Selected People
Credits
Images · PELLE CASS
https://pellecass.com/
Pelle Cass
[글쓴이:] nr
Alessandra Sanguinetti
New-York based photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti often explores through her work, changes, experiences and feelings in society. Sanguinetti’s photography is infused with a certain serenity and a beautiful melancholia showing a certain level of trust between her and her subjects.
Her decade long project The Adventures of Guille and Belinda captures two cousins growing up together in the rural province of Buenos Aires, in Argentina. It is a testimony of family, a study of love, tracing the girls’ lives between every day and imagination from the ages of 14 to 24 and their passage from girlhood to young womanhood. The series which began in 1998 is the subject of two booksThe Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams (Nazraeli) and ten years later,The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Illusion of an Everlasting Summer(Mack).
Recently, Alessandra Sanguinetti shot a cover for Vogue Italia for their January 2021 Animal issue which aimed at bringing awareness to the urgency of the environmental problem.
When I was nine years old a book I began to get curious about the books on our living room coffee table. Amongst books about nature and old ‘masters’ (Caravaggio etc) there was a Lartigue, a Chim (David Seymour), Dorothea Lange book , and Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy. It was the latter that made me beg for a camera. I had a gut reaction to that book – it was the first time I saw, or paid attention to, images of people long gone, and it was the first realization that I was going to die and disappear as well. I panicked and had immediately associated photography with death, life, and memory.
I did receive a camera for Christmas and set out to memorialize everything in my life.
That’s the way it’s been since.
As far as my practice, it was in my twenties that I consciously realized photography was a way to relate to the world and a way to make a living. I’d never thought of myself as an artist or anything in that neighborhood, until then.
Credits
Images · ALESSANDRA SANGUINETTI
https://www.instagram.com/alessandra_sanguinetti/
Designers
- Cecilia
- Christen
- Hadil, 2003
- Mayelin
- Jessica
- Miriam. Aida Refugee Camp, West Bank, Palestine, 2004
- Sarita
- The Couple
- Mothers, 1999
- Untitled, 2009
- The Blue Dress, 2000
- Untitled, 2009
Matthew Genitempo
Mother of Dogs
“Mother of Dogs is a project that I began and completed at the beginning and middle of quarantine. Life had been tossed in the air once the pandemic hit, so my partner and I began taking daily walks by the train tracks next to our house in order to introduce some stability. That project could be related to growth considering our development towards balance and steadiness.”
Yis Kid
Spiders and Religious Mysticism
Credits
Photography · Yis Kid
https://yiskid.com/
John Pawson
“I have always thought that a house should be a collection of spaces in which to dream”
John Pawson CBE has spent over thirty years making rigorously simple architecture that speaks of the fundamentals but is also modest in character. His body of work spans a broad range of scales and typologies, from private houses, sacred commissions, galleries, museums, hotels, ballet sets, yacht interiors and a bridge across a lake. His method is to approach buildings and design commissions in precisely the same manner, on the basis that ‘it’s all architecture’, incorporating minimalism and rigorous simplicity mixed with function.
NR discusses with the renowned British architectural designer about his career, some of his key works, his most recent project Home Farm, a space in which family and friends can gather, as well as his future plans for 2021.
John Pawson, it is an absolute pleasure to be interviewing you. Thank you for taking the time to be a part of this issue. How are you doing in those strange times we are all living in?
My wife Catherine and I have spent most of the various lockdowns at Home Farm in Oxfordshire. I am used to being pretty much constantly on the move and being still for so long has been a revelation. At any one time, some or all of our three grown-up children have also been here. One of the few upsides of the current situation has been the opportunity to live alongside one another again for extended stretches as a family, when normally we are scattered.
You have always been revered for your taste for minimalism and rigorous simplicity mixed with function in your design approach. 30 years ago minimalism would not be used as much as it is now, by architects and designers. Although some like Louis Khan do talk about ‘a society of spaces’ and about how the rooms not solely accommodate specific uses and functions but they create spaces and places encouraging chance encounters and unplanned meetings. This is something we can find to some extent in your work as it shows that a building is intrinsically linked to the quality of life within it and enriches experience. Do you think about that a lot when you start working on a project? About enriching or bettering the visitor’s or the inhabitant’s interior experience and engaging all of our senses, almost like a tactile reality?
When I start working on a new project, my thoughts are focused on the place – the immediate site and its surroundings – and on the people that will use the spaces I am designing. A huge amount of thought goes into refining the function and the choreography, but in the end it’s about making atmosphere and about ensuring a quality of sensory engagement.
Minimalism has now become a life style which is something we can all thank you for as you have helped coined this new phenomena. In your body of work can also be found a certain inclination for idealism and purism rather than materialism.
When and where did you find your attraction for simplicity and how did your search for it, began?
I think that my interest in simplicity was always there, even as a child. My parents’ values and the treeless landscapes of the Yorkshire Moors where I grew up helped reinforce these innate preferences.
Who or what inspired you to start creating and designing?
What are some architects’ works or designers’ works that you really like?
It had been at the back of my mind for a long time, but the person who gave me the final impetus to pursue a career in architecture when I was in my late twenties was the Japanese architect and designer, Shiro Kuramata.
Alongside Kuramata, the people whose work I have always admired include Mies van der Rohe, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin.
I studied Interior Design at the Royal College of Art in London and your name came up frequently during my research as I was very interested in spaces that have a positive influence on the spirit and mind, spaces in which one is able to daydream and contemplate without any distractions. I am sure you know of Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. I find some similarities between your manifestos most specifically in relation to day dreaming, thinking, imagination and presenting the space we inhabit as a cosmos of its own. What are your views on Bachelard’s philosophy?
