ‘simple’ Matisse made his forms, there is more than just technical skill required to paint something that endures. Although modern stresses spread on the contemporary skyline, art and creation are myriad and many. 

Some people paint humanity in its barren reality, while others depict the trees and the abstract emotions of humankind. Some grow grass and paint horizons that are endless and gold or muted in a haze. And some people paint both. 

Haley Josephs paints atmospheres stratified by living forms and forests. Look at the paintings long enough, and the figures and shrubbery sway, form into forest and producing form. They are separated by time and depicted in a scene. Superimposed by a colour that glows from afar like hot fire or heavy foreboding, soon to reach but still at a distance. Intimately separated by layers of paint and the glazes that hold them. Josephs shares emotional figures that come with a sense of accepted loss. They radiate mystical serenity. 

Her paintings give us something to ponder on, to feel. They shed light and emotion like myths and time, spreading out into the present like glowing bulbs in a century that is gloomy and dark, somewhat starved of and simultaneously surfeited with hope.

With a pictorial attitude that runs along the lines of an “If I don’t do it, then it won’t get done, so only I can do it” attitude, Josephs discusses her work and how she mines her mind, constantly experimenting — and at times failing — in a drawn-out process to improve and develop more and more work. When she will be done is unclear. Actually, the answer is clear. She won’t.  She has a lot of work to do and isn’t stopping anytime soon. 

Billy De Luca: Where are we calling from now?

Haley Josephs: Just home in Brooklyn. My studio is nearby in Williamsburg, but I’m around Domino Park next to the East River.


Billy De Luca: The last time you exhibited your work was at the tail end of last year.  How did you feel about that show in London?

Haley Josephs: I feel like so much has happened since that show, but it really set me up for where I’m at now.  Having made so many works with such intense colours from my time in and around Acadia National Park really helped me feel free. I learned a lot from all the explorations of colour, the references to nature, and even just being up there, honing in.

Billy De Luca: And what are you doing now?

Haley Josephs: The work has been progressing into a darker territory. The show gave me the nutrition to keep going; many of the exhibition’s works were made out in nature. I made a lot for that show, and I could have kept going. I just felt this need to produce. There was just so much to do, even though there was less time and space. It was the most I’ve ever felt OK about a show; I always feel pretty weird about putting all this emotion into something and putting it out into the world and having people watch you. But this show, I felt the calmest. I used to be very judgemental of myself after a show, but after the London exhibition, I felt ready to move on to the next step. 

Billy De Luca: And now that this exhibition is done, what would the ‘next steps’ be?

Haley Josephs: I used to be interested in the lusciousness of paint right out of the tube or barely mixed on the canvas, letting that be and sit on the surface. I thought that was really sexy. Now, I feel like there’s more nutrition in delving into how to capture colours in a shadow. I want to spend more time on the paintings I’m currently working on. I want to be layering more, practicing with different glazes, and working on the complexities of deeper colours. Finding colour within the darkness.

Billy De Luca: The darker tones reflect light when glazed, and it’s a fascinating experience up close. When you look at a Caravaggio, you can see how much layering goes into his dark background and how many colours sit behind this ‘darkness’.  

Haley Josephs: And it’s attractive. When I was in London for my show, I also explored parts of Europe over the weeks. I realised that when I was surrounded by paintings in museums, I was attracted to those with darker tones. Before, I felt intimidated to push through and challenge colour. But now I am more interested in the browns, greys, and greens that have these complexities. 

Billy De Luca: How do you achieve that?

Haley Josephs: I’m now using a material called Canada balsam (a natural resin that has the effect of an old master’s glaze). They almost look like there are colours underneath glass, layered so much and keeping the vibrancy without muddying it. When I go up close to a painting, I like to see what the artist was thinking about, like how tree bark is expressed through the paint, not just colour.  There’s this one painting I did with a Unicorn, and it had an extremely glossy surface, so much so that when you look at the painting in person, your body is also in the image. It’s almost like a mirror, and you have to confront being a part of the painting and interacting with it. That’s also why seeing the picture in person and not just online is essential.

Billy De Luca: What sort of dialogue arises from your work? 

Haley Josephs: Well, I think the truth is my work is really hard to talk about. I think of paintings as metaphors and try to create worlds of emotional landscapes. There’s this surreal aspect because it’s so otherworldly. Sometimes the landscape or sky or abstract landscape is supposed to represent this inner world, one where people get this intensity of emotions that are unnamable. 

Like everything is sort of unnamable.

Billy De Luca: It can only ever be boxed into a word…

Haley Josephs: And that’s why I make paintings. It’s my way of communicating, some people can say things in words, but obviously, not everybody can articulate everything. I can only hint at certain things that it’s about. It is up to the viewer to feel how they feel; that doesn’t have to be described in words.

Billy De Luca: How do you feel about these works? 

