Father, Son, Holy Ghost

What I always liked about The Girls apart from them being hapless represantatives of the sunny loveable mint ice cream dimension impossible to reach from where we are was that painfully real sense of being wounded when in love. How the world around appears to be so hopelessly wastedly beautiful. Simple but I still can't say it right, only Christopher Owens can say it right. And that's what he does.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost is the best title Girls could choose for their second album. Timeless, obvious, great title for a great record. And yep, these black tight leather pants, black crop top, Girls denim jacket and the Deathly Hallows symbol on his neck in a new video are so cool.



When I call Girls frontman Christopher Owens, he's bedridden for the third straight day. What's wrong with him? "Well, there are a lot of things wrong with me," he says with a chuckle. But he's not kidding. The singer-songwriter is in the thick of a self-imposed pre-tour drug withdrawal.
"I struggle with an addiction to serious, very heavy opiates," he says later on in the conversation. "Getting rid of this shit is literally the worst hell you can imagine. I don't know why I always go back to it, but I do." The admission isn't as surprising, perhaps, as it should be-- the 32 year old has made a point to keep his music and his life as honest as possible, even if that means telling strangers about his darkest addictions. This openness is inviting, though, and it's all over Girls' strikingly unguarded songs, which tell of love and loss with the wide-eyed naïvteté of someone half Owens' age.
By now, the singer's eccentric back story-- he was raised in the well-meaning but ultimately dangerous and perverse Children of God religious cult before breaking away and subsequently being taken in by Texas artist Stanley Marsh 3-- is something of indie rock lore, and Owens doesn't back away from it. Several songs on Girls' new sophomore album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, deal with Owens' fraught and complicated relationship with his mother, who allowed another son to die of pneumonia because of Children of God's anti-medicine stance and prostituted herself in Owens' presence while he was growing up. (She has since left the cult as well.) When he sings, "I'm looking for meaning in life, and you my ma," on the new record, you can hear the confusion of his experience as well as universal empathy.



Pitchfork: There are some very talented gospel back-up singers on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and when you contrast them with your relatively small voice, it can sound...

Christopher Owens: ...funny! I know what you're talking about, and it's part of my neurosis. I was very much aware from the first recording we did that my voice sucks. It's fun to perform and be a singer, but writing songs is what really makes me happy. While we were recording this album I sent a Tweet to Justin Bieber: "Hey Justin, I'm the lead singer of Girls and you should come be the singer in our band. It'd be great for your career." Imagine that-- he'd be like the new Julian Casablancas! I'd give him all my songs and he'd sell millions of records. He would do a better job on vocals and I would be happy watching the shows from the side and writing songs for him. But he never replied. I knew he wouldn't, but I was dead serious. And what I was acknowledging with the Tweet was that everything on this album had jumped up in quality except the singing. But those are the breaks, man.

Nan to Scott

A letter Nan Goldin wrote to Scott Campbell.
I wish I had my ghostwriter. Hope our encounter is round the corner. Every ghostwriter needs a regular writer anyway.





Published in 032c.

Higher Learning

New project of Tavi Gevinson Rookiemag  is a magazine for teenage girls with plenty of nice reading, which kept even me in front of my laptop till 2 am yesterday. Some things never leave you after all, such as insecurity, loneliness, sadness, weird thoughts, they're just   wearing out and appear to be not so sharp as at 18. One of the coolest features is Higher Learning, a collection of high school stories by famous guys including Dan Savage, Zooey Deschanel, Patton Oswalt, Jack Black etc.




Zooey Deschanel

If only high school were as simple as a teen movie. I would have loved to have been as single-minded as your typical teen heroine (must get in with the popular crowd, must get floppy-haired dude to take me to prom, etc.), but as a teenager I had a lot on my mind. For instance, infinity. How was I supposed to think about prom when I spent so much time thinking about the concept of infinity? Prom was OK, but infinity was interesting and terrifying. This made it a lot harder to think about the dudes with floppy hair.

I often liken my high school experience to the opening scene in Stardust Memories, where Woody Allen is sitting on an unmoving train with a lot of really miserable-looking people, when out the window he sees an identical train, only on this train, as I remember it, everyone is happy and attractive, and there is a young Sharon Stone wearing a feather boa, and there are men in sailor suits popping bottles of pink champagne. He can no longer accept his sad train existence now that he has seen the happy train, and he tries in vain to escape. The difference between Woody Allen and me was, I kind of liked my sad train. I saw that there was another version of high school that was being peddled by the media but I could never connect with it.