Like Bachelard, I have always thought that a house should be a collection of spaces in which to dream. The potential for dreaming comes when the mind and body are at ease.
The Valextra store was not your first retail project. You had been commissioned before to design stores for Calvin Klein in previous years. Could you tell us a bit about your decade-long relationship? How do you feel the world of fashion collide with the one of architecture and interior design? If you could pick one contemporary fashion designer that you would want to work with, who would that be?
The first store I designed for Calvin Klein actually opened more than two and a half decades ago. I think that the relationship between fashion and architecture is a naturally resonant one, even though the creative timeframes are so very different – the cycles of fashion are measured in weeks and months, where a single building can take many years from conception to realisation.
For me, it’s ultimately very simple: I’ve always tried to make stores where the clothes look good and people feel comfortable. Since Calvin, I have designed stores for Christopher Kane and Jil Sander’s creative directors, Luke and Lucy Meier, with whom the architectural collaboration is ongoing.
Obviously I imagine that it would be quite difficult to provide a short answer to how you find ways to approach fundamental issues revolving around space, proportion, light and material. But could you give us an insight into how you achieve such balance between those elements?
The balance between the defining elements of my work – light, space, proportion, surface and scale – is always the result of a long, slow process of paring away.
The St Moritz Church in Augsburg is a standout example of bringing out the inner beauty of a space, a sort of humble beauty. I have not visited it in person (not yet) but I can imagine from the photos that the visitor would feel sheltered and protected. Could you tell us about the process of refurbishing such place?
With the St Moritz church we inherited a building that was already the product of many earlier interventions, over the centuries. My intention was to simplify things a little – to achieve a clearer visual field, where the primary physical experience for people entering the building would be of light and space.
What places around the world have been particularly inspiring for you and your craft? You have cited Milan for example as one of the most influential cities in terms of craftsmanship, manufacturing and culture. What are some other places you have really enjoyed visiting and that have nurtured and influenced your work?
I am always energised by visits to quarries, to choose stone for a project. I’ve gone deep underground in marble quarries in Vermont and the north of Italy, where you find yourself entirely surrounded by a single material. For someone interested in the condition of seamlessness, it is utterly exhilarating.
You’ve mentioned in interviews before that you use photography as a tool alongside your sketches which to me highlight how architecture can be a multidisciplinary field. You have also released a photography book titled Spectrum through Phaidon a couple of years ago. Could you tell us what other mediums you have used before to complement your work process?
Photography is a critical design tool for me. I use my camera in the same way that other designers use a pencil and sketchbook. I also find physical models very helpful as a medium for exploring ideas – both in the early stages of a project and later on in the architectural narrative, when it’s more about understanding the impact of the details.
You must get a lot of different reactions to your work. Do you rely on how the exterior world perceives your work and if so how do those perceptions inform your future projects?
My work is never going to appeal to everyone. I have been fortunate that there have always been people for whom my architecture makes sense and that some of these people are in a position to commission me to make more of it.
The theme of this issue is Growth and your countryside retreat, Home Farm in Oxfordshire is a project I felt resonated with it as you have successfully created a space that enables peace and tranquillity. How did the idea come about?
Do you spend a lot of time there?
It was really Catherine, my wife, who was originally keen to find a place in the countryside. Now, of course, I could not imagine life without Home Farm. The idea was to make a home with space for the wider family and friends to gather through the year, but also somewhere Catherine and I could live in a slightly different way than is possible in the city. In normal circumstances we move back and forth between London and Oxfordshire, but over the past twelve months I’ve relished the chance to immerse myself in the place – in the architecture and in the surrounding landscape.
We have a number of architectural projects on the drawing board and on site, but one of my ambitions this year – fuelled by this immersive period at Home Farm – is also to develop the inventory of domestic objects.
Any book recommendations?
A book I never tire of is ‘Architecture of Truth’, Lucien Hervé’s black and white photographic essay of Le Thoronet, a twelfth century Cistercian abbey in the south of France. Hervé captures the different spaces and surfaces of the architecture across the passage of a day, inspiring Le Corbusier to write at the beginning of his preface to the book, ‘Light and shade are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth, tranquility and strength’.
What will you be working on this year?
We have a number of architectural projects on the drawing board and on site, but one of my ambitions this year – fuelled by this immersive period at Home Farm – is also to develop the inventory of domestic objects.
Any book recommendations?
A book I never tire of is ‘Architecture of Truth’, Lucien Hervé’s black and white photographic essay of Le Thoronet, a twelfth century Cistercian abbey in the south of France. Hervé captures the different spaces and surfaces of the architecture across the passage of a day, inspiring Le Corbusier to write at the beginning of his preface to the book, ‘Light and shade are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth, tranquility and strength’.
Nonotak
“what drive us was the experience, the moment, to feel physically connected with a space”
NONOTAK was born from the collaboration between architect musican Takami Nakamoto and visual artist Noemi Schipfer back in late 2011. The duo embodies that merge of architecture, spatial design, music and sound. From creating dreamlike environments to performances using light and sound installations, NONOTAK present their own format of art to the world. Combining Noemi Schipfer’s experience in kinetic visual and Takami Nakamato’s approach of space and sound, the studio creates ethereal environments immersing the viewer.
NR discusses with the duo about the creative process behind some of their works, how the Covid crisis impacted the arts and music industry but how also it gave the two artists time to reflect on themselves and on the meaning of creating art and ultimately the studio’s plans for 2023.