Haley Josephs: I mean, to be honest, this work feels like me. More like what I’ve been trying to describe in the past. I feel like I came up short before and couldn’t really tell you what I was trying to tell you. However, with this recent show, I felt closer. The works I’m making now are more ethereal and feel less about the figure and more about emotion. It’s not always just about narrative. People notice there’s a greater intensity to the work. Maybe it’s because of the shift in a darker palette, but I think it has to do with me being more intentional about how I start my compositions and what means I used to execute the work. In the past, I would let myself be more content with things and think, ‘Oh, this is OK,’ and wouldn’t really question everything in a way that I felt like I was really challenging myself. But I am now.

Billy De Luca: Have you changed your practice method?

Haley Josephs: I used to use source materials, sometimes taking photos of myself to get the anatomy right or looking up pictures online to inform my vision. Now everything comes from my imagination. I’ll draw out a composition in my sketchbook, letting it come out onto paper. Making sure I have the correct design is just as hard. I just draw it out until I get it. It’s now coming from this true place and looking how I really wanted it to look.

Billy De Luca: That’s very much like Giacometti’s visible reworkings in painting.  Fleshing it out shows how hard painting and proportion can really be. When did you start working in that way?  

Haley Josephs: When it came to school, I mainly painted from photographs of family members. I liked older photos (there’s something interesting about the colours of older photographs), I liked the palette, and I then started working on pictures of female family members that had passed on. My sister and my aunt passed on, and they sort of became characters that naturally came up in my work. They inserted themselves organically. When I was using source materials, they’d still be there. Now I’m more intentional about using images in my head. I’ve started doing work that is authentically me, and I’m beginning to rely on my inner narrative and imagery. I have to hone in on that.

Billy De Luca: When did you begin making art in general? 

Haley Josephs: I grew up attending a Waldorf school (Steiner School) with a huge emphasis on art. We did a lot of watercolours and form drawing — and a lot of the prompts were biblical. But before then it starts with a memory. I was four or five years old, and my cousin (Sophie) and I lived together for a little while.  We had a basket filled with old crayons and scrap paper, and we would draw all day for hours. We used to get really into this thing where Sophie would take all the neon-coloured crayons, and we would try to invent a new colour. We would draw one layer after another with these neon crayons. They would build up on top of each other, and I would have this feeling in my stomach that made me feel tingly. I wanted to get this…colour experience.  It felt like a trip, like I was in this other world, and I realised that, through drawings, I could make this different world. A lot of kids, when they grow up in challenging situations, can interact and react very differently. Drawing this other world allowed me to escape. 

Billy De Luca: And the landscapes? With these paintings, there is less immersion in nature — it almost pushes back.  Are these backgrounds reflecting a sense of longing?

Haley Josephs: I think I was very much influenced by my time in Maine. I was excited to be painting so much, diving into that sense of movement and place and the inner world, the emotional landscape of the characters. Sometimes, however, the paintings are done in a more abstract way, but still holding to representation and having this dream world be real but fantastical. Not everything has to be recognisable. 

The landscapes are also a part of the symbolism in my work. They revolve around my aunt. When I was a kid, she went missing and was in this accident in Montana and walked off into the wilderness and was never found. It has a very specific image in my head of this woman walking off into the Montana landscape, filled with rolling hills and a big sky. When I was at art school getting more into my specific style, I kept painting this scene with a woman and this landscape in her head and then outside of her because I imagined her disappearing into the horizon. Sure, the characters in my work can have this sadness, but the image also sends a message of perseverance and going through difficult times, of overcoming. 

Billy De Luca: And do your paintings have a style? One could place a sticker of ‘surrealism’ on a work with melting skies and name anything ‘fantasy’ following an unimaginable scene. But they aren’t only surreal. They are on a canvas and imagined by you…

Haley Josephs: Yeah I mean I have always had a problem with labels, like my whole life. But I think they are probably just paintings. 

Yeah. They are paintings. 

Billy De Luca: Brilliant. Have you always worked in oils?

Haley Josephs: When I first learned how to paint, it was in acrylic. And being at the Steiner schools, we would paint a lot with watercolour. Watercolour was technically my first experience, but I got hooked on oils, and you can’t go back from oils. It’s just so luscious and. sexy, and I love it.  Also, before I went to college, I was really into ceramics and sculpture too, and I still have a sense of clay, but my heart is definitely into paint.

Billy De Luca: And it’s been ten years since you graduated from Art School and got your MFA. Do you feel comfortable with what you are doing now, or are you still exploring the subject matter and changing things? 