Of course, I went to an artsy sort of school, so things were a little bit different. It wasn’t unusual to find a young gentleman wrapped in a piece of duvetyne theater curtain secured with safety pins into a makeshift toga. And no big deal guys, but we had Guys Wear a Dress to School Day. But even surrounded by all these unicorns, I felt like the unicorniest. I just did not fit in.

One day my history teacher asked our class, “Do you guys think about infinity?” Most of my classmates gave him the you’re totally lame blank stare, but my mind started racing. “How does he know?!” I wondered. He said, “I used to think about infinity, and then I stopped.” He chuckled to himself. For me, this moment mapped a strange intersection of emotions: whereas I now knew I wasn’t alone, the people I wanted to connect with, my peers, seemed even farther away. I guess it was then that I realized I wasn’t required to LOVE high school, like the movies demanded; I didn’t have to want to go to prom and homecoming or be the center of the social world—I just had to make high school a place where I could get better at the things I wanted to do. And that’s exactly what I did.

Jack Black

I was running with a pretty rough crowd in 1984. It was a gang of kids from the tough part of the neighborhood. We’d listen to heavy metal and watch The Exorcist. We’d wear jeans and flannel shirts. We’d BMX and skateboard around town.

Things got pretty hairy. I wanted desperately to belong to something cool, and fitting in with these guys was everything to me. I stole some money from my mom. I got caught and confessed all my badassery to my parents. I felt like I needed a fresh start, and my folks agreed. They decided to send me to a school for troubled youths. It was called Poseidon.

It was a very small school in West L.A. that featured a student psychologist named Roger. In addition to being a kick-ass therapist he was also a big bodybuilder who could defend himself and break up fights in the yard if necessary.

I was not required to have sessions with Roger. But I saw the other kids going into his office, and I was curious. I wanted to tell him my story and see if I needed counseling. So I signed up for a session and went into his office the next day. I spilled my guts about stealing from my mother and cried my eyes out. It was an intense catharsis. All the guilt and stress I’d been holding on to for years just melted away.

I continued seeing Roger, but never had that kind of mind-blowing release again.

The rest of my ninth grade was mainly focused on animation drawings and improv classes with my incredible theater teacher Deb. Deb was inspiring. She encouraged me to get involved in all aspects of theater. She insisted that writing and directing were far more interesting endeavors than simply acting.

I was also obsessed with two students named Collin and Gary. Collin loved Mick Jagger and Gary loved Michael Jackson. They would do impersonations all day and argue about who was better. One time it came to blows and I tried to jump in to defend Collin, who was getting his ass kicked. I punched Gary in the side of the head, and he just stopped and looked at me with confusion in his eyes. I had never done anything like that before. Or since.

I started reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I drank it up like a delicious nectar. It is the story of the young Buddha’s journey. Reading that book marked the beginning of a spiritual journey that lasted for years.

But that is another story.

Good luck in high school. Being a person is hard.


Lesley Arfin

Dear Kid in High School,

Not that you really give a shit what I have to say, cuz kids in high school love not giving a shit, but I also know that you actually give a huge steaming pile of shit, so shut up your face and listen.

You’re allowed to care about stuff. That’s the first thing. Even if you think it’s stupid or weird, like polka music or “being obsessed with mimes.” One day you will look back not at all the things that made you cool enough to fit in, but the things that didn’t. And you will love them.

The second thing is write everything down. Even if you don’t like writing, just write about every obsession, story, hatred, happiness—whatever. And save it. All of it. I say this because when you’re an adult, you will get drunk with your friends one night and read your diary out loud to them.

It will be the funniest night of your life.

When teachers say, “This is the best time of your life,” they are wrong. They are only saying that because they’re teachers and they have to look at your weird faces every day. There is no “best time of your life,” but rather perfect moments, like when someone’s gum falls out of their mouth while they’re telling a story, or when a jerk is walking toward you and accidentally gets hit in the head with a soccer ball. Make sure to store these moments in a safe place in your brain. They will be useful to you in the future, I promise.

