https://kirstyallison.substack.com
Endless gratefulness to the believers. x
Hey – I’m sharing new and exclusive writing over on Substack.
https://kirstyallison.substack.com.
It’s easy to subscribe, either for free, £5 a month, or £50 for the year.
I’ll send a thank you to annual subscribers. Endless gratefulness to the believers.
x
Kirsty Allison, founder, publisher & editor of COLD LIPS
Started a fash and spoken word zine: BUY IT
Beyond the editorial, read why in a piece for the Literary Platform
Look at these gorg photos by Charlotte Freed from the London Fashion Week party at The Library. Thanks to DJs, Gil De Ray and Feral is MC Kinky, and all the amazing performers, and supporters. Massive appreciation to London Fields Brewery for keeping artists happy
For more info: studio@coldlips.co.uk
Like Cold Lips on Facebook, Love us on Insta, baby
http://www.lib-rary.com/library-news/2016/2/11/kirsty-allison-sylvia-plath-fan-club
What inspired you to put together the Sylvia Plath Fan Club?
I wanted a home for people with a bit of integrity, and rock n roll, the true meaning of literature. Sylvia Plath is a very loose icon for the night – she’s not a literal paragon; people are surprised when folk from all worlds come together to celebrate lyrics, writing and words of all sorts – we had Mussolini come down to the last one and perform his final speech. Lisa Moorish has read lyrics, Gail Porter’s tried out bits from her forthcoming memoir…I like to make films for people who have performed. We’ll start playing those back. It’s good to play some records too. The place it happens in is important, people have to feel comfortable as it’s kinda naked doing words without music, the way we listen is important too, it has to feel easy. Words offer light, through the darkness, I like the space to reflect that…it’s about words all ways. Words always. Words against the silence of voices. The outside world may be fucked, so let’s create our own. I’m a total aesthete like that. I think short bursts work well from a variety of voices. Like a cool magazine – as a writer, it’s always about the way different people speak, I’ve been transcribing people’s dialogues for years – everyone speaks differently, I love that, but I hate slams, sure they encourage perfection but it’s not about that, it’s not a competition, it’s about appreciation, and unity, through words…
What do you consider to be the perfect environment for writing?
It’s in the soul, primarily. I do some of my best work in bed. Ha. Relaxed. I have a decent desk too. It’s solid. I get synesthesia, so there’s only some music I can write to, but having written professionally since a teen, I can do it anywhere. I write on my phone, wherever I can. I think having a pen or a keypad is like having a cunt, you’ve always got it on you – it’s how you use it that counts.
Name three Instagram accounts we should be following.
@idea.ltd
@yazbukey
@kirstyallison_
I also like @MakeBlackOutPoetry
What are the top three items on your bucket list?
My bucket is happily on its own experiential bucket list experience, without me – I think it’s on holiday, or washed out to sea – I’ve lived so many lives, I can’t keep up with dreams – it’s one long and beautiful trip, making the most of every day. Of late, that’s been more about trusting inward than outward. So that would be top, then remembering the bucket is the journey, then being switched ON in the bucket.
What can we except from the upcoming event at LIBRARY?
It’s gonna be hot. It’s London Fashion Week, and I’m launching my first ever magazine at the club. It’s called COLD LIPS. I am super excited. Amazing line-up. It’ll be a fun!
Kirsty Allison is bringing her already legendary Sylvia Plath Fan Club to LIBRARY on Monday 22 February 2016.
The all-star line up includes:
Justin Cartwright
Tony White
Johny Brown (Band of Holy Joy)
Zoe Howe
And residents: Kirsty Allison, Anne McCloy & Gary Fairfull…
Members RSVP | Non-members may purchase a ticket here
Mike and Claire Manumission are infamous for first shagging live on stage in Paris in the 90s, and continuing the tradition at Privilege, in Ibiza – the biggest club there, where audiences of 15 000 were regular, every Sunday night. Their shows were a spectacle of imagination, with fetishes for all tastes, guided by the most beautiful dancers on the planet.
I played in the backroom, with Kris Needs, and friends from Primal Scream and writers such as Irvine Welsh and Howard Marks.
From the days when I was known as K-RoKA – and that’s Jade Jagger all bound up…
On NYE it was a total honour to be invited to go all 50s guitar twang, and play aside friends and accomplished folk such as Paco Fernandez, Mark Moore, Feral is MC Kinky, Richard Norris, Andy Carroll, and see the wondrous Polly Fey and Johnny Golden. Shoreditch House put on one hell of a party, with piles of lobster, and mountains of cake, and it was good to be closer to the legendary NYE fireworks. The hosts, my dear compadres, part of my Ibizan fam, Mike n Claire Manumission are forever inspiring. Claire’s vision and Mike’s will to enable his queen’s desires have always been their magic. Their creative connection is fabulous. As are their shows and parties. There’s always sleaze, in the best taste, but it’s balanced with Claire’s pure panache and class. They had the Royal Ballet perform before jumping into the pool at midnight. What fun times we have had, from Cannes film festival to the summer living in the Manumission Motel, a former whorehouse near Ibiza Town, replete with waterbeds, for the resident DJs, and dancers (separately, always, of course). Wild times. The music never stopped, and the bar rarely closed.
After writing the Red Gallery book on Shoreditch last year, I was delighted to be interviewed by Andrew Mark Corkery for this three-parter comparing Shoreditch with his hometown of Fishtown, in Philadelphia…
The last chapter is my favourite. And there’s also this lil film he put together with me n the artist/editor of Dark Times, Paul Sakoilsky.
A Fish Out of Water: Spirit Reporter Discovers Another Fishtown Across the Pond
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BY ANDREW MARK CORKERY | JUNE 17, 2015
A street festival in Fishtown, and a street festival in Shoreditch.
A street festival in Shoreditch, and a street festival in Fishtown
Art galleries, coffee shops and street art. Community gardens, street food festivals and First Fridays. Start-up tech companies, converted warehouses and creative spaces. You may think theses elements describe the vibrant community of Fishtown, but not in this case. What I’m actually describing is a community similar to our Riverward, only this one is more than 3,000 miles and an ocean away in London, United Kingdom.
In this “A Fish Out of Water” series, we’ll take a look at this far away neighborhood called Shoreditch, see what similarities we can find between it and Fishtown and maybe even learn a thing or two from that community’s developmental process.
But why compare these two communities? Are they really that similar?
According to Fishtown resident Nadia James, they are.
“I actually just came here visiting a friend and never really considered [living in] Philadelphia at all,” James said. “But I came to Fishtown because it specifically reminded me of where I used to live in London—an area called Shoreditch.”
James had lived in London for a couple of years, but a desire to start her own business led her back home to North Jersey where she launched her content marketing consultancy firm, Griot Digital. Not long after starting up, James found a new home in Fishtown because it possessed the same creative business environment she loved back in Shoreditch. Today James serves customers like Rutgers University, SemperCon and Practice Unite from her office space located at 2424 Studios.
Shoreditch and Fishtown share commonalities throughout their respective histories. Both communities have a long, storied past of being working class neighborhoods.
Charles Booth, in his 1902 book “Life and Labour of the People in London,” described Shoreditch by saying, “The character of the whole locality is working class.” The UK blog Book Snobs say Shoreditch’s “working class roots” remain an element of the community’s vibrant nature today.
Kenneth W. Milano, a local historian who has published six books on Fishtown and other surrounding neighborhoods, characterizes the Riverwards’ roots in similar terms.
“It’s always been a working-class community,” Milano said. “You have families from the 1730s that are still living here. I think it goes to show the character of the people of Fishtown and the attachment to their community. [It is] a 275 year-old working-class neighborhood.”
Conrad Benner, an artist and street photographer, grew up in Fishtown and his family still lives in the community. Benner remembers how his father installed fire alarms for a living and his mother worked at a bank. Together his parents bought their house in the neighborhood during 1970s. According to Benner, his family will never leave Fishtown; their attachment to the community has become a large part of who they are as people.
Live music in Fishtown and live music in Shoreditch.
Live music in Shoreditch and live music in Fishtown.
“When I was growing up I really loved it,” Benner said. “I mean, it was definitely rough around the edges, like most American cities at that time, but for the most part [the neighborhood’s residents] were great, loving people.”
Even with these proud working-class traditions and demographics, Fishtown and Shoreditch are also linked by their well-documented past of embracing artistic culture in the community.
It’s not widely known that the first theaters of London were built in Shoreditch. The first of these playhouses was simply and aptly called “The Theatre,” built in 1576. Shoreditch is also partly responsible for breathing inspiration into the man who many would come to regard as one of the greatest playwrights the world has ever known: William Shakespeare. He came to the area as an actor during the 1590s and lived in the community. He wrote a few characters into his plays based on people he had met while living there. Some of his earliest works were even performed regularly in Shoreditch, including Romeo and Juliet.
Milano believes that Fishtown has also nurtured artists and creative people getting their start throughout the neighborhood’s history. He cites influential artists from a more recent history like Frank Bender—who is considered one of the foremost forensic sculptors in American history—as one of the many creatives who have called Fishtown home.
It’s important to note that what’s considered an artistic profession has changed over time; the folks living in Fishtown a few hundred years ago would definitely be considered artists by today’s standards.
“You always had artisans,” said Milano. “You always had craftsmen, cobblers, furniture makers and so forth. But we didn’t bill ourselves as artisans; we were working people with a job. We have always had artists in Fishtown, but it wasn’t an art community. It wasn’t artsy in a sense that it was called artsy. We didn’t have galleries, we didn’t have a scene, but people were definitely artistic.”
The two communities’ storied artistic traditions have stood the test of generations, manifesting their creativity in a number of forms through the openings of boutiques, galleries, cafes and street art.
Philadelphia-based photographer and artist Jen Cleary, recently took a trip to Shoreditch and stressed how impactful the experience was for her own creativity.
“I was told that that’s where the art is, so I just spent a whole day in Shoreditch walking around and shooting as many photos as I could. I remember being like this is a candy store…holy shit,” said Cleary.
“It reminded me of Fishtown. Just so much of it was in one compact area. Like the part next to the Old Street train station in Shoreditch [where] it’s just non-stop street art. That reminds me of underneath the El between Girard and Berks Station.”
It wasn’t until recently, over the past few decades or so, that Fishtown and Shoreditch were openly considered by the public as landmark arts communities with creativity emanating throughout the broader culture of each area. This kind of change doesn’t happen overnight. According to New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), more than anything else, it takes years of community development articulated with a vision put in place by people who genuinely care about the community they inhabit.
Row homes in Fishtown and row homes in Shoreditch.
Row homes in Shoreditch and row homes in Fishtown.
Sandy Salzman, a fourth generation Fishtowner, has been Executive Director of the NKCDC since 1998. She credits her community’s progression to its residents as well as partnerships with various city agencies and organizations like The Philadelphia Horticultural Society and Mural Arts.
“When I started [at NKCDC], Frankford Avenue was a mess,” Salzman said. “We decided that we were going to make it into an arts corridor. We didn’t have one gallery; there were no artists living on Frankford Avenue. We didn’t even have a coffee shop.”
In her office Salzman keeps a picture from 1998 of a trash-strewn lot at Montgomery and Frankford Avenues. The photo paints a clear memory in Salzman’s mind and vividly symbolizes the more than 1,100 vacant lots scattered throughout Fishtown during the the 1990s. Close by is another image of that same lot, but in 2004. It shows a starkly contrasting view of an upstanding and well-tended pocket park with several trees that continue to grow there.
Shoreditch’s similar transformation was put into words by Wong Joon Ian, an East London based journalist, at the start of his article “Gentrification Without Displacement in Shoreditch,” published in the Center for Urban and Community Research’s blog.
“First came the Young British Artists, then it was Banksy and his cohorts,” Ian said. “Now, it’s the million-dollar startups of Silicon Roundabout. Shoreditch and its brick-walled Victorian warehouses have been branded a cultural quarter since the Young British Artists moved into the hollowed out, lightly industrial area on the City’s edge in the early 90s.”
Kirsty Allison was one of those Young British Artists and is now a professor, filmmaker and writer, with articles appearing in publications like The Guardian and a recent book entitled “Making Something Out of Nothing: Red Gallery Shoreditch.”
Allison believes the Young British Artists undoubtedly took ownership of the community and laid the groundwork for transforming Shoreditch into what it is today.
“[Shoreditch] used to be a lot more black and white, but now it’s very, very colorful,” Allison said. “It’s a very fluid area, which means it contextualizes to whatever is around it, and whatever is incoming into the community. It adapts naturally.”
As the neighborhood adapts, so do its businesses, with new tech startup companies like Soundcloud bringing more creative energy to an area well known for its entrepreneurial spirit.
“There are so many tech companies now, which are really part of creative industries. They are the kind of business side of creativity,” Allison said.
In 2013 the Silicon Roundabout of Shoreditch brought 15,720 new tech/creative startup companies into the community, making it the most popular and sought-after startup destination in all of the UK.
While the number of tech startups in Fishtown isn’t quite as staggering, there has been an influx of companies coming to the area, partly because the neighborhood falls under Philadelphia’s Keystone Innovation Zones—geographic zones where young tech and life science companies can apply for up to $100,000 of saleable tax credits. Tech companies in Fishtown include Boxter, Bluecadet, Pixel Parlor, and 3D Printing Dog, among other new and creative businesses popping up at places like 2424 Studios.
According to Fishtown resident Nadia James, another element that makes the local tech startup scene so incredible is the sense of camaraderie and passion she experienced first-hand during Philly Tech Week.
“I came to [Philly Tech Week] and everyone was really open and supportive when I was telling them I was starting my consultancy company, so I just knew this would be a great place to start my business,” James said.
She added:
“What I also really liked about Philly, particularly in Fishtown, is that you get a small community feel even though you are in a big city, and that’s probably the biggest thing I loved about London,” said James.
After moving back from London, James wanted to find someplace similar to the area of Shoreditch. Being a North Jersey native, New York City seemed like the obvious choice. But The Big Apple just felt like too big of a place and lacked a sense of community.
“I mean, you can live in a borough but it does not necessarily mean you get to know the people around you and feel like you know you are a part of something,” James said. “I felt like that in Shoreditch—a neighborhood where I could meet people. When I moved to Fishtown I felt the exact same way.”
This sense of community is fostered in several ways: First Fridays are staples of the monthly calendar in both Shoreditch and Fishtown, and an important component of how the arts stay in focus and at the forefront of the community. According to James, both areas’ First Fridays are nearly identical in layout, setup and overall community vibe:
“Free wine and beer, you just walk around the same little streets. It’s very close together and you talk to people.”
As James continues living in Fishtown, she wants to play a role in adding more elements to the already dynamic nature of her community, especially relating to London’s work culture. James was an account manager for Linkedin, a slightly stressful position at times, but she notes that on random sunny days (which can be rare in London) her manager would tell everyone busy at work to leave the office.
“Everything that I experienced there I want to have for the people that work for me here,” said James.
Workplace etiquette and random lunches aside, James’ attraction to living in Shoreditch came from its blending the conventional with the alternative. She sees the same synergy in Fishtown through the colorful variety of people who call the neighborhood home.
“I don’t really fit into either box personally but I enjoy different aspects of both. So I may be going to a pub that’s full of yuppies [or] I may also like to go to a dive bar that’s maybe full of hipsters. I felt like I could get all of that in Shoreditch and I feel the same way about Fishtown.”
Back in London, writer Kirsty Allison believes that this mix of culture and creativity plays a large role in what makes communities like Shoreditch and Fishtown so inviting and unique.
“It’s about maintaining a spirit of creative community and freedom within a space that should be available for everyone. It’s about cultural equality as much as anything,” said Allison. “There is an important part of cultural progression that needs freedom to articulate itself, and needs space where you can be free to express yourself beyond existing paradigms.”
Allison stresses the life-changing effect that communities like Shoreditch and Fishtown have on the folks who are a part of them. When speaking about Shoreditch directly, Allison stated: “It’s created me.”
“I would not have written my book—it’s a product of a friendship through the community. It’s also inspired my fiction work. My whole novel is set in 1990s Shoreditch,” said Allison. “I would not be who I am without having had the experience and freedom that I have had here. It’s given me my identity really.”
Conrad Benner, photographer and lifelong Fishtowner, echoes the same sentiment about his own home and how it has effected his own personal and artistic growth.
“I would definitely not be the person that I am today if it were not for growing up in Fishtown.” said Benner. “It’s not just the sense of the community and the support that community inspired, which has shown itself throughout the years. It’s also about what it taught me about the world. I saw the world first through the eyes of Fishtown.”
Want to learn more about Shoreditch and the ways it compares to our home in the Riverwards? Check out Spiritnews.org in the coming weeks for more in this “Fish Out of Water” series.
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http://spiritnews.org/articles/a-fish-out-of-water-part-two-class-and-sustainability/
A Fish Out of Water Part Two: Class and Sustainability
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BY ANDREW MARK CORKERY | JULY 2, 2015
“A Fish Out of Water” is our ongoing series describing the similarities between Fishtown and a community in London called Shoreditch. The series will explain how these communities have adapted over time to the challenges they face. Part One described similarities of both communities through the lenses of their creative environments, illustrious histories, working-class traditions and deep impressions left on those who have lived there.
Photos from Shoreditch courtesy Jason McGlade and Kirsty Allison. For full image credits, please refer to the free digital edition of Making Something Out Of Nothing.
These hip and developing communities, heralded as they are, often bear the brunt of divisive generational and class divides. In particular, the alienating divide of cultural stereotypes provoke deep-seated misunderstandings, frustrations, and occasionally points of anger in those who inhabit these neighborhoods.
This section of “Fish Out of Water” focuses on exposing what might cause these tensions in the community and how best to cultivate understanding through a culture and policy perspective. Beneath the tension and misunderstanding there are new, albeit tentative, perspectives circulating. And in it, the power to make these communities sustainable for the long term by harnessing the same creativity and diversity that made them so dynamic.
When speaking on diversity and its role in the community, Nadia James had this to say about Fishtown:
“You can have racially diverse communities but very rarely…is it also diverse in class. What I love about Fishtown, at least in this moment, is that you do still have that class diversity. I think it has a lot to do with the history of Fishtown and that a lot of people have been here for multiple generations,” James, a former Shoreditch and current Fishtown resident, said. “You have a working class and a young professional class and they are all coming together.”
Her claim is backed by statistics. Census data shows a noticeably wider spectrum of median household income, ethnicity, length of housing tenure and education level in Fishtown than in nearby neighborhoods like Mayfair.
Conrad Benner is an artist and photographer who grew up in Fishtown and still lives in the community today. Benner agrees that this blending of cultures and classes has had a unique role in shaping the community but feels as though he has experienced the community through a different lense than James. Benner believes that the cultural makeup of Fishtown is not something that can be garnered from the narrow context of these census tracts or the framework that broader society uses to define class.
“[There’s] this whole idea that working class families are different than the people moving in because [the newcomers] are creative. I would almost argue that the people moving in are in fact the new generation of working class,” Benner said. “This is the economy of the 21st century. I work in digital marketing and these are the jobs that are available to us. Everyone is working class.”
Kirsty Allison, an English writer, professor and filmmaker, echoes similar sentiments from across the pond:
“I wouldn’t use class to determine people. I just think that the class categories have become outmoded and they are no longer relevant.” said Allison. “The creative people that are actually doing innovative work rarely have that much money.”
As we reported in Part One, Shoreditch boasts a large population of creative people working in an array of tech, art and creative industries.
According to statistics from accountants at UHY Hacker Young reported in London’s Financial Times, 15,620 new businesses were set up in and around Shoreditch between 2013 and 2014. In addition, 305,000 sq. ft. of office space was rented to startups, about double the amount in 2012. With this new, booming industry Shoreditch has been dubbed by many as the primary hotspot of digital creative industries in all of the UK.
Regardless of Shoreditch and Fishtown’s ongoing development of industry and the class discussion that surrounds it, both communities have a distinct collaborative nature where everyone seems to help one another.
As James puts it, “People are trying to build one another up.”
As people build each other up in a personal and professional sense, the ways in which each community has been structurally built up differ. The types of buildings and construction projects happening in each area and how those spaces function within the community highlight some of the major differences between Shoreditch and Fishtown.
Fishtown has always been a largely residential area with rowhomes and condos making up a large amount of landscape, still remaining that way even following the continuing influx of people to the community. As more people have moved into the neighborhood, so has development of additional low-rise residential spaces to accommodate the growing population.
Photos from Shoreditch courtesy Jason McGlade and Kirsty Allison. For full image credits, please refer to the free digital edition of Making Something Out Of Nothing.