Haley Josephs: I think from my earlier work being influenced by pictures of my aunt to now, there is a level of looking back which makes me realise it’s kind of always been about this chase. A chase to deal with representing and overcoming as a character, seeing a kind of salvation in different ways. In parts of my life, like after grad school, I got really confused about what my work was supposed to look like. I did a lot of really weird things when experimenting, but I think that’s an important thing to do while you’re there. Trying different things and messing around, and not being so precious about things. It took a lot of reckoning to get through graduating and having your work put in a box. Now, I feel a lot more free, and that’s why the narrative and feelings are still as present as they have always been. But it’s when the work is free that the images and story come out in a more authentic way. Even if it takes a longer time to get there. By making a lot of mistakes and failing a lot, I got to the point of being comfortable with just that, not judging whatever happens. I think the thing that hindered me the most was fear. A fear of expectations of others and myself. Now I feel like I can let go of that, and the absolute truth can then spill out. I’m always there in the paintings, but it got fogged up a lot for a while. It became uncertain. It took a long time, but now I’m breaking free of that.

Billy De Luca: But now, what makes a good artwork?

IHaley Josephs: look for a sense of deep exploration and curiosity. I don’t like settling for something and fitting it into some equation of expectations of what one’s work is supposed to be. If there’s something you want to say, say it, and have a real sense of intention and not be held back by the confinements of style.

I like the idea that art comes from this unknown and trying to say the unnameable. It has to be free; I want to see that there is freedom in the work and that it’s been pushed enough. A good painting is one where you push it out into space — nearly out of control — and then you bring it back down. You have to let it get out of control and then hone it back in.  That way, it can capture something that is in this magical realm.

Billy De Luca: And does that mean you know when to stop?

Haley Josephs: I think in the past, I would feel like I wanted the painting to be done in a matter of a day or two, and when I had the composition, the picture would be done (while the paint was still wet). I’d think that’s it. But I stopped too prematurely. Now I’m layering to prolong the painting process. It is getting harder to know when it’s done, but you learn something if you go too far. It’s really nice to have them sitting with me more.

Billy De Luca: I’m sure glazing would help. Titian glazed his paintings up to 20 times back in the day.

Haley Josephs: Glazing, yes! It does so much and shows you how you can think something is done, but then you add another glaze and realise, ‘That’s actually that’s so much better than it was… I did need that when I thought it was done.’  And that’s a big thing to learn. You have to be OK with messing it up. You have to be OK to fail. I like to see paintings that involve a struggle because safety is safe. I think pushing yourself, scaring yourself, and messing with it could be better.  Being so precious is not always the answer.

Billy De Luca: There was a recent work you painted that exemplifies this. There is so much depth coming from behind a treelined background, and a glowing filament of yellow light shines past the darkness. Those colours coming through balance with the form on the left, but how are they balanced?

Haley Josephs: Colour is really hard. I wanted there to be this glow, to make them have this luminous quality. I want there to be a sense of glowing from underneath instead of having light on the surface. It also furthers my work as it revolves around this sense of pushing out from underneath. This work aligns more with what I’ve been trying to get out for a long time.

Billy De Luca: It reminds me of a Turner yellow. The luminosity aspect of his paintings also redefines the parameters of how a painting interacts with light. A casual observer could think, “Your old series is bright, and your new series is dark”, but it goes deeper. You are not going from bright to dark. You’re going from bright to luminous. There’s a darkness in front of it, but you can see the light seeping through.

Haley Josephs: That’s what I’m trying to do. It’s super hard to achieve. There’s something about working towards getting that effect that feels like an exploration of the character as well.  The character gains a sort of sensibility through a mined inner psychology. The act of layering then feels more appropriate. I’m always learning, even with the glaze I’m working with now.

Billy De Luca: It’s true. There are many aspects in the painting process that are involved in making a painting…and making it glow and making it real.

Haley Josephs: Yeah, it’s about capturing some kind of energy that somebody can react to. The same energy that I felt when I was a kid drawing with those fluorescent crayons, trying to capture colour in this complex way that you have to work towards. And it’s not just one crayon that you can draw with, so the question becomes, how do you find the right grouping?

Billy De Luca: What would you say your harshest criticism of your work would be?

Haley Josephs: There’s always this feeling of being really misunderstood. It’s natural, and it happens a lot. In the past, the work has been talked about in a ‘cutesy’ and ‘pretty’ way and in a less-serious tone. It’s not like the work wasn’t taken seriously, but the subject matter was less regarded because of the emotional femininity of my past work. I went through a whirlwind of emotions, but I ended up with a drive to be more me and push. We all have a unique perspective we all show, so I have to try to show mine and keep going. I have a lot of work to do.

Credits

ENCOUNTER, 2022
BECKONING PATH, 2023
All artworks courtesy of Haley Josephs

Elsa Rouy

An artistic metaphysical surgeon

Grotesque bodies writhing in pain, catharsis, and even brief relief emerge in the artworks of Elsa Rouy. She is fascinated by the way bodies behave as vessels as if the form humans inhabit were once empty containers now filled with external impurities. In her paintings, the young British artist dissects women figuratively and literally. Blood and flesh intertwine, and their vivid shock and detailed stupor are brought out by every brush stroke. Eyes far apart, wet hair, dripping fluids, a cut-up chest, an eye coming out of the labia, entangled bodies, and complex, undefined, and intricate emotions to be unpacked and explored. These paintings unravel the mystic center of all kinds of emotions, anatomizing them until their influential power and how they come to play in daily life seep through and become known.