Noemi and Takami, you both come from different creative paths, respectively illustration, visual arts, architecture and music. It is always very interesting and inspiring to see how two worlds merge. How did you meet and what inspired you to start Nonotak Studio in 2011?
Noemi Schipfer: We first met in highschool in Paris at the Japanese class ( Tak have both parents Japanese and I’m half Japanese half French so it was a way to have good marks at school. Then we lost sight for few years and we met back in Tokyo during summer holiday. Tak was studying Architecture at that time and I was already graduate from Art school. We spent time walking in Tokyo and it was really inspiring to listen to his approach on Architecture and Space.
Tak was also playing in a metal band and I had the chance to follow them on few shows to take tour footages. In the late 2011 Takami was working in an Architecture studio called Bigoni-Mortemard in Paris and they were looking for an illustrator to do a mural painting in the entrance hall of a new building in Paris. To work on this project was intense & fun and it give us the will to do more together and to create our own space. We wanted to merge our backgrounds all together : visuals, space and sound. The installations format came pretty naturally and the first idea was to develop an immaterial space were everything would be intangible and in motion.
Takami Nakamoto: As Noemi said, we have known each other for a long time and the purpose of collaborating together was mainly because we had the same vision on what format of art we wanted people to experience, and how we were going to merge our backgrounds in order to create a particular environment where light, space and sound collide all together.
ISOTOPES V2 is a light installation experience that was inspired from Fukushima’s nuclear disaster. Could you tell us more about the creative process behind creating a dematerialised space? I love the concept of making something tangible out of a feeling or something that disappeared and that no longer exists, making it almost part of something fictitious. It is also a way to sort of immortalise the individuals that had and have been affected by Fukushima and it adds a commemorative and contemplative feel to it. Is that something you consciously wanted to convey?
NS: Fukushima’s nuclear disaster is something that personally really touched me. I was in Paris at this moment but I remember I was shocked and afraid about the news. Japan is my second country, it is a place that I used to go since I’m born and I have so many memories there and part of my family. When the nuclear central exploded I thought I would never be able to go back there again so it was heart breaking. At this moment I felt really strange how one part of your life could feel like it was almost just a fiction. Everything could change or even worth, just disappear.
Time is a notion that fascinated me a lot even when I was a student in art school. Memories are a notion that is so immaterial but so strong at the same time. When we develop our first installation ISOTOPES V2 we wanted to represented this different notion of immateriality by creating a space that is constantly changing and where the audience would be able to travel through.
TN: I think this project is special to us as long as it was our first piece being exhibited in an international exhibition like the Mapping Festival in Geneva. First time we were able to share the experience of our work to unknown public and it felt like a new chapter in our career. It also made us look at our work in its actual scale, as long as we have been working on small scale models to work on the composition. This really brought another dimension to the purpose of our hard work.
LEAP V.3 at Wave Of Tomorrow Festival 2019 in Jakarta, I loved this piece which I thought was such another great work of yours in terms of translating feelings or emotions into sounds and lights. Could you tell us a bit more about this piece?
NS: The first time we developed our installation LEAP was in a festival called Electric Castle in Cluj Romania and the exhibition space was really specific and historic. It was in an old stable of a castle, so the space itself was really atypical and the celling had beautiful bricks arcade. It was important for us to keep this strong architecture so we decide to invest the ground as the canvas. We wanted to deploy the installation in the maximum surface of the space and the light to cover every corner of it. That’s how we design those custom panels where 4 indirect lights are hidden behind and pointing 4 different directions. Light is a very flexible medium that has a huge impact on it’s environment. By controlling lights it’s not only the source itself that is moving but the entire space gets affected and painted by the shadows it creates.
LEAP V3 in Jakarta is the biggest version we did of this installation. We wanted to keep the massive volume of the space and highlight the length of it with the speed of lights and sound.
TN: In fact it was important to actually stay and program the installation on site, considering this unique context in Jakarta we were immersed in. We like the fact each site specific installation is about experiencing it through the build of it, the space itself, the people who are helping us with construction with the same goal of looking at something special at the end.
Last spring you revealed a large-scale installation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, titled GIANTS. The audio visual light and sound installation was set inside the Farol Santander building which was reminiscent of Nonotak’s first commissioned project in the lobby of a public housing building in Paris. Exploration of sound and space is at the core of GIANTS. Was also being in Brazil informative as to how you wanted to conduct this piece? It feels like a lot of your pieces are connected to the spaces they inhabit and are quite site specific like LEAP V.3. The interactions from the visitors in some of your pieces such as PARALLELS with the lights and by walking through the space, adds a very important element to that connection.
NS: When we get commissioned for an art installation, the starting point that drive us is the space that will host the piece. When we got the floor-plans and pictures of Farol Santander building we were struck by the verticality of the space and the massive columns. We wanted to accentuate this characteristic by adding more columns with light. The space offer a 360° view so it was important for us to include this specific in our piece as well. The columns included lights in the 4 directions, like LEAP installation concept. This space was also really interesting because there was two floor levels. You were able to see it from the ground levels, but also from above at the second floor. The rhythm of GIANTS is really contrasted. You have the first part were the ambiance is really dreamy, light dots are floating like fireflies are dancing together and then suddenly the sound get more violent and solid lines appear and move in the entire building like an army.
TN: I think the way we named the installation also speaks by itself in a way. When we saw the spatial context of the exhibition space, we immediately thought about experimenting with verticality and create an experience where people would feel like these massive totems of lights are taking over the space like Giants. The scale of these totem gave us the possibility of affecting the space with light so much that we could both create a feeling where we felt both “compressed” by it. The fact they are deployed along the whole space made these totems feel like they were ruling it.
