Antivirus Software Founder, Zombie-Chemist, McAfee wanted for murder
MURDER On Sunday the 11th November, 2012 at 8:00am acting upon information received, San Pedro Police visited 5 ¾ miles North of San Pedro Town where they saw 52 year old U.S National Mr. GREGORY VIANT FAULL, of the said address, lying face up in a pool of blood with an apparent gunshot wound on the upper rear part of his head apparently dead. Initial investigation revealed that on the said date at 7:20am LUARA TUN, 39years, Belizean Housekeeper of Boca Del Rio Area, San Pedro Town went to the house of Mr. Faull to do her daily chores when she saw him laying inside of the hall motionless, Faull was last seen alive around 10:00pm on 10.11.12 and he lived alone. No signs of forced entry was seen, A (1) laptop computer brand and serial number unknown and (1) I-Phone was discovered missing. The body was found in the hall of the upper flat of the house. A single luger brand 9 mm expended shells was found at the first stairs leading up to the upper flat of the building. The body of Faull was taken to KHMH Morgue where it awaits a Post Mortem Examination. Police have not established a motive so far but are following several leads.
Antivirus pioneer John McAfee is on the run from murder charges, Belize police say. According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force’s Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down Saturday night at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye. via http://gizmodo.com/5959812/john-mcafee-wanted-for-murder blulight.ru forum excerpts — Hello Everyone. I’ve been lurking here for years and just recently decided to join up. I’m hoping to get some help here. I’m a huge fan of MDPV. Not the white hydrochloride – it’s inconceivable that anyone on the planet would willingly put that into their bodies — I’m talking the freebase form. I think many of you that don’t bother to freebase it yourself have at least tasted the freebase version when it was widely available as “tan mdpv”. I think it’s the finest drug evere conceived, not just for the indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild comedown. My question is this: How can I more easilly separate the oil from the precipitate using some mechanical means? Here’s the nightmarish process I’ve been going through so far: First I precipitate and then place the container on a foot vibrator for 30 minutes to raise the first oil (the oil is heavier than water, by the way): Then I painstakingly touch each droplet with the point of a hyperdermic, which causes the oil to climb up the needle. Then I slowly extract the needle until the surface tension at the top allows the oil to float. I can only do a small amount at a time or else the oil collects into a ball large enough to sink again. I draw off the oil with a filed down needle point and then spend another 30 mitues of vibrating until the next batch rises. As I proceed, the droplets become smaller and smaller until they are barely visible. The complete extraction takes 5 to 6 hours. For anyone who freebases mdpv, by the way — the oil is dangerous beyond belief. When I first started doing this I accidently got a few drops on my fingers while handling a used flask and didn’t sleep for 4 days. I had visual and auditory hallucinations and the worst paranoia of my life. It’s all the bad aspects of white mdpv times a hundred. If you think the comedown from the white mdpv is bad, rub this oil into your skin. You’ll be begging for a hundred milligram dose of the white in exchange. Use rubber gloves. Anyway — can someone tell me how I can mechanically separate the oil from the precipitate in less than 5 hours? I definitaely don’t want to use a reagent. I’m not a chemist or any kind of scientist by the way, just someone who refused to accept the “new mdpv”. pg. 11 I suppose it’s time I should introduce myself. My name is John, and my main focus is the effect of medicinal tropical plants on bacteria, and vice versa. I don’t need to tell you my exact location, because it doesn’t really matter. “Imagine there’s no country”, as another John once said. I do research on the chemical signaling molecules that all bacteria use to upregulate gene expressions. This means — the signals that bacteria exchange to determine when to go pathogenic, when to form biofilms, when to produce protease, when to produce bioluminescence, etc. To do any decent research in this field, I had to be near tropical plants. Jungles have tropical plants. So I moved to this place: until supplies could arrive, after which I built the lab: And stocked it with stuff that I would need in order to do research: Then, I went about the task of bringing some small civilization into the heart of darkness: With these creature comforts I have been able to dedicate myself to a brand new field of study (not even named yet), that uses the control of bacterial gene regulation to create some fairly astonishing stuff. You may have read recently about using bacteria to create thymidylate – a critical component of genetic engineering (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090416161133.htm). You are already familiar with oldest mind altering drug that would simply not exist except for the presence of microbes – alcohol. You can probably count at lest two dozen other bacterial or microbial created drugs (hint: penicillin, nearly all antibiotics, etc.), from your own memory without assist. What’s new is the science of Quorum Sensing which allows us to discover what chemicals excite or inhibit the expression of millions of creative genes in bacteria, and to use those chemicals to control gene expression. Bacteria do astonishing things to change the composition of plants, animals, and…. organic and inorganic chemicals. I am positive, without any shadow of a doubt, that Ulitimate Sextacy, as a prime example, could not have been created (from mdpv) without bacterial assistance. There zero probability that “Tan” could ever be produced without bacterial assistance. IMHO. I believe that whatever chemical was created in the making of Ultimate Sextacy, was the very first bacterial psychoactive drug created (it predates the 2006 Tan by 2 years, if you go to the trouble to trace it all back). Tan was the second. I am not aware of any others. Those of you who are trying out Ultimate Sextacy as we speak, will attest to the brand new universe of libido enhancement that it creates. Those of you going to the tyrouble to create the Tan, will be able to attest to the second chemicals powers. We are in a new age folks. Good to meet you all.
War Witch, his latest feature was entirely shot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in July 2011. Presented in Official Competition at Berlin International Film Festival War Witch received the Silver Bear for Best Actress (Rachel Mwanza) and a special mention from the Ecumenical Jury.