Elsa’s themed focus undulates too. There is an evolution in how she approaches her art, and it is evident in her recent paintings and their more pronounced technical elements. Her earlier works ooze abstraction with enough visual cues to pinpoint who the figures are (take her mother and child series where, for example, she explored the concept of bodily fluids and motherhood). Recently, her paintings take a darker route, a sharper solid state, and a more emblematic yet relatable spin on emotions. A temporary shying away from the diaphanous bodies of women, her artworks employ female forms as a medium of absurdity that hopes to make viewers feel unsettled. A gnawing feeling digs into their emotions as they gaze at the paintings, trying to pull themselves away from her artworks yet already too deep into Elsa’s world for them to let go.

In a conversation with NR, Elsa revisits the themes she explores, attempts to define the abstruse emotions that flow from her to her artworks, and reflects on her paintings as a gateway to who she is; the “metaphysical surgeon” moniker someone calls her; and the parts of herself she is still yet to unravel. 

Matthew Burgos:  I want to start our conversation from the beginning. Can you tell me about your introduction to the art world, paintings in general, and any personal experiences that made an impact on your artistic journey?

Elsa Rouy: I’ve always been into art, and it’s something I’ve done since I was a child. It makes sense for the trajectory of pursuing it as a career as an adult. There have been a couple of times that changed my view on how I approach art. When I went to college, I started seeing it as both a career and a hobby. This perspective became stronger in university. Thematically, my artwork is a development from childhood. I’ve always channeled my emotional experiences into a creative process, mainly through drawing and writing since I was a child. As I’ve grown older, this has become more prominent, extending into poetry and painting, exploring other art forms. Now, I’m working on this idea, but with the awareness to critically engage with concepts and consider their reaction to an audience rather than just myself.

Matthew Burgos: Would you say you grew up in an artistic environment?

Elsa Rouy: Yes, it was definitely encouraged. I think my parents weren’t artists or involved in the arts, but my mom used to draw sometimes, and whenever we did something creative, we were always encouraged to make things and draw. Doing anything with our hands was never discouraged. So I think it was a healthy environment where we were allowed to grow artistically.

Matthew Burgos:  Were you conscious of the themes that you wanted to explore in your artworks? 

Elsa Rouy: No, I don’t. I’ve always liked drawing the body, but I think it was only recently that I started to think deeply about it. It developed through my studies, but it’s only been in the last year that I’ve honed in on what I want to explore with my artwork and try to do that with precision, rather than just painting whatever comes to my head.

Matthew Burgos: But did you go through that process? Did you experience a time when you dabbled in so many themes, trying to figure out what you wanted to focus on?

Elsa Rouy: Yes – I think this happens a lot with everyone where you go off on different routes. There were definitely points where I was trying to make more explicitly political artworks or ones that were less overtly sexual, and maybe more about the ordinary, but I realized that I was interested in this idea of using the body as a vessel and manipulating it to express emotions and explore the brutality of the human condition. So, that’s what I want to focus on rather than trying to go down these other routes.

Matthew Burgos: Do you think there’s a spiritual context going on with this artistic thought? 

Elsa Rouy: I guess so. I’ve never thought of it as spirituality, but I guess it could be in a way because I’m looking into emotions, and there’s a lot to do with, as I always said, about the body being this vessel, this container, and the idea of having these emotions and the existence that we have within it, the containment, and then the leaking out of it, and how we try to contain everything emotionally, but it doesn’t work. And that’s why I’m interested in the fluids coming out and the breaking of the body to signify this false sense of containment that we try to have. So I guess it could be spiritual in that sense, but I don’t think I do stuff for very spiritual reasons.

Matthew Burgos: What are these emotions that we’re talking about?

Elsa Rouy: It’s quite difficult to explain. So it’s not one emotion. It’s trying to look at the intensity of different emotions. They could be like despair or destructive emotions, or maybe even softer emotions like happiness. But then it’s taking them to the limit of complete chaos, basically. And I think a lot of the time inside, it can feel like that, and it’s trying to find the balance between the soft emotions and the brutal emotions. It’s hard to pinpoint which ones because it’s a different range. I guess they used to look a lot at shame, but I’ve moved away from that now, and it’s more of an exploration of different emotions.

Matthew Burgos: Are these emotions that you personally firsthand experience, or ones that you want to focus on in your art?

Elsa Rouy: I think it’s a bit of both. So it’s going back to what I said at the beginning where a lot of it’s taken from emotions that I feel. Then I write poetry, and it would normally be in the moment, get a couple of sentences out. And it’s the same when I come up with an idea for a painting. This image will start forming, but then I go back to them and from a non-emotional point or mindset, I change them. So it’s more like observing the emotions from a distance rather than them being chaotic.