But also, quit bitching about being in high school. At least your mom still makes you dinner at night, and that rules.

I’m not gonna say don’t do drugs because that’s ridiculous, just don’t take anything that is known as an “epidemic” (crystal meth, Oxycontin). When they tell you in health that they’re addictive, they’re not “just trying to scare you into being a normie,” and it’s not all “government propaganda.”

Stick with pot, acid and booze and you will have way better memories. When you do acid or shrooms and you think you might be having a bad trip, get a piece of candy and hold your friend’s hand and it will go away. Try not talking for a while, too. If it’s still bad, well, whatever, it will be over in 14 hours.

If you want to stay out all night, say you’re sleeping at a friend’s house.
If you come home super early and your mom says, “Why are you home so early?” you say, “I got homesick and I missed you.” She will then make you eggs and you can watch TV.

If you don’t want to change for gym a good trick is putting sweatpants on over your jeans. If you don’t want to go swimming say you have your period. If you want to go home early or get out of a class, give the nurse a general “my stomach hurts.” If she asks you, “How does it hurt?” you say, “It’s just pain.” There’s no cure for that.

You might feel at times that you are ugly and disgusting and unlovable. Some of you might feel as though you are beautiful and hot and cool and awesome. Know this: When you’re in your 20s you go through, like, a time machine of opposite days. What I mean is, everyone who thinks they are hot shit in high school eventually turns into cold diarrhea by their 30s. And all you ugly nerds will eventually start to sparkle like geodes. If you don’t believe me you can ask Facebook.

Hmm, what else what else? Some things I regret: not learning an instrument (I gave up playing the sax, wish I hadn’t), not learning a foreign language (got kicked out of Spanish), not taking more acid (was afraid of bad trips but regret now due to lack of funny stories).

I don’t know what else. You guys are gonna do whatever you’re gonna do, fuck that up, do it again, and so it goes.

You all probably know just what you’re doing anyway and don’t need any advice at all, isn’t that right, you little smartass?

I’ll be watching you. I am the eyes and ears of this institution.

Scott Campbell in 032c

I finally got summer issue of 032c in my hands - dream issue for someone so passionate about tattoos as I am. Silvia Plath "The fifteen-dollar eagle" story, nice text "The Tatoo and the world" by Victoria Camblin, Nan Goldin letter to Scott Campbell (never knew she had tattoos by him, but that appeared to be i'm sorry, each letter in different colour) and fantastic long interview with him. Coolest words about tattoos I've ever read.

Scott Campbell (b. 1977) is a tattoo artist. He is also a video artist, recently catapulted from a suburban American cultural underground into a glossy, art- and fashion-world mainstream. In this way he embodies the creative model of the decade - a practice of cross-over in which a craft such as tattooing can be interbred with luxury industry operations like Louis Vuitton bag design. It is a system in which social hierarchies are navigable with an unprecedented fluidity. An artist can move not only up and down vertically on the ladder of commerce, but also laterally between disciplines and media.

LOVE Kristen

Kristen McMenamy is the greatest model of the dark parallel universe we all belong.

Aaron Young

Aaron Young art in Purple Fashion Magazine. LA-raised, he is one of the most uncompromising and fearless artist of the decade. 

For his final undergrad project at San Francisco Art Institute in 2000, multimedia artist Aaron Young made a video of a motorcyclist doing tire burnouts in Diego Rivera's former studio space. "It almost got me kicked out of school," he says. "But my professor stood up for me." Four years later, Young was vindicated when MoMA snapped up the piece for $5,000. The throttle on his career has been open ever since. In 2006 he was selected for the Whitney Biennial, and the following year Tom Ford threw the after-party for Young's performance piece Greeting Card, in which 13 bikers carved skids and whirls into 288 plywood panels on the floor of New York City's Park Avenue Armory—while spectators watched in gas masks. Young's pieces now fetch six-figure sums. "I find it really tough to swallow when collectors resell my work for a shitload of money," he says. "Not because I'm not getting it. It just kills the purity." Next up is an enormous gold-dipped Roman chariot impaled on a 30-foot column inside Rome's 2,000-year-old Teatro di Marcello—"the biggest thing I've ever done," Young says. Don't expect that to be true for long.