Komona, a 14 year old girl, tells her unborn child the story of how she became a rebel. It all began when she was 12; kidnapped by the rebel army, she was forced to carry a AK 47 and kill. Her only escape and friend is magician, a 15 year old boy who wants to marry her. Despite the horrors and daily grind of war, Komona and Magician fall in love. They thought they had escaped the war, but fate decided otherwise. In order to survive, Komona will need to return to where she came from and make amends with her past. Around them, war rages on… A tale set in Sub-Saharan Africa, WAR WITCH is a love story between two young souls caught in a violent world yet filled with beauty and magic. Somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, in a small isolated village, Komona, a twelveyear-old girl, lived peacefully with her parents until the day the rebels came. They pillaged the village, captured Komona and forced her to commit an irreparable act: slay her parents. In the rebels’ camp, the training is merciless: Komona is hungry, scared, and the Rebel Leader, who has no pity for her tears, repeatedly beats her if she cries. She quickly learns to endure, to fight and above all, to survive. During a battle waged against the government’s army, only Komona is spared. The rebels chief sees this as a sign and declares she is the new sorceress. She is soon brought to Great Tiger, the supreme leader of all the rebels, who makes her his war witch. Only one person is willing to help and listen to her, a 15 year-old-boy named Magician. With the passing months, Magician and Komona fall in love. They experience an all too brief moment of what happiness can be. The war catches up with them. Time passes… Komona is now 14 and pregnant. She wishes to forget the past, but her parents’ ghosts keep reappearing. She soon realizes that if she doesn’t want her parents’ ghosts to haunt her baby, she must undertake the long journey that will lead her back to her birthplace. WAR WITCH is a life lesson, a story of human resilience. Director’s notes It has been now 10 years since I started writing this film, just about the same time that I started writing my first feature film. It was on a peaceful morning when, as is my habit, I was skimming through news headlines, getting ready to write. And then, almost accidentally, I saw on my screen, in the list of search engine results, the name “Johnny and Luther Htoo,â€ ten-year-old or so twins who had become sacred figures for rebel groups, whom they guided spiritually and strategically. They were chain smokers, and legends said they had 250,000 invisible soldiers at their command. That was how I started my research on child soldiers and their imaginary world. After several years, a screenplay was born; one that would attempt to pay homage to the real African heroes – men, women and children whose human resilience will always be able to overcome the tragedies of war. And in order to do so, the film had to be shot in one of the most paradoxical places on earth: Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once in the DRC, we entered into a parallel world, a universe that is at the very boundary between real and surreal, in constant mutation, filled with extremely powerful paradoxes. Even if our story isn’t specifically located in the Congo, the parallels between this country and War Witch are omnipresent. The decision to film in this country was also imposed by Rachel, a girl from the streets whom we discovered, and who has a raw natural talent as an actress. It was an exceptional encounter. I wanted this film to break away from my former films, and to shoot scenes as if there had never been a before; nor was there to be an after. As though only the present moment was real. My actors were not allowed to read the screenplay before the shoot, and we shot the film in sequence. In this way, the actors never knew what was going to happen to their characters the next day… “So Kim, what scene are we shooting next?â€ “Roll the camera, something’s happening…â€
Ayana V. Jackson (born May 14, 1977) is a US American photographer and filmmaker. Born in Livingston, New Jersey, she received her B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College in 1999. In 2005 at the invitation of professor Khatarina Sieverding, she studied critical theory and large format printing at the University of Arts Berlin. She is best known for her focus on Contemporary Africa and the African Diaspora, most notably the series African by Legacy, Mexican by Birth.
Ayana V. Jackson (born May 14, 1977) is a US American photographer and filmmaker. Born in Livingston, New Jersey, she received her B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College in 1999. In 2005 at the invitation of professor Khatarina Sieverding, she studied critical theory and large format printing at the University of Arts Berlin. She is best known for her focus on Contemporary Africa and the African Diaspora, most notably the series African by Legacy, Mexican by Birth. Ayana Vellissia Jackson was born in Livingston, New Jersey and raised in East Orange where her family has long held residence. Her grandmother Angenetta Still Jackson, is descendant of Leah Arthur Jones a member of the founding family of New Jersey’s first Black Settlement, Lawnside, New Jersey. Her grandfather J. Garfield Jackson was Essex County’s first African American principle. The city of East Orange later named Jackson Academy elementary school after him. Following her Grandfather’s interest in Africa, she first began traveling to Ghana in 2001, where she visited her families compound in North Odorkor. During this trip she began her photography career with the series Full Circle: A Survey of Hip Hop in Ghana. Ayana V. Jackson initially studied photography during her undergraduate years at Spelman College. She later fortified her training while at the University of Art Berlin, and subsequently during a course of photography residencies including the Bakery Photographic Collective and Cité Internationale des Arts Paris,France. Her photographic series Full Circle: A Survey of Hip Hop in Ghana, Viajes Personales, and African by Legacy Mexican by Birth have been exhibited widely in association with Gallery MOMO (Johannesburg, RSA), Rush Arts Gallery(USA), A Gathering of the Tribes (USA), Galerie Peter Herrmann (Germany), San Francisco Mexican Museum (USA) the Franklyn H. Williams CCC/African Diaspora Institute (USA) and CulturesFrance (FR), the US State Department and the World Bank. She has received grants from the Inter America Foundation and Puma Creative, the latter supporting her participation in the 2009 Bamako African Photography Biennial (Rencontres africaines de la photographie). Public art exhibitions include Round 32 of Project Rowhouses (USA) in Houston’s 3rd ward. Her photography can be found in publications including the exhibition catalogue for her series African by Legacy, Mexican by Birth, “Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society” (Columbia University), and Camera Austria. She has lectured and conducted workshops at university and arts institutions in the US, Colombia. Mexico, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
Posthumously, though, demand for his work is growing, and many of his older books are being reissued. Now, one of the most beautiful and sought after is being reprinted in hardcover for the first time since it was produced in small quantities in 1978.
Posthumously, though, demand for his work is growing, and many of his older books are being reissued. Now, one of the most beautiful and sought after is being reprinted in hardcover for the first time since it was produced in small quantities in 1978. The Eyes of the Cat was Giraud’s first collaboration with the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who would become a close friend and co-author. The portfolio-sized, 56-plate book was actually never meant for widespread distribution. Rather, it was printed in a tiny quantity, as a bonus gift for friends and clients of French comic publishers Les Humanoïdes Associés–a kind of internal thank you note. “The supply was depleted long before the demand for the sought-after book had been satisfied,â€ explains Stephen Bisset in the anthology Taboo. “Its nearly legendary status was assured by its scarcity.â€ via: fastco
Statuesque is the word for Naomi Campbell, an icon of our time who, it seems, can inflame opinion in any observer. Statuesque is also the word for Naomi - Nick Knight's 25-foot interactive sculpture that formed the centrepiece of the exhibition SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution at London's Somerset House.