Matthew Burgos: You’ve mentioned before that your works are a visual portrayal of mixed emotions, very complicated and hard to define. But at the same time, you set boundaries between you and your work because, at the end of the day, you’re not your work. But you also added that self-reflection is part of your work and that painting allows you to reflect on your emotions. When does this process of using paintings as your medium start and end, and how do you separate yourself from your art?

Elsa Rouy: I think when I said that I’m not my artwork, I meant it in a quite literal way. When I get criticisms or if I get frustrated with an artwork, I don’t see the artwork as myself, and I try not to let it affect me so directly. It’s not like somebody is attacking me as a person if something goes wrong with the painting or if somebody doesn’t like it or gives a critique. I don’t take it as a personal attack. But I think with the actual artwork itself and myself, it’s a blurred line. And I don’t think there’s ever a clear separation. It’s difficult because when you do it every day and you’re constantly thinking about it, it kind of becomes part of yourself.

I was thinking about this question earlier when you asked me, and the best way I can describe it, it may sound pretentious, but it’s like myself and my artwork seem holistic. All the artworks that I’ve made before and the ones I’m making, as well as the ones in the future, seem to already exist in my head as a space, but not physically. So I think there is a detachment from the physical artworks, but the creative process, the ideas, and the concepts that form them are very ingrained in me. They’re constantly there, and I’m constantly picking them in my head, trying to figure out what I want to do, referencing what I want in the future with my artwork, or what I want in the past and trying to make that now. It’s like they coexist in a plane, and they’re webbed together. There’s probably no escaping being fused with my artwork now, but on a mental level, not physical.

Matthew Burgos: Do you continue the themes that you worked on in the past, or do you prefer to explore new ones and inject nuances of the past themes?

Elsa Rouy: It depends on the theme. Some are recurring, which is natural in my practice and life. But I also leave behind themes that no longer feel important or have reached their limit in exploration. However, even the themes I leave behind still inform the ones I want to explore now. For example, I used to focus on grotesque women and their bodies, but now I use the female form to create absurdity and make people uncomfortable in a different way. So there’s an evolution in how I approach certain themes.

Matthew Burgos: I came across your series where you conceived artworks related to bodily fluids and mothers, and looking at these paintings, how did you correlate these two?

Elsa Rouy: The first theme I explored was about containment and expulsion of the body. Initially, I focused on bodily fluids explosively leaving the body, but now I examine them as leaking or coming out. Whereas before, it was more like violent explosions. Pregnancy and giving birth represent a similar idea, with the body as a container releasing something in a chaotic and violent manner. Both themes touch on the delicate balance between life and death. The expulsion of body fluids can signify dying or illness, while giving birth is about bringing life into the world but also carries risks of death and health issues. To me, these themes have similar meanings as images. The mother figure was significant because it relates to a personal aspect. I used to have fears about becoming a mother, but I’ve now overcome them. When I painted these images, it was like a weird compulsive thing to shift this idea.

Matthew Burgos: What qualities come to your mind when you think of the words mother and child?

Elsa Rouy: The qualities I explore in my artwork related to the mother and child theme are both self-evident and multifaceted. On one hand, it’s about ideas of nurture and protection, creating a safe environment for growth and survival. However, I also delve deeper into the notion of the mother as a safe space while the baby represents something strange and potentially scary that the mother may reject. It’s about examining these complex dynamics.

As for the child, I see them as innocent, fresh, and malleable. They embody a sense of purity as they haven’t been influenced by external factors yet. At that stage, they just exist as a being, growing and learning without the complexities of language and cognitive processes. It’s like witnessing the pure essence of human existence before the complexities of life come into play.

Matthew Burgos: Can you describe your relationship with your mother?

Elsa Rouy: We’re very close, and I consider her one of my best friends! She’s actually visiting me at the moment.

Matthew Burgos: That’s great to hear! And about your recent artworks, you depict a lot of transfigured feminine bodies that exude a wide range of emotions. It made me wonder if these paintings portray psychological dilemmas or distress experienced by the subjects, and if the use of body and nudity serves as a medium to express these emotions. Could you provide some insight into the world that inspired you to create these images? What kind of environment did you immerse yourself in, and what did you envision while visualizing these artworks?

Elsa Rouy: Yes, my recent artworks explore points of emotional brutality. I use the body as a vessel and manipulate and distort it, completely objectifying it until it becomes uncanny and uncomfortable. This allows it to express intense and palpable emotions. I set up scenes with doll-like figures to awkwardly express these feelings. I prefer the snapshots of moments in the paintings because I’m fascinated by the spaces in between things. The slightly abstracted, broken, and distorted bodies create tension, leaving gaps for the audience to interpret and create narratives in their minds. There’s no predefined narrative; the bodies are like puppets placed in a scenery for the audience. The distressed and distorted faces evoke personal emotions in people, making them feel connected and touched. It’s interesting to use the body in a cruel and brutal way to bring out vulnerable and soft emotions in ourselves.