In Shoreditch it’s a much different tale. Before The Young British artists moved there in the 1990s there was actually not a lot of residential space in Shoreditch. Because of that, the area and its property values are currently booming and developers are flocking in to build more.
“There is a supply issue and there is also a rent issue because of the way that housing is done in London and in the UK. There is not enough social housing in general and the total amount of housing is also going up and as a result you have a crisis from the supply side,” Wong Joon Ian, an East London-based journalist, said. “Add to this a spike in global demand because global investors view London property as a desirable and safe asset”.
It’s not just that people are being displaced and forced out of their houses only because the rent is rising. Ian says it also has to do with the fact that a large amount of new residential space is being built to accommodate the influx of high-income people moving into the area, most of which is high priced real estate.
“You have declining supply and increasing demand from outside. So the people who do get squeezed are the people who don’t have the capital to compete with the demand and don’t have the capital to find new supply,” said Ian. “But you have to ask yourself who is that new supply for, who can afford that new supply?”
Some would say the biggest and most controversial “new supply” of housing and real estate on the horizon in Shoreditch is the Goodsyard, an £800 million ($1,254,240,000) mixed-use scheme by joint developers Ballymore and Hammerson. As reported in the Financial Times of London, if the project obtains planning permission more than 1,450 new homes and 600,000 sq ft of office space are set to be built.
“There’s a lot of money in Shoreditch at the moment,” said Matt Cobb of Hatton Real Estate in the FT. “That can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing, because whatever you decide to build you have to make sure you won’t be destroying what made the area desirable in the first place.”
Ian stresses some alternative ideas about the gentrification of Shoreditch in his article, Gentrification Without Displacement in Shoreditch written for the Center For Urban and Community Research Blog.
“Unlike the narrative of commercial or industrial gentrification, in this case, the displaced property owners welcomed the move out of the area. Again, this upsets the narrative of wealthier incoming gentrifiers displacing existing residents,” said Ian. “In the case of Shoreditch there were no existing residents to displace”.
In Fishtown, Conrad Benner believes the traditional narrative of gentrification in his own community may not fully apply either. Benner critiques the framing of gentrification put forth by outlets that influence public perception and offers his own counter argument.
“The media sort of projects this idea that when gentrification happens it’s this clash between cultures, but that’s just not what I have experienced,” said Benner. “On a human-to-human scale and as someone who grew up in the neighborhood, I am very excited to see the way that [Fishtown is] changing in positive ways. Business are opening up, Girard Avenue is getting redone, the highway (I-95) is getting redone, more and more transportation options are becoming available and all of these things are happening because there is a renewed energy in the neighborhood.”
While Nadia James hasn’t been in the area as long as Benner has, she was in Shoreditch during that neighborhood’s development and feels that Fishtown is starting to reach a similarly uncomfortable level.
“I think that there is actually way too much property being developed in Fishtown right now. Every block I go down I see a new building coming up. The good thing about Fishtown, though, as opposed to Shoreditch, is that at least there are the building limitations,” said James.
Photos from Shoreditch courtesy Jason McGlade and Kirsty Allison. For full image credits, please refer to the free digital edition of Making Something Out Of Nothing.
There are two 42-story skyscrapers planned for development in Shoreditch that have been set on a timeframe to be completed by the late 2020s, as reported by The Independent. This would never be the case in Fishtown though, thanks to specific zoning classifications in the area that would not permit the construction of the skyscrapers currently set to be built in Shoreditch. The only designated zoning code in Fishtown that would permit something close to the 42-story Skyscraper in Shoreditch would be designation SP-ENT.
There are also additional checks and balances on the development of larger buildings in particular areas, including Fishtown. One of these checks that involves the community most is Civic Design Review, a process that occurs when a plan requires both an appeal and a design review. Then there are public meetings and hearings which occur before a Zoning Board, and when City Council considers amending the zoning code they do so with input from the public. Through these processes, the public has some power to influence the development of their own community.
“I think here in Fishtown people want it to be more balanced though so it doesn’t turn into the next Brooklyn, or I mean even just thinking of other Philadelphia communities. There is a reason why people are paying to live here and not Rittenhouse Square,” said James.
In Shoreditch, a number of people in the community sympathize with this same view but within the context of their own community. The Shoreditch Community Association sees the area’s continued development as something that needs to be guarded, regulated and watched closely for foul play.
“There isn’t enough balance on the development. The Council (local government) wants to see only commercial space, the estate agents and developers only want to see residential units—for overseas investors to pay over the odds for but never live in. And the historic locals are trying to protect the historic balance of the area,” said Rachel Munro-Peebles, a leading member of the Shoreditch Community Association. “Everyone, big businesses, companies, and people wants a slice of Shoreditch but it’s only the people who live and work here who understand it and want to protect it.”
Kirsty Allison was part of the movement that lead to Shoreditch becoming cool, and understands the importance of keeping a watchful eye on development. But she also notes that there is an invariable part of community regeneration that we must all come to accept on a fundamental level in order to have progress.
“Change is change, and that’s the thing about it,” said Allison. “That’s the issue with rent control and where artists fit into a community, and whether society values it enough. A lot of people would say that rent control is necessitous to retain a community. There are still a lot of artists and creatives living around here but I don’t know who could get a warehouse now, they would move further out,” said Allison.
With that said the cost of a one bedroom flat in Shoreditch varies anywhere from £335,000 ($513,488.00) to £725,000 ($1,111,280). Additionally the sizes of these flats are regularly priced at £1351.35 ($2071.35) per square foot.
Whatever the multiplicity of factors behind the fundamental changes in communities, it’s imperative that everyone be looking at the issues we all face today through a sense of broader contextual vision.
“Look at how we arrived here. What are the factors driving it? These are global trends and recognizing that, these may not be issues a local council can solve on their own. Maybe there needs to be some redistribution of legislative power or something,” said Wong Joon Ian.
As real-estate prices are skyrocketing in Shoreditch, the market in Philly remains sustainable by comparison. Robert Beamer lives in a repurposed residential warehouse in Fishtown. He sees Philadelphia and Fishtown as a much more economically sustainable environment to live than most other high-priced cities in the U.S., and others internationally. In fact, it was Philly’s affordability that brought him here in the first place.
“Most cities are intensely crowded and expensive,” Beamer said. “But here I can go to a show and see a world-renowned artist, then I can also go to an amazing dinner and not pay an arm and a leg for it and the dinner is going to be really amazing.”
James concurs with Beamer and sees our community as an area that may really remain less affected by these global trends noted by Ian in Shoreditch, in relation to affordability and sustainability. She sees Fishtown as somewhat immune to the high, unaffordable nature of city life that some believe is currently affecting Shoreditch. She notes that Fishtown is not next to such a massive financial hub like London, which in her understanding makes it easy to develop since financiers and developers are only a 10 minute train ride away.
“Somewhere like New York or London, they are international cities and Philly is more of a regional city. So I think that plays a massive role in the development of each city because you have all these foreign investors in these other two cities. And yeah they have the money to throw at Brooklyn or Shoreditch and make it what it is becoming. As where in Philadelphia we don’t have the same kind of people, ” said James. “There are very few large enterprises here in Fishtown and for this area thats a good thing. Because when you’re small you can’t bully and say this is what we are doing.”
But regardless of Fishtown’s fundamental and developmental differences to Shoreditch and other large cities globally, by the numbers Fishtown is actually becoming more unaffordable. From the 2003 to 2013 Fishtown saw a staggering 270% increase in home property value.
Local historian Kenneth W. Milano has seen this first hand.
“What does a working person make, $50,000, $40,000? The point is that a working person cannot afford a house in Fishtown, can’t really even afford a house in Kensington,” said Milano. “So you would need 20 percent down to buy a house, 10 percent in a better economy, and then pay $1,000 a month for every $100,000 you borrowed. Well $1,000 a month is a lot of money. So I mean thats still only a $120,000 house, that’s a little row house in Fishtown, not even Fishtown…Kensington.”
Here lies the issue at heart—gentrification and displacement in both Fishtown and Shoreditch.
Some believe these factors could risk pushing members of each community apart from one another if not handled and understood through the proper framework.
James feels, having lived in Shoreditch and now living in Fishtown, that both communities confront the issues of gentrification and displacement on a daily basis and that they have varying degrees of societal impact.
“It comes down to the economics of things. So if the rent is too high then people and business can’t stay here. And it’s the smaller businesses that make it what it is,” said James. “If you have people who are really only interested in themselves and what they do, then those are the same people who don’t mind there being monopolies. But one thing I’ll say about Philly and Fishtown is that everyone is really collaborative and I think that is because the economy has been small”.
With regards to people being displaced in Fishtown, Benner feels it’s an issue that warrants a certain level attention given the climate of gentrification that the community is experiencing. But at the same time he sees his own experience first hand as an anecdote that counters full fledged displacement.
“It’s a question and issue that really needs a study but I can say anecdotally it has not pushed my parents out and it has not pushed me out. And definitely the block I grew up on the vast majority of people I grew up with on that block still live there,” said Benner. “Again, I think that Fishtown has had so much space to grow that there’s room for more people.”
In spite of the fact that Benner feels strongly that there are alternative experiences and viewpoints revolving around society’s limited contextual understanding of what constitutes displacement in Fishtown, he notes though that the increases in the cost of living more generally are, without question, cause for concern.
“An apartment that I would look at three years ago would have been at least $300 to $400 cheaper then it is today. And I do really worry that may really not need to be the case,” said Benner.
Crossing the pond once again back in Shoreditch, Allison believes wholeheartedly that regardless of the community under no circumstances should that kind of systemic and systematic injustice “be the case” as Benner puts it.
“It does not matter who they are no one should be living in a squallored environment if there are people living next door living a good lifestyle. Everyone in an environment should look after each other it does not matter where you are,” said Allison.
“The issue is though whether or not there is a divide being created in the community between the people who have every right to live here and who have their community here and the people who are being sold the lifestyle here for a million pound for a flat. It’s gone to a different level of greed…That is what will destroy it too is mass greed.”
A Fish Out of Water: Spirit Reporter Discovers Another Fishtown Across the Pond (Part 3)
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BY ANDREW MARK CORKERY | JULY 20, 2015
SOLUTIONS, DISSENTING VOICES AND CULTURAL OWNERSHIP
Despite the varying levels of affordability and overall differences in the sustainable economic climate of both Fishtown and Shoreditch noted in last weeks (Fish Out of Water Part 2), many whom we spoke with believe these communities are prime examples of how people work together to create the essence of a neighborhood. In addition people noted that communities like these are needed on a fundamental level because of the way they are able to help guide society at large.
The way these communities often look to guide our society is through their dissent.
President Deight D. Eisenhower once described “dissent” as inherent within American culture.
“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion,” said Eisenhower.
Despite Ike’s heartfelt patriotic characterization of “descent” the phrase “dissenting voices” however is one that over the years is sometimes confused, not fully understood, and in conversations about communities is often not invoked for fear of upsetting the status quo.
Through this series of stories though it’s clear that time and time again when offered the status quo Fishtown and Shoreditch often opted to reinvent themselves, staying vibrate and taking on an entirely different approach to community.
However the most basic components of the phrase dissenting voices remain murky at best. When pressed for a definition one will find some variation in meaning that includes straying from the beaten path of authority and utilizing speech in some form to do so.
Spirit Journalist Andrew Corkery and Professor Kirsty Allison
Regardless of how general the definition it still paints a focused clear picture of what the communities of Fishtown and Shoreditch offer to the rest of the world, a vigilant dissenting voice on issues and culture within the larger spectrum of modern global society.
One facet making up the dissention within both Fishtown and Shoreditch is how the communities, to a certain extent, exist within an alternative economic landscape.
Nadia James, a former Shoreditch resident and current Fishtown resident, believes that the fashion and art sectors of these neighborhoods contribute to their environment of independent sustainability.
“It’s not going to be a Forever 21 that has a small up-and-coming artist have a pop up shop in the community, it’s going to be another independent boutique owner,” said James. “So you need those small small local businesses there to sustain each other.”
Across the pond in the UK , professor, writer, and filmmaker Kirsty Allison also sees those same sustainable independent economic models as prevalent elements of their developing community culture in Shoreditch.
Allison’s recent article published in The Guardian entitled “The Cultural Revolution Starts Here” discuss particulars of how many in the Shoreditch see themselves as a part of a more all encompassing economic, political and social movement, dissenting against status quo power structures.
“East London was the first zone to co-opt creative people into its ‘regeneration’ program[me]. The current phase witnesses remaining native communities and cultural migrants rebelling against economic apartheid, creating an urban laboratory of flexible arts spaces for symposiums, screenings, street-food festivals – anything really … IF YOU’VE GOT NOTHING, THERE’S NOTHING TO LOSE is painted high by artist-in-residence, Chris Bianchi of Le Gun,” wrote Allison in The Guardian.
Back in Philadelphia, resident Jen Cleary believes art is what drives the multifaceted discussion fueled by these dissenting voices. She feels it furthers those conversations outside the community as well, and into a dialogue within broader society.
Cleary is a photographer and spends a lot of time in Fishtown and other areas of the city photographing street art. Earlier this year she also took a trip to Shoreditch to experience the street art like the piece mentioned by Allison above, among many others.
She focuses on street art’s unique ability to embody dissenting voices through a medium of social and political commentary that seeks to derive the impetus for societies structural change and progression.
“It comes from a place of rebellion, its the art of rebellion really, and being able to say something through a visual medium,” Cleary said.
Cleary notes that important issues throughout history were brought to the forefront of society’s collective consciousness through foundations laid by street art in years past, which continue to influence other street arts projects today.
“In the 80s [prominent gay-rights activist and artist] Keith Haring had a lot of things to say about how gay men were treated during the HIV Crisis in New York. It was huge,” said Cleary. “And now were talking about people in Shoreditch and how they really don’t think the Tory Party [UK’s conservative political party] treats them well.”
Creativity particularly in the form of street art in Cleary’s view invites people from all walks of life in a simple emotionally powerful manner, to question the world around them and look for solutions within themselves to help solve society’s complex problems. She also sees how similar forms of street art to those mentioned during the 80’s HIV Crisis are represented through different forms of creativity in Fishtown, depicting today’s pressing social issues.
“At one point there were these little cat calls that were on the ground, and you would find them at every bus stop,” Cleary said. “As a woman that kinda shit can happen to you a lot. They were just little pieces of art spray painted on the ground with a stencil that would give you little things that you could say back to Catcallers. It was good to see, it lets you know that you are not alone and it wasn’t just you. And it opened up the dialogue.”
Shoreditch London
“The funny thing is that it became a city-wide action to place anti-catcalling signs on all SEPTA transit. So its always a political statement, which we need we always need. Every society needs a dissenting voice.”
Street art may be providing a dissenting voice in these hip communities. According to Conrad Benner, a local photographer, these voices are even more dignified in areas like Fishtown because the artists live within the community and respect it. While some may interpret street art as vandalism, the artists who create it do so in a way that is beautifying and thought provoking.
“I think one of the greatest things about artists that live in Philadelphia is that by and large they pay respect to people’s private property and to businesses,” said Benner. “So when they put up a wheat paste and a sticker or some stencils, generally speaking, it’s on abandoned spaces which are sort of abundant in Fishtown. So it’s exciting to watch.”
Robert Beamer lives in a formally abandoned warehouse in Fishtown that has since been converted into creative living space. Beamer agrees with both Cleary and Benner in that the development of dissenting voices along with creativity’s place in that process is not only exciting to watch, but even more inspiring to be a part of.
“Living in a building where every other apartment is filled with other artists, the ability to bounce your ideas off people, to throw a flyer on the wall and know that people are going to see it, it lends itself to creativity.”
In the eyes of those living there, places like Fishtown and Shoreditch are communities that celebrate their residents and the lives they lead. In addition they often function as an olive branch extending the impetus for societal progression in one form or another to those the world over.
Still many questions face these communities today. How do we keep these communities functioning in a manner that benefits all who are apart of them, along with continuing their substantive and positive impact on global society, rather than benefiting just a few?
How can we ensure that vibrant and necessary communities like these will stay at arm’s length from people only looking to take advantage of their message by commodifying the “merchants of cool” surrounding the fabric of the community?
How can we know that 20 years or more from now places like Fishtown and Shoreditch will still remain viable and sustainable for all people?
Having lived in Shoreditch and now calling Fishtown home, James feels she knows part of the answer.
“I think you need a balance. I think Fishtown does that really well. For example you can have the bigger establishments but then you can have a small, little Indian restaurant like Ekta,” said James. “Most of the companies I have seen, they all came up because other people helped them. They understand the value of helping other people, playing it forward, and giving back.”
In Shoreditch Allison agrees with the principle of balance in theory, but offers advice seeing changes play out in her community within a somewhat uneven landscape filled with a seemlinging endless amount of individual interpretations.
“Everyone has their own narrative about what has happened. I don’t know if I am into mass sweeping generalizations about do’s and dont’s for anyone but this idea of ownership is where all the problems start. But what is ownership? Is it a financial investment, or is it creative ownership? So that goes back to the idea of the social and cultural economy. How do you measure those though?” said Allison.
Allison sees cultural ownership as an element that factors heavily into the complicated equation of keeping communities sustainable, but still senses an innumerable amount of questions about how to quantify the concept.
“Do you do it by the amount of time you invest into something, do you go Malcolm Gladwell and say it has to be 20,000 hours you put into Shoreditch to make yourself part of Shoreditch? How does that work?” said Allison. “I think that people still need a space to be a part of the community, and to have a space that is a long term investment. That would be a really radical thing to do.”
Beamer in Fishtown believes what Allison advocates for should not necessarily be such a radical decision, but unfortunately in our modern global society it is. That being said, Beamer recognizes that sustainability is in fact the most sensible choice to make.
“You need to stick around the neighborhood that you helped create, and we should learn from those mistakes and missed opportunities of other cities,” said Beamer. “There has to be some sort of a fusion between making a lot of money from these spaces and keeping them around.”
I half beer
I champage
I palinka
I red
I palinka
And then she stopped counting
Chainsaw
Holy soup
Holy goulash
A spunk-strewn British flag lies over a black, metal trunk in the alcove of the gay bar on Prague’s outskirts. It is daytime, late December 1992. The action has left the building, leaving a smell of beer, good-times and a plastic policeman’s hat, which is scraped up from the floor by an English-speaking manager who took pity on the three of us – female students, who somehow found ourselves without somewhere to stay after a two day bus ride from London. Directing us to a grand flat, dripping with gold and literature up near the famous clock tower. We’d made it.
I’d been to Prague before. In 1990 I’d carried memorabilia from Amsterdam to Charles Bridge where me and a Dutch-Indonesian guy whom I became biro pals with (who later had plays on Dutch radio which were banned, I never asked why) worshipped at the Lennon Wall – my fave monument in the world ever, which on that first visit was just a candle, burning for world peace and love, with a photo of the dead Beatle. Flowers hung around it like a Hindi temple and a few of us left messages, in biros on the walls. (I was travelling with my parents, from Amsterdam, with my own tent, them giving me freedom to explore. It was a pretty cool trip.) By this return in 1992, the sacred shrine of Lennon’s Wall (who I often spelt like Lenin) prayed on anything alternative: The Doors, The Velvet Underground, but “I heart Guns n Roses” in massive graffiti writing – that didn’t make sense. To me, at that time, Guns n Roses stood for nothing – the west was impacting.
By 1997, of course my appreciation of songs such as Mr Brownstone grew. And it was around then, reporting for Scene with the British shock artists, that I checked in on my rock n roll mecca once more. The acid-house generation were still in naive belief that Blair would never go to war and unity would guide us into the next millennium. The popular belief he manifested (until he lost us) by getting Oasis over to Number 10 for all that champagne supernova malarky. Yet we were desperate for a government to believe in after Thatcher’s rave dissolution, taking our parties into superclubs she could tax, and monitor. In came artists we could believe in: their values of privileged liberty were explored in video, installation and on walls: porn, freedom to fuck, vegetarianism etc, and after a rather loud night on the absinth, fellow hotel residents pushed a note beneath Tracey Emin’s door saying they were “ashamed to be British”, (the note Mat Collishaw made into a T-shirt). It was punk and Cool Brittannia. Although, I found more light at the Lennon Wall, standing as a glocal foreshadow of mobile phones bringing everything closer, the iron curtain peeled back bad hip-hop graffiti, stretching far along the river. The west wanted more west, as my friends had wanted more city, back in the New Year of ’93. Taking an overnight sleeper to Keleti, Budapest’s main station. For £20. It was serious adventure. Communism fell in ’89, as it had in Czechoslovakia, but unlike Prague, we were the only tourists in Hungary. Or maybe there were a few other bravehearts, but they’ve vanished from my memory in these blurs of youth. A woman pounced us as we arrived, offering us a place to stay. Trustingly, we travelled an hour out of Budapest (!) to a pine forest village covered in snow. We fed village dogs our old salami, only to have village children pull it from the dogs’ mouths. The alpine houses were all made with local wood. It was modern and excellent for young explorers. Every little shop in the village (of which there were two, basically sheds with no signs, built onto living rooms) offered us vodka shots as soon as we were through the door. That’s the kinda behaviour that can make a girl fall in love.