[See post to watch Flash video] Statuesque is the word for Naomi Campbell, an icon of our time who, it seems, can inflame opinion in any observer. Statuesque is also the word for Naomi – Nick Knight’s 25-foot interactive sculpture that formed the centrepiece of the exhibition SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution at London’s Somerset House. Inviting viewers to utilize Naomi’s body as a conduit for global communication, exhibition goers and online viewers alike were able to ‘graffiti’ across her with projected light, while microphones placed in and around her body picked up visitors’ audio responses and broadcast them worldwide. This project documents both the final installation – showcasing a ten-minute extract of over three hours of footage captured over the three-month exhibition run, alongside a tour narrated by Nick Knight of the exhibit itself – and also the all-important process behind scanning Naomi in three-dimensions and recreating this Supermodel, super-sized.
1945 Film
A series of human installations on imperialism in Africa & racism
Deutsch-Südwestafrika Installation by Brett Bailey Third World Bunfight presents The Exhibit Series Throughout 2012 and 2014 Site specific Exhibits A, B & C A series of human installations on imperialism in Africa and racism These three deeply moving Exhibits – researched and created by South African artist, Brett Bailey – gaze into the hidden Curiosity Cabinets of European racism. They focus on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Europe’s powers scrambled for African colonies, and her scientists formulated the pseudo-scientific racial theories that continue to warp perceptions with horrific consequences. Drawing on the ‘human zoos’ and ethnographic displays so popular during this period, each of these site-specific Exhibits places Africans and African asylum seekers in display cases, unpacking the histories, and turning the gaze back on Europeans. EXHIBIT A: Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Vienna Festival and Teaterformen Festival, 2010; Oslo, 2011) draws together several threads concerning European racism towards Africans from the mid 19th century to the present. It opens the wounds of ethnographic exhibitions, social Darwinism, and the increasingly xenophobic policies of the EU. Made for festivals in Austria and Germany, it focuses on the imperial moment in German South West Africa (Namibia), and the atrocities committed by German colonial forces. EXHIBIT B: paradis perdu (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, 2012), made for Belgium and France (for presentation in 2012/13), widens the lens to take in both the Belgian Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo (‘Congo Brazzaville’). Much the same brutal scenario of exploitation of resources (ivory, rubber and timber) and people occurred in both these neighbouring Congo territories during the imperial period that followed the Scramble for Africa. EXHIBIT C: (2014) will include territories colonised by the British Empire and Portugal, and look at the policies towards immigrants in these countries. See www.thirdworldbunfight.co.za for photographs and further details. “The piece is a mixture of shock therapy and musical and visual aesthetic” neue-brauschweiger.de “This is necessary because Europe has a lot to learn” Der Standard – Austria “Exhibit A: Deutsch-sudwestafrika leads not only the fate of the indigenous population during the colonial period before your eyes, but also draws the eye to how people are perceived in Africa today” Wiener Zeitung – Austria A Place in the Sun The human zoo of the imperial time in Europe, which contributed to the racial fictions for construction to legitimize the colonial policy, the genocide overpopulate to the Herero and the Nama in Namibia under German colonial domination and the increased racism and use of a ‘politics of the strong hand “against immigrants in Europe.” via — die-junge-buehne.de/blog/2010/05/23/exhibit-a-aus-besuchersicht/
In 2008 Rizzoli (New York) published the official archive book “A BATHING APE®â€. If that book, which shows all of the signature piece, is the “A Sideâ€; this “BAPEÂ®ARCHIVES by NIGO®â€, whose contents have been selected by me from my perspective as both a maker and a collector, is the “B Sideâ€ – a personal, underground archive. (Taken from NIGO’s FOREWORD) 発売日 Release date ï¼š 2012.4.1（SUN） è²©å£²ä¾¡æ ¼ Sales Price ï¼š 2,940円（Including tax） 出版社 Publisher ï¼š honeyee.com 言語 Language : æ—¥æœ¬èªžã€è‹±èªžã€ä¸­å›½èªžï¼ˆç¹ä½“èªžï¼‰ã€€Japanese, English, Traditional Chinese å†™çœŸã€è‘—æ›¸ Writing & Photo ï¼š NIGO® アートディレクター Art Director ï¼š 伊藤弘 Hiroshi Ito（groovisions） http://www.groovisions.com/ 監修 Editorial Supervisor ï¼š 鈴木哲也 Tetsuya Suzuki（honeyee.com） http://www.honeyee.com/ 編集 Chief Editor ï¼š 榎本一生 Issei Sakamoto（Shoes Master） http://www.shoesmaster.jp/ 販路 Distribution ï¼š â– 国内店舗 ï¼š BAPE STORE®ã€ä¸€èˆ¬æ›¸åº— â– web shopping ï¼š BAPE.COMã€amazonã€ZOZO â– 海外店舗 Stores overseas ï¼š BAPE STORE® and more
• Limited Edition, Numbered Notebook Personalized by Nas with exclusive photos and selected art • Exclusive Life Is Good T-Shirt • Nas – Life Is Good Deluxe CD (18 Tracks) • All notebooks included in the box will be signed by Nas!