Matthew Burgos: And you did quite visually and literally dissected the body in one of your paintings. Was it a way for you to metaphorically look into the person or explore who that person is?

Elsa Rouy:  Yeah, I think so. The figures are all somewhat based on me, so it’s like breaking the person to find what’s inside. Someone recently described me as a metaphysical surgeon, and I thought it was funny and accurate. It’s weird, but that’s kind of what I do. I never thought of it that way before, but it makes sense. I liked that idea. I’m like, “This is great. I’m going to run with this.” Especially because I want to explore more about blood and the concept of small cuts on the body. It fits well with these ideas. But yeah, it was funny.

Matthew Burgos: I’m wondering if you like horror and gory movies?

Elsa Rouy: If it’s done well, yes, but I like more stylistic ones. I’m not the biggest fan of slasher movies, but I like ones that are more campy eighties ones with the prosthetics and all of that. I went to see Men (2022) with my friends at the cinema, and there’s this scene of a weird rebirth from a man’s body, with grown men coming out of a vagina and everything. And as soon as it happened, all of my friends at the cinema looked at me. I sort of liked that part – the scene, I mean.

Matthew Burgos: Are there things about yourself that you want to know and/or learn more about?

Elsa Rouy: I want to explore everything! I want to discover new things that I genuinely enjoy and are exciting. There are so many activities and experiences I haven’t tried yet, and I believe they could bring a lot of joy into my life. So, I’m eager to find out what I truly like and expand my horizons. I’m interested in getting back into dancing. I used to do it when I was younger, but now maybe try a different style. Um, on the other hand, gardening seems intriguing. Whenever I see videos of it, it looks so calm and relaxing. I’ve never tried it, but it seems like a nice activity to explore.

Matthew Burgos: Even if you have a lot of things to explore, a lot of things that you want to learn more, do you feel connected to yourself or do you feel like you have to learn more about who you are?

Elsa Rouy: Thinking about it now, there are times when I feel connected to myself, for sure. It fluctuates; sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I see it as a learning process, and it’s natural for it to go up and down throughout life, which makes it interesting. You think you know yourself, and then suddenly you realize that you don’t. It keeps life entertaining and exciting.

But I notice I feel very in touch with myself when I’m using my mind and body together, like when I’m painting. The cognitive movement of my body and the thoughts work in harmony, and in those moments, I feel like myself. On the other hand, there are times when I don’t have control over my body, like when I’m on my period or when I’m ill. In those moments, I feel grounded and deeply connected to my humanity and my body. My brain isn’t preoccupied with self-concepts; it’s more focused on the physicality of the body. And I think that’s when I feel most connected to myself.

Matthew Burgos: And how do you feel today?

Elsa Rouy: I feel pretty good actually. No  crazy emotions going on today, but who knows – it could be different tomorrow.

Credits

A FACE WHEN LOVED, 2023
DANCING ON BROKEN ANKLES, 2023
Artworks courtesy of the artist.

Rae Klein

A Fraying Blur

At first glance: Things held within a cloud of pale air. 

At second glance…

Rae Klein is tough. She has built a body of work that has received considerable praise. She was born in Michigan and is still there, working with a rhythm is respectable and representative of her success in recent years. Today, her role in this relationship is simple: she keeps producing.  However, there is nothing desultory about this method. What Klein does is focus on the essential element of her life. Klein has always drawn but hasn’t always worked in oils. Before attaining her BFA, she planned to become a nurse. Before covering gallery walls, she shipped paintings out of her garage. Now, she has a studio. Oh, and she paints. 

Folds and pleats of curtains separate from tense formality. Her constructions confront yet refrain from congesting the scene (they reference without any upturned noses or scoffs). The closest you’ll get to old-school is a bunch of candles resembling Corinthian columns or caryatids. Still, they are unsupported and unlikely to raise too many analogies to the ‘art of old’ — they are also clearly paintings of candles and candelabras. The source material is deliberate, and she paints it big and small.  

The larger works are considered and organised by preliminary work. Smaller works are usually unplanned and texturally emotive, “If I’m going to sit down and do a painting, I’m going straight in, and I want to know that I can get it done in the session. I don’t want to get back to it later.” However, Klein’s paintings interreact simultaneously on both scales. Vector lines are established, and intense colours are formed. Pallid clouds interact with pairs of eyes in a spiralling stare. In the studio, she pulls up a painting with a horse head from the desk, and it immediately forms fantasies with a luminous white glow, breaking with the background through a plunged brush and sharp contrast. She makes paintings that can absorb hours of looking and hours of reading. As such, she leaves the sensuous appreciation to the viewer, briefing through a blur. Outlines are near perfect, sometimes muddied and obscured like a forest in fog. She restricts the number of brushes she uses, how long she works on her paintings, and how many finished works are produced in a month. 