Budapest was a train ride away, and I remember it being very dark at all times. No shops with illuminated anything – no flash windows, just huge black cement buildings, Tudor-esque hills of medieval voids, wide-roads rambling ordered forever, entrancing squares of balconied houses that stood off main streets – looking down as if the centre was a theatre. If you wanted to buy something it was held in a glass-enclosed unit behind a big Hungarian behind a counter. My pride purchase was a patchwork sheepskin waistcoat “It’s for a child!” laughed the woman with big arms.
At a Turkish bath, massages were done with soap bars and buckets of water. My pal Juliette, who’d been brought up Catholic, screamed in hysterics at the proposition of walking around naked in public with a towel the size of a flannel.
Now, in 2014, the baths have signs in English and there are massages available in oils and chocolate and all sorts. I’m sure Grindr and Tinder and Sugardaters work as well as they do in any other western city. For now there are tourists everywhere. You can buy everything from Zara to Louis Vuitton. Budapest has become City Break Central, and with Alex, my husband, we visited Kiraly and Gellert baths. Kiraly is beautiful, more authentic than Gellert, with the obligatory holes in a domed roof, plunge pools where Alex was warned of their shrinking powers, there’s an outside tub, in a square in the gardens. It’s a right hang-out. Gellert, by comparison, is ginormous – they make women wear swimming hats to swim in the pool – men don’t. And in both, everyone wears swimming costumes. The first time I went, with the girls, it was naked and same sex. Annoyingly, if you want to swim and haven’t been before, hats are available to purchase once you’ve locked all your goods away in a locker. But there are bars, for lunch, it’s the kind of place you can stay all day, but of course we didn’t arrive until the sun had nearly set…There are outdoor pools, sun loungers, and yes, Wes Anderson has defo visited. Shame to share the water. Which I made the mistake of perhaps drinking a little too much of, having read of Agua Juventus – offering eternal youth – Bottle That Shit and Sell It To ME, I thought, drinking as greedily as I felt looking at the cream cakes at the Centrál Café (I’m lactose intolerant).
We were in Hungary for the wedding of artist, Marta Rocamora and composer, Gregor Konready’s wedding. This Catalan / Hungarian couple met working at the Red Gallery and they helped enormously at our wedding, so it seemed a good circle to celebrate their love.
We thought we’d go five star for 4 nights, booking the Buddha Hotel – (and should have stayed at the Boscolo) – Buddha is all red and black, nailed over the top of nouveau – a nightclub-style place full of waiters laughing at the chaos of breakfast and storming into our room for a party at weird times of the night.
Ernesto Leal, who founded Red Gallery, arrived with the co-founder, Yarda Krampol and Red director, Giuseppe Percuoco. We goulashed it up for a night before leaving town to a place where the Hungarian princes took their crowns – Szekesfehervar, or as Ernesto called it: Che Guevara. I was calling it Shake it Baby. Met by the groom’s brother, we went onto Tac, now 70k from Budapest, where we were all staying, where the reception would be…
Alex and I had a quick look around the village, he thought I was joking when I told him I was going into a shop – it was one of those sheds I’d been to twenty years ago. We returned to our room, changing into appropriate garb and the Spanish mother ceremoniously separated herself from her bridal daughter.
A big master of marital proceedings with a huge felt cape in cream and red, fairytale leather boots and an accordion was our guide – joining us on the solidarity bus back to Che Guevara Shake It Baby, where the exchanging of rings would occur. With a soundtrack including The Bangles’ Eternal Flame, there was rice throwing, photos, and the Red contingent escaped, now with several more of us, planning to re-group in half an hour. Of course, after taking a beer, and an ice cream and photos, we missed the bus back to the reception. Cabbed it back. We were lucky enough to witness such traditions as the holy cutting of the log – where man and wife each hold an end of a saw before the chainsaw is passed to the wife, with champagne toasts and the first palinka (the stuff they’d called vodka back in the sheds)…
Uncle Andres and his revolutionist’s moustache
There was so much palinka. And pastries. I did a full palinka detox – sitting with catalans, all excited for the forthcoming Scottish election. Singing Kalinka Kalinka with Palinka Palinka. After a few hours, chicken was dropped on the table – we ripped it from the bones before broth followed with aldente gnocci pasta and pimento on the side – amazing food – then holy stew and potatoes – all hail a decent goulash, and sauercraut and gherkins – and once one’s appetite had been met – fried cheese and fried hash brown and fried rolled up ham and we danced all night, found a secret bar with a huge lizard dragon in it. And more alcohol and holy goulash and holy stew. Marta began wearing her belt around her head, all hippy child, before dosie-dohing around and coming back down for dessert dressed as a Hungarian Disney Princess. Greg was all top hat and tales, looked like he was from a century ago – which is quite a weird thing for an electronic music producer…all friends forever – the dawn rose, and the tour with Red Gallery ended at 5am, when Alex and I took a cab to the station to get our train to Bucharest…
City pipes up like rattlesnakes
Ecstasy sunrise
Crowns in the road
Capital comes
And crashes
Full metal church
Woemania.
Men with double earrings
Gypsy with wooden stick
Men with big moustaches
Helmet hat bellend rooftops
Big cereal fields
Meeting puppies on platform
Gypsy no eyes – prison tattoo number, steal a child, beg. Gypsy curse.
One way.
Pear dumpling haystacks.
There is a bored girl called Amelia going to Bucharesti – I give her Polish fudge, the same type my old Polish neighbours used to give me. The Danube is wide as a lake and really is blue. It’s stunning, wild, green hills forever. Takes 15 hours from 7 this morn to 11 tonight to reach:
BUCHAREST
I leave half a bottle of wine from the wedding with a guy walking with a shepherd’s stick, defo part of the 3% of Romanians who are of Romany stock. (Blame British media for my surprise at this statistic.) 3% battered, tattooed, outcaste. It’s wild here. Loads of men drinking beer around barrel tables at a little nightshop shack at the back in the station, where hard-as-iron women serve. It seems the educational standards aren’t very EU – there’s very little English and there’s the same stupid factor you find in any central city station with boozy guys stepping over luggage rather than waiting for it to be moved. It is midnight…and cities congregations are often stupid.
Having eaten peanuts and crisps since the wedding, we relish a half grilled chicken and a spicy merguez-esque sausage, violent red, with big cut chips. Everyone else eats beer. We could have had about 4 Happy Meals from the undercutting new MacDonald’s for the same price.
We roll our luggage around the outside perimeter – got an hour before the connection to Sofia. The streets are wide and glitz-free. There a couple of uber-lights – from a Subway and the obligatory supermarket-near-the-station which makes most of its cash from meths-esque products. It’s dark here, huge communist buildings reach into the sky, without the glow of cities such as London. Black as the sea we shaln’t see the Danube wash into.
TOWARDS SOFIA
When a weird Soviet guy starts taking your train ticket from you in the middle of the night, it doesn’t matter if he’s dressed as a night guard in the sleeper train you’re boarding to Sofia. What happens if he just takes the tickets, flogs them on, and tries to kick us off the train? All aboard for pure costume drama. We’ve stepped past an ancient tea toiler boiler, and Hey Jude sings from a ginourous comms device of the same era as the song, all inside a worker’s cabin. There’s a woman in there, bored, getting dressed or undressed. Dark wood everywhere. Red claret carpets and velvet bunks. The weird Soviet guy wants to exchange our tickets for sheets. But he can’t tell us that. Speaks no English, I have no Hungarian or Bulgarian – although later pick up a couple of words – in Greece. A fight nearly broke out as he drunkenly staggered over Alex’s shoe – he seemed to be complaining about the difference in the quality of their footwear before passing over the sheets, as we bid adieu to our evidence of purchase. I’ve always said the problem with communism is shit shoes.
Yet we wake with no problems, Soviet guy is smiling, the morning light shows Bulgaria to be far craggier than Romania, which was soft and undulating.
Raw nature. Verdant – never trodden by human foot, in any kind of shoes, there’s loads of it – on and on. Everything is written in Soviet script/cyrillic.
SOFIA
Che Guevara awaits in shops at the commie station. There are pictures of various revolutionaries, above glistening pastries. No cashpoint. A McD’s in a tent. Left luggage womanned by a little lady. Everything looks like you’re wearing glasses with a nicotine sheen. Part of Europe since 2007 but uses Lei as the currency. A few alco-groupies await tourists at Sofia station – people trying to help for 1 Lei…about the cost of the biggest bottles of beer ever – like maxi-bottles of Coca Cola. We get a train to Centrum. Metro. New. Two stops.
Homemade orangeade with mint for me and big ice cream coffee for Alex. The esplanade is wide, with cafes all along the centre of the main shopping streets. It’s mellow and cosmo with mountains at the ends of the roads. Lunch in a cafe playing house music. Every cafe played house music. Big Byzantine church – gold gold gold domes, amazing mosaics, blues. Beautiful. Walk around town for the afternoon.
Steaming through country now. Back on another train. This time to Thessaloniki. It’s a long way. Agrarian climbs down from the mountains. Rivers, roads. Slow life in the south looks richer than the dying communist bloks nearer the city.
Hark, wheels stopping. That was us and the German interrailers freeeeeaking out. Train has been going in the wrong direction for 30 minutes. It’s picked up some random carriages – we’d just got into Greece, after a 38 hour journey, we don’t really want an extra couple of hours on a train.
Yet we arrive in Thessaloniki 10 minutes early.
WHY DID WE DO THIS JOURNEY
Thessaloniki station has a lil orthodox corner to light candles in – and an ancient photo booth. Feels like a film set – frozen when the debt happened. Trains have only been reconnected for a few months (post-recession) but it felt pretty India. As it did walking around the bus station later looking for a hotel and finding one with wallpaper over damp and mirrored ceiling tiles – we didn’t get an hourly rate.
Now at the back of a bus going past lush lakes and small fields on the northern coast of Greece – it explains so much having travelled here from the north, over the mountains, rather than flying straight to holiday central.
My big idea for the day is a philanthropic index – where tax and CSR is rated per individual. Everyone needs to do something for others. Alex doesn’t agree with me.
There are clouds across the higher hills as we head into a valley towards Turkey. What the fuck are they doing there? I do not want to see clouds for the next week. I want to turn off – see the temp rise as the minutes strike up from my first coffee in the mornings. I want the blue and white of postcards. I want the pictures in the guidebook. We’re getting a boat from Kavala, pop to Thassos or Samoraki, we’ll leave for the other if they’re too full of package holiday makers, what a weird phrase. Make like it’s a holiday, dudes.
The bus driver’s music is quiet though the air con, Chilli peppers, Guns n Roses, classic soft rock – a long way from where we started. 22km to go. Proper info travel seeing the baltic wilds, the chipped communist faces, German trains exporting cereals.
After a ferry, and a bus, I’m lying on a bed looking at weird Christmas cards framed on the walls – pictures sent from early explorers to this island, an island now overrun by Romanians. It came as a surprise – to get to a beach recommended in an out of date guidebook that you now can’t see for people. CLAUSTROPHOBIA – GET ME OFF THIS ISLAND. Seeing every beach stacked out by cafe owners’ umbrellas and sun loungers, offered for a minimum spend of 25E. So much water falling from the sky now – explains these verdant crags. These domineering hags. These green salads. A wood fire around a fig tree, grape vines, roofs sucking up the skies, sealine and clouds hazed together. My Nike insoles blown to sea. Heavier and heavier the rain and sailboat masts ticking geiger faster. Sun-dried pine replaced with pools of needles and burning logs. Men running under parasol shades and warmed by mama in towels. Water on marble. Olives falling over crazy-paving. Waves bashing over the Byzantine ruins, sandy beaches finally free of peeing children and mothers watching whilst dads channel Olympic swimmers past. This place is not for travellers like us – it is a place of reservations and organised families. But half the ferries no longer run, victims of the recession pushed by the loans offering greatness – so it’s hard to leave.
Giola pool is used on all the guidebooks to Greece – it looks bigger in pictures. Jumping in from quartz diving boards carved by the ocean into this natural round pool, filled with still sea water. Scores of people. Freeform. On a moto – no shades, trying to find an unknown beach, a place to recluse. This restaurant old, with rooms above all with the beauty of Aliki from its sights. A family palace, a unit. Something we don’t have. And then it stops and the island is bathed in sunlight.
Bread and stew go in the fire oven – I feel part of a Greek family – fuck banks – we’re in cashland – why would greeks on an island do anything other.
Moving house – moving house. The place was only available for two nights, we’d tried 6 others prior to this, used to rocking up and seeing what’s available. In a cheap place with another dodgy mattress, booked with a 14-year old spotty kid, his mum apologises for him when she drives our stuff around to the next place we found – it’s hard, getting rooms here. All the Romanians have booked in advance. We hang with some Romanian academics – they’re not coming back next year – too busy. The climate is not of the south islands – yet the sea is stunning and blue and the sun warms the stones so it’s perfect for naked midnight swims.
If we’re up that late.
Now we’re on Kinira Beach – the woman who only speaks German, and Greek, is OCD clean. Not a grain of sand is in the wrong place. We have balconies at the back and front and the sea is loud and hypnotic through the window. Proper mattresses – personal kitch – not blue and white though – here she’s gone for fleshy pink and white. BASTARDS (I WANTED BLUE AND WHITE – that’s why we came to Greece. It was here or Croatia, after the wedding – but we’d had our honeymoon in Mykonos/Anti-Paros/Serifos last year and were keen to feel as good again – and the journey here was worth this disappointment).
RAIN, CLOUDS, GO AWAY.
Epic travel frazzle. From Kinara to Poptos by moped with all our luggage and both of us. It began raining heavily. Potos – nice baclava lady feeds us in her cool Pretty Sweets shop (or something ) all Farrow n Ball colours. Not as good as the stuff we had in the mountain village – but we needed that woman’s spirit. Potos – skala Prinon by bus. Whisky stop for Alex, more camosmile tea for me. Skala Prinos to Kavala by boat. Now on bus to Salonikia.
So we did 2 nights in Aliki Archodika Restaurant, long hike to stony beach by food and they made everything from bread to olive oil on site, was well worth it and the view from the storm has all come back through writing this.
1 night of miscomm at Dolphins on Kinar – gets super- advanced bookings and final 3 nights in Kinara Clean Obsessed, next to Hotel Sylvia.
Makedonia Palace hotel at Thess. I hate arriving after the pool and sauna have shut. Top breakfast. Would return.
We had champagne cocktails by the beach in Navona, the restaurant, and later found a jewish rock bar, full of rich kids, next to a squat a few blocks back…
Paror Calor.
x
I was first approached about writing the book which became MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING in 2011. It was published in December 2014.
We had a party. I escaped before dawn. RED gave away 2000 copies. If you weren’t there, you can read the book here. It’s designed by Tomato, art directed by Jason McGlade.
Here’s the related article in The Guardian:
Grateful to the Red Gallery’s Ernesto Leal for awakening many of the thoughts that made the final cut. Also for he and Yarda Krampol’s trust in my exploration of the Shoreditch I’d recently returned to. I approached it like a documentary, an archive. Left some interviews entirely unedited.
The essay explores the cultural legacy and necessity of Red – plus 30 interviews with people involved with the building of this unparalleled contemporary hacienda. Thanks to all contributors/interviewees and those that supported the creation of the book.
Pics below by Urte Janus, more here, the cover pic is thanks to Fiona Cartledge.
Shoreditch’s RED is the creative force engaging local communities through facilitation of the continuing Cultural Revolution in the heart of East London.
This versatile, multi-functional space has welcomed a myriad of creativity through its doors since opening in 2010; transforming a derelict group of buildings and unused land into chameleon like art studios, galleries, live events venues, offices, screening rooms, open air event setting, incorporating a street food market and bars.
In keeping with its ethos of cultural guardianship, RED has actively encouraged not only artists and local residents to engage with the facilities, schools such as St Monica’s Primary have utilised the space and in keeping with their continued commitment to communitas, RED plays host to an annual symposium of the religious arts initiative Urban Dialogues, bringing together people from all faiths.
A year in the making, MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING documents elements of the magic that takes place behind the doors (and often on the walls) of RED through interviews and photographs.
To celebrate the launch RED will be hosting a photographic exhibition and in keeping with its anti-hegemonic practice, 2000 copies of the book will be distributed at the launch.
Additional commentary from visionaries such as Stirling Ackroyd’s James Goff, Tom Burger Bear – one of the chefs who led Time Out! to dub Red Market as being the birthplace of ‘the new food revolution’, curators and artists such as Alice Herrick of Herrick Gallery, Jerwood Prize winning Svetlana Fialova, Paul Sakoilsky, Chris Bianchi, Matthew Hawtin of Minus, former street artist, Part2ism,Dimitri Hegemann of Tresor Berlin, trends author Dr. Lida Hujic , fashion designers: Roggykei, patron Nick Winter, Stephen Shashoua of 3 Faiths Forum, music consultant: Juan Leal, Gary Means’ Alternative London street art tours and more.
A myth about graphic designers is that they’re sticklers of aesthetics and masters of finding the ultimate font, aren’t they?
They know how to rock a retentive margin. And their pencils are always needle sharp, and in a nicely OCD-straight line. Most def a tonne more file-conscious and organised than the paint-brush wielding crazies who took the less financially instantaneous pathway at art college – under the belief they were secret Hirsts, but better. It’s an old fashioned belief that fine artists hold the higher ground of insanity. It’s a pre-pop assumption that they refuse to sell out to capitalist normality and they have ‘chosen’ to live in their mother’s shed with a Dan Flavin light, making shit video installations about mice being their best friends from the city they have been rejected from, or they’ll solve world peace by forming sculptures out of coffee grinds in the shape of Africa.
Yeah – I came to this realisation when putting together this catalogue for a show about acid house flyers. Although the curator, Ernesto Leal had done the groundwork, tracking down these heroes of rave art, a collection of the first rave wave of designs, it took ’some time’ to co-ordinate the facts of this posteriturial research (posterity/curatorial – yes, basically a timeline) – these designers were rock n roll…
*Ease on by…*
– under the echoes of the utterances of acid house, always said between gurns and rushes upon rave fields of yore – Where are you from? What are you on? (obviously my answer would always be that I was from the school bus and I was on my way home) – we EVENTUALLY agreed on the dates and places and facts of these MDMA artifacts.
One love.
[please click the blue Issuu link below if the artwork doesn’t show in your browser]
issuu.com/ourhistory/docs/poster-back-5?e=0/7567862
Creative direction for the poster was by Wilhelm Finger at Double Decker – – always a dream to work with.
I’ve been places.
Many of my cuts have been left in the 20th century – on the pre-digital slow train – alongside Lacroix dresses, a record box or two and a few empty bottles…
A fellow professor was interested in some of my old travel writing – in about ’95-’96 I worked as a travel ed for Dan Kahuna. Anywhere I could get to with other people paying for it. With Lee Bullman as my wingman, we toured Europe, did Paris Fashion Week (our first date), the next issue was maybe Munich (doubling up on my TV presenting duties), later gigs included a sex tour of Amsterdam, staying in the John & Yoko Hilton. Neither Lee or I died, surprisingly.
These are a few travel cuts from the digital age:
🎶⚡️🎶✌️🎶👂🎶
Listening to The Fall – hearing more online now than I’d ever heard at 20 or 21 when we put this together for Scene- the style magazine I used to edit on in the grunge days.
Mark E Smith had a girl with him (not Brix), I pinned up her drooping hem after he’d sunk about 9 pints in Finch’s on Portobello Road. They’d taken an early train down from Manchester. We had to get Smith drunk to get him into Jocelyn Bain-Hogg, the photographer’s studio- he’d dealt speed from the doorway years before and it brought back bad memories.
Already that day he’d thrown a window cleaner around atop a crane from the base control in Canelot Studios and bitten Gary Numan’s hand.
The PR, Bernard MacMahon told me Mark paid his band members a weekly wage. Few lasted long.
I’d like to see him play soon, and meet him again, having understood his music better.
HOT IN THE CITY, HOT IN THE CITY – it was, when Jason McGlade, editor and publisher of Freestyle, parked up in my mate’s gallery, RED, blogged me with this picture, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, awwwww….