Your work revolves around making visible, moving objects, forms, large-scale AV installations and spatialized sound. For instance with Parallels at STRP Biennale, you have used the whole space as a canvas for light which must also be quite difficult technically. That must result in a lot of experimentations and research behind each piece. Could you both tell us a bit more about that process?
NS: At the beginning of NONOTAK we were a lot exploring light through projections and semi-transparent screens.
The semi transparent screens allow us to catch the visuals but also letting passing through the light and create duplication of the same visuals into several layers. It was our way to materialise the light at this moment. We develop few installations and a performance using this concept and explore different set up to see how we can create illusions playing with the positions of the projectors etc.
When we get commissioned for STRP Biennale, the theme of the exhibition was “Outside the screen”. We were working on the concept of the piece we wanted to present and at some point of the night we just realise why not just take literally the theme of the exhibition and get outside of our screens. That’s how we develop a concept that would materialise the light through space itself by using haze and would only have the space as a limit of the installations.
The first time we were able to experiment on this new concept was during the few days we had to set it up before the opening of the exhbition. We had preparations and expectations in our mind before coming but the first day we were there we just realise the effect wasn’t working as planned. We had to change everything, move completely the position of the projectors inside the room and start from zero all the composition of the visuals at the last minute. It learns me how important it is to be in front of the piece when you program it and how dangerous it could be to work on something by simulation when it comes to something as sensitive than light.
TN: This is actually one of these projects that really drew a line on the approach and the personal relationship we have with the work we create.
We realized that imagining projects in small scale or simulating them was helpful to visualize projects but nothing felt more real than getting to our exhibition space, spend time with our new piece and work on the composition in relation to the space. Living within the project and make it an intense experience. That’s how we like to experience our installations, and we should never forget that the reason we started all of this was because of our love for materiality in light, and we do think this can’t be replicated virtually and we treat it as a material in itself.
Your 40 minute audio visual piece SHIRO was ranked by the New York Times as one of the top 15 performances at Sónar Electronic Music Festival in Barcelona in 2017. I could not find the whole performance online but watched various extracts from it. In contrast to your other works, you both are taking part on stage so to speak in the performance. How did that feel? Would you want to do more of those kind of perforrnances in which the public get to actually see you?
You have performed this piece in different places over the years, was there any in particular that you keep a fond memory of and if so, why?
NS: When we were working on our installation we also realise it was cool to see people silhouette passing through it. The relationship with the human body scale and the installation was interesting. Tak as a musician was interested to extand his background in electronic music. That’s how in summer 2013 we worked on our first performance called LATE SPECULATION. The concept was us performing inside a translucent structure with 2 projectors and use our silhouettes as part as the visual effect. One projector was placed from the front and the other one in rear. By alternate which projector was on, we were making a visual illusion of us appearing or disappearing. SHIRO is our second performance in continuity with LATE SPECULATION.
Installations and performances are really different experiences. The first big difference is the fact that we are sharing the same moment with the audience and have a direct reaction from them. The dynamic is really different. It’s really powerful to hear the audience during the show.
TN: In addition to Noemi’s answer, I think we simply like the fact to not really limit ourselves to installation artists but also performances where music takes another dimension and also the way we directly interact with the audience and experience something in real time with them.
Stage is a special and unique place to express yourself and we enjoy switching from installation projects to live performance projects.
The 2019 pandemic in which we are still in, has obviously impacted quite harshly the arts and performances industry. The past year has definitely been difficult and for some more than others but I feel like we have all in some sort and in different capacities being able to plant the seeds for the present year. It feels as though there has been a lot of self-reflection and introspective work done at an individual level which will then enable growth, which is the theme of this issue. How do you both feel with this? How does Growth resonate with you?
NS: During 7 years we had the chance to be able to live for our art and been able to showcase it in so many extraordinary places. I would be for ever grateful for this. The rhythm of our travels, exhibitions, live shows was intense and we never really had breaks at all. When we had our first show cancelled and the first lockdown was announced I was a little bit puzzled but at the same time for the first time since years, I would have a break and time to step back about NONOTAK.
Now that it’s been a year we are in this situation and seeing how it evolves I’m more than sad and anxious about the future. With NONOTAK what drive us was the experience, the moment, to feel physically connected with a space, exchange emotions with an audience, share a stage with people. And when I see the art scene going more and more only online it deeply depress me.
TN: That “covid” crisis really affected the touring dynamic of our collaboration and it is pretty sad, but we know it is also reflecting in many other people’s lives. That crisis gave us the time to reflect on ourselves, the meaning of creating art especially in this type of context. But it also gave us the time to reflect on society and the power the government has over people’s lives and their freedom but more importantly, the way they are able to fragilise culture and normalize it out in the open.
Questioning the narrative became politically incorrect, aspiring for freedom makes you feel guilty and this is the society we allowed ourselves to live in. What kind of future does Art expression have in this “new normal” we are submitting to? I don’t really know about that. But it seems to me that being a sovereign individual is the starting point of any form of expression and we feel like we are totally losing the value of what it means to be free. It is pretty scary to me and I guess it is for many other people.
I think growth is still possible in this context. being adaptive is key to finding a path you feel comfortable with in terms of creating and growing. Since “covid” started we got ourselves in projects that required lot of learning and we at least feel like we took advantage of this a little bit. We don’t know when we would have stopped touring without any interruption if this did not happen as well.