All in oils, the pigments bleed down like dyes, revealing painted imagery — or, more accurately, echoes of images — sourced from eBay, thrift or antique stores. Then, they are translated, and soon layers are raked in, and blue skies wrap backgrounds like Sistine Frescoes. Using a soft brush solvent for highlights and bursts of light (looking like lens flares from a JJ Abrahams film), Klein creates these marks by melting the paint while running the brush through the surface. The thinner paint draws (using a round brush) a glossy line or carves down (using a Filbert brush) to show the canvas base. “It’s just as important to move paint off the canvas as it is to put it on,” says Klein. The ground comes through like white tree roots, shining with a subtle radiancy. Like cutting away at curtains rather than parting them. But you can still see the paint, just differently.

Contemplating her practice, Klein observes her work through a tinted window, seeing a bit of herself inside but remaining outward-looking. Klein is introspective in her description yet makes her way across canvases with a tender distance. She’s focusing on the work and the process. In other words, she’s honest. She’s tough.

Billy De Luca: This is an early morning chat.  It is 9:00 am.  Where are we?

Rae Klein: In East Michigan. I live and work in a town called Grass Lake. It’s an hour south of Lansing (Michigan’s capital) and an hour north of Detroit.  It’s like a village. 

Billy De Luca: Have you always lived and had a studio here?

Rae Klein: No. I grew up across the State. Kind of by the lake, in Holland, Michigan. After school I moved, and I had been working from my garage in a town called Stockbridge for the past two years. I moved homes and the studio here in October 2022. It’s a cheap place to live, and it’s small.

Billy De Luca: And that must have been during the pandemic too. Did that affect the scale of your work?

Rae Klein: In those days, they were a lot smaller. They went from about 40 inches to now much bigger. My new studio’s ceiling is about 12 feet (four meters). 

Billy De Luca: Does it feel better to have a gallery not to stress about the administrator?

Rae Klein: Oh yeah, absolutely. Shipping was always a doozy. Now a couple of dudes show up and pack ’em up. And that’s it. I think I just have to be there.  So that’s amazing.  

Billy De Luca: Do you stretch the canvases yourself? What makes them so smooth and glossy?

Rae Klein: No, I have a guy in Detroit who makes the canvases, and then I prime them myself. The canvases are all linen. I used to work on larger grain linen, but now I’m switching to a smaller grain. You can get a lot more detail that way. And the glossiness comes from the varnish. I varnish all the works so that I don’t touch them when they are done. Paintings can be overdone so quickly. It takes a lot of self-discipline to let it be the way it is. Some of them are smooth sailing. Others are ‘problem children’. The ones that are more of a struggle involve more problem-solving. I put them in a ‘time-out’ pile I have in the studio of works that are sitting. Eventually, I figure it out. That’s one of the fun parts of working: when it clicks. Then, knowing what to do.  

Billy De Luca: How do you find painting in oils? Does it force you to have patience? 

Rae Klein: All the work up here in the studio is drying…waiting. The oils help. But I still get impatient, and mistakes happen. I’m trying to apply a technique for controlling errors. Some mistakes will cause beautiful results, especially with textures and colours. But other mistakes have to be sorted into the ‘do not make again’ pile, for instance, getting perspectives wrong and disturbing the image or technical stuff like messing up the surface while priming. Learning to control my mistakes is a big part of improving.

Billy De Luca: And when it comes to your colour selection, do you create your own palette of pigments, or do you mix it up a lot?

Rae Klein: I do a lot of mixing. I’m really into earth tones, but it depends. If something is more mechanical and doesn’t have people, animals, or candles, it probably won’t beg for earth tones. But with my paintings that feature more organic matter, I’m squeezing those browns in!

Billy De Luca: And what makes you select your imagery and subject matter?

Rae Klein: That’s always been a tough one to answer. Basically, I think that they are just things I like. That feel timeless. I’m also now realising that they are also liminal: they could be from any place at any time. I think that’s interesting to play with.

Billy De Luca: You’re right, temporally communal. They are not bordered by specific contextual zones like Jasper Johns’ American Flag or a Gerhardt Richter scene of Paris. It’s tailored to a broader audience.

Rae Klein: And it’s not that I’m trying to cast a wide net. I’m glad I’m not thinking about that when I’m painting, but I do like the idea of having people relate to the imagery as if they might have seen it before. In the design phase, when constructing a painting, I’m looking for it to be a little new to me. I’m always trying to play around with it. I want it to strike me as if I’ve just discovered something. I think how I sketch them allows me to play with the idea a lot. The more rigid paintings are constructed much more like collages, and that’s also where I get some excitement. For some paintings, I just sit down and…do. And that’s a whole other thing. When it comes to the physical act, it has a lot to do with texture. It is equally important to fill the painting with exciting textures and marry it with itself. I get several types of enjoyment from different processes.

Billy De Luca: So, one process generates novelty, and the other comes naturally. Would you say that’s how you started making art?