Producing an entire issue of a magazine which is ROUND and comes in a FRISBEE – from the back of their converted van – FREESTYLE needed a journalist for a feature about RED and this is what we made:
I’ve done a LOT of sit-ups since seeing that picture…
THE AMAZING ARTWORK is by LE GUN‘s Chris Bianchi and Robert Rubbish.
FREESTYLE IS AVAILABLE FROM GOOD STORES & ONLINE, get in touch with them to find out more.
This is issue 4, and was crowdfunded. Previous collectable frizbees designed by Paul Smith, Eley Kishimoto, Matthew Williamson – this edition is all Berlin black vinyl and has a super-fly, augented reality app – showcased in the video above…
THIS IS:
the inside of my pyramid
neon freedom with a slow shutter
handcrafted GIFs
illustrated frames
21st century fe-dentity
Shakespeare’s Egypt as the promised land
PRESS RELEASE, 11th June 2013
KISS ME CLEOPATRA
A film for Kelli Ali by Kirsty Allison starring Munroe Bergdorf
You are cordially invited to attend the launch party at W Hotel, 19th June, 2013 RSVP essential
Hosted by Munroe Bergdorf
Drinks reception from 8pm. PA by Kelli Ali x Kindle 9pm. Premiere at 9.30pm
With DJs: Sink the Pink,
Sarah Blackwood (Dubstar/Client), Andy Fraser & Villota
Kirsty Allison’s Automonika Demonika Ego Erotika and Family Is A Night Out Across Starlit Glades played pop-ups at Tate Modern & Tate Britain last year. Kelli Ali (Sneaker Pimps/Satoshi Tomiie/Paul Oakenfold) loved the political poetry/iPad collages and she approached Allison to make a film for Kiss Me Cleopatra, the first single from her new Band of Angels album. Released on 19th June at 9.30pm, the Warhol-esque video stars rising femme-fatale, Munroe Bergdorf (host & DJ at London’s hippest gay club, Room Service):
“Being a huge Liz Taylor fan, it is an absolute honour to play Cleopatra – especially for somebody as iconic as Kelli. I’m in love with the final project, Kirsty’s made an amazingly fresh product.”
Kirsty Allison, a multi-media artist who’s explored many arenas of expression from styling for Boy George to DJ goddess of Ibiza, paint & collage, literature & poetry, film, radio & media production says:
“My vision for KISS ME CLEOPATRA was to bring frenetic fragments of 20th century culture into the 21st century. The song’s concept brings parallels to Mapplethorpe, Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret & Lou Reed’s Street Hassle. Casting Munroe as Cleopatra made it possible to reach a fierce new Egypt. Munroe epitomises progressive society & post-modern beauty. Ada Zanditon’s AW13 pieces are perfect for the acid-goth diaspora-vibe.
I love how Alexander Villota shot it.”
Cutting between the simple look dictated by the original ‘selfies’-style footage supplied by Kelli Ali, shot on a mobile phone by her collaborator & muse, Léigh@BitPhlanx, and an editorial-influenced process, the video reflects the DIY method of Band of Angels (so-called as it was 150% funded by fans via the crowd-sourcing platform, Pledge Music).
“DIY is where it’s at. The world has suddenly woken up & remembered that art not only ‘can’ exist outside the humdrum drone of mass mainstream culture but ‘must’ exist outside of it. Kirsty Allison & Munroe Bergdorf are hanging out at Warhol’s Factory right NOW…they’re both modern icons of beauty & feminine POW in their own right.”
Ali first shot to fame as front-woman for trip-hoppers, Sneaker Pimps. In the midst of grunge, the Spin Spin Sugar remix by Armand Van Helden gave birth to speed garage. Kelli later went solo, releasing two albums with Bjork’s label, One Little Indian before independently releasing her critically acclaimed, Rocking Horse (produced by composer Max Richter). This was followed by A Paradise Inhabited by Devils (with pianist Ozymandias) & now, the self-produced Band of Angels album. Kelli has collaborated with top producers & artists including Marilyn Manson, Marc Almond, Bryan Ferry, Linkin Park & Paul Oakenfold. Exploring genres & identity within an idiosyncratic musical framework, Kelli Ali is becoming the Cindy Sherman of pop music.
Band of Angels available on iTunes / http://www.kelliali.com/ & Amazon worldwide. Kiss Me Cleopatra Remix EP features Peter O, Killaflaw, Coloquix , Terminal 11 & more…coming soon to iTunes & Amazon
Super-pleased to present a new
series of images at Tate Britain.
You are invited to join us on a spirited quest to explore questions of identity and belonging. Amidst pumping bass lines and crowd mayhem, LABEL will explore the one question that has intrigued mankind for centuries: “Who am I?”
Label: Family Old, Family New, Who Am I? Exhibition as part of Tate Collectives – Great British Art Debate showing UK, Iceland, Finnish, American and other international creatives with artist Tracey Moberly in projected installation.
Saturday 24th November at Tate Britain 1-5pm
LABEL is curated by Tate Collective as part of the Great British Art Debate. What does Britishness mean to you? Join this audacious retort to stereotypical ideas about Britishness.
Here’s the scrawl I began from. I will upload a Videm version shortly.
Videm – definition: series of pictures/video/poem.
Family Is A Nite Out Along The Branches of A Starlit Glade
Family is a fallen manor
A service gardener
A quad-grandson of a preacher man
A loan shark
A builder
A teacher
A farmer
A librarian
A potion pusher
The BBC. An MBE
A family fantasy // fallacy
A mother
A father
A brother
A rigger A writer A lover A lawyer
An artist A daughter
Hung
I am black as a flock of sheep
I am mexican I am manx I am blonde I am white I am scottish
I am crazed
I am straight
Sometimes ambidextrous
I am early. I am late
I’ve walked a thousand mountains and fallen down more
I’ve sailed ships around the world
I’m related to Ford
Grace Darling the Starling chirped for me
My grandfathers wars were all different you see
I was rich
I was poor
They robbed
They won
My family is yours
My family is higher than sun
Follow The Great British Art Debate on Twitter @GBArtDebate and on Facebook
Sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Funded & Great British Art Debate
I’d been going on at Ernesto Leal to programme Danielle De Picciotto in his Red Gallery in London’s Shoreditch, and am super-proud he invited me to steer this panel.
I knew this picture of Danielle De Picciotto (with her husband, Alexander Hacke, of Einsturzende Neubatten) prior to knowing much else about her…
It was Chris Bohn, editor of The Wire magazine, who turned me onto Danielle – he was reading her book (The Transgression of Beauty – which I whole-heartedly recommend – she’s a true inspiration, the type of woman I don’t find enough of, and trust her schedule will allow her to perform at Red later this year…) – Alexander Snelling – my boyfriend and I were meeting with Bohn and his girlfriend, Keiko, to discuss a film Alex is directing about psychedelic-techno maverick, Manuel Gottsching (the Berliner who went up a mountain with LSD-guru, Timothy Leary, managed to come down to be chased by Nico, recorded with Ashra Tempel, and made this, the definitive Balearic track, sampled on Sueno Latino, nicked by countless inferiors, re-sampled by Derrick May, who, incidentally, believes Techno is a power greater than the mechanical consciousness feared by The Frankfurt school – which I’ll get to – but let it be known, Gottsching is the DUDE).
So we’ve visited Manuel’s scene in Berlin – and I’ve fallen in love with the city’s embrace of techno-academic philosophies guiding ART (I’m a long-term fan of Christiane F- Hacke’s first girlfriend, and I love the Helmut Newton gallery by Zoo Station, and just knowing that Iggy Pop & Bowie hung out in West Berlin kills me – I’ve been lucky enough to visit amazing private views over the years and have a few of Sven Vath’s Harthouse records, a couple of Kraftwerk, some Detroit, Belgian, some of Jeff Mills Underground resistance and old Tresor records in my collection…) but the biggest appeal to Berlin for me is the rationalisation and need for structural understanding of CULTURE in the programming at festivals such as Transmediale, and discussions at squatted buildings which support discussion as an essential element of progressing thought and practice – call it Neo-Marxism, or techno-democracy, stemming from The Frankfurt School (which I have State-lectured in – under the guise of Contextual Studies for Media – in the old syllabus for undergrads, before Marxism disappeared from the current outline, which came out shortly after the current government – NB – how the fuck can you discuss technological and democracy without Marxist-models is beyond me – but I find it easy to blame the State’s need to have conforming, non-questioning workers who love life in the Mall – another soapbox/blog, another day)…however, the German need to evaluate is likely the intelligent evolution stemming from their post-Nazi situation, I find an inherent German characteristic is logic and REASON (I don’t care if nationalistic identification is perceived as rascist, again, another soapbox, another blog) AND I love working with Germans for this, in my experience, Germans deliver – and progress is why, when I used to write for NME, DJ, Mixmag and many other publications including The Face, Sky, Dazed and Raygun (before DJing and going onto make music documentaries for BBC Radio) – I was always on about the ELECTRONIC VANGUARD, and that’s what Ernesto’s events have always been about – which is why we’re drawn to each other – but aside from Ecstasy, Peace, Love & Unity, the aspects of rave culture shared by the British and German scene-are people came together from different worlds – when the Berlin Wall fell, the former-Soviet East and the Western bloc (which had been broken into districts ruled by the ‘Western Allies’, France, the US and Britain – with consultation with West Germany), having parties in warehouses in former GDR-land (German Democratic Republic/Soviet) where ownership and legislation was murky, dancing under initial idealistic ideologies of anarchy and optimism in much the same way as we did around the M25, in pre-Criminal Justice Bill Britain – before super-clubs, capital super-greed and State taxation were instigated by the devisive mega-minds at the top of the power tree – so what evolved, particularly in the grimy warehouse clubs of Berlin such as E-Werk, and all the ‘stay up forever’ principals of Doctor Motte’s LoveParade, was the Techno philosophy of Newness being the Future. Space – the final frontier…
Ernesto has a pre-occupying theme of gentrification, which becomes as explosive as Shoreditch rents when combined with Berlin’s 90s trance culture and the MASS POSITIVISM which accompanied the WHITE LIGHT/WHITE NOISE-TOTEM championed by DJs such as Paul van Dyk, a discovery of Mancunian, Mark Reeder who was drawn to Berlin in 1978, having started The Frantic Elevators with a certain Mick Hucknall – before becoming Factory Records label rep in Berlin, moving into East Berlin – the nutbag – started managing and engineering bands like this female punk band, Malaria!
Our economy has been on a downward spiral since acid house – I don’t blame the drugs, I’m with the half-glass full, Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, who suggests LURVE will get us out of our current financial straits – basically, positive spending energy encourages positive energy – embrace, LoveWorks – bring it on, let’s just get in debt forever, it will always be future debt.
I’ve previously said I believe there should be a Global Charter of Corporate Social Responsibility (with relative social ‘taxes’ – not wholly binary, or financial – more altruistic and community-based) and with this in mind, should base-level creative projects, such as bars, clubs, and galleries, and those feeding from their existence such as property people and businesses, support the underground matrix of artists which offer them credo – (Shoreditch being a prime example of essential co-existence – if Westwood and McQueen have lots in Redchurch St, will they want to stay there without a little of the grit that attracts hipsters to Boy – or will East have moved South by then – I suspect the rents will have pushed them there) but an alternative model could perhaps exist through something in the grasps of corporations: Land, and the provision of it to artists – seeing as we cannae squat civilly nae more – from September it will be a criminal offense to squat in the UK, I would suggest areas encouraged giving land to artists to aid gentrification, perhaps if their taxes and business rates aren’t doing so well, what with all these empty shops – but if it is done borough by borough, communication can exist in a real sense between those who need to be provided for in some sense by those bigger than them – let’s call it the the parental duty of the 1% if they can be philanthropic enough to assist, but we know it’ll never work – as long as there is greed and need…
But I hope THE INNOVATOR, DIMITRI HEGEMANN (who’s the key speaker) can spread some advice here – he gives grants to artists, supports them with one job to lead to another, a good guy – labelled a Techno activist through, what I suspect will be a belief about DIY-ism, he had the Fishburo bar, turned it into the UFO club, before setting up Tresor -does his embrace of Techno side along using the Internet and whatever private-app based networks we can think we’re underground communicating upon – to achieve this – because what this talk at the Red Gallery sets out to do, is explore the relationship between Subculture and Creative Industries – Tresor, being a prime example of a Creative project, so passionate in its advancing of the techno arts that it became a philanthropic sport of Hegemann to provide lifeblood to the underground matrix of artists. Is it as simple as Subculture being another word for Lifestyle – so said Alvin Toffler, the futurist who is cited by Detroit-Juan Atkins (Cybotron, Model 500) for inspiring him with his writing on ‘techno rebels’ in his book, The Third Wave. Is it true the underground no longer exists in our networked world, and instead, the choice is Lifestyle – and whose we’re buying into, because Money Corrupts Equality.
And if we have to be part of a Lifestyle, can we do it without guys like Dimitri investing in progressive artists in an era where it’s Google vs The World? (They have Orwellian-powers you do not want to believe) – where does the capital fit in with art? Currently through gallerists – bless their sweet souls, but howabout musicians – it’s hard out there, and writers – wow – well, I lecture, and have a PHD is Ducking n Diving. Is it as black and white as being either DIY and thoroughly indie-pendent, is there a rainbow of opportunity to find support through sponsorship as a working class artist – or one that has to work. To offer complete autonomy to artists takes a truly maverick brand, and in my experience, there are very few who don’t want to imprint some level of Ownership, and a corporate-instigated belief system or another bullshit masquerade. I love the principals of GEMA (the copyright society of Germany) who are responsible for ‘protecting artistic works’ but such are their endeavors, to protect the artist as a creator, they are superstrict – and German YouTube is not as liberal in content as elsewhere (another blog -Creative Commons etc and the need for ownership). Is freedom of expression the same thing as freedom of audience – in Idealistic times, yes. Which seem historical by their very notion – amoral times, ladies and germs (that’s a Garfield-ism, he was my philosophic hero when I was growing up).
Is there a middle ground of compromise where artists don’t have to do as De Picciotto and co did – which was recluse to a castle, only to have a hundred skinheads as their door- or is the point to co-exist, to log-in to culture and leave the studio as and when required, rather than build a wall around culture, forcing us to totally DIY it, leaving our small castles to get attacked – do we need to be more unSocial than Social – UNwiring ourselves to the networks where corporate/capital cyber-control leave Analogue the only freedom fighter in the ongoing flotilla of post-modernism – because even private networks will always be hackable, because people and artists will always be buy-able. Let’s all go and buy an island of ideals. It couldn’t possibly be this planet. What is the revolution? As I read in Vanity Fair’s current issue, Woody Allen has endorsed Smirnoff, Kurt Vonnegurt – credit cards, Hitchcock- Western Union and Salvador Dali – Alka Seltzer (!) – Bobby Gillespie sold his soul to Uniqlo – if you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’re stupid enough to believe it – but free economy… (another box of soapsuds, another blog).
As I draw to a close, I would suggest the corporate wave of digitalisation has overthrown the Techno dream of a democratic internet, and new-tech or old-school are the NU NEW. All power to Anonymous, or maybe not an oligarchical portion. Folk jumpers and the craft they represent worn with iPhones continue into the next season, my darlings…(iPhones, I know, still – despite a recession, what can everyone sport? The symbol of not being lonely.)
So the velocity of techno-times have passed, to be replaced by the arguments for living anti-Socially whilst being wired in – PHEW – had to get that out –
Techno-culture was always the melting of new forms, dripping towards a virtual existence – we are in that place – where morals have been replaced by armageddon. The devil’s playground, which is what the underworld and new world’s can offer – Money and art, and where the twixt wane, cultural capital and it’s involvement with the state – let’s embrace the arts and intellectual like a fist full of dollars and challenge and progress at this event on Thursday 7th June. Which is full – but message me if you’re super-keen and I maybe able to swish you in under my magic cape…or stay tuned on here, Twitter and my mailing list, and I hope to upload the discussion soon…
My mind is sure of one thing, there needs to be cultural friction, such as that caused in the competition for Berlin to reclaim its capital status against Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and the riches of Bavaria – cultural friction causes us to fight for progress, unless we’re just creating, man, either in a fog of auteurism and drugs – what Simon Reynolds enchantingly labels some aspects of techno as, “A full-scale retreat from the most radically posthuman and hedonistically functional aspects of rave music toward more traditional ideas about creativity, namely the auteur theory of the solitary genius who humanizes technology,” or in other words, the bedroom DJ – a precursor to the ‘Dead Boys’ of Japan, who are called so because they literally do not interact with society – and this is the darkside, the last frontier, or crossroads that an artist has to do a deal with the devil at in order to create a new beginning…perhaps the Techno dream has come true.
Crossroads and fringes have to shake their tassels right back to the core to have any effect -Techno was a reaction of modernity, a quest for the future, to live on spaceships, in clinical, scientific beauty – away from the wishy-washy drug music of psychedelia – whether Berlin can continue to do this now that the wall’s come down remains to be seen, or as British politics currently suggest, there is, in fact, a dark secret that if you Build walls, spectacular things will occur, but only once they’re destroyed.
Where are you moving to next? I heard Athens is pretty cheap…Britain overlooked the importance of allowing people to live as artists to produce exportable merit. We’ve been drugged goddamit. And all nanny wanted to do was help. I take responsibility…TECHNO FOREVER!!!
DO CHECK THIS SELECTION OF TRAX- THEY WERK…
Kirsty Allison, London, June 2012
‘ArtIsts’ we are (the I being the ego), dottIness extremus, the InfinIte I. And few artists exemplify this better than the pre-Yoko Ono, single Japanese female, Yayoi Kusama – so conceptual she sacrificed her sanity for us.
The current retrospective at the Tate Modern in London – sponsored by Louis Vuitton – is curated as a human story. 
The first room – the micro-struggling illustrations of a young girl in a world where death lies at the end of the phallus-twisted tunnel.
[Yayoi Kusama, Accumulation of Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization) 1950]
The second room – making it big in America – with obsessive, fish-scale canvases –
[Yayoi Kusama, Pacific Ocean, 1960]
…which remind me of the beautiful off-white, suede Louboutin for Giles boots I was lucky enough to borrow for a shoot…
She sells well, netting success with her ‘mind-net’ pictures but wants to escape the confines of her work – only way out is on a boat – and it’s filled with cocks, wriggling to get inside her…
[Yayoi Kusama, Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, 1963]
The exhibition then goes pop! She makes a film about herself, a pretty geisha vs the entire ugliness of an industrialised city.
O, the 60s! Send a letter home.
[Yayoi Kusama, Accumulation: Airmail No2, 1966]
The next rooms get preeeeeetty psychedelic. Learning from pop-meisters, and being in contact with Georgia O’Keefe, who possibly advises on lifetime themes, dots start to appear in Yayoi’s work. She brands herself with the burning stamp of dottiness – polka polka polka dotty dotty dotty. And she looks good on a horse.
© Yayoi Kusama and © Yayoi Kusama Studios Inc.
And she puts dots on the horse. And rides the horse. And puts dots upon herself. And takes the horse to water. And puts dots on water. And the cat gets polka-ed too…Self-Obliteration – the movie of these events is wonderfully pre-computer, and so is she…
Opening a concession in Bloomingdales’ selling dresses made of transparent PVC and flowered-up suitcases- it’s a period so fabulously of its era, 
-they inspired the S/S 2012 Louis Vuitton collection…
[The future vision of Louis Vuitton and Kusama is destined to be dotty…where Murakami added colour and cutes-i-ness, Kusama will add strong-woman circles, in yellow on black and white on red.]
The exhibition moves on to chart happenings in her apartment, although not orgies because she was scared of venereal disease, it was about real love rather than sex, a peace mission – everyone gets naked, and she is the star. The posters are wonderful, even the desperate, hand-written ones.
The naked venus of her own parties. Putting the I into Artist – I mean, would we bother otherwise?
But after all the parties, the result – it’s too poetic for words, because, after a hallway of amazing collages, she sections herself, works in a hospital studio, art therapy, and the phalli are back, leaping out of boxes, like bad thoughts from a spaghetti-ed brain.
[Yayoi Kusama, Heaven & Earth, 1991]
I nearly cried at the burned-outness of the next pieces…which I cannot easily find pictures of, and to revisit it, I only have to flick through my mind. No, you can’t come in. I’m busy.
Too many microdots, all over the walls…and the snakey phalli…
[Yayoi Kusama, Yellow Trees, 1994]
To a magic room, where we entered her installation house to ask – “Do you take dots? Drop more spots in your tea?”