We are doing this interview during the first few months of 2021 and the issue will be released this spring. Are there any projects you are looking forward to be taking on and that you could share with us?
NS: We are working on permanent installations that will take place in 2023. It’s a different challenge than working for events or temporary exhibitions but really exciting about the idea that the piece will last for ever.
Félix Maritaud
“you just have to give it a space, a medium, the body”
Félix Maritaud has catapulted to success in French Cinema with his breakthrough role in Sauvage; solidifying him as one to watch. The Camille Vidal-Naquet directed film, depicted Maritaud as a male sex worker in the streets of Strasbourg in search for love. Maritaud’s ability to play emotionally complex characters has proved to be a reason why he is helping to change the landscape of French cinema and challenge Queer roles within.
NR speaks with the actor about some of his most prevalent roles and the preparation behind the characters and where we can expect him in the future. For the 28-year old Saint Laurent muse, 2021 will be a fruitful year with projects such as L’énnemi de Stephan Strekker, and in Tom by Fabienne Berthaud.
Felix, It is great to speak to you. First of all, growing up, was there a significant role that inspired you to get into acting?
I won’t lie, I never thought about acting before some people asked for it, it just happened, and for good because i really do love this way to explore life through my body.
Before that I was more inspired by art history, artists, paintings, I’m not watching a lot of films, I don’t have many references about movies and cinema, I just participate sometimes.
One of your first roles was in ‘120 Beats Per Minute’ (2017) directed by Robin Campillo. It is a unifying movie between the personal and the political, tracing back the story Act Up Paris and the lobbying of their activists for adequate legislation, proper research and treatment for those with HIV/Aids. It also centers on the romantic lives of the characters in the movie. Why did you decide to pick this role?
First i always had been really moved and inspired by the history of the creation and actions of ACT UP, even when I was in fine art school at 19 with friends we did « anti-patriarchy » actions creating a group called ACT HOLE as a tribute to ACT UP activists, so when they called me to do a casting ( my first one) for the film i though i already belong to it.
A standout performance for us was your role in ‘Sauvage’ (2018) in which you play the role of a young sex worker. Could you tell us about the preparation you had done prior to filming?
The casting process was quite long, the idea was really to create a body to the character, a way to move, to stand, to walk, to be naked etc. Camille hadn’t in mind a body like mine writing, he was thinking of a more fragile body type, even if i’m not strong btw, my body was imposing something that we had to adjust and adapt using dance workshops and lots of talks, practicing the body movement of the character on Paris streets,
“trying, trying things to find this strength into vulnerability that is what makes to me the beauty of this young sex worker.”
How was it working with Camille Vidal-Naquet, the film director of ‘Sauvage’?
It was really great, he really knew what he wanted about the film and the character, and we had a really friendly relationship, with all the team actually, so it created a space of strong artistic expression based on truth, empathy and love, because that’s what the movie is about. Camille is a really precise director, and on the other hand he is really open to what the team had to say, or propose.
You have mentioned previously that the character you played in ‘Sauvage’, stepped into your shoes rather than the other way around especially because of how specific the script was. Could you expand on this?
I don’t think of characters as persons you’re building entirely consciously, I don’t want to either. I think that what’s interesting to catch on camera is more an energy, something more fluid than a definition of codified, psychological things that people used to think as the way to define or describe characters.
I think that at a moment of commitment to a character, you can’t ‘control’ it anymore, you just have to give it a space, a medium, the body. So as it was a really intense role, and a really intense shooting too and as I trusted the script and Camille I just let the characters vibration the use of my body, it was really intense, but I did learn a lot from it.
So I’m giving space to my characters, I let myself be pure energy just to let them in, creating their own narratives with my body,
“I think of this job as a relationship, and I try not to impose things on relationships.”
You have also worked with Gaspar Noé in his medium-length movie ‘Lux AEterna’ (2019) produced by Saint Laurent’s creative director, Anthony Vaccarello. Could you tell us more about the movie and how it was working with Gaspar Noé?
I don’t know if I would say ‘movie’ to talk about this work of Genius Gaspar Noé, to me Lux Aeterna is a kind of a narrative manifest about creation of chaos with many levels of understanding. The movie makes me feel like a parallel to what movies are doing to life, changing perceptions of realness, creating a form of chaos as a distortion of an equilibrium between senses and the ‘ways it goes’.
I like working with Gaspar, it’s really something. As Saint Laurent produced the movie, he had the opportunity to do what he wanted and express it really freely,
“I never saw a script, or texts to learn, pure genius energy.”
You have a strong affiliation with Parisian fashion houses such as Lanvin and Saint Laurent. How does fashion inspire you and your work?
I feel fashion is like a place in society where desire is key and expression of the self is at the center of purposes, style is a way to express people’s self. I met Anthony Vacarello during a radio show we were both invited by Beatrice Dalle, then he invites me to some shows and we get to know each other better, i really like his vision about desire, this provocative chic sexiness with beautiful fabrics and materials, I think he’s making women really powerful and sexy, I really do like what he does, I like wearing SAINT LAURENT leather jackets, its makes me feel so much strength. For Lanvin, I knew Bruno Sialleli from a long time maybe 10 years from common friends, I like his poetry, it’s soft, colors and shapes are soft and sometimes belongs to dreams, joyful ones, and as we have almost the same age we have lots of references in common, he’s a really nice guy.
Your latest role was in ‘L’Ennemi’ directed by Stephan Streker (2020), a movie encapsulating the idea that as human beings we are our own worst enemies in the end. The character you play, Pablo, was written with you in mind. Can you tell us a bit about Pablo and how you played him?