Barbados-based photographer Mark King recently spent two weeks in June as an artist-in-residence at the Alice Yard space, Woodbrook, Port-of-Spain Trinidad. “I came to Trinidad with the birth of an idea,â€ says King. The residency opportunity was King’s first visit to the island. His photographic project would be based on his outsider knowledge of the place. According to King: “For many years people have told me how exotic and beautiful Trini women are. It often dominated the conversation when men discussed the island. This was hard to ignore and led me to embrace the subject and do a project exploring this perception of Trini women. Then I was going through some things I had and found a book on the birds of Trinidad and Tobago by Richard ffrench and thought I would relate the birds to Trini women. There are a variety of women in Trinidad and that has to do with hybridisation and creolisation. Trinidad is a very multi-layered place.â€ A surface reading of the connection King makes between women and birds may yield a feeling of offense and a hasty condemnation of his work but King’s project lends a powerful, nuanced appreciation of the socio-cultural constructions of gender and the dynamics of the interface between men and women. Bird watching or birding has long been a male-dominated practice of observing feathered creatures in their various habitats for aesthetic value. Bound up in the aesthetic principle underlying acts of watching is an inclination toward classifying and sorting birds. Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen calls this a process of “systemizing.â€ Bird watching is not however, restricted to the birds in a literal sense. Bird watching as a metaphor has, for some time, seeped into interactions between men and women. The word “birdâ€ is a colloquial term used among men in places like the UK and Trinidad to refer to women. The “bird watchingâ€ practice in this sense also involves a systemising process in which women are ranked and categorised. Trini women usually fall into a dominant mental category. The Trinidad habitat is known in popular opinion for its women classed as having beautiful physical attributes. In his article entitled “Female Facts,â€ author Kevin Baldeosingh speaks of Trinidad’s “high proportion of nice women.â€ Yet, Baldeosingh – himself a Trinidadian – does his own further classification. “I don’t like Trini women just because of their physical attributes: I also like them because a lot of our women are what I call ‘femaleists’ – i.e. independent in spirit but not edgy about it and, unlike a certain brand of feminist, preserving a genuine affection for men (undeserving though we might be),â€ says Baldeosingh, who insists that serious investigations into Trini women can provide “fundamental insightsâ€ to the workings of Trinidadian society. Baldeosingh maintains that research into and scrutiny of Trini women is his “obligation as a writer.â€ For photographer Mark King, his stay in Trinidad allowed him to do his own watching and study of Trini women, aided by his camera. King arrived in Trinidad and immediately began to acquaint himself with the place and the people. “Feeling out a place informs my work. I do people-based work influenced by my surroundings,â€ notes King. He became acutely aware of Trini women from what he describes as different groups (although these groups could overlap): “natural beauty,â€ “office/corporate women,â€ “party/club women,â€ “athletic/fitness womenâ€ and “Amazonian women.â€ A visit to Trinidad’s National Museum also informed and developed his idea. Seeing taxidermied birds in glass boxes with accompanying details of their scientific classifications was a catalyst for King’s consideration of glass settings or “windows functioning like nests where the female is prominent,â€ King explains. The use of a glass environment for female subjects would be appropriate for describing the personal, micro context of King as an outsider looking in. It could also serve as a comment about a macro socio-cultural milieu of “bird watching,â€ in other words, as a reflection on a broader context in which men watch and systemise women as specimen. “A diorama would make sense,â€ says King, who quickly got to work, building sets within Alice Yard’s glass-enclosed exhibition space. Desks, flowers, sand and beach umbrellas are among the elements used to create such habitats as office settings and beach locations. “The beach scene in particular,â€ notes King, “is fitting to the fantasyâ€ of the tropical, Trini woman. King then staged and photographed women in these various settings. Among his photographs are images of Trini women in “the nudeâ€ – to use King’s words here. King’s choice of the word “nudeâ€ instead of “nakedâ€ is noteworthy. “Nudeâ€ is a highly political term, in other words, one caught up in tensions of power. Nude is a convention derived from traditions within art history. English art critic and author, John Berger understands the term “nudeâ€ as a category or classification that can be distinguished from the term “naked.â€ According to Berger: “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become nude. Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguise. To be on display is to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of one’s own body, turned into a disguise…. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.â€ King’s work can be seen as offering a display of women in the “dressâ€ of nudity, yet by portraying the women in a standing position as opposed to a supine one, he straddles the line between objectification and a presentation of these women as erect agents of their own image, where they are active subjects of their bold nakedness. His nude images are also reminiscent of a Gauguin-esque portrayal of tropical women. French artist Paul Gauguin’s depictions of Tahitian women have received much scholarly attention, including feminist enquiry. Feminist analysis has furnished the argument that Gauguin’s art has played an instrumental role in the establishment of a trope in which tropical women are always seen as exotic. However, reading King’s work in relation to Gauguin allows us to not only see King’s nudes as inscribed with the category of exoticism but to also consider his renderings of bodies coded with what Jane Duran argues is a sacred sensuality – a “transcendental sacredness,â€ where the body moves beyond the limits of a physical classification; beyond the simplistic and reductive confines of an object. King’s project is very much about a taxonomy of women. He does not subvert the male gaze but rather, he amplifies and reinforces it in such a way that calls it into sharp scrutiny. His use of photography for this project not only recalls the key place visual devices like cameras, binoculars and telescopes have held in traditional bird watching practice but it also opens up space for a critical conversation about a socio-cultural optics, that is, about the kinds of lenses through which we see, give focus to and interpret women. His is vital work, which has the potential to inform relationships between men and woman and shed further light on issues of visuality, identity formation and the construction of people as emblems of place. While his residency at Alice Yard has come to an end (an experience which he describes as an incredible one), he is hopeful that he can return to Trinidad to do further photographic explorations of Trini women. He aims to continue creative movements away from what he describes as “the literal.â€ It would be fascinating to see this work in progress, develop to the extent that it engages at a level of complexity that considers how women watch and construct themselves. Again, we may turn to the work of John Berger as a useful resource for thinking along this line. In the book Ways of Seeing, Berger observes: “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.â€ To follow Mark King’s work visit: www.markkingismarkings.com via — link
RICK RUBIN is perhaps the most important record producer of the past 25 years. His stamp on contemporary music is immeasurable. While still a student at NYU, Rubin borrowed $5,000 from his parents to start the Def Jam label with Russell Simmons. Soon he was working with the cream of the music world — Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, Slayer, Danzig, U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Dixie Chicks, to name a few — transcending musical genres like no other producer before him. Rubin has meditated for most of his life and, with an unusual regime of exercise, has recently lost 130 pounds. Rubin’s stellar career is now the stuff of legend, but we wanted to know more about the man behind the myth.