[Yayoi Kusama, I’m Here But Nothing, 2000]
She’s still an inpatient, cooked for, paying for an organised life, looked after – she has a studio over the road – she must have paid for the whole hospital…art, we get sick if we don’t do it, sick if we do…the 82 year-old said this to the Guardian, “I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That’s why I’m in a wheelchair. I’ve been doing it physically — it’s hard labour — throughout my life.”
(Many contemporary artists follow the lead of the Italians, and have studios of assistants making their art for them – commerce – greed – I,I,I,I,I,I,I,I,I want more art on my walls, now, do you hear? Ok, Ego!)
If you’re prolific, you have to be looked after – Virginia Woolf would surely agree. Kusama is the queen of her own disco – this exit piece, Infinity Mirror Room moves right on from the mirrored rooms at the Serpentine show in 2000.
Try turning the screen brightness up and down, up and down and project this to your brain…with a dance remix of your own Garageband – it’s a 1993 co-lab with Peter Gabriel:
Here is a Louis Vuitton co-lab from 2006 (yes – that’s Marc Jacobs):
EXTRA NOTES ON NAKEDNESS:
I saw naked pictures of Patti Smith recently -not these ones unfortunately, although almost undoubtedly also taken by Robert Mapplethorpe – the others had more vulnerability…
there are so many pictures of me knocking about, in dirty old filing cabinets in the wastelands of youth. Who cares? Do the most crazy ‘I-people’ get naked?
[Dame Vivienne Westwood, selling anti-consumption since 1971, by Juergen Teller]
Is it a stand against drab normality? The ancient Greeks would say so. In Berlin recently, it was interesting to find out nudity was seen as an act of rebellion and freedom in the old Soviet DDR lockdown of the East Berlin ‘rescheming’ regime.
Fame and the quest of fame is seen as a contemporary sickness – a trap of our commercial and marketed times – but for Kusama, Patti Smith, most female icons of the last century and the twenty-first (beyond our dear Royals, and those of a more Middle Eastern persuasion – who intelligently stand against idolisation, or have no power to use the politics of ‘shock and awe’) – stripping off and whoring ourselves is to rise above those that won’t – I wasn’t born with a fiefdom, life is so fast – we are who we lie next to. Paris Hilton, we are indebted to your ‘I-matter’ legacy. Or we die in the bland ocean of normality and conformity. Extremes – nakedness is beautiful, it is vulnerable, it is who we are. Nakedness is so brave. So intimate. So NOT fashion, but everything fashion is about. As a true riot grrrrrrl – it is only flesh.
In an interview in Index about her Self-Obliteration/naked period, Kusama says it was a time when she hated herself. However, she was more famous than Andy Warhol.
Her dresses helped take her there. Particularly the ‘hole dresses’ where hooded ponchos are slashed to expose our breasts.
I was disappointed by the exhibition, to discover at the heart of the art was an ego – a crazy, I-sacrificing soul who would never have become so famous had she not been determined to make herself the star of the show. The Serpentine did it better, that show was about the product of selfishness, THE ART, not the person that created it. However, without I, there would be no ArtIst.
I Art, Therefore I Am…
(photography copyright © Harrie Verstappen, The Looniverse)
Yayoi Kusama’s autobiography is out now…the octogenarian has also illustrated a fabulous, turn your kids into trip-heads, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland…
Our good friends Swami Roberto Pereno & Guru Babette kindly hosted a private screening of the film Alex and I have been working on for five years at their Society Film Club in Mark Fuller and Iron Maiden’s Sanctum Hotel in London’s Soho on Monday night. We had a great turn out – Boy George came with Fat Tony (DJ ledge). They’ve found a new guru in the star of the film, Laurie Handlers of Butterfly Workshops. So happy they love it. Thought it was up George’s street. Other guests included Charles Edwards, one of my fave artists in London (he also owns the Pure Evil gallery in Scrutton Street, Shoreditch), singer Kelli Ali, Eric Stein of Cult With No Name, architect Piers Gough, hairdresser and DJ Johnny Russell and press from Glass, iD, The Evening Standard, Little White Lies, The Independent and elsewhere. After two screenings I danced on the rooftop to the sounds of DJ Rev Milo Speedwagon & DJ Carrera – she’s a racy one, alright. The film’s out on Valentine’s Day.
Me with model and DJ Carrera.
Leather, boots (not seen) & bias cut T-shirt with zip detail by Alexander McQueen. Leopard print leggings, Freedom for Humanity (the same guy who does 7even for Mankind). Photo by APChilds.
Originally published in Scene, December 1997. Scene was a gorgeous, luxuriant fashion magazine published by a multi-millionaire. I was contributing editor in the late 90s.
LEMMY: How did the black magic associations originally come about? Was it a fantasy of yours or Tony’s (Ozzy’s guitarist) – or was it just designed to titillate?
OZZY: There never was a black magic thing! We were called Black Sabbath purely because , at the time, there was just all this bullshit, flower-power, San Francisco shit and living in the industrial polluted town of Aston, near Birmingham, it was like ‘What the fuck are you on, mate?’ They were buying bells (bellbottoms) without enough money to buy a pint.
LEMMY: And you were wearing a kaftan, right?
OZZY: It’s all right to talk about peace and love, but people were making bells and kaftans and manufacturing flower power shit, making dough, and Tony turned round one day and said ‘Isn’t it amazing that people buy this stuff when they’re not really into it?’ So we decided to start writing scary music. It fucking scared me!
LEMMY: That dove biting thing that you did in New York backfired.
OZZY: It was never done as a publicity thing, it was actually done in pure innocence, I must confess. I’m 49 now and my epitaph is going to be ‘Ozzy Osbourne – the man who bit the heads off various creatures’
LEMMY The bat was bad news wasn’t it? (Ozzy had to get treated for rabies after eating the bat’s head) The audience even started chucking rattlesnakes on stage.
OZZY: It got kind of crazy. This policeman came to a gig and he said, ‘Which one of you is Ozzy Bourne?’ I said, ‘Me’, and he said, ‘Do you realise the effect you’re having on the population?’ I was like ‘What do you mean?’ That was when he showed me a polaroid of a guy in the audience wearing a cow’s head on top of his own head (There’s a prolonged silence on the tape while Ozzy and Lemmy remember just how crazy things got) I remember seeing Hendrix play at the Woburn Abbey Festival and I was fucking stunned because I thought he was faking how cool he was. Everyone else was smiling onstage and being all nice and everything and then on walks this weird guy with gypsy clothes on and he had the most awesome sound.
LEMMY: I was there too. I used to work for him.
OZZY:If you saw that now you wouldn’t believe it was fully legit. Him doing that with his teeth – I thought he was playing to tapes. Until then it was all this happy music. Even The Beatles and The Stones were playing happy music.
LEMMY: Yeah, The Stones, yeah. They tried to copy Sergeant Pepper on the Satanic Majesties record. Next question is did you have a particular sexual fantasy 20 years ago? And if so, has it changed?
OZZY: I wanted to screw my current wife in 1979 so I left my old wife for my new wife. In those early days I was out to lunch almost all of the time.
LEMMY: You’re out to breakfast now.
OZZY: I had lots of fantasies, but since this AIDS thing’s come out, and since I got older, sex isn’t such a big deal in my life anymore. In the old days the biggest fears we had were catching syphilis and herpes
OZZY:Do you know that across the road from here, when AIDS first came along, there used to be an advert for diet chocolate and it said ‘Lose weight with Aids’ The chocolate was called Aids!
LEMMY: I remember that quote of yours: ‘The only black magic is chocolate’ I was there to witness to the five monks who visited you on the Blizzard of Oz tour – they were chanting outside your room
OZZY: I don’t remember it really. I never realised there was black magic until we started getting letters inviting us to gatherings and ceremonies. I thought it was a fucking wind-up. They through I was the antichrist. If you start meddling with dark things, they come back to you. I don’t believe there’s a God sitting on a cloud playing his harp. I think we live in heaven ad hell. All the temptations are here on earth. Can’t fuck, can’t smoke cigarette, can’t get stoned, can’t drink, so what can you do ? Pray.
LEMMY: Do you think it’s important to have a fantasy to retreat into and do you think that’s dangerous or beneficial?
OZZY: I think more good constructive fantasies are needed. When I found out Santa Claus was rubbish I was devastated. As men we’ve all been through ‘I wouldn’t mind getting her in between the sheets!’ But then once you’re done, it’s over. My greatest fantasy has come true and that’s being a great rock n roll player, a better thing couldn’t have happened to me.
LEMMY: What was your expectation of stardom and is it as you though it would be?
OZZY When I was a kid the problems were all about money and that was what the arguments were about. Stardom doesn’t eradicate that. I was absolutely entrapped by Beatlemania. I wanted to be a Beatle.
LEMMY: I was in the fan club, me.
OZZY: I bought Beatle wigs, the whole nine yards.
LEMMY: John Lennon was shot because he failed to live up to a deranged fan’s vision of him. What do you think of that? Have you ever felt threatened by it?
OZZY: It’s an occupational hazard in this business and the media makes it worse. Lennon was one of my icons and the combinations of Lennon with McCartney was like sweet and sour. I wrote a letter to People magazine after they put the Lennon’s assassin on the cover. I said that when they do things like that, that’s when fantasies get dangerous. Violence is part of reality – we haven’t yet stopped wars. I do feel threatened, yes. But if you don’t wanna fall down, you don’t stand in slippery places. In the old days, I used to drink and get stoned, that pump of booze and drugs, I ended up doing crazy shit
LEMMY: You were anybody’s.
OZZY: You can do heroin and jaywalk on the M6 – the power of destiny will kill you when the time is right
LEMMY:Heroin changes you into a dog
OZZY: I’ve been into various rehabs (mainly for alcohol addiction) throughout my adult life and heroin people are different, once they give up they’re pissed off and they act like they’ve given their soul away. You and I have seen it a million times. The graveyard’s full of them. I don’t know many successful users.
‘I get to keep all the cash’
Collaboration be damned – why bother with clashing egos and split royalties when it’s easier than ever to make music single-handedly these days? By Kirsty Allison
Kirsty Allison
The Guardian, Friday 19 June 200
“It’s cheaper to tour,” says Ben Nicholls, matter-of-factly. “The scheduling’s not a nightmare and I get to keep all the cash.” He’s explaining why he does what he does: perform and record dark and intense garage rock as a one-man band, under the name Dennis Hopper Choppers. Not a solo artist – one man with an acoustic guitar, a line in heartfelt melancholia and, possibly, a beard – but a one-man band.
Being a one-man band no longer means having cymbals strapped between your knees, a bass drum on your back, a mouth organ suspended around your neck and sleigh bells tied to your ankles. These days, one-man bands are using technology to realise their musical vision, and to take control of what they do. These new one-man bands are not novelty entertainments.
But how do we define the one-man band? Adam Clitheroe, director of the documentary One Man in the Band, puts it this way: “For me, it’s someone willing to go and try to make the noise of a band. If you’re a one-man band in your head, you’re big enough to do it.”
The godfather of the modern one-man bands is probably Hasil Adkins, a rock’n’roller who claimed to have written 7,000 songs, was a forefather of the punk-rockabilly hybrid known as psychobilly, and who died in 2005. “I saw Hasil Adkins, the founding father of the contemporary one-man band scene, and his rockabilly surf twang made me realise it was time to stop arsing around with other people,” says Nicholls. As a child, Adkins assumed that the records he heard on the radio in rural West Virginia were all the work of one-man bands, and he never relinquished his individual approach to music – he once recorded an album of songs about chickens, entitled Poultry in Motion. But Adkins, obviously, was far from the first. There are records of multi-instrumentalists in England and France going back to the 13th century. By the 19th century, the social historian Henry Mayhew noted blind one-man bands busking on London’s streets. In the following century, the one-man band was often part of a clown act, as well as being common among hillbilly communities of the sort that produced Adkins.
What Adkins had that his successors share was a desire to be the centre of attention, even if there’s also an element of necessity, given that few of these artists would be able to pay backing musicians. Bands just don’t allow individual expression, says Johnny Halifax, who performs on his own as Honkeyfinger. “The very nature of having a democratic songwriting process dilutes any ideas from individuals, and unless the warring egos create something as significant as Jagger/Richards or Lennon/McCartney, the concept has to come from the mind of one person.”
Where the Roland 303 gave acid house its sound, and the Roland 808 gave hip-hop its beats, the piece of technology that has done most to liberate a new army of one-man bands is the Boss Loop Station sampler. Combine that with a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection, and you’ve got everything you need to make music as a band, without the hassle of bandmates, A&R men, or distributors. “It’s amazing and revolutionary,” says the Tokyo-based one-man band Merce Death. “Since the Boss Loop Station sampler came on to the market seven years ago, it’s opened up the scene. Before, there was only a delay pedal; this sampler allows us to create and control our own layers to play against.” His setup means his improvised space-metal-jazz sets ricochet across the internet from his suburban home as he broadcasts online.
Johnny Halifax chose to become the one-man band Honkeyfinger four and a half years ago, fed up of the “control-freak behaviour” in bands. He, too, uses technology, but in his case it’s to create new music from the roots of rock: the blues. He loops and layers lap-steel guitar, kick drum and harmonica, with his voice processed through a vocoder, while playing guitar solos on top – and it all goes through a single bass amp. Having the ability to sample and loop enables him to recreate the sound of a 60s power trio, like Cream or the Jimi Hendrix experience, without the hassles of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker spitting blood at each other, or Noel Redding wondering why he isn’t the lead guitarist.
But if technology has liberated some, others have chosen to remain resolutely lo-fi and insist on a purist approach to being a one-man band. Dennis Hopper Choppers, for example. “I lug all the gear on and off stage and do not use any form of technology,” says Nicholls. “That’s got to be part of the challenge, playing everything at once, all by yourself. That’s what people want to see. I am a whole band – I do it without cheating. I make that much sound and it becomes part of the whole live experience watching someone create that. I think the sampler is a compromise: it lacks the true ingenuity which I deliver. It’s the sound-defying logic of watching a one-man band struggle to deliver that’s got to be a large part of the attraction.”
Thomas Truax, too, rejects electronics, preferring to invent his own instruments to provide the sounds he wants. The hornicator, for example, is made from the horn from an old gramophone, a kazoo, strings and a microphone. Something he calls Mary Poppins features two arms that fly out to provide a train-like rhythm. He travels from gig to gig by public transport, a wandering minstrel. And when he performs, it is a spectacle – the originality and seeming impossibility of what he does is much of the appeal.
There’s even a case to be made for human beatboxers being urban music’s version of the one-man band. “In another life, I would have been in a band,” says Killa Kela. “When I started I was going into drum’n’bass or a jungle clubs, and the DJ just stopped, it would go silent, and I’d have to fill that – it was a bit of a circus act. Now I can deconstruct what I’m doing, record it, and on my new album the song has to outweigh the concept.” Kela, though, has moved on – he tours with live musicians and has just announced a new live band, but, he says, “I still turn up at clubs and wait for that silence. The one-man band element is nostalgic, and the performance is intimate because it’s so physical – it’s come a long way from doing the Lambeth Walk with a kick drum on the back. I’m still a one-man band, I like to collaborate, but there’s a saying that with restriction comes creativity.”
Kela’s journey is echoed by Amy Turnidge, whose debut album as Theoretical Girl is coming out soon on Memphis Industries. Theoretical Girl started as a one-woman project, but has expanded. “I am a one-lady band, yes,” she says, “but I’ve lately started to get a band because there’s only so far you can go on your own, and outside input is good. It’s a romantic feeling being on a train, alone on the road. It’s freeing, but then it gets to a point when you want your friends with you and someone to share it with.”
Even the most committed one-man bands feel that sense of loneliness sometimes. After all, it’s hard to be a rock’n’roller if there’s no one else to indulge in rock’n’roll behaviour with you. As Johnny Halifax puts it, somewhat wistfully: “The problem I now have is not being able to blame anyone else for smashing up the dressing room.”
Saturday
Big Movies: Fishtank & Brightstar
Big Party: Grey Goose, Soho House
Two sleepless weeks of preparing a new edit, ancilliary materials and sound c/o Slumdog people on a budget of air and smiles precede the Grey Goose, Soho House party at the Chateau de la Napoule. The courtyard holds a stretch bar and piles of lobster, piglet carcasses, lamb chops, and mountains of berries, cherries and mini-patisseries. My first meet is Quentin Tarantino beneath a tree. I give the groovy giant a flyer and he talks about his acting. I’m addicted, I want the Weinstein penthouses and Jackie Collins yacht. My last Cannes was ten years ago, Djing with Irvine Welsh, tripping La Croixette as a young starlet with Claire Manumission, blissfully unaware of the dark arts of entertainment shielding their cards as we giggled, falling-up red carpets.
Now looking for progress with Slack Alice Films’ slate, I meet 21st century fox, Malin Ackerman with Taylor Kitsch promoting gritty, political thriller The Bang Bang Club. Talent sells movies. I meet people I’d like to see the sun come up with, but with a town full of actors, on screen or otherwise, you gotta keep headstrong.
Sunday
Big Movies: Un Prophete & Looking for Eric
My accreditation is not ready. Without the status pass, I am nothing, the same as gongoozlers clinging to red carpets, until meeting stylish outsiders, Andy, Janus, Sam and Sally from Cannes in a Van. Call lawyer, Lee Stone (Lee & Thompson) hoping to exchange a couple of D&G party tickets later that week for free legal on the movie, he’s woken on the beach and quickly recites a list of A-list places where distributors await. Later I hit the Majestic, best carpets of any hotel in Cannes. Scorsese sits at the bar. I meet Brits from 4DH Films celebrating next script by writer of The Wrestler, based on Nick Taussig’s Don Don book. I compare their fate to another producer whose $7m film went straight to DVD in the US. The Strokes play on a rooftop as I return to my car. The smell of garlic, cigars, jasmine, piss and promise fuse with the Med breeze that feeds us.
Monday
Big Movie: Antichrist
Big Parties: BBC Films/Film London, Akvinta/Hollywood Dominoes at House, Spandau Ballet at Nikki Beach.
Budget breakfast backfires, as I gouge finger to bone slicing yesterday’s baguette. Lesson: never eat yesterday’s bread. The surreal-o-meter jacks as I ride the hills in a stretch freaking limo courtesy of Yves Abitbol, MD of MyConcierge.fr who I met outside the hip 314 hotel. Lily Cole, David Furnish and an exclusive cohort play in a delightful villa. Dark dead palm trees, silhouetted by coiffured privets and wedding cake Louis XIVth rococo houses mirror in the swimming pool against the deep blue sky. I chat to Paris Hilton in the toilets, she’s cool, sharp, immaculate and funny, slagging off people who use her with her friend Deborah. I ask D to take our pic, ‘Yeah, I’ve been doing it since I was 15,’ she says.
At the Carlton (the US hotel with snow from Jim Carey’s Christmas Carol, a Transformer on the terrace and a GI Joe thing at the entrance) I take a seat with Val Kilmer’s bandmate, Mick Rossi. We pretend we’ve known each other for years to producers of theirwww.222themovie.com and David Blin, who used to own Harry’s Bar in Kingly Street in Soho.
‘Hey Mick, tell her, tell her, her eyes BITE!’ says his Scarface buddy. My indulgent ego.
Then a disturbing text from Andy, Cannes in a Van has been impounded.
Tuesday
Big Movie: Drag me to Hell
Big Parties: Scottish Screen, WMA, DogWoof/Co-operative Bank, and a zillion others.
By my Antibes pool I plot how to ensure screening success. Arranging, inviting, scheming. Alexander Snelling wants to come out, Cannes is the festival all directors dream of. He’s at Pinewood, also judging films for Apple and meeting people in Bollywood next week. Most importantly, he is completing the script for the next project, a thriller set in India’s ex-pat community. Attending is impossible.
Wednesday
Big Movie: Inglorious Basterds, Tantric Tourists
Big Parties: Cannes in a van & Outlines at Baoli for Inglorious Basterds
Screening at 10pm, slotted between Tarantino and the late night screening of Sam Raimi. Together with Andy and Sam from CIAV we meet Yves from MyConcierge.fr (my limo ally) at The Martinez Hotel to discuss how we may be able to avoid the van being interrupted.
I pin posters around the Palais, flyer all the journos in the press room, run up and down la Croixette all day pimping the movie. At 6pm I do a quick change outside my car and drive to the agreed spot on the Croixette to save space for the attention seeking van. The town is rammed.
A sense of relief passes as the film does its hilarious and deep magic to a large crowd of people. Grace Jones waves from her limo, and there are two deals on the table, with a couple of new leads.