Rae Klein: When I started painting, I was adding a lot of detail to the work. I felt like excitement would come from being very descriptive. Now I’m trying to see if I can leave more out. Like, what if I could just paint a curtain in an exciting and impactful way but also in a way that doesn’t involve planning out the whole scene? I think the exciting part for me right now is saying more with less. That’s the broad journey.

Billy De Luca: I love that. It’s interesting how acts of omission can further the quality of a work. And when you do it well, it feels much better. Like when somebody finds something interesting in your work that you didn’t have in a CV or portfolio.

Rae Klein: Yes! And I’m trying to apply that to my figures. I almost want them not to be a specific person. I want them to be a representation of a person. It doesn’t need a face or even eyes. It can be just one thing. I like setting the tone with objects.

Billy De Luca: I also noted that the smaller paintings involve outlines that come over and into the surface, like a finger through wet sand. They streak into the layers, muddying the paint and allowing the earth tones to spring up. Is that an example of a finishing touch or how your paintings are conducted within a session?

Rae Klein: Oh yeah, that’s both. I use a brush for that, and it’s very difficult to do on the large ones because it takes so much time to fill in an area. And it has to be done last because it marries the background and the foreground. The blend happens within the shapes and layers. I go over an area with the paint from the background to the main subject to ‘cohesify’ the image. Sometimes it creates a more interesting pattern, colour or line; other times, I let the lines show to avoid overworking the painting.

Billy De Luca: What do you think gets people interested? Like a profound experience of art. Do you think people can just as quickly struggle to accept your work?

Rae Klein: When somebody tells me that it makes them cry. That’s when I’ve done a good job with the painting. I’m in Michigan, so most of my interaction with people besides openings is through Instagram. People are all surprisingly friendly. If they leave a comment, it’s supportive. But there have been times when somebody will go, “So, this is art?” But I don’t take my paintings seriously. I’m not heartbroken if that happens. I’m interested in how people see it.

Billy De Luca: So you are removed from your work?

Rae Klein: I think so, yeah. I don’t keep them. Once I’m done painting a work, it has done its job for me. Once it is done, it can go in a pile. The enjoyment comes from making it and learning, not the final result it extracts. I mean, I’m proud of them, but it is not like I am going to keep them. There are always more nuances to learn that come with painting. And they keep coming! So, it’s better to focus on learning and improving.

Billy De Luca: Has the way you’ve produced changed over time? You just got back from your honeymoon. How was it being away from the studio? 

Rae Klein: I took a week and a half off. And I was like…WOW, what’s going on? I just love to paint. If I have free time, I think I could be painting. I just love it.Usually, I’m pretty consistent. It has been stable for the past two years, but the period in which I worked is now widening; when I started, I would ask myself what I could do on the day, and now it’s more about what I can do in the month and how I can plan the next six months. It was interesting because I have always had a schedule, and when I started supporting myself with my work, I would make paintings available every month or two. That schedule is different in the timespan from the gallery schedule, so it has changed, and I’m structuring it a lot more.

Billy De Luca: And who would you say is your toughest critic?

Rae Klein: Good question. The gallery has really helped me grow and become comfortable with talking about my work. Nicodim is great because they are selective with their artists, but I still have creative control. It’s not always like that with other galleries. When it comes to advice, I think it’s probably my husband. I go to him with a problem, and he’ll be honest, and that’s good.

Billy De Luca: What affects your style?

Rae Klein: My method involves a lot of images too, and they are mostly found. I get a lot from that. Then comes the process of making it interesting for myself. I think style is ever-evolving and something that’s in the rear-view mirror. I figure it will continue to change since I’m on a learning journey, and that’s where the enjoyment is for me. Looking back, it seems pretty fluid, but I’ve been told it is pretty consistent. Some people see it that way, but I see it differently. 

Billy De Luca: What would be something you’d always like to keep in your paintings? Is there more to add?

Rae Klein: The first thing that comes to mind is that I don’t see the dogs or the horses going away. I’ve been drawing horses since I was a little kid. I wasn’t a ‘horse girl’ but I did love horses. As a kid, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near horses, so I had to draw them. I used to paint cars, and as I learned more, I realised it wouldn’t fit, and those got phased out. I don’t think how I get images or anything like that will change. That’s always been pretty consistent. I do want to keep up with technology, though. Trying to learn about AI generation and digital resources is very important, especially how to use that stuff. If you start to fear it, it can cause stagnation in learning, especially since that is where the momentum is taking us. So I’m concerning myself with that right now, and it’s definitely interesting to learn about. I don’t see myself integrating these new things very often, but I want to be aware of them and know how I could use them if I wanted, without having any judgement. I’m looking to coexist.

Credits

GEMINI,2021
IS THERE A BETTER MAN THAN I, 2023
SONDRA IV, 2023
CASCADES II, 2021
All artworks courtesy of Rae Klein and Nicodim Gallery

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