Text via Details.com

032c Issue 21

I have already held the latest issue of 032c in my hands in the end of may, during my surreal visit to Kiev. It was getting dark, I woke up on the couch, hangover echoing in my bones and floating through my skin, the apartment was silent, everybody was out, someone to the forest, someone sleeping in the back room. So I sat at the table, drinking tea, hands shaking, a weird bare bone on a plate somewhere too close in a small kitchen, I could feel it's presence. I was halfway through a long Scott Campbell interview when the guys came with 3 bottles of wine, and I never managed to read it to the end.

The next day we met Joerg Koch and he gave my good friend Zhenya another new issue, and we thought "Ah, hell", and he asked Joerg to sign it. But Joerg Koch said "No, I don't want to spoil it with my signature, It's already perfect". We laughed about it later, but now, when I think of it, I think he was right. No need to spoil it. It is perfect.




“I got my first tat in 1978. None of you were even born yet. You really missed out.” – NAN GOLDIN in a letter to SCOTT CAMPBELL, the young and famous tattoo artist featured in this issue’s 40-page cover dossier, complete with poetry from French modernist FRANCIS PICABIA and a little-known short story by SYLVIA PLATH. Elsewhere AZZEDINE ALAÏA bares his love for animals and women; English artist HELEN MARTEN builds a page-specific installation; dream boys OLAFUR ELIASSON and KEVIN KELLY get techno-Utopian; AL-JAZEERA proves it’s the media outlet of the new millennium; LUCAS OSSENDRIJVER takes LANVIN to the frontiers of men’s wear design; FERNANDO ROMERO builds an art museum in Mexico for the world’s richest man; DANKO and ANA STEINER go downtown with LEELEE SOBIESKI and Salem’s JOHN HOLLAND; Munich magazine magnate Dr. HUBERT BURDA talks tabloids and media theory while the king of arts publishing WALTHER KÖNIG takes us back to the first German art world boom; JUERGEN TELLER shoots KRISTEN McMENAMY in CARLO MOLLINO’s Turin estate, testing the Mollino mantra, “Everything is permissible as long as it is fantastic”; New York’s DIS magazine invades our Global Briefings section; 032c’s latest SELECT presents the best of this season’s books, products, and ideas; and so much more on 276 pages.



Kristen McMenamy claimed she was the weirdest model of her time, and anybody who liked her seemed to appear queer or mental, but still, she married one of the biggest club owners which resulted in excessive coke consumption and kids. Which is obviously great.

Andre and Annabelle Dexter-Jones

Such a cool feature at Nowness about Andre and Annabelle Dexter-Jones.



From Parisian street artist to international nightlife impresario, restaurateur and hotelier, André Saraiva has a knack for adding a liberal dose of cool to anything he touches. The Chinatown digs the newly appointed L’Officiel Hommes creative director shares with his girlfriend Annabelle Dexter-Jones are no exception: the studio’s spare white walls are accented with friends’ artworks, including a Tom Sachs medicine bottle, and a library of vintage magazines. It was during his first outing as a photographer for French style bible Jalouse in 2008 that Saraiva met Dexter-Jones, a model who happens to be the daughter of Foreigner’s Mick Jones and sister of Mark Ronson; although it would be a year before she finally succumbed to his charms. The aspiring actress is now starring in Saraiva’s latest project, The Shoe, a short film that will be previewed on NOWNESS over the course of the next two days. We asked the couple to provide intimate insights into their other half.





 
















What is André/Annabelle’s most treasured possession?
Annabelle: He really treasures these brass knuckles that were given to him by his close friend Dash Snow. The word "baron" was engraved on it by Dash along with some other small words.
André: A little silver frame with a washed-out photo of her and her dad that she carries around with her.

What artwork would André/Annabelle most like to own?
Annabelle: I think he likes the idea that art is viewed in museums or that art belongs to everyone. Ownership is less important to him. But I don't think he would be mad if a Cy Twombly or a Giorgio de Chirico walked into his house.
André: A Caravaggio.

What is André/Annabelle’s biggest ambition?
Annabelle: To love and love and love and love.
André: She doesn't have ambitions, she has dreams.