RICK RUBIN is perhaps the most important record producer of the past 25 years. His stamp on contemporary music is immeasurable. While still a student at NYU, Rubin borrowed $5,000 from his parents to start the Def Jam label with Russell Simmons. Soon he was working with the cream of the music world — Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, Slayer, Danzig, U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Dixie Chicks, to name a few — transcending musical genres like no other producer before him. Rubin has meditated for most of his life and, with an unusual regime of exercise, has recently lost 130 pounds. Rubin’s stellar career is now the stuff of legend, but we wanted to know more about the man behind the myth. interview and photographs by ANNABEL MEHRAN ANNABEL MEHRAN — Where did you grow up? What kind of music were you exposed to? RICK RUBIN — I grew up in Long Beach, Long Island, New York. There was always lots of music playing in the house. My dad is really into jazz, especially Latin jazz. And the pop music of the day was always playing — a lot of The Beatles — on the radio, or in the car. I heard a lot of music from an early age, and I always pursued it, first by buying singles and then albums. ANNABEL MEHRAN — What was the first concert you went to? RICK RUBIN — An Aerosmith / Ted Nugent stadium show. ANNABEL MEHRAN – What was the first record you ever bought? RICK RUBIN — I bought singles by The Monkees, Hermans Hermits, and the like when I was a little kid. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Out of you and all of your friends, were you the one who was the most musical? RICK RUBIN – I was the one most into music. I mean, there was a time when I was really young that I just loved music. Then I went through a period of not really listening to it. Then I started up again in junior high school. During the no-music period I listened to comedy records. I was obsessed with comedy records and I collected them — Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Monty Python, Cheech and Chong. I would kind of memorize them. I can’t remember if I laughed out loud, but it was entertaining. I also liked Abbott and Costello’s old TV show. It was old vaudeville. They were more concerned with the jokes than with a plot so it could be really psychedelic. I liked the abstractness of it. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you think that some comedians have a kind of musical rhythm? RICK RUBIN – Absolutely. Comedians play off of that. Chris Rock talks about that a lot, how music and comedy are related. George Carlin talked about it, too — he would write a joke like a song. The phrasing, rhythm, and choice of words were all really important, as if it was a kind of music. A comedian can get into a rhythm telling jokes and you’ll almost be laughing at just the rhythm of it. They can make anything sound funny if they tap into a pattern that makes it sound like it’s a joke. — Certain guys have told me that they got into music — or into the arts in general — just to meet girls. — That wasn’t the case for me. Music took me away. It took me to another place. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Where would you listen to music when you were growing up — alone in your room with headphones? RICK RUBIN – All the time. But out loud. ANNABEL MEHRAN – When you’re working on a record now, at the end of the day’s sessions will you listen to it alone, just for your own pleasure? RICK RUBIN – No, I don’t listen to the music I’m working on for pleasure. But I do listen to other music for pleasure, all the time. Then I go to work and I listen to music with my critical hat on. It’s different, but I still enjoy it — when it’s good. There’s the analysis mode, and then there’s the enjoyment mode. ANNABEL MEHRAN – You’ve never taken drugs. But weren’t you ever at least interested in them, even when you were young? RICK RUBIN – No. It seemed like when most of the kids I knew started taking drugs — and pretty much everyone I knew took drugs — it was out of boredom. They’d finish school and have nothing to do, so they’d get high. But I always had other stuff I was really interested in doing. First it was magic and eventually it was music. I’d come home and listen to music and play the guitar. I was never bored. A part of it had to do with my being an only child. I learned how to entertain myself. I think another part of it is that I learned to meditate when I was about 14, and that became a big part of my life. Also, my parents didn’t drink and they didn’t like having alcohol in the house. If they went to a wedding or something, they might have a drink. So I didn’t grow up in a culture of drinking and I think that played a role in my not drinking. ANNABEL MEHRAN – One of the reasons kids start drinking is that it loosens them up, helps them lose their awkwardness. Did you just not feel awkward? RICK RUBIN – No, I felt awkward, but I didn’t think drinking would change that. I felt weird — that I didn’t belong, regardless of what I did. I didn’t feel a part of anything. I was completely by myself. Plus, I was the only person in my high school who liked punk rock. I was, like, the lone punk rocker. I felt like I didn’t fit in at all. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Did you go to shows? RICK RUBIN – Yeah. I loved the shows. I might’ve felt like I belonged with the musicians. That was where I always felt like I fit in. And I took pictures at shows. I had a darkroom. So I always had a creative outlet. ANNABEL MEHRAN – How did you deal with your friends taking drugs? RICK RUBIN – That didn’t happen until later. But I’ve always felt that people should do what they want to do. I don’t think there’s only one right way. Everyone has their own way of coping and dealing with the world. I understand that the reason so many artists do drugs is that they’re sensitive. I understand the need for self-medication. But I’ve done it more with meditation and therapy. Meditation is a way of seeking. I’m into analyzing why things are the way they are. I’ve also done a lot of therapy. If something is painful, if you’re sensitive or uncomfortable, if you feel like you’re different, your choices are to examine this and figure it out, or to numb yourself and ignore it. Most people tend to numb themselves and ignore their problems to avoid how they feel. Most people don’t seek therapeutic help, and just look for ways to kill the pain. We live in a kill-the-pain society. TV kills the pain. Doctors prescribe drugs to kill the pain. Somehow I got into tuning into how I feel and trying to understand it. At one point I was doing Freudian psychoanalysis four days a week. After a year or so I became so depressed that it was crippling. So I pulled back and switched modalities. ANNABEL MEHRAN – I’ve seen the way you interact with people. It’s like you’re hyper-aware of how they’re feeling. When you’re with people who are on drugs, or who are just upset, are you able to control your compulsion to help them out? RICK RUBIN – It’s an internal struggle, because a part of me wants to help, but there’s also a part of me that knows that ultimately everybody has to do their own thing. I really respect people’s boundaries. If it’s clear that someone needs help but they don’t want it, then I’m not going to push it on them, because I wouldn’t want that done to me. Like, my appendix burst ten years ago, but I wouldn’t go to the hospital. I didn’t want to have surgery. ANNABEL MEHRAN – You wouldn’t have surgery? RICK RUBIN – Certain people will try to convince me to do something, something that might even be in my best interest, but I won’t want to do it. I don’t want anyone putting their values on me, even if they’re right. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Even if it’s a matter of life and death? RICK RUBIN – It’s my choice. I want to have the information, then I make the choice. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Did you know that your appendix had burst? RICK RUBIN – No, not at the time. When I found out, they wanted me to have the surgery, but I chose not to. I understood the risks, but I believed I wasn’t going to die, and I didn’t. But I got really sick. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Would you do the same thing today? RICK RUBIN – Absolutely. I handled it perfectly. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Explain to me in simple terms what it means to be a producer. RICK RUBIN – Well, different people do it differently. So I can only discuss it in general terms. It’s the equivalent of being a movie director. You’re responsible for the material. Now, you don’t write the material, but you’re responsible for what’s chosen to be presented. You cast the people involved and then you try and get the best performances from those people. You have the unifying vision of the project and you know how it’ll work. Now, in some cases, the artist is very strong and so the role will be different from what it is with, say, a newer artist. It’s different with every artist. I mean, some artists don’t write their own songs, and so the producer’s job is also to the find the songs. Some artists do write the songs, but if they’re not good enough then the producer’s job is to tell them they’re not good enough and to help them do whatever it takes for them to be good enough. So, the first step is getting the material. Once the material exists, it’s about how it’s going to be recorded, and about getting the best performances from the musicians. Then it’s about presenting it all up, with a nice bow tied around it. Producers come from different backgrounds and their backgrounds usually determine the kind of producers they are. For example, some producers are also engineers, which is in itself a very different job from that of a producer — it’s a technical job, working with equipment. But it’s not uncommon for an engineer to graduate to becoming a producer. I was never an engineer. Sometimes a guitar player or a drummer or a singer will become a producer — they’ll come at it from an artist’s perspective. Sometimes a writer will do it from a writer’s perspective. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Early in your career you worked with the Beastie Boys and other groups who employed a lot of sampling and computer-generated music. You went on to make records with people like Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, people who recorded using real instruments. Did this involve taking a totally different approach in the studio? Do you have to change tacks working with different types of musicians? RICK RUBIN – The early hip-hop albums I made were done before samplers or computers were used for recording music. Due to the technological limitations we faced, these earlier records were more handmade than most of the ones made today, but it gave them a more human feel. The music might speed up, slow down, be out of time, or be out of tune. These imperfections have a certain effect on the listeners — they can tell that the music is being played by humans, instead of computer-generated. For this reason, we also tend to avoid the click tracks and grids used by so many other recording artists today. I’ve had the chance to work with such disparate artists that now each project is a learning — or relearning — experience, as I try and see what best suits each artist. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Being a producer who wasn’t first an engineer, do you ever find it difficult to talk to engineers about technical issues? RICK RUBIN – The engineers and I don’t discuss technical issues. I explain how something makes me feel — and how I want it to make me feel. Sometimes I’ll refer to specific instruments, but never in a technical way. The same thing is true for musicians — I might say, “In this spot, is there a lower note you can play?â€ or “Can we do something with more movement in the bridge?â€ But it’s never, like, “Let’s try a C sharp.â€ ANNABEL MEHRAN – Jay-Z spoke about how you stripped his material down to the basics, to get to the heart of the music. You did this with Johnny Cash as well, emphasizing the quality of the songs and the musicians’ performances. Does this searching for the essence of a song reflect a musical philosophy of yours? RICK RUBIN – It’s funny — the first album I produced was LL Cool J’s first album and the credit I took on the album was “Reduced by Rick Rubin.â€ I guess the aim has always been to get down to the cleanest, most elegant form of the music. It’s like building an architecturally strong foundation for a building. After we have that we sometimes add a little decoration, but when the essential form is as beautiful as it can be oftentimes nothing more is needed. ANNABEL MEHRAN – What’s the most difficult thing you have to deal with in the studio? Is it issues with the musicians — like maybe their sense of timing and tempo, or their confidence levels? Or is it more technical issues, now that the technology of recording is so complex? RICK RUBIN – Overcoming bad work habits artists have developed over the years is probably the most difficult aspect of it. It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of homework to write great songs. It takes great discipline and few artists have the natural inclination to do the kind of solitary work that’s necessary. Communication between the band members is another problem area. Often the relationships between the members are unhealthy and the issues that stem from this limit productive collaboration. ANNABEL MEHRAN – You were in a band in high school, right? RICK RUBIN – Yes, but not anything really worthy, even as just a prerequisite to being a producer. I’m a real fan of music. So I produce from that perspective — of what moves me about an artist, of how I want to feel listening to that artist. So I’ll ask myself if what we’re creating hits the sweet spot strongly, or not. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Did you ever want to work in just one genre, or was it always mixed up? RICK RUBIN – Most people do tend to work in a specific genre. I first produced my punk rock band, and after that I produced rap records. Then I moved from rap to heavy metal. Then I did comedy and then blues. I’ve never listened to music in a genre-specific way, except maybe when I was into punk and didn’t listen to much of anything else. And maybe again in the early days of hip-hop when I didn’t listen to much else. But those periods were focused — they were about those special moments. I always listened to Black Sabbath and some other things, though. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Is it the same when you produce a comedy record? Do you try and bring out the best in the comedian? RICK RUBIN – Yeah. It’s about talking to the artist in advance. Helping to edit the material. I love comedy. It’s one of my real interests. But I’ve always listened to music eclectically. Because of that, I approach it in such a way that I can easily work with Jay-Z or the Dixie Chicks or Neil Diamond or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The fact that their styles are so different doesn’t matter. I like their music, I understand who they are and what they do, and I work with them from that perspective. Another important thing for me is trying to make records that sound like the artists. Some producers have their own sound, and all the records they produce sound like their records. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Like Phil Spector? RICK RUBIN – Phil Spector is one example, but there are also people like Timbaland, who makes Timbaland records, and Dr. Dre, who makes Dr. Dre records. They’re cool, but I never wanted the records I do to sound like my records. I want a thread running through the records that’s about the artists, not about me. I think my recordings are honest, almost documentary-like, explorations of who the artists are. With other records they may not necessarily project exactly who they really are, but rather play up to the highest level of the mythology of who they are — which can be interesting, too. But I want their true selves, which may be different from how we’ve come to know them, and may even be different from their own view of themselves. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you ever think about what the public wants? RICK RUBIN – No, I never think about that. Sometimes when we’re in the studio working on something and it sounds really great, I might think, “Wow, people are really going to love this.â€ But that’s the only time I ever think anything like that. It’s just that I’m excited that people are going to get to hear something great, and I know they’re going to like it. ANNABEL MEHRAN – When you’re working on a song, do you ever think, “This is it! This is a number one song!â€? RICK RUBIN – No, I never think like that. I don’t even know what a number one song sounds like. I don’t listen to the radio and I don’t look at charts. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Never? What about the first time you had a number one record? Weren’t you psyched? RICK RUBIN – I can’t remember. I don’t even know if I’ve had one. I can remember the first time I had the number one album in the country. [“License To Ill,â€ by the Beastie Boys, the first rap album to reach number one. — Ed.] I remember that because of a conversation I had when I’d just graduated from NYU, or maybe it was when I was still going to NYU. I got a call from my music business attorney and he said, “You have the number one album in the country. How does it feel?â€ And I said, “I’ve never been more miserable in my life!â€ Because it’s never really been about that. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Have you ever not been successful? RICK RUBIN – I have had a remarkable run. It’s been pretty amazing. I have gone through patches where I’m colder. It’s a normal sort of cycle. But it’s unusual to have worked for so long and have had so many great — unbelievable — successes. It’s hard to believe. The only thing I can attribute it all to is my not trying to be successful, but only trying to make good music. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make the music as great as can be. I’m not at all lazy and I won’t settle for just anything. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist — I can be miserable if I know things could be better. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Will a project ever take a different direction depending on the way you’re feeling personally? RICK RUBIN – Well, if it does, it’s definitely not on purpose. I think I’m pretty consistent work-wise. I’ll hear a song and write a set of notes about it and then not think about it — two years later I’ll hear the same song and write a new set of notes about it and they’ll be the same as the first set. It’s like math. It tends to be purely analytical. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do people choose you as their producer or do you choose them? RICK RUBIN – Both. I mean, usually an artist has to choose me first, unless it’s a new artist, in which case it’s different. But with established artists, usually they approach me. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you ever say no to people who want to work with you? RICK RUBIN – Sure. I mean, sometimes it doesn’t work out schedule-wise. There are a lot of reasons why things don’t work out. ANNABEL MEHRAN – When was the last time you apologized to someone? RICK RUBIN – I apologize all the time. The first thing that comes to mind is a comment I made to David Crosby, in the context of our producer-artist relationship, which upset him. That was the last thing I wanted to do, so I apologized, first in person and later in a letter. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you have any regrets about certain records you’ve made? RICK RUBIN – Not really, not about anything. Even when decisions I’ve made have negatively impacted my life — like bad financial decisions or something — I don’t look back on them with regret. I feel like things happen perfectly to get you where you are and to make you who you are. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you work all the time? RICK RUBIN – Yes, but I don’t necessarily like to. It’s weird — work takes on a life of its own. Plus, I want things to be great, and it takes a while for them to be great. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you always lie down when you listen to music? RICK RUBIN – I try to, but sometimes it’s pretty much impossible. images via purple diary ANNABEL MEHRAN – Didn’t you sometimes feel lonely? RICK RUBIN – Yeah, still do. ANNABEL MEHRAN – You’re clearly a deeply spiritual person. How would you describe your beliefs? RICK RUBIN – I’m a seeker and a believer. I’ll believe in most anything until I’m convinced otherwise. I believe in God and any of the paths leading in that direction. ANNABEL MEHRAN – How did you find out about meditation? RICK RUBIN – I was very lucky. My neck hurt and I went to my doctor, who was kind of hip, and he said it was stress-caused and that I needed to learn how to meditate. So I learned how to do Transcendental Meditation. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Let’s talk about your coming out here to Los Angeles. RICK RUBIN – I came here to work on the soundtrack for the movie, Less Than Zero. I never officially moved to LA. I just came out to work. I would go look at houses in the Hollywood Hills on weekends. It was flat where I grew up so houses built into mountains were really interesting to see. Eventually I found one that seemed like it would be more fun than the hotel I was living in, so I bought it. It stayed empty for years — I didn’t bring my things out for at least five years. Even when I was working 12 hours a day, there was something about coming to LA from New York that made it feel like a vacation — even more so now that I live in Malibu. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Why did you decide to get into shape? RICK RUBIN – It’s because of my friend Mo Ostin, who’s also sort of my mentor. He ran Warner Brothers records for 40 or 50 years. He’s really a sage. He signed Jimi Hendrix and the Sex Pistols and many other great artists. He worked with Frank Sinatra. Had an incredible life — has an incredible life. I went out to lunch with him one day and he said, “Rick, you’ve always really watched what you eat and you’re really diligent about food.â€ I was vegan for a long time. He said, “Now you really are starting to get big and I’m starting to worry about you. I’m going to give you the name of a nutritionist and I really want you to go see him.â€ He spoke his piece and I could’ve said “coolâ€ and then never followed up on his suggestion. But it resonated with me and I was prepared to do it. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Tell me about this crazy exercise regime of yours. RICK RUBIN – OK. I’d already lost about 90 pounds. Then I met Laird Hamilton, arguably the best athlete in the world, and a guy named Don Wildman. Don is in his 70s and is, like, a nine-time Iron Man champion. I was happy with my exercise regime of bicycling along the beach, and walking and swimming. I’d worked my way up from swimming only one lap to swimming a little over a mile. So I was happy with where I was, exercise-wise. Laird and Don were excited about all the weight I lost so quickly. They said I should start going to the gym with them. So I started hanging out with these guys, training with them three days a week, with weights, and then Laird — he’s so inspirational — developed underwater training. You bring dumbbells into a pool and you walk down into the deep end with them, holding your breath, and you do all these exercises underwater, like ten feet under. You try to use as little air as possible swimming down because you want to have enough air left to lift the weights. Lifting weights underwater is interesting because holding your breath and all of the sudden, a switch goes off in your head that says, “If I don’t breathe now, I’m going to die.â€ The first thing you do is freeze, because you’re like, “Oh, my god, I have to put the weights down and I don’t have enough time to put them down because I have to race to the top.â€ But you have to put the weights down and race to the top, and it’s terrifying, every time. You get your air and then you go back down and do it all again. ANNABEL MEHRAN – How do you feel afterwards? RICK RUBIN – You’re essentially weightless underwater, so while you’re doing it, it feels like the dumbbells don’t weigh anything. But then, an hour or two later, you suddenly feel like you’ve been hit by a bus. ANNABEL MEHRAN – Do you listen to music while you’re exercising? RICK RUBIN – No. I mean, I can listen to music in the gym. I put on classical music. But I don’t use the energy of music to drive me. I find it distracting. If I’m listening to music I want to close my eyes and listen actively. I can’t do that and exercise too. ANNABEL MEHRAN – You must have so much more energy now. Are you directing that energy towards even more exercise? RICK RUBIN – Pretty much. My whole life revolves around exercise now — and I love it. I feel like I’m going to be doing it from now on. ANNABEL MEHRAN – One last question. Do you think the fact that everyone feels good around you is one of the reasons you’re so good at what you do? RICK RUBIN – I’m sure there is a certain comfort factor. People feel at ease around me. I think one of the reasons that the music turns out good is that I can make people feel comfortable and they can be themselves. I try to set up an environment in which artists can be naked and vulnerable, but still feel safe enough to really express themselves. I would say that my ability to put people at ease does play an important role in it all.