Thursday & Le Weekend
Big Movies: FACE, A L’ORIGINE, DAS WEISSE BAND
Big Party: AmberLounge/AmberFashion & Martini Boat, Monaco
Cannes is officially dead, banners from balconies are packed up. Few engaging dinners and lunches with Syrian dodge drafting director, Michael Sibay, Emcee Productions, and, at the Orange Beach with Jerome Lapara-Dares, a Harvey Keitel looking guy with a family Theatre Antoine in Paris. He sells rights to European films in Hollywood. It’s such a French scene. Vincent Cassel, Francois Cleuzet, Carla Bruni’s stylist, Sarkozy’s tailor. And I meet badboy, Frederic Bejbider, who I look forward to interviewing.
If Cannes is surreal, Monaco is double. AmberFashion is a show around a pool, charity auction, dinner and disco for the Elton John Foundation. The Bransons are out, Lewis Hamilton arrives on a boat, the F1 drivers model, someone pays $145K for dinner with Elton and David. It’s Euroglitz on another level. The next night Alison Poltock of the East End Film Festival and I do a Thelma & Louise along the coast, then hang out on the £25m Martini boat, meeting millionaires, investors. It’s immense. We party till the sun comes up around pits of the Grand Prix race course, nearly missing flights home later. We have been in another world, one where I thought for a second, lawyers wouldn’t want to get paid.
http://www.dazeddigital.com/ArtsAndCulture/article/3410/1/The_Alternative_Cannes_2009_Diary_
THE ALTERNATIVE CANNES 2009 DIARY
We bring you indie film producer Kirsty Allison’s belated diary of industry minglings, yacht parties and popcorn talk
Photography by Kirsty Allison Text by Kirsty Allison | Published 04 June 2009
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/3am-asia-rise-of-the-nu-mohemians/
Rise of the New Mohemians
Tokyo’s streets are a homage to sci-fi fantasy, seventies style. Fields of mirrored skyscrapers are snaked by webs of towering monorails, glass-fronted mainstreet superstores flash with phosphorescent adverts. But like every Big Brother backdrop, a revolution occurs a few alleys back from the sheen, and in Tokyo, mazes of traditional cubed houses hold a variety of secret Steppenwolf doorways.
Behind one such door in the North of the city is a library bar with vintage issues of Visionaire and opulent Japanese-edition fashion photography books, it stands as a temporary salon for writers who don’t use pen & papers, or laptops, they write novels on their mobiles.
Drinking an £8 coffee, Ryu, king of the new ‘mohemians’, explains how he came to be credited as the first m-novelist,
“It came from necessity, I was working in a bar in Shibuya where the girls with the orange faces are” begins the 23 year old whose profits from his first m-book have allowed retirement to a desert island, where he’s profoundly in love with the local delicacy of octopus balls. In broken English and through a translator he goes on to tell how he felt disturbed by the repetitive cycle of observing chicks arriving to the scene, enticed by the appeal of darker life, slipping into a world of wrist-cutting, drugs, prostitution, debauchery and occasional degradation.
From his bar he assembled a team of groupies who spilt their stories to him. He emerged as a writer making notes on his phone about the new faces’ demise. “I sent the first notes and chapters to girls fresh to the area as cautionary tales, they told their friends, and their friends” Using emoticons to signify character moods and shortcuts of text speak, he uploaded test chapters to a website which got downloaded to phones. Ryu’s high octane writing appealed to girls across Japan, the site received unprecedented traffic and a paperback publisher soon clocked the sounds of the underground; his maverick m-novel, Tokyo Real, went on to sell three million hard copies, 32 million have been issued via the website.
“I didn’t plan to begin as a counsellor, or a writer, but the notes on my phone became chapters. The book was then published and it was made into a film, manga and anime.”
This organic progress has now been gazumped by market manipulators, and Tadashi Izumi, who has a PhD in Victorian literature from Cambridge, and Honjo Sae, who formerly wrote traditional books, have picked up on techniques to exploit this new market, they’re at the helm of this epoch which sees around three million people across Japan self-publishing in this way, students are it, teachers do it in their lunch time. In a society where texting is way more polite than speaking on the phone in public, it’s an acceptable form of creativity that fits in your pocket. The process operates in one of two ways, either via subscription, where users sign up for a certain amount of content a month for however many yen, or they give it away free. Apparently giving it away for free is favoured, as with most creative acts on the web.
Tadashi Izumi recognised the largest audience being teen girls, so began writing stories specifically for this audience, cannily, he also designed merchandise ready to rock.
“It’s a marketing dream,” says Tadashi, “The audience have time on their hands, they are always on their phones, killing time. We call them the Oyayubizoku generation (the thumb tribe). I created merchandise to tie in with Crossroads, my first m-novel. The characters wore a perfume and necklaces already available in the shops when the book was launched online. They thought they were real, pre-existing products, but the book worked as a kind of advertisement’ he says.
Crossroads sold 2m copies in just one week, the website receives around 12million hits per month. Izumi’s follow up book, Cross Overhas a diamond necklace available in select boutiques which sells from 100 000 yen (over £700), he’s trying to break into an older demographic. “Shakespeare would have been a mobile novelist” he claims.
Honjo Sae was recruited by Japan’s biggest record label, AVEX to write stories which include members of bands, as a cross-promotion, multi-platform, 360 PR megamix.
“You have a smaller screen space,” she explains of the Keitai Shousetsu which are fast spreading across China and Taiwan, “It’s all about action, less description, and the sentences have to be short, with spacing to fit on the screen”. Honjo calls herself and Ryu ‘non-fiction novelists’ as they are picking the truth from real life and interpreting them back to the public. Fantasy is everyday for Tokyo people. This is the tech age where several generations cite all their heroes as cartoon characters. Atom Boy is cooler then Elvis. So manga houses are also providing hand drawn cartoons exclusively for the phones, there are m-soap operas, m-films, m-street art, customised screen savers and Comic Studio software which allows consumers to develop plots for all mediums where they are the protagonist. We are living in the future, and the immediacy of technology suits Japan’s mohemians, it’s a culture that embraces the moment. Tokyo is a socially connected city where a walk through town is like being in the ‘Ray of Light’ disco video, or maybe that’s the sleep deprivation, Daft Punk gone crazy.
Yet aside to tech love there is a tradition for respect which permeates everything from the one-to-one love binds of seaweed around sushi, where the consumption is intimate, dark, with low slung opium smoking seats to recline upon to suck the exquisite delights of Bachannalian feasts, where plethoras of health and happiness are served alongside iced jasmine tea, with or without alcohol, Kobe beef gently fed by the tit of people who want to eat happy cows, parma ham wrapped around samphor type of asparagus, creamy tofu with sesame sauce, pork steeped in dark illicit concoctions, and the finest tuna sashimi. A pool of heated water to have blanched mushrooms and soup or the temples of such world class gastronomic havens as chef Jeff Ramsey’s 25 course tasting menu on the 36th floor of the Mandarin Oriental, where views of red flashing lights create organized patterns in which to try and understand the city. It’s a joy to taste and behold. And perhaps this ritualistic respect related to the very art of writing, and communication and the painstaking skill required to use the pictorial scripts. The pride and manners expected from one another are perhaps a route of this servitude reflected in digital society, which sits within pleasuredomes of simplicity and intellect demonstrated at places such as the 2121 Design Sight, (a masterpiece cocoon to the art of design by Tadao Ando and Issey Miyake). It’s not as easy as ABC. But this complexity leads us to wonder how many adaptees to m-writing will blossom overseas. In Europe we’ve probably all now got friends who have bought a zillion classics for a fiver for their Nintendo DS, and perhaps downloaded some of the sample chapters that are getting provided digitally as promos from companies like Canongate. Transworld last year pioneered a programme of texting in for chapters, which proved moderate success, HarperCollins have the e-experimental imprint, The Friday Project, and 3 are adopting socially networked technology such as Skype calls to allow us to all integrate into the future and apply these Mohemian ways with handsets like the INQ. Soon the Espresso machine will print titles on demand in bookshop, to order – you want Lolita on pink paper in ten minutes, you got it. This means less shelf space, more data space.
The old guard will always prefer a book. But the advantages of being able to adapt screen colours, font size are incredible for the dyslexic or visually impaired. Also, as a study aid, or for those who like to flit behind a hundred books at once, the e-book is the answer, you can carry a library in your handbag. Genius.
But how many writers can give up words for text-speak is yet to be seen. There are numerous companies exploring ways to use mobiles to market novels designed for traditional paperback, particularly bestselling brand authors like Andy McNab although it may be left to indie kids to invent new ways with words, and today is our playground for the future.
Thanks to Takeshi Miura and Akiko Hamaoka for translation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kirsty Allison started writing professionally as a teenager on Loadedand Dazed in 1994. Her fiction has appeared in Ambit andKatalogue. She has recently been performing poems around London. She has been working on a novel set in 1990s Shoreditch since the 1960s.
Kirsty Allison travelled to Tokyo with 3snapshots.com
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Saturday, May 16th, 2009.
‘If you set out to get rich, you’re doomed’
The veteran producer of movies such as Atonement looks forward, in his new role as head of film for Shine Pictures, to ‘climbing the populist ladder’ with quality ‘arthouse crossover’ films. He speaks to Kirsty Allison
Kirsty Allison
The Guardian, Monday 15 December 2008
Paul Webster’s office at Shine Pictures drips with movie executive success despite being in the unlikely location of Clerkenwell, in central London, not Hollywood. Promotional posters and award glitz for producing films such as Atonement ($128m gross), The Motorcycle Diaries ($58m), Pride & Prejudice ($121m) and Sexy Beast ($10m) sit alongside reminders of his early days distributing cult classics such as The Evil Dead.
Webster joined Kudos in 2004 and was responsible for introducing the company to his “old friend” Elisabeth Murdoch two years later. Her company, Shine, paid £22.89m for the producers of Spooks and Hustle, with a further £1.97m contingent on future performance. Webster was made head of film for Shine Pictures in July and now runs a company with an annual turnover of £30m. The company is a joint venture with distributor New Regency, giving Webster access to funding from Fox, part of the News Corp empire.
He met Murdoch in 2003 through mutual friends in the film business but refuses to elaborate on their friendship. “She’s a muncher!” is all he says, referring to her PacMan-esque ability to pick up media commodities. As part of Shine’s acquisition spree, she went on to acquire Reveille which makes Ugly Betty and had an ancillary movie production wing.
“Nobody knew about it, so Lis said why don’t you handle that as well, which meant we were gifted a heap of American projects,” Webster says.
Kudos’s next film will be a western – The Staked Plain. The film, financed by Focus Features, the specialist film wing of Universal Pictures, has “entirely been born out of television people” from Reveille. Webster says this supports his belief and that of Stephen Garrett – executive chairman of Kudos – that “writing and directorial talent can migrate back and forth between TV and film in the UK”.
FilmFour failure
Yet Webster’s career – more illustrious than the careers of most in the UK film business – hit a road block of sorts when he previously tried to unite a film unit with a TV broadcaster.
He was chief executive of FilmFour in 2002 when it folded after just four years, with losses of £3m in 2000 and £5.4m in 2001. These may have been small sums in Hollywood terms but they were enough for the board of Channel 4 to close it down.
Webster claims that FilmFour was not a failure financially; he blamed the “overall situation” – by which he means a failure of the parent company to understand film financing – coupled with the advertising downturn. He claims it cost more to close down FilmFour than it did to run it. The business reopened with Tessa Ross at the helm three months later with smaller budgets and strategy. Webster worked for Ross as a producer on The Motorcycle Diaries and Touching the Void.
“What we originally tried at FilmFour was to turn it into a standalone business that was not subsidised in effect by the television channel,” he says. It proved too difficult. “Not least because the relationship between a broadcaster and a film company is always going to be fraught because the broadcaster will always want your product/programming immediately.” He hopes Shine’s distribution deal with New Regency will circumvent that problem.
“It’s kind of an adage of the film business that all the films that get made after departure end up working,” he adds.
Webster now sees television as supporting the film industry in the UK, with film existing “on the rump”. This co-dependence is what he and Garrett – who founded Kudos along with Jane Featherstone – envisaged before they teamed up at Kudos. Webster says that Featherstone reads film scripts, and they talk about talent, “but she’s got a day job, Stephen kind of straddles both”.
He adds: “It’s hard to make cold economic judgments as a film producer. If you set out to get rich you’re 99% doomed to failure, you’ve got to be driven by a passion that supersedes paying the rent.”
Webster’s position is a far cry from his start in the business – as a dispatch clerk in the basement of the Gate cinema in Notting Hill. He was 23 and the explosion of German New Wave cinema was beginning. “I got the bug,” he says, “I was going down to the Electric to watch double bills every night.”
He started distributing cult films in the UK with Osiris before producing at Palace Pictures in the 1980s. He went on to independently produce films such as The Tall Guy, before setting up Working Title’s LA office and being made head of production for Miramax on films including Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting and John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love. When FilmFour was disbanded in 1998, he briefly returned to Working Title, producing Pride & Prejudice and Atonement with the director Joe Wright. Recent projects include David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and the forthcoming flamingo documentary The Crimson Wing (a collaboration between Kudos and Disney).
“It’s important to make films that travel,” Webster says. “You can’t make films that just appeal to the UK market, because you’re forced into making films of such a small budget that the demands are too rigorous of an audience – and then you’re driven into an arthouse ghetto. There are, of course, exceptions like Mike Leigh but I think there’s a greater consciousness of making a film connect to an audience.”
Webster is, unsurprisingly, very supportive of state-funded subsidies for independent films such as the Film Council’s New Cinema Fund. “It’s like the pebble you throw in the pond – eventually the ripples do hit the shore and it’s essential to have avant-garde and audacious work being done because the periphery always informs the mainstream,” he says.
Populist ambition
“I’m not in the business of art films, I work in a much more commercial arena but I benefit from it. I’m really interested in how far we can climb the populist ladder here at Kudos, my ambition is to reach broad worldwide audiences with an arthouse crossover working with talented directors,” he says, citing Wright as an example.
He is scathing about some digital filmmaking, which he sees as encouraging poor-quality movies. “It has resulted in a lot of very cheap movies which look very cheap, and unless you’re someone like Michael Winterbottom, who has an innate understanding of visual storytelling and like the freedom of being able to continually direct, rather than spending years of putting together the money required for film budgets, ultimately you gotta have the welly; you make your film cheap, you gotta have the money to sell it, you still need that, I mean Michael [Winterbottom] works with Angelina Jolie and has Ben Affleck – he follows the same course as all of us. We all doff our hats to the power of the actor, the power of the movie star, it’s very, very real. The reason we got Atonement greenlit was because Keira was it in, y’know.”
The currency of talent aside, what about the very real threats to cinema – piracy and the recession? He actually manages a giggle before pointing out that this is not the first time the death toll has rung for cinema – it has survived television, video and DVD.
Regarding piracy, he believes it is the responsibility of distributors to adopt more progressive ideas. These could include releasing movies online, on DVD and in the cinema at the same time. The huge marketing spend of studios – the average is $250m for each big release – tends to make such big gambles unattractive. Staged releases – ie in different countries at different times – allow for mistakes to be rectified.
With plenty of companies in dire financial straits, the fear is that many downturn-hit parent groups will downsize their film arms. Webster shrieks “hold on to your hats!” when asked about this year’s financial collapse. From Hollywood there are currently widespread reports of studios reducing production and development slates – Viacom/Vantage, Lionsgate and the Weinstein company recently cut back staff, and distribution companies in the UK have been dropping like flies.
Webster believes the deal with New Regency (and the access it provides to News Corp funds) gives his business enough support to withstand the current turmoil. “I think when you’re in the middle of the maelstrom you just have to stick to your principles,” Webster says.
“It’s a time not to be afraid and not to go back to the kitchen sink of storytelling … I have a crude and unshakeable belief in the power of long-form storytelling and there will always be audiences for that, we just have to find new ways of telling those same stories.”
Curriculum vitae
Age 56
Education Left Burnt Mill comprehensive in Harlow, Essex at 17
Career
1975-79 dispatch clerk, Gate Cinemas and Cinegate Ltd
1979-81 joint MD, Osiris Films
1982-88 head of theatrical distribution, Palace Pictures
1988-1995 independent producer. Set up Working Title’s LA office
1995-97 head of production, Miramax
1998-2002 chief executive, FilmFour
2004-present head of film, Kudos Pictures/Shine Pictures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/15/television-channel4
Goth-folk: A walk on the dark side
Goth-folk provides an ideal accompaniment to the gloomy new year
If ever there was a year to embrace your inner dark side, 2009 would be it – the economic doom and gloom means it’s time to dig out old Cure T-shirts, swap champagne for snakebite and black, and embrace the goth-folk revolution.
The latter requires no “folk cardigans” or backcombing. Instead, it’s about the words. As Kelli Ali sings on her new single, The Savages, from the album Rocking Horse: “We are the Savages /Welcome to the dark.”
Down cobwebbed alleys and atop moonlit hills, promoters such as Electroacoustic Club, Antifolk UK and Dead Beat are mining interest in the new depression’s pin-ups, among them Ali, Greg Weeks and Marissa Nadler. “I just don’t understand why people would like asphalt more than green grass and woods,” says the American Weeks, a Leonard Cohen for a new generation. His current album, The Hive, swings from medieval melancholia to sunshine-licked mantras and even a Sonic Youth-like Madonna cover, all recorded in his 24-track analogue studio. Weeks is the founder of the record label Language of Stone, whose stable of artists, including Noa Babayof and Sharon Van Etten, share his passion for antiindustrialisation. “We are analogue creatures, not digital media,” he insists.
Hip, palefaced boys in duffel coats and rosy-cheeked, haystack-haired posh girls, goth-folkers are as likely to be found lurking in the aisles of the organic superstore Whole Foods Market as they are in cemeteries. Their common interest is less likely to be cooking heroin than baking bread. And their antitech, back-to-roots dreams echo the political folk era of the 1960s and artists from Pentangle and Fairport Convention to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Instead of optimism about world peace, however, goth-folksters have a passion for the macabre and a sombre acceptance of realities such as Primark, The X Factor and the global economic meltdown.
In the mainstream, Laura Marling and Goldfrapp are goth-folky, as are the esoteric sounds of the Horrors and goth-prog mods Ipso Facto. Vincent Gallo, the auteur behind films such as Buffalo 66, who performs poetic chants as a solo musician and within his band, RRIICCEE, is a seminal player. His “art or die” attitude is shared by the classique-gothique folker Françoiz Breut, whose sound has attracted American bands such as CocoRosie to Europe to exhibit art alongside their music. Don’t expect Felicity Kendal in The Good Life – it’s more “Kurt Cobain’s Bad Life”, played with tingly tambourines, flowery guitars and a self-conscious irony.
“I’m really happy, as whenever there’s a resurgence of a darker way of expression, it usually means there’s going to be a shift towards more thoughtful times and craft, where it’s like a quiet rebellion to pick up a guitar and gently coo about the darkness of everything,” says Kelli Ali, the former front woman of Sneaker Pimps, whose Rocking Horse album shows a full embrace of folk with trademark gothic leanings. “I was a teenage goth, definitely. I was so into Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus, I listened to Bela Lugosi’s Dead as a morning ritual. After my last album, I started learning the acoustic guitar, so I revisited my mum’s folk sounds, Joan Baez and Sandy Denny.”
Written over a three-year period while Ali was travelling around Mexico, Rocking Horse is an album stripped down by necessity and overflowing with introspection. “It’s a very performance-based album, because we didn’t have that much studio time with Max Richter, who produced it,” she explains. “We had to get the best performances using real instruments and we didn’t layer or edit as much as I did in my early records, which were very synth-based.”
After recording the ethereal and strikingly opulent Rocking Horse in Edinburgh with Richter, Ali got a band together and independently recorded a live, tour-support album, Butterfly, in a day, self-producing it with her manager, Metso. It is only available to buy at gigs, in keeping with the DIY approach of this new movement.
In America, meanwhile, the self-sufficient high priestess of goth-folk is Marissa Nadler. “I don’t go round cutting cats and making bloody bodies,” giggles the dark-haired icon, whose fourth album, the magical Little Hells, comes out on March 2. On it, she has “gone electric”, a backlash against the sound that brought her popularity. “Mall goths with leather and white faces are so not me,” she explains. “I’m a loner, sure, but it’s more a dream-folk sense of the gothic, more classic, going back to Edgar Allan Poe. The new record definitely has a vibe of Cocteau Twins; it’s dark in tone, I can’t run away from that.”