What music is André/Annabelle playing on repeat right now?
Annabelle: Whatever is on my iPod; he also loves "Superman" by Laurie Anderson.
André: Alexander Dexter-Jones's “Phantastic Phone Call”

If André/Annabelle was a cartoon character, who would they be and why?
Annabelle: Krazy Kat. The Kat is more like a spirit, always happy, genuine and blindly in love with Ignatz Mouse. The cartoon was created around 1920 and André has a beautiful book of all of the old comic strips. That or Pepé Le Pew.
André: Ignatz Mouse, the one that Krazy Kat is in love with.

If André/Annabelle could have a super power for a day, what would it be?
Annabelle: To fly so that he could paint the Empire State Building.
André: To transform everybody into frogs—in order to kiss them.

What’s the most romantic thing André/Annabelle has ever done?
Annabelle: Everything André does is romantic, it’s in his blood! Most recently he wrote my name in giant letters on a building in LA. Twice!
André: It is about the subtleties with Annabelle. I like when she writes small love notes and hides them in my luggage for me to find when I'm away.

What does André/Annabelle’s perfect night at home consist of?
Annabelle: Sharing a meal cooked by me. Unfortunately, I don't cook so we order in and he loves a good (bad) Hollywood rom-com! He also likes when I read him stories.
André: Watching episodes of Arrested Development and eating Hershey’s Kisses.

What’s André/Annabelle’s favorite film?
Annabelle: Chris Marker's La Jetée and Lethal Weapon.
André: Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I think she is a bit like Holly Golightly; free.

What makes André/Annabelle laugh?
Annabelle: His daughter, Henrietta. And my brilliant wit!
André: Everything!

My Neighbours from Bungalow 10с

"My Neighbours from Bungalow 10с" by Bruce Weber published in Vman issue # 22.
Вполне читается как чудесный оммаж гомоэротическим журналам, из которых когда-то вырезал картинки для коллажей Роберт Мэпплторп и которые оживали и говорили в фильмах Ван Сента. В них есть нечто интимное, как в полароидных снимках, гей-порно и алтарях святых, где Дева Мария прсотирает свои руки над Жаном Жене.
Мой друг гей из Берлина вчера состриг под машинку свои высветленные волосы. Правда, он все равно невероятно красивый.









Pictures by Bruce Weber Vman issue 22.

Maria Callas

Мне всегда хотелось иметь проигрыватель для пластинок, чтобы слушать на нем пластинки с оперой. Это такая фишка, которую, вместе с барочными интерьерами с египетскими кошками, буддами и зеркалами в золотых имперских рамах, очень любят геи и пропагандируют декадетствующие гомосексуальные (мои любимые) писатели. Так вот теперь, что я обнаружила вчера вечером после изматывающего дня, проигрыватель больше не нужен. Можно прослушать Марию Каллас, Энрико Карузо и оперы Вагнера в интернете. Маленький штрих медиаконвергенции придает им особую трогательную хрупкость.
В Париже букинисты в огромном количестве продают старые журналы, и три года назад, когда я там была, умудрилась случайно как-то купить Paris Match 1969 года, и только потом сообразила, что на обложке была Мария Каллас. Нельзя не восхищаться Марией Каллас. И это, вместе с потрясающей красоты фильмом "Портрет Дориана Грея" 1945 года, который сегодня утром показали по телевизору, новым альбомом Black Devil Disco Club и мужскими рубашками, будет частью того холодного эстетства, которому я собираюсь придаваться, потому что, во-первых, ну что еще делать, а во вторых, мне кажется, на этом и будет строится стиль нашего неопределенного завтра.

Ballad of a thin man

On the streets of Rome for the first time in my life I witnessed what a great look can be created with a сlassic suit. This is where I realised that the future of style definitely lies in the dendysm revilval. Maybe I'm just getting older and it's time for my next Oscar Wilde grave visit, but this is how it feels. Details, tailoring, jewels and flowers.
The T Magazine celebrated skinny suit come back with a magnificent editorial called "Ballad of a thin man" featuring Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, Dave Gahan, Lou Reed and other symbolic figures of ever lasting self distruction, wonderful ressurections and dozens of iconic records. Bill Mullen, T Magazine fashion editor dressed most of his music idols for the shoot and as for other personal heroes he would like to dress, he said "We's have to start digging up some graves at this point".

Несмеяна

Надя Шаповал в роли лондонской бомжихи.
Love!























Hooligan magazine february 2011