Pablo is jailed with the main character of the movie, they share the cell, it’s a really close relationship into space at first and then into minds, their relationship show a form of class warfare between them, an average politician jailed in front of a young guy, it’s a beautiful relationship and working with Jeremie Renier was a real pleasure, he’s a great guy and always ready to play what I do like a lot.
You have had a lot of success French cinema with these independent movies. Do you have any desire to break into international mainstream cinema?
I wouldn’t say mainstream as to me this word belongs to something I try to escape most of the time in my own life, but yes, I will do every project where i feel like it can reach a level of emotions and sensations i would enjoy, I have many projects to come outside of French films, I love to discover new horizons and way to create so I stay really open to new experiences.
What’s next for you?
You’ll see me soon in L’énnemi de Stephan Strekker, and in Tom by Fabienne Berthaud where I play a guy coming out of prison and finding out he’s a father with the great actress Nadia Teresckevitch, and in You Won’t be Alone, an Australian/American/Serbian horror movie by Goran Stolevski that is gonna be legendary. At the same time I’m focusing on self stuff like artworks langage to understand more of life, creating pictures, poetry and having fun with DATAs.
Credits
Photography · MICHELE YONG
Fashion · MIREY ENVEROVA
Art Direction · LAURA GAVRILENKO
Grooming · MIKI MATSUNAGA
Creative Direction and Interview · NIMA HABIBZADEH and JADE REMOVILLE
Production · THIRTEENTH PRODUCTION
Alexandra Leese
Me + Mine
My body. My limbs. My hair. My nose. My skin. My heart. My lungs. My breath.
Much of what we are taught about ourselves as women is that our bodies are not ours. As if we are someone else’s to keep, to define, to use, take pleasure in, and to hurt.
Loving our bodies is not as simple as it sounds when we are still finding a home within us. When we’re alone in nothing but our skin.
While nudes have traditionally been used to display our bodies for the pleasure of the male viewer, these portraits of us are distinct in that they evoke the safety we feel when no one is looking. We do not produce images for the gaze of patriarchy or to compete with other women. We don’t seek to empower people — we know empowerment happens when we take control for ourselves.
Across many regions and cultures, though it doesn’t represent every kind of body and beauty out there, this project is us sending nudes to ourselves — not to be consumed but to be revered. Each woman has a unique, evolving relationship with her body. What we have in common is being alongside one another on the path to loving our bodies how we choose, despite the battles we may face.
So we dream along our journeys. We touch each hair, each fold, each wrinkle, and each scar, remembering that we belong to ourselves.
Credits
Words · Alexandra Leese and Xoài Pham
Me + Mine is available for purchase via antennebooks.com
Proceeds of Me + Mine will be donated to the organisations Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, Trans Law Centre and Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre.
Sumayya Vally
Sumayya Vally From The Johannesburg-Based Architectural Studio, Counterspace, On Amplifying The Lived Experiences Of Those Who Have Historically Been Overlooked
When Sumayya Vally founded the Johannesburg-based architectural studio Counterspace in 2015, it was against the backdrop of a deeply entrenched narrative of western hegemony. As an architectural student in South Africa, at the University of Pretoria and then the University of the Witwatersrand, Sumayya found the curriculum pivoted around a western worldview. And as the name implies, Counterspace seeks to redefine such a narrative, to amplify the lived experiences of those who have, historically, been overlooked. Earlier this year, Sumayya’s efforts to incorporate marginalised and underrepresented architectural ideas into an existing lexicon were internationally recognised when she was included as one of the TIME100’s most influential people.
Sumayya’s architectural perspective is one shaped by her experience growing up in a place less openly inclusive, though equally diverse. Now 30, Sumayya’s early life was spent in the final years of Apartheid-era Pretoria. And as child, she experienced first-hand the impact that architecture and design can have on people’s lives. As South Africa nears 30 years since Apartheid’s end, it’s a country that remains deeply segregated by race, class and wealth. Architecture and city planning is not an innocent bystander here and have been used throughout history as tools for control, subordination, and exclusion. Sumayya’s exposure to this complicated reality informs the interdisciplinary, and often imaginative, work that Counterspace does.
In 2019, the studio unveiled Folded Skies – a series of three sculptural structures made from interlocking tinted mirrors. The iridescent glow captured in the surfaces of the structures appears to represent the history of a city built on the vast gold deposits discovered in Johannesburg in the 1880s. While the legacy of this glittering past is reflected in the city’s colonial architecture, Folded Skies recalls instead the ecological aftermath of the gold rush. The city remains blighted by toxic pollution emanating from the equally vast number of waste dumps left behind from abandoned gold mines. The presence of these dumps is a reminder both of the aphorism that ‘everything that glitters is not gold’ and of the country’s history of segregation and suffering.
Johannesburg was a city divided right from the start, with mine-owners, wealthy from the gold rush, living separated, then segregated, lives from a black population who were eventually forced into townships in the city’s suburbs. The hangover of that gold discovery continues to wreak havoc. The large domineering heaps act as a physical barrier between rich and poor, black and white neighbourhoods; a reminder that segregation still exists. Toxic fumes from the dumps, which are themselves now being mined for the fragments of gold they may contain, are carried south by the wind, poisoning the black communities who live in their path – environmental racism in practise. Though human-made, the waste heaps demonstrate how materials can be used to control, to divide, to enslave people; as tools to construct a built environment, or as resources to build global trade.