Nadler, who sees her songwriting as a form of therapy, is a chipper lass to speak with. Then again, goths have always had a sense of humour: the Sisters of Mercy could never have survived otherwise, and surely the comedians Russell Brand and the Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding are goths.
Elements of a more extreme form of goth-folk are identified in the singer-songwriter Rose Kemp. Sporting spiked dog collars, cobweb eyes and Tudor sleeves, she is the scion of Steeleye Span’s Rick Kemp and Maddy Prior. Musically, she marries the traditions of her parents with prog rock and doom metal. “My parents were a huge influence,” she says. “They basically invented a new genre and changed musical history. But I have always done my own thing. The only similar thing is being brought up around the traditional minor scale.”
Don’t be too taken in by unconventional appearances, however – these depressionist leaders are tooled up for modern times as indie innovators available on iTunes. So why not throw yourself into the season of the witch?
Kelli Ali tours from January 15 (www.kelliali.com , www.myspace.com/kelliali ). Françoiz Breut tours from January 19. Marissa Nadler will tour in the spring; her album, Little Hells, is due for release on Kemado on March 2, with the single River of Dirt out on February 9. Greg Weeks is planning a tour for March; his album, The Hive, is out now (www.languageofstone.com )
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5423165.ece
THESE STORIES WERE FIRST PUBLISHED ON THE CHANNEL4 WEBSITE.
Profiles of The Mighty Boosh, Faris Badwan from The Horrors; Fee Doran, designer for Madonna & Kylie; writer & actress Sophie Woolley; Mr Holy Moly; digital maverick Jonti Picking; designer & musician Jonny Halifax; female director Amanda Boyle; photographer Charlie Gray & doctor of fabric Julian Roberts.
J’ADORE FARIS: ETCH A SKETCH
Another rock star has entered the art arena. Kirsty Allison digs out the latest recruit, Faris Badwan (aka Faris Rotter) from The Horrors.
Also of interest
On auto Pilot
“I can’t seem to do any work unless I’m under pressure,” announces the very tall Faris Badwan (aka Faris Rotter) from a rooftop on Hoxton Square.
There are two days left before his first exhibition of illustrations in a new gallery on Brick Lane. With a Pilot pen swinging from his neck, joined by a white fur covered lighter and all manner of Victoriana regalia worn in a haute urbane style, he suggests that Pilot should be supplying him with free wares.
“Who knows, maybe that’s my ultimate goal, to get free pens. Actually that would suit me fine”
Close-up
“When they get blown up, you actually get to see the texture of the pen. The whole point of it is to put it under the microscope.”
As he poises one leg artfully across the other, sitting at a 45 degree profile to the camera, Faris, frontman to the inimitable five-piece, The Horrors, has a presence of aloof genius. His eagle silhouette carries an art school confidence.
We sit at the same level as the flocks of cranes that are creating a new skyline. This is Faris’ former hood: the place that gave birth to his legend. He’s here to have these stylised and heavily worked books scanned before they’re enlarged for a series of limited edition prints.
“When they get blown up, you actually get to see the texture of the pen. The whole point of it is to put it under the microscope.”
The pages contain words and beginnings of poems or lyrics, atomised between spirals and energy lines that shape mini-stories and tales .They’re magical nets, webs that link and weave and wave.
“It all comes from the same place,” he discloses, “I suppose,lyrics are drawn from the drawings I’ve done. They tell stories. Maybe not apparent ones but there’s always some sort of process behind it.”
Getting in on the act
“In all honesty, I really love the course and I’d like to go back, but I’d be equally happy not to go back as it would mean I was doing alright in this field.”
Pete Doherty’s syringe art exhibited recently in West London with £60,000 price tags, enough for a few good nights out. Perhaps now that records fail to sell enough to rack up rock star mansions, art is offering the alternative.
Ronnie Wood, David Bowie, John Lennon, Iggy Pop – there’s a history of one art form feeding the other. And from looking at the William Blake-esque doodles, it becomes painfully obvious that this is the case.
“I did go to St Martins, technically I’m still there,” Faris remarks. “I’ve got the option to return. I’m studying illustration. In all honesty, I really love the course and I’d like to go back, but I’d be equally happy not to go back as it would mean I was doing alright in this field.”
Long road ahead
“I think you can only get so big without compromising your artistic principles.”
So, the band, man. He feels he has felt the biggest rush of success already, about a year ago.
“The amount of people you play to doesn’t just increase infinitely. It goes very fast, then you reach the natural size your band’s going to be.”
“We haven’t quite reached that size yet but y’know, bar massive unexpected commercial success, there is only a certain size that you can be and that’s certainly something that we’re happy with. I think you can only get so big without compromising your artistic principles.”
Without the make-up of the Sisters of Mercy, or as much hairspray as Robert Smith, and with the ironic humour of the 21st century, they’ve got a long road ahead.
“We’re writing the next album. It’ll probably be out in March. We’ll release another single before the end of the year. We’ve got eight new songs after two weeks writing, so it’s going pretty well.”
Don’t mention art history
“You know, art history at school was so fucking boring.”
At art school one is taught the power of individual expression: “Obviously everyone has influences, but mine aren’t really conscious ones, in all honesty,” he admits.
“I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think you are more inspired when you’re looking at other people’s work, but I don’t really go to galleries or know a lot about artists. I know something about the ones I like, but I’m not really a fanatical student of art. I just like doing it.”
“You know, art history at school was so fucking boring. It was such a chore trying to find out when these people were born and I don’t care, y’know.”
He continues, “I hate painting. I used to like it but I find it so, frustrating. For me, I can’t seem to get the rhythm of painting because you can’t draw a straight line. You have to keep putting more paint on the brush and it’s not for me.”
“I like Marcel Dzama. Egon Schiele is probably one of my favourites in terms of human form. Jean Michel Basquiat… he’s completely different, although quite similar in intensity because he used colour.”
“I don’t. But I like the idea of it…horror vacui, the artform where there’s the compulsion to fill every bit of space on the paper. I think that’s funny, the name, the irony there…”
Is that partly where the band’s name came from?
“No not at all, I probably would have called the band Horror Vacui if I’d have known!”
MIGHTY BOOSH
Predictably, at a Q&A with the Mighty Boosh, open to the public/die hard fans skiving from work, there’s the profound question -would the Boosh rather be a band?
Uh, look at them, the new Peter Sellers & Spike Milligan…they roll in an hour late, pint glasses of Coca Cola disguising half a bottle of JD within, one of them’s wearing a cape, and the other is jostling around, half in awe of his own genius, half disgusted. Uh, yeah, they look like a band. And today’s onstage guests are the American guy, Dave Brown, who plays the show’s zookeeper, Julian’s brother who plays the ape, and the pixie-ish guy who’s like a friend or toy of Aphex Twin, Naboo. They’ve just come from some kind of performance/fan manhandling event at HMV and they’re about to go on tour, so are they a band yet? Y’know they make music? Bill Bailey – is he a musician?
But first, for this event which is being filmed for DVD prosperity by Baby Cow (Steve Coogan’s production company) and myself, somewhat sneakily, if feels, they start at the beginning. How did they meet?
“Was it in High Wycombe?” asks Noel Fielding?
“The Hellfire Club” suggests Julian Barrett
“The first thing you ever said to me was “Is your hair on backwards?” You had a suit on and little round glasses, do you remember?”
Julian, the jazz fan, then suggests it was the Enterprise in Chalk Farm, and then there’s talk of an Asylum, the play. Rich interrupts, says things like ‘You were shooting crack in your testicles’, whilst Julian makes subtle plays on words and Noel explains the male/female aspect important in any comedic duo…
“I am clearly. Yeah, I’m the woman, Julian’s the man”
Talking about the preparation for their first gig together, sponsored by Oranjeboom, Noel paints a Withnail and I picture of no heating, and no curtains – because they made them into costumes. Julian made a song with a shower head and a lamp, and those rubber shower head tap things for eyes. That went a bit weird, and the office workers at the gig thought them a little surreal, so they invented some zoo keepers and put potted plants all over the place.
That turned into a pilot, half with audience. Then it went on radio, and then TV, and then they were doing Brixton Academy, and now they’re doing Wembley Arena. It should pay the bills. It’s about getting the props the right size, they say.
A member of the audience asks the band, sorry, comedic duo with session guys who are really part of the group, what sort of album they’d all be; Noel obviously chooses the Stones, Exile on Main Street, one of the best albums of all time, but then, in his bimbo insecurity retreats saying that he’s probably a little more Milli Vanilli. Julian Barrett goes for Bartok, the mad mathematician classical guru.
Mike Fielding, Julian’s brother chooses Cypress Hill. Dave Brown, the smartarse, goes for Chaz and Dave. And rightly so. Rich then opts Celine Dion.
The Boosh have the raconteuring spirit of all those who spend time on the road, they are quick witted, and at each other like squabbling siblings.
But they’re still after the golden chalice. Yes, they would love to do a film. “Do you think we should do a film?” Yes, scream the audience…and what we have to look foward to is a bit Wizard of Oz, a bit Sinbad…Clash of the Titans is good. For Julian, “Anything by Bartok”
Repetition as much of a cornerstone of modern comedy as this band are themselves.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION IN THE FICTION & POETRY (and other writing) BLOG…
CELEB COUTURE
When a popstar/rockstar wants a mega wattage outfit, they can’t go wrong with the Mrs Jones label. Kirsty Allison stitches together this designer’s story.
Suits you
Rocksuits, popsuits and Scissorsuits, Fiona (Fee) Doran’s sewing machine has stitched a compilation album that hits all the peaks of the last decade’s visual music history.
From Kylie’s white comeback mega-hood to The Darkness’s all-in-one beyond-ironic spandex, the girl responsible for the looks that make popstars rock, and the Mrs Jones label, sits in front of me in her West London kitchen creating a couture tale of her career thus far.
Look like a star
“London’s club culture was our home, man. Fee was styling bands in Hoxton, making clothes for shoots with Marcus & Mert and working on a collection called DoranDeacon.”
Fee is a charming, self-deprecating gal who I first met in 90s Shoreditch. She had recorded a track with Tim ‘Love’ Lee called Give Me A Bite of Your Kebab about her Southend upbringing.
London’s club culture was our home, man. Fee was styling bands in Hoxton, making clothes for shoots with Marcus & Mert and working on a collection called DoranDeacon with Giles Deacon whose label, Giles is now toast of the London catwalk.
She then had a head-over-heels love affair with Mark Jones, head honcho of Wall of Sound record. She had a child whose first word was leopardskin, got divorced, and kept the Mrs Jones name, strictly for business.
Fee is currently working on a Mrs Jones collection that takes wearable elements of designs she’s made for stars. This is being sold through the Mensah boutique on Portobello Road, and via their online shop. It gives mortals the chance to dress like pop heroines.
Fee’s first break
“You know who that was…Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran.”
Ext. Portobello Market stall.
‘Poshgirl’ accompanied by Stella McCartney: Oh I love your stuff, darling! Do you think you could make me something?
Fee: Ok, yeah, whatever, here’s my number.
Int. Poshland, making a bird some trousers.
Poshgirl: You must meet my boyfriend!
Boyfriend: What would you make me?
Fee: Oh, probably a little pink mod suit
Boyfriend: I like the sound of that!
Ext. Street outside Poshland:
Fee’s mate: You know who that was?
Fee: No.
Fee’s mate: Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran.
Fee: Oh! You think he liked the story about me sellotaping my gerbil to the record player?!
Dress me up
“When artists start out they just don’t have money, like the Scissor Sisters, and no one will lend them anything.”
Spilling on her first job with musicians, Duran Duran during their White Lines phase, Fee regales the learning curve of how not to style celebs.
“I made the awful mistake of saying, ‘Just tell me what you want and I’ll make it for you.’ They designed these gold plastic suits.”
After working with Duran Duran for six months, taking midnight crisis clothes calls, she then decided to do an opera. After a few years in the wilds of Hoxton she went on to work with international megastars.
“There was Zootwoman, Kylie, Goldfrapp, The Darkness. It wasn’t until I had a baby that I had to get sensible and work everyday and become normal really. It’s always been about making stuff from old stuff, mixing it up with vintage, then cutting up vintage stuff.”
“When artists start out they just don’t have money, like the Scissor Sisters, and no one will lend them anything. You phone up PR companies and they’re like ‘Who? What?’ not even TopShop would lend them stuff. So that’s how it started; if I can’t get it, I’ll make it.”
Mother/godmother/whatever
“Making someone an outfit is not just about the songs, it’s about visual entertainment.”
Switching to the topic of School of Rock, Fee admits, “It’s like being a fairy godmother. On School of Rock I had a vicar’s daughter, I was like, ‘Take yer plaits out love.’ That was brilliant!”
“I’ve done quite a few ads, Bounty ads, Halifax ads…they’re never much fun ‘cos there’s always that continuity shit. I like to go in and out.”
She continues, “Videos are the best really; take a big bottle of whisky and a cowboy boot as a decanter! It’s like being at a club: music going on, people getting dressed up, hanging out with bands and getting drunk, making them do naughty things.”
“Making someone an outfit is not just about the songs, it’s about visual entertainment…so they’re doing it for me in some ways.”
YOU’RE ASKING FOR IT
Who is Holy Moly and how did he position himself at the frontline of celebrity gossip with his website? Kirsty Allison uncovers the man who has a knack for getting the tittle-tattle before anyone else does.
Gossip guy
“Is that Kevin Lygo, the head of Channel 4 meeting with the head of Sky One?” asks Holy Moly.
He doesn’t shut up, like a grinning cruise missile his snout twitches with anticipation for gossip, power and media.
Finding Mr Holy Moly has been like a quest for the Holy Grail. His balaclavaed face is masked behind AKA companies and mysterious email addresses. After a tabloid style chase, contact is made with the media mogul, whose newly launched internet TV station has more higher concept content than your average red carpet clip
The man who is stealing the gossip gauntlet from PopBitch and has created the most successful schleb brand since Heat, is elusive, to say the least.
Man in the mask
“Arranging a meeting in his native environment, the place where he preys for his victims, he offers a full house portfolio of private members bars from around London to meet in.”
Arranging a meeting in his native environment, the place where he preys for his victims, he offers a full house portfolio of private members bars from around London to meet in. We settle on Chiswick House, part of Soho/Shoreditch House. It’s just down the road from his former work place, Sky News.
On arrival it’s complicated. “I’m here to meet Holy Moly,” I explain to the concierge. “He wears a balaclava”.
After a few mentions of the celebrity gossip he partakes in, there’s no way I’m going to be allowed upstairs. So I wait for the man in the mask. Zorro is minorly late, there was traffic en route from his office in Chelsea Wharf.
Mystery man unveiled
“I’m not a Perez Hilton wanting to be the star of the show. I’ve got no desire to present my name as the news.”
He’s a classic media-type, attractive, charming, and focused. He’s not wearing the balaclava, but a bristle of stubble and a confidence associated with these clubs.
He has all the style accoutrements of Media Man, an iPhone in one hand, and a Crumpler-type bag with a Mactop in the other. He is our era’s godhead, fusing new media, old fashioned Thatcherite entrepreneurship with loads of trite tittle-tattle about people who are famous for little more than being mysterious enough and freakish enough to get on a reality show.
I wonder if libel is the reason for his disguise, but he cites a more magnanimous answer:
“I’ve got seven or eight full-time staff, a pool of contributors. Credit isn’t all down to me. I’m not a Perez Hilton wanting to be the star of the show. I’ve got no desire to present my name as the news.”
“Secondly, if I was the only person it would make sense. But there are 150 people who send it all in as their own. I’m there to give props to the people who are sometimes risking jobs, and I can say my name and no one knows.” Schneaky.
The whole truth
“More fool them if they speak to me like a piece of shit. A journalist’s job is to let the public know the real truth.”
So Holy Moly could be anything: the dark shadow, the superhero of truth, justice against stupidity and freedom from idiocy.
“I appear as I am when I’m getting stories, as though I have no agenda… More fool them if they speak to me like a piece of shit. A journalist’s job is to let the public know the real truth.”
This frontline mentality is to be admired…it’s successful. Holy Moly has taken the web by storm. Its irreverent disrespect for the art of fame is uniquely humorous and sits as a welcome polarity to the reams of pap paparazzi cheapo jibes.
No stopping him
“We’re not trying to Dennis Pennis them, we’re just trying to point out to them the stupidity of their jobs.”
He remarks, “I see Holy Moly as being anti-celebrity. If there is some integrity to what these people are doing, fair enough. But we do champion people too. We first picked up on Lily Allen in 2004. We scooped Rhianna and Chris Brown, and the Mark Thompson and Jeremy Paxman biting incident.”
You what?
“Mark Thompson, head of BBC, bit a colleague when he was about thirty. Holy Moly got hold of the story through Jeremy Paxman’s team… So alongside publishing the bizarre, and largely unacceptable, Holy Moly is also agenda-setting, but equally irreverent.”
“We turned around to Kerry Katona and asked her if she’d dipped her chips in ketamine. We’re not trying to Dennis Pennis them, we’re just trying to point out to them the stupidity of their jobs.”
It’s not a direct money spinner either. It’s sponsorship led. And sponsorship doesn’t come immediately.
He mentions, “Server bills of £2.5K a month, then there’s a gap which can go on for some time. It’s a sponsorship led medium. It’s not intrusive, and people don’t pay for content.”
“But I don’t see why it should slow down,” he continues. “I’ve been doing it for 5 years. We could take it internationally, India Russia, Australia. The TV thing could be huge. Anyone that watches American Idol will love it. There’s no stopping the growth of the internet.”
And with a family to support, there is no stopping Mr Holy Moly. He’s honest. He’s in it for the money. And why not.
ONE HELL OF A GO
Jonny Halifax has witnessed the pioneering days of promos and has come through on the other side as a rock god of title sequences. Kirsty Allison meets the man making the coolest film graphics on the block.
Also of interest
Whatver means necessary
Jonny Halifax is England’s rising rock god of title sequences. Born the son of a sailor, he looks like a wane Lemmy and plays a Mac like a slide geetar.
His recent work for Julien Temple showcases his trademark ‘handmade’ style of heavy folk art. He combines After Effects, Motion, drawing, photocopying, “whatever means necessary… the less software based trickery the better.”
Man of many talents
“Whether it’s music, film or art, it’s all a simmering collection of influences, thoughts, ideas.”
Under the daytime allure of The Royal Oak on Columbia Road there’s a backdrop soundtrack similar to Jonny’s own one man band:
“I supported this guy last year,” he comments, sipping on a Leffe. In an industry that relishes individualism, but excellence in only one area, we continue a debate started on email about the realities of being a creative with many talents.
Jonny is a musician who makes the coolest film graphics on the block. He has climbed the promo/ad/tv ladder to get here, kicking down sub-career paths from across the creative sphere.
“Whether it’s music, film or art, it’s all a simmering collection of influences, thoughts, ideas. This can explode into an expression of sound or image, which finds some kind of form. Finally you hone and edit it into a finished work.”
Rite of passage
“Having the front to give it one hell of a go, and hope nobody asked for too much back-up.”
So the medium might be the message, but the process is the same whether it’s a canvas, a story or a song. The medium could be…a jellyfish.
With a history in pop promos with acts like Lo Fidelity Allstars, Goldfrapp, SchwaB, Forward Russia and The Scare, he now sees those experiences as a rite of passage in filmmaking:
“Learning how to use a camera, organise a shoot, get on with other musicians and commissioning editors, make sandwiches en masse, put make-up on men, put up lights, broadcast formats… Well you get the idea… Oh yes, and directing, producing, and editing.”
“It helped that I was working with a like-minded bunch of gung-hos at the time. We called ourselves rather pompously ‘General Lighting and Power’, but that was what it was all about. Having the front to give it one hell of a go, and hope nobody asked for too much back-up.”
“I think that’s a good thing; DIY rules.”
Scrimp and save
“We grew to make probably better promos on a PD150 and load of software filters than we could on 16mm and a load of free meals in Soho post houses.”
General Lighting and Power was a Tomato-type creative cooperative founded by Jonny, Danny and Ezra (now directing at Serious Pictures) and Nic Clear. Located above Dazed and Confused’s offices in Old Street, they worked across the media arts and architecture. They also had a house band.
“When we started making promos the budgets were getting smaller and smaller – what was being made for ten grand in 1997 was being done for one in 2002.”
“Obviously record sales probably dropped off in this period due to the growth of the web, but in that time we grew to make probably better promos on a PD150 and load of software filters than we could on 16mm and a load of free meals in Soho post houses.”
This punk rock ethic, is partly why the collaboration with Mr Temple was a success.
Paving an alternative path in this field, it’s not surprising that Jonny stands out from the crowd with his iconoclastic style.
