An interview with Bless

Full article via Blend.

Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss, who founded Bless in 1997, exist in the design-as-art, art-as-design school of production, creating objects and clothing that both question the nature of consumption and fuel it as well with their highly coveted limited edition products. Each Bless collection starts with an object, an idea, a garment or an all-encompassing design solution for life – the Bless version of “basics” – often incorporating recycled goods as materials. They have sought out alternative business models to continue production according to their own vision, through creative funding, in some instances, via corporate sponsorship and collaboration. In this sense, they are like commodity artists, using the language of contemporary commodity culture – the buying and selling of goods – as their medium. Not surprisingly, their work sits equally well as a gallery installation, a pop-up shop or on the racks of a (carefully chosen) boutique. For the customer also seeking substance as well as style at the point where art and fashion blurs, Bless is the go-to, always ready with a new answer to everyday life that is as fashionable as it is functional. Here, we talked to Bless about their take on denim – the greatest symbol of the “everyday” if ever there was one – as well as their past collaborations and future dreams.

An interview with Antistrot

Full text available via Blend.

Excerpt:

You could call Antistrot a crew, definitely, though not of the graffiti variety – the output of the Rotterdam-based collective might look like street art from a distance, but they’re really Academy-educated muralists making paintings reflective of a generation raised on a diet of magazines like Vice and The Fader, graphic novels and classic comic books and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. They combining pop cultural references on densely painted canvases or in epic murals, like an extended YouTube video re-imagined by a group of bad boy muralists run amok. There’s lots of sex in the form of porn-perfect female characters, who might be juxtaposed with some very nerdy-looking guys next to a Papa Smurf yogi. In another painting with a beer theme, they’ve rendered New York hipster artist Dash Snow slurping a brew. And then there’s violence: Guns, tanks and scary-looking animals. Chaos on canvas.

Shana Moulton Wants to Believe

Originally published in Blend (Netherlands) Issue No. 30.

“I’m completely convinced that I’m almost a diabetic, even though I’m really careful,” says video artist Shana Moulton, who as an undergrad once did a performance where she covered her face with a caramel mask, waited for it to dry, peeled it away and ate the entire mask. Then she washed everything off in a basin filled with white sugar. “I was almost puking,” she says, and explains how at the time, she’d just learned her parents had Type 2 diabetes. So her self-professed hypochondria isn’t completely unfounded. In Moulton’s ongoing video series, Whispering Pines, she plays a character named Cynthia, an alter ego who is plagued with a variety of illnesses, perhaps more imagined than real. She’s constantly looking for a cure, or some kind of answer to all her problems. Cynthia tries everything from beauty products promising miracles, to water fountains spouting New Age energy speak, to an Avon lady hand healer. It’s these illnesses and the subsequent remedies that are the catalyst for Cynthia’s fantastic escapist adventures through the looking glass. Whether Cynthia actually finds liberation – or salvation – is unclear, and the video’s low-tech aesthetic and over-the-top citric acid color scheme make the viewer feel a little loopy, as though you’ve just stayed up all night, bleary-eyed, watching cable access infomercials for crystal-wielding psychic healers. Moulton grew up in Northern California, a hotbed of spiritual self-help and seekers of healthy alternative lifestyles, but she’s recently moved to Brooklyn. We meet up around the corner from her house just as she’s finishing the final edits of her latest video, “Sand Saga,” to discuss Cynthia’s fate, New Age kitsch and why Kombucha tea is Moulton’s new hope in a bottle.

On “Turning”: A Conversation with Antony Hegarty and Charles Atlas

Published in Blend (Netherlands), Andy Warhol special issue, November 2007.

It has been almost a year since Antony Hegarty and Charles Atlas toured Europe with their collaborative project entitled “Turning.” It’s a meditative piece on transformation that features thirteen “beauties” placed individually on a rotating turntable, a live video feed mixed by Atlas and a musical performance by Antony and the Johnsons. As Antony sings, a single beauty stands still on stage, moved by the turning pedestal. Behind the band and Antony, their faces are projected onto a giant screen, filmed by two cameras with a delay, so that as they turn away from one camera, we always see the front of their faces. Atlas layers images on the spot, creating a mesmerizing live portrait with Antony’s haunting voice and lyrics forming the psychological soundtrack. Think Warhol’s screen tests, but on a larger, more public and more spiritually dense scale. But whereas one senses an emotional detachment between Warhol and his subjects, after hearing Antony describe the almost psychic bond he felt between himself and his models – all female, but with diverse, unique experiences with their gender identity – you realize that “Turning” moves well beyond the simple relationship of object and objectifier. It is far more complicated, and when you get down to it, holistic, than that. The performers and the audience are watching each other, the camera, Antony, all reacting to and interacting with each other in a way that comes, well, full circle.