By engaging with Johannesburg’s complicated history, Sumayya and Counterspace’s practice is as much social history as it is about designing for a better future. Uhmlaba, a film made in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum, will explore South Africa’s history of segregation using soil (as land) as both its catalyst and focus. The studio often uses film and photography (archival and contemporary) to animate their ideas; visual evidence to demonstrate the fluidity of life and people in an urban environment. And if Johannesburg exemplifies how the architecture is used to control and segregate, the architect’s plan cannot always anticipate the unpredictability of the lived city experience. Counterspace celebrates, and designs, with small acts of subversion in mind. And so, as Sumayya explains in our conversation below, a new approach to architecture and the way we look and engage with urban spaces begins with interweaving unheard and overlooked histories into the fabric of our built environments.
Would you be able to share some insight into the upcoming film Umhlaba?
Umhlaba translates to land in Zulu. The land in South Africa, like many places in the majority world has been implicated in our histories of movement, dispossession and displacement, empire and extraction. The film considers the depths, scales and layers of connection (and violences) in our relations to land – through the narration of recipes, stories and ingredients that become part of our cultures and constructions of belonging – to the violence of breathing toxic dust and the zoomed out segregation and separation of bodies from land in Apartheid city planning. The film is a collage of these various scales and entities, and weaves together connections and links between what was assumed unconnected and innocent.
How did you develop the approach that Counterspace takes through research, practice and pedagogy?
Johannesburg has served as a source of immense inspiration for the practice. Because so much of the city exists below the surface, so many ritual, economic and other practices have developed incredible resistances and are able to surface and exist, despite being excluded by our city’s histories and infrastructures. There is so much that lives beyond the limits of traditional planning, design and beyond the tools of the architectural plan, section and elevation. These ways of being invite us to imagine different ways to draw – to find tools to learn, absorb, understand, listen to and interpret our conditions. Many of them are aural, oral, atmospheric – which has given rise to drawing through film, performance, choreography, the digital, sonic and atmospheric field notes, temperature, colour, etc., to develop an expanded lexicon and ways of reading and seeing Johannesburg.
What informs your approach as an architect to incorporate performance, the medium of video/film, cultural histories into the practice?
Rituals, ways of being and the lives of people in my city – and this intent to draw, make visible, amplify and sharpen aspects of our histories and cultures that cannot be included in the traditional tools and ways of archiving that the discipline and the profession of architecture has inherited.
Counterspace’s work delves into materials like sand, soil, everyday detritus, so I’d love to know what you see as the cultural importance of “material”?
I very much see materials as shifting earth and land; constantly being negotiated, reconstituted and reconfigured. Whether implicit or explicit, all projects stake a political claim in their approach to materials. I am very interested in the use of detritus, in traces and reconfigured leftovers, in how these give us a reading of our relationships to the earth. Materials are not neutral – everything, from cane and cotton, to concrete and gold – is a reading of our ties to each other and our histories (and consequential futures). I am also interested in blurring the binaries that we have drawn between ourselves and the world we are in, and a part of. Johannesburg has also given me an implicit desire to be resourceful and to piece together a lot with very little.
How do you navigate the kinds of architectural malpractices/Western authority that shaped the studio’s raison d’être?
I see my practice as an effort to realise design languages from places of difference – different ways of being and seeing, different histories and stories – and in that sense it has always existed tangentially to the dominant canon. I think things are changing now, but for a long time this meant that the work was quite invisible to the dominant canon. I very much see myself as part of a generation and a movement working to translate and embody our own positions of difference and bring a critical mass of them into the world. Any identity that is different to the dominant discourse is a lens with which to see the world from a different perspective – which is so needed, now more than ever.
It’s interesting to think of spaces where people gather as places that weren’t always envisioned as serving those very purposes. How did growing up around Johannesburg shape your understanding of this?
Our city, of course, has a history of clandestine meeting and organising – from pirate radio setups on kitchen tables to underground jazz during Apartheid. The city has such a divisive understanding of what public is and looks like. In many regards, we never had public spaces that are truly designed for everyone and that have truly drawn on our ways of being and our understandings and cultures of what ‘public’ is and looks like. But, in many other ways, the resilience of practices and gathering that exist outside of, and despite formal limitations, has been a revelation. Being able to see and read these, and learning from the atmospheres and spaces that are created by people and their practices of gathering and constructions of belonging – whether at a carwash, at a petrol station, for a lunchtime gathering, or church on a patch of leftover veld grass in the centre of the inner-city – has been deeply fundamental to my practice.
Bruno Sialelli
“Being at home, not being able to live a ‘normal’ life, does not mean that you cannot dream, have fantasies, expectations for yourself”
When Bruno Sialelli’s recent collection as Lanvin’s creative director was unveiled back in February, it was rich in a kind of French bourgeois opulence; perfectly coiffed hair, glossy lips, impeccable tailoring and strut with the air of je ne sais quoi. Stylistically, the collection finds its inspiration somewhere between the 1920s with sheer, ankle-gazing cocktail dresses and feathers – and the 1960s; flapper-esque headbands that verge on space age, bouffant femme fatale waves and dramatic eyes. But within barely weeks of show, the glamour and sultriness that Sialelli envisioned for this season were already overshadowed by a wave of another kind.
There’s little need to dwell on the fact that sales of athleisure and loungewear have soared for the best part of a year now, especially as many parts of the world enter a second lockdown of some kind, as pandemic infections rise and restrictions follow. That doesn’t so much concern Sialelli, however. For one, the AW20 collection took inspiration from the brand’s namesake, Jeanne Lanvin, who crawled out of poverty, the eldest of 11 children, starting as a milliner’s apprentice at age 13, before going on to found the fashion house in 1889.