Jonny Halifax’s current film projects include gfx & titles for: ‘Tantric Tourists’, ‘Silent Sound’- a Jason ‘Spaceman’ Pierce DVD, an Edward Lear series and a Honkyfinger video.
DOCTOR ROBERTS: THE GEEK’S GOK WAN
How can you define Julian Roberts? Is he a filmmaker, fashion designer, conceptualist, culture vulture? Kirsty Allison tries to unravel the mystery…
Also of interest
Suits you
Julian Roberts, aka JulianAnd, is the alternative guru of fashion television, he’s the geek’s Gok Wan, and he’s definitely wearing some trousers. They’re pale black denim, if you’re interested…
A former RA student, and an honorary professor of Hertfordshire University (where he spent three years creating a course, a building and validating his ‘Tunnel Technique’- more of which shortly), Julian has shown 13 different collections at London Fashion Week since the late 90s under several different monikers.
Fitting it all in
“He collaborated with The Royal Institute of Mathematics, who see weird maths in his intuitive patterns, which, they tell him, use negative space.”
As the fashion host of BBC Blast, he serves daily trend missives from Hackney – home of the modern anti-hero. He is someone who will defy cash and the temptations of becoming an LVHM mega-brand for the thrill of the academic and satisfaction of pure art.
Other current projects include designing new vestments for the Archbishop of Canterbury (his dad’s a vicar – it’s all about who you know). He collaborated with The Royal Institute of Mathematics, who see weird maths in his intuitive patterns, which, they tell him, use negative space. He will be touring America where he’ll show people his Tunnel Technique/Subtraction Cutting as phase one, and go into nu wave marketing and distribution for the second phase.
And he’s also recently redesigned the Pizza Express and Nando uniforms. They’re pretty groovy too…mix and match, classic charcoals and blacks. Phew! He speaks quickly, he has to fit so much in his life.
Fashion and film
“I bounce between film and fashion. It’s quite elusive and I see it as a negative sometimes but actually I like being in between things.”
“I like to build something up, then kill it off. I’ll give it all away, destroy the soul, I sold all my patterns online for nothing as a way of moving on.” So he’s the Vincent Gallo of fashion.
“I bounce between film and fashion. It’s quite elusive and I see it as a negative sometimes but actually I like being in between things. Why shouldn’t a fashion designer do film?”I projected a collection on the Natural History Museum and got the people who put Gail Porter on Parliament involved.”
That was his first serious involvement with video. He’s since utilised many different techniques, combining old school 80s computer graphics, projecting them on models and then filming the whole thing and editing together in a very new wave way.
His hip use of video is evolving on the catwalk, although it is yet to cross over from off-schedule to official catwalk selection.
Traditionally in fashion, the clothes do the talking, but equally it is an industry that is famous for being the last to ditch the fax machine. Email has only really having been adopted by design houses in the last few years. So it is possible that JulianAnd style direction, combining video, catwalk and performance will become more widely adopted and integrated.
Stepping out
“We have relentless optimism. It’s about positivity, we’re there to challenge.”
JulianAnd’s other sideline is Super Super. He explains, “This is a loose group of artists, DJs, musicians. I’m creative director of the fashion show we do. We don’t rehearse, that’s part of it.”
“We have relentless optimism. It’s about positivity, we’re there to challenge. It’s about people being too scared to step out of normality and conventionalism, especially with terrorism and things like that. It can be oppressive.”
“I think Super Super is about doing it yourself, looking different. Why not take some risks, play some roles. It’s quite empowering, and I see young people doing that.”
Two seasons old, the SuperSuper show is famous for being extremely long and unorthodox. Combining several different designers, live gigs, and video, it’s like an excursion to the youth club party. The colours and sincerity are on a par with the nu-rave mood of designers like Cassette Playa and House of Holland. Yet this mood is calibrated into a whole movement.
Championing DIY
“When I was growing up in the Seventies, people sewed. Now people buy things from China and forget that these clothes are actually still sewn.”
“There’s a generation gap again,” he says, sipping whiskey sours in the basement of the CrazyBear in London. “When I was growing up in the Seventies, people sewed. Now people buy things from China and forget that these clothes are actually still sewn. I have people asking me, ‘How can I find ethically sourced clothes?’ The answer is make it yourself. I can show you how to do it in 20 minutes.”
Julian’s loathing for the identikit consumerist society we inhabit, and enthusiasm for the current youth cyclone of new invention is very on trend. He is in exactly the right place to be the face to champion the new era of DIY, innovation and individualism.
JulianAnd is fashionable, again. With another collection this season and with Namalee, muse and queen of SuperSuper….TV series, anyone?
WEBBILY WOBBLY: JONTI PICKING
HIT FACTORY
Why do people drop down to their knees at the mere mention of Weebl and Bob? Kirsty Allison meets the creator Jonti Picking.
Also of interest
No flash in the pan
Jonti Picking is the Picasso of the digital art world. He’s also the Dali, the Chapman brothers and the Vic Reeves.
His regular instalments of uniquely stylised cartoons with characters who have pie obsessions or carry names like Prawn to Be Wild, give many a geek a reason to keep thinking in binary. His www.weebls-stuff.com site has more hits a second than Stock, Aitken & Waterman ever achieved.
A true Flash don, Jonti’s unique brand of (fairly base) humour proves that geeks are funny.
Okay we knew that, but advanced fans of his Flash toons can get into online chat, moving plots forward and some will even become collaborators, as several of his peeps have done.
He also has a top secret comedy series in development with Channel 4 and some very cute toys that make ideal gifts.
Give him some work
“My style has evolved a little with the greater freedom…I’m no Disney though.”
GEEK FACT: Brian Blessed who played Prince Vultan in Flash Gordon does voiceover in the Documentary That Is About Weebl and Bob, the story about how Jonti developed the legendary cartoon characters, Wobbl and Bob. So why does he use Flash?
“You can make pretty much anything with it, games to animations to web applications. When I started to use it waaaaaay back in days of yore, PCs weren’t as powerful and internet connections were pretty slow.”
” As a result what I used to make was fairly simple. I was looking to keep file sizes down and keep the animations running smoothly.”
“These days you can do a lot more including video and 3D. My style has evolved a little with the greater freedom and also simply by getting better at animating. I’m no Disney though.”
Fans may disagree. He is frequently hailed as a digi-god by new media folk. What does he say about that? “They should give me some work then… baby needs a new pair of shoes.”
Home boy
“It’s pretty cramped so we’re looking into moving into offices where people won’t mind me shouting ‘anus’ into a microphone at various points throughout the day.”
Still working from home, “in a bedroom has more wires and flashing things than NASA’s mission control”, Jonti admits, “It’s pretty cramped so we’re looking into moving into offices where people won’t mind me shouting ‘anus’ into a microphone at various points throughout the day.”
“It’s good in a way since you can work when you want and I’m often up ’til 4am doing stuff. It takes a fair bit of self-control though since it’s far too easy to just spend the day playing Portal or Halo 3.
The call from MTV
“Then one day I got a phone call from a chap called Paul (great guy) at MTV who said they wanted to show the series. I thought ‘hell yes!’ and quit to do that.”
Combining music, art and script, Jonti’s interest in all things internet was ignited whilst on a music technology course where one of the modules was using Director.
After working at a London based new media company, “building Flash stuff and various websites for some pretty big companies”, and designing the 3D maps for the first Resident Evil, Jonti’s move into animation full-time was by chance.
“I’d started Weebl and Bob and that had taken off surprisingly well. Then one day I got a phone call from a chap called Paul (great guy) at MTV who said they wanted to show the series. I thought ‘hell yes!’ and quit to do that… I never looked back.”
State of play
“I don’t know many clients who’d be happy with a level where you make an old lady crap herself.”
On the subject of digital art peers, Jonti enthuses, “I love the work of Adam Phillips (www.biteycastle.com), frankly no one can touch him at the moment. Chaps like Cyriak Harris, David Firth (www.fat-pie.com) and the guys I work with on www.weebls-stuff.com (Peabo, Drewmo) are all kind of growing up together making Flash toons.”
“It’s really getting interesting these days and production values have shot up incredibly.”
Funding much of his fun work by corporate work, Jonti has worked on a series of ads for Anchor Butter, Sesame Street (yes, that’s Sesame Street) and done titles and links for a show called Totally Viral on Dave.
He says, “We’re currently making a massive game for T-Mobile which I have to say is a lot of fun and they are surprisingly cool about subject matter. ”
“I don’t know many clients who would be happy with a level where you have to make an old lady crap herself. As for the future we’d like to just carry on doing what we do and slowly grow.”
NEVER A GRAY DAY: HE GOT THE HUSTLE
What is it about photographer Charlie Gray that puts A-listers at ease? Kirsty Allisonexposes the smooth operator…
Also of interest
Jetset lifestyle
Recommending film titles to George Clooney is not something everyone would feel comfortable with, but for Charlie Gray it’s like the first cup of tea in the morning.
Just back from LA, then Monaco, whilst fitting in romantic liaisons with an upcoming hot actress makes Charlie seem like the original 60s Blow Up caricature. He’s got the hustle, the looks and a prolific amount of style and good taste.
Exposure
Charlie had the usual battles with old guard, bitter lecturer types who bullied most, but seemed to have a soft spot for his potential capabilities.”
Born the son of a record retailer, Andy of Andy’s Records in Cambridge, his mum dealt in vintage clothes. He floated through school, excelling in what he put his mind to. A trait that continues to manifest itself today.
Studying a graphics and history of art degree at Anglia Polytechnic, Charlie found that his lectures clashed…so he went swimming.
Charlie had the usual battles with old guard, bitter lecturer types who bullied most, but seemed to have a soft spot for his potential capabilities. Then finally he fell under the wing of a caring photography tutor, Stuart Smith who introduced him to reportage photography. He also studied typography and design with John Warwicker from Tomato, the innovative graphics collective of the 90s.
This combination provided him with a portfolio which he hauled around the likes of theNursing Times and The Guardian before graduating to doing stills shots on TV dramas and reportage on advertising shoots.
Stuart Smith still edits Charlie’s work and he cites him, “one of the reasons I have been so successful so far”.
Rounded personalities
“You meet some actors and actresses who are surly and just show up; there’s a lot to be said for people who are still hungry.”
“I’m doing Jude Law next week,” Charlie says, before grabbing the phone to negotiate a rate for Hello! syndication. Mr Gray is very well-mannered…it’s something he’s learnt from hanging around the truly professional and successful of the world.
“I think when you get close to someone you realise how professional they are; polite, professional, well turned-out, great clothes, and that’s George Clooney being himself.”
“He drove himself on the first day. He’s always telling jokes, getting involved, looking at the screen. He’s interested in the whole process. He’s rounded. He didn’t make it till he was 35, so I’m sure that has something to do with it. He’s a complete gentleman.”
“You meet some actors and actresses who are surly and just show up; there’s a lot to be said for people who are still hungry.”
“Simon Cowell is another one of those people who has had success later on. He’s thoroughly professional”
Classic style
“When they are completely unaware…when they’ve let go of their status; that’s when you get great reportage.”
Whilst learning the ropes in TV drama, photographing the likes of Daniel Craig doingOur Friends in The North, Charlie began to build up his classic style of Magnum moments with stars.
He has worked on several BAFTA-winning series like the Trial of Tony Blair and the groundbreaking Riot films, as well as filling in for Sky and MTV.
“TV work can be fun. The director of Our Friends In The North, Simon Cellan-Jones did cartwheels on set to wake people up.”
Charlie possesses a style that balances contrasts and saturations beautifully. What does he think makes the perfect picture?
“Being there in the moment. It’s about encapsulating the whole mood of the event. If it’s celebrity-based, it’s about getting a key person talking to another person in their field when their guard is down. When they are completely unaware…when they’ve let go of their status; that’s when you get great reportage.”
On another level, in portraiture, you can see the connection is comfortable and there’s someone uncoiling.”
Sharp shooter
“I think giving away the mystique of how you work is a terrible mistake.”
“I think giving away the mystique of how you work is a terrible mistake,” Charlie confesses.
“I use a Nikon D3, the one that’s very good with high ISA/low light, and I shot the BAFTAs at 5000 ISA and there’s no noise. If I’d used my previous camera with its 1500 there would have been a lot of noise.”
“I don’t get nervous that often but for the BAFTA Film Awards I was in the auditorium for two hours preparing before everyone arrived. I’m not a sweaty person, but my palms were hot!…Being there in the Royal Opera House, I was thinking, ‘I have 20 minutes to get everyone.'”
Nevertheless, Charlie Gray thrives on the adrenalin buzz.
FEET ON THE GROUND
Kirsty Allison uncovers why this playwright is tipped for the top.
Lives the life
Sophie Woolley is amazing. Why? Well she’s beaten the legions of mashed up, self-proclaiming pint glass wielders who hang out in Shoreditch bars and Soho clubs preaching about the artistic legacies they’re going to leave for the world.
Sophie was always there, sitting, observing, polite, witty and erudite…but Sophie would be actually doing it, rather than talking about it.
Club together
“People who helped me along the way are club and literature promoters like Ernesto Leal, Sean Mclusky, Joe Muggs and Melanie Abrahams.”
Performing in nightclubs was where she started, reading poems that were slick, innocent and funny. She then wrote the DJ Bird column for Sleaze Nation, did some stuff for Shoreditch Tw*t and appeared in the Comedy Lab pilot on C4.
She says, “People who helped me along the way are club and literature promoters like Ernesto Leal, Sean Mclusky, Joe Muggs and Melanie Abrahams. I started off performing in cabarets and discos and writing specifically for those environments.”
“I even moved to Brighton for a year to work with Jamie Liddell and Matthew Yee-King – that went wrong though. I went off in a musical collaborative direction and it turned out to be a dead end. Even so, we did create some great things which really worked, but they were just moments and not enough.”
Run with it
“In the beginning I approached the running theme as a kind of smirking outsider – but then I ended up getting addicted to running.”
Her dark satire, When To Run sold out on a recent run at the Soho Theatre, and is still touring Britain. In June, her new play, Fight Face opens at the Lyric in Hammersmith. She’s also just signed up to work on some TV sketch shows. Irvine Welsh calls her ‘electrifying’.
When to Run first touched the surface as a poem. It then became a play in 2005 which features a handful of people, all played by Sophie. The structure is clever and the characters and accents are hilarious.
“In the beginning I approached the running theme as a kind of smirking outsider – but then I ended up getting addicted to running.”
“Feeling like a lemon”
“I just kind of stood on stage feeling like a lemon everyday – but despite having a bad time, the audiences enjoyed it…they didn’t know about the lemon stuff.”
When to Run then got financial backing a year later and Sophie took this, her first properly developed play, to the Edinburgh Festival.
She did 26 nights: “I just kind of stood on stage feeling like a lemon everyday – but despite having a bad time, the audiences enjoyed it…they didn’t know about the lemon stuff.”
Sophie felt a little unprepared: “I had never worked with a director before as I’d just done little stand alone monologues in the past and I hadn’t been to drama college.”
“I could do the voices okay but not the physicality of each character. I didn’t even have a costume. Just a frock and a chair on the stage.”
Can’t wing it
“If someone has paid to come and see me I’ve got to be better than good. There is too much dross out there already.”
But at these performances someone from the RSC spotted her, and managed to set her up with a female director from the National Theatre of Scotland. They then rehearsed, and rehearsed, and she sold out a stretch at the Soho Theatre last year.
From raver to rave reviews, she says, “I’ve realised I can’t do my best work alone. I can’t just walk onstage and wing it anymore, that’s not enough in my book. And it’s not enough for an audience.”
“If someone has paid to come and see me I’ve got to be better than good. There is too much dross out there already.”
Take control
“I have sci fi dreams about having a little robot who can do speech recognition and I can take it everywhere with me.”
Sophie’s performances are captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing. The words she has written are projected in huge writing onto a screen behind her just above an urban landscape. It’s very impressive and beautiful to have these magnified words beamed behind someone who sits on stage reciting them word perfect.
If GCSE students checked out Shakespeare in this way, it might all make sense. Sophie’s impetus for doing this is a hereditary hearing problem.
“I had been losing (my hearing) slowly for years. The end of 2001 was a bleak year as the effects of deafness on my life really started to hit home. But I picked myself up and learnt to lip-read and sign. So it’s a happy ending because I took control.”
“I have interpreters and stenographers to help me at rehearsals and meetings nowadays and that means I have to plan ahead and have a decent filing system for all the paperwork that comes with booking interpreters. I have sci fi dreams about having a little robot who can do speech recognition and I can take it everywhere with me.”
With the success of When to Run and all that training, Sophie and her robot are all set to become champions in the British high league of comics.
When to Run tour dates – 11 April Cardiff, 24/25/26 April Manchester; 26 June Hull; Fight Face at Lyric Hammersmith 19-21 June.
Amanda Boyle is a 34 year old director.
Kirsty Allison thinks she should be cloned.
Amanda has the credentials to inspire and lead a new generation as a filmmaker. Although she has only made a handful of shorts, each tick the right boxes (funding affiliations, philosophies and in production value) to allow the British film establishment to roll out the red carpet for her. Amanda’s most recent short opened at the London Film Festival, it was funded by the Film Council, BBC Films and FilmLondon, Pop Art stars Ben Milner from Son of Rambow and uses an inflatable puppet to deal with children and bullying in a very British setting, it was written by Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son. Imprints, her previous short film features a male doctor grooming a female patient with amnesia in a frightfully domineering fashion; the dreamlike Hotel Infinity follows the fantasy style of many Oriental films of recent years; and Heavy Metal Drummer from 2005 follows the tale of a young drummer in Morrocco, in a very filmic documentary fashion.
But despite BAFTA nominations, high-flying agents and critical plaudits Amanda Boyle tells 4Talent she’s finding the struggle to succeed exceptionally longwinded. Is that because she’s a she?
“I hate to make generalizations about sexes, but film is a male dominated arena, and there are a lot of women in production, rather than directing. Men can be very good at projecting confidence and when they’re younger and get carried into the system faster. I had the sense that I had to learn all the roles, and I’m not sure that’s the right way, but a lot of men I know go ‘I am a director’ and it’s about getting out there, and financiers and producers want to know that who they’re backing is confident, I felt I had to do a few shorts, and now I feel I’m up to the challenge of doing features.”
The progression from shorts to features is an established one for directors, as is moving from production to direction. Amanda broke into the British film industry as a post-production assistant at WT2 (part of Working Title Films).
“I left college and thought about film school but my dad died so I was quite pragmatic, I targeted film production companies I respected and wrote hundreds of letters. I sent three to Scala (Stephen Woolley’s company), eventually I got accepted at WT2. I worked there for seven years, it was fascinating as they work in the studio system. It’s quite a unique opportunity do that, it’s taught me to develop things thoroughly before approaching companies”
“I read Philosophy at Cambridge…I don’t like talking about that, it feels like a long time ago, it always gives the impression that film is cliquely, I didn’t have any contacts (her mother is a sculptor). But I did a lot of theatre at university, I had great lecturers, Peter Greenaway, Terry Gilliam, Danny Boyle, and it moved me from theatre into film, and the fringe work I’d done was collaborative, and so is film”
“My films are about the exploration of different ideas. With the shorts each one had a problem I was trying to solve, looking back they are personal films using metaphors and my journey has been to try and do that more directly. So now it’s more about being head on. I don’t know if it’s a philosophy but I’m trying, for example in the documentary I’m working on, to make it very inclusive. Each project has something I’m fascinated with, I feel I’m too early to know what defines me really, it’s just an inquisitive nature, I think.”
Powerful characters are a good place to start. Amanda’s documentary is about autism, based on the writings of Kamran Nazeer. She has also been developing a series of drama features with playwrights.
“Film is extraordinary for taking time, and if you don’t write there’s no money in development, that can wear you down and can effect you terribly. There are other people who have come from other areas, like visual artists, who seem to manage the crossover better, if people come from different disciplines it almost seems easier”
Amanda was selected on the Clore scholarship programme this year that has provided her with enough income to survive. She also scooped the rather tasty mentor of Stephen Frears (director of The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters and many more).
“I do feel there are lots of women coming up, I went for a drink with my agent (Sarah McWhinney at Curtis Brown), and she said most of her people are women. I know one girl who gave birth on the cutting room floor!
“If you want to be more than a token, it’s about the quality of the work, I’d be lying if it hadn’t been tough. If you’re trying to explain why you’re trying to do it and why the whole machinery takes so long, spending two years in development means working with actors is a luxury, I have devoted so much of my life to it I’m not giving up now!”
CHANNEL4.COM
15 FEB 2009
kirsty allison 