And of course, Sialelli’s collection could not pre-empt what this year would entail, but pandering to a current demand for soft, comfortable clothing is not on the cards for Lanvin. Has the house had to adapt to a potential shift in customers wanting more casual attire? No, as the creative director explains over email, ‘I do not think this is a mission for a house like Lanvin. Being a couture house – the oldest still in activity today – brings responsibilities.’ Responsibilities, that is, to both ‘the legacy and to the clients.’
Since Sialelli took the helm at Lanvin in January 2019, he’s been quick to outline that he intends to elevate the brand’s heritage and Jeanne Lanvin’s legacy. By making his loyal commitment to the Lanvin legacy and client clear, however, Sialelli demonstrates that he truly means business as the brand’s creative director – pandemic, or no pandemic. ‘Being at home, not being able to live a “normal” life, does not mean that you cannot dream, have fantasies, expectations for yourself,’ he explains,
“being dressed up, being elegant, being fabulous remains essential to our lives – even more today, and mandatory tomorrow!”
‘To me, Lanvin is here for those reasons.’ There’s always been a demand and desire for the glitz that Lanvin affords. During the interwar period, when fashions veered towards a rejection of the constraints that lingered from the nineteenth century and loose-fitting dresses reigned supreme, that era at Lanvin is rememberable for the robe de style. It was a look that referenced the romanticism and elegance of the eighteenth century, with full skirts and ornate beading. Not quite 100 years later, that mentality returns to the fore under Sialelli: the SS21 collection was envisioned and created under the first lockdown and is ‘all about elegance, optimism, and joie de vivre, the ingredients of today’s world.’
That ethos of grace and hope is so deeply woven into the fabric of the Lanvin image that it cannot be compromised. Especially so considering, as Sialelli explains, Jeanne Lanvin’s vision during the interwar years remains synonymous with the “French look” of that time. ‘Still today, when you refer to this period, only Lanvin silhouettes come to mind.’ Jeanne’s eponymous brand ‘brought a very unique style that remains a reference today,’ and Sialelli sees it as being part of his mission as creative director to reimagine that for a contemporary audience and client. For the SS21 collection, staged in Shanghai, the opening look made a resounding reference to Jeanne’s heyday; a bejewelled black robe de style coalescing French and Chinese culture and style.
After a tumultuous few years at Lanvin, following the departure of the house’s much-respected creative director, Alber Elbaz, in 2015, much pressure lay on Sialelli’s shoulders. He was the fourth designer to head the house in as many years; relatively unknown and only 31 years old, he wasn’t the kind of superstar appointment that has been made at other houses in recent years. This, as it turns out, has landed in Sialelli’s favour. Though he’s keen to emphasise the importance of continuing the legacy that Lanvin has left on the fashion world, the appointment has also enabled him to carve out his own legacy.
With almost three years in the role, how does he perceive the mark that he’s made on Lanvin? Objectively speaking, it is, he says, ‘very difficult for me to answer that!’ But it would be the ‘deep and constant dialogue I initiated with Jeanne Lanvin. Understanding who she was, as a woman, as a fashion genius and as an entrepreneur.’ But also, ‘why she did what she did – the genesis of her story, and what still exists today,’ he explains:
“I guess I place myself as a filter through which I digest, project, and establish Lanvin today.”
Sialelli’s approach to creating a new look for Lanvin is apparent in the ways he re-uses the brand’s heritage now. For the most recent collection, the brand collaborated with the estate of the French-Swiss art deco artist, Jean Dunand (a friend of Jeanne’s), whose prints perfectly encapsulate that early-twentieth-century fascination and cross-cultural fusion of styles between the west and China. Sialelli’s inspiration for each season comes ‘from everywhere, on purpose,’ from people he sees on the streets, to stand-out iconography.
Lanvin under its current creative director is the perfect blend of classic, French style and a savvy for knowing what a heritage fashion house should be today. Sialelli has definitely tapped into the power that an iconic look can hold in the twenty-first century (his Instagram is brimming with beautiful close-ups of the Lanvin collections and images that clearly serve as personal inspiration). Whilst the house has had to rethink and adapt to the changes this year has brought, evaluating and reaffirming the Lanvin vision, Sialelli has been using his time differently – doing what he previously couldn’t find time for;
“Looking, reading, listening to things that I would not have managed to prior to these lockdowns.”
And though Sialelli is, like the rest of us, uncertain as to how deeply the pandemic will affect the fashion industry – he is hopeful for Lanvin’s future. ‘My responsibility is to (not for now and, I hope, not in a very long time) hand over the reins to another creative director one day who will come to continue the story we are drafting.’ Despite a few hiccups, Lanvin finds itself as the oldest French fashion house – a feat coupled by the accomplishment of never having lost its distinct charm and elegance.
Team
Photography · TERESA CIOCIA
Fashion · MARCO DRAMMIS
Interview · Ellie Brown
Creative Direction · NIMA HABIBZADEH and JADE REMOVILLE
Casting · Isadora Banaudi
Make-Up · ANDREA SAILIS
Hair · YU NAGATOMO
Photo Assistant · GIUSTINIANO MODARELLI
Fashion Assistant · FEDERICA MUSELLA Make-Up Assistant · DANILO MASALA
Hair Assistant · MARTINA PORCELI
Models · SONYA MALTCEVA and JULIANY MORAES at FABBRICA MILANO, THORLEIF ENDSJO and MASSAER SECK at D’MEN and MARIA BAZA at ELITE