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY is best known for directing the cult movies El Topo, 1972, and The Holy Mountain, 1973. But he’s also a prolific writer, artist, playwright, philosopher, as well as a healer and magician — adept at every artistic activity, from the most abstract to the most popular. His passionate investigation of the Tarot coincided with the therapeutic session he calls PSYCHOMAGIC. A man of culture, at the crux of South American and European traditions, art is for him a form of rebellion, medicine, and spirituality which transcends all barriers.
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY is best known for directing the cult movies El Topo, 1972, and The Holy Mountain, 1973. But he’s also a prolific writer, artist, playwright, philosopher, as well as a healer and magician — adept at every artistic activity, from the most abstract to the most popular. His passionate investigation of the Tarot coincided with the therapeutic session he calls PSYCHOMAGIC. A man of culture, at the crux of South American and European traditions, art is for him a form of rebellion, medicine, and spirituality which transcends all barriers. photographs and interview by OLIVIER ZAHM OLIVIER ZAHM — One thing that fascinates me about you is the world of symbols that cross your universe, your body of work. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — I was raised by a father who was a Communist and a Stalinist. He came to Chile from Russia when he was five. He wanted to be like Stalin. He dressed like Stalin. When I was four he said to me, “God doesn’t exist. You’re going to die, you’ll rot away, and that’s it.â€ He created a terrible neurosis in me, so I started life searching for truth. OLIVIER ZAHM — Through the denial of God? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, and the idea that there’s nothing else. I was in total despair and didn’t accept this truth. I sought another truth through experience. I felt that through words I wasn’t getting anywhere, because behind every word was another word, and another, to infinity. OLIVIER ZAHM — Was this some kind of spiritual research through words? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Philosophy is a search for truth, but it isn’t the Truth. I wanted things to affect me concretely. The meaning of words didn’t have an effect on me, only their vibration did. Their beauty, poetry, and splendor impressed me. Through words I could receive beauty, but not truth. I didn’t want to say that truth was beauty. I was searching for things that affected me directly: symbols. A symbol doesn’t communicate a precise thing. It acts like a mirror and in that mirror you see what you are bearing, what you are. If you are able to see symbols, you’ll see yourself, and you’ll be able to control your progress, because as time passes and you develop, symbols change with you and accompany you. OLIVIER ZAHM — Do you remember the first symbol or the first symbolic things you encountered? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, the Coca-Cola logo. I had a teacher, Oscar Ichazo, who was part of a movement called Arica. When I was in Mexico doing The Holy Mountain, we paid $17,000 for him to come for one night. I wanted him to enlighten me, to tell me the word, and he gave me LSD. He sat me in a meditation position in front of a luminous circle on a terrace. It was a spinning Coca-Cola logo. As it spun, it became a line, then a circle, and then the Coca-Cola logo, which I stared at for six hours. It was the Coca-Cola circle, a ring of light in the city, on top of a roof. And that’s when I had a flash of inspiration, a tremendous mental change. OLIVIER ZAHM — The drug accelerated it? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — It accelerated things I had never experienced but needed to know. To come to something, you have to know it. If you don’t know something, how can you look for it? From that moment on I saw that symbols enter into me. You don’t see them from the outside, like when you look at a fashion magazine. They penetrate into you like a key, opening inner dimensions, opening me up to things that are difficult to explain with words. Your being changes. OLIVIER ZAHM — And enters into another dimension of consciousness? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — It enters your dreams and changes them. I started having lucid dreams. One day I dreamt that I was leaving the planet. I was entering infinite space. I saw pyramids, a white one and a black one that overlapped to become one volume, a six-pointed star, but dimensional. I said to myself, “That’s divinity. I’m going inside.â€ I went inside and I exploded. When I woke up, I wrote El Incal, which I made with Moebius [the French comic strip artist, Jean Giraud]. It’s about the incorporation of symbols within yourself. El Incal talks about how the Incal enters into you and changes you. How an ordinary guy becomes the universe’s savior. OLIVIER ZAHM — Are you saying that you have led your life according to this interpretation and fascination with symbols? Do you think it’s a language that’s disappearing or that it’s not as powerful today? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — What the masses think doesn’t interest me, nor whether symbols are dying out or not. Esoteric teaching pays no attention to public thought. In working with symbols, I work with myself. My father told me I was an empty sarcophagus, that I would rot away, so I said to myself: “Being a prisoner of this body can be a wonder or a catastrophe. We all have incredible knowledge, but because there is death, there’s knowledge that we don’t have.â€ My life’s work has been discovering the knowledge within me. Where I perceive intuition, I develop it. You have to develop telepathy. You have to begin to develop what you are, but not from the point of view of an egomaniac or a narcissist. Words are transpersonal; they exist outside the artificial ego, which is put in our heads when we’re children. I write poems every day. Today I wrote, “Everything that is an owner, everything that has an owner, is not real.â€ I don’t want to be dependent on ideas or feelings or desires. OLIVIER ZAHM — Are symbols a way to know and to liberate yourself? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Of course. When you speak of liberation, you enter into Buddhism, which is the philosophy of the great liberation. But Buddhism’s great liberation isn’t enough for me. It means to become free and to reincarnate, to be liberated from this life of suffering. I think the greatest liberation is to accept that this life is joy and to enter into it, living it to the fullest possible extent. We will perhaps pass on to another life, but that’s not where the interest lies. The interest lies in living in a state of bliss here and now. PSYCHOMAGIC OLIVIER ZAHM — Does the symbolic world also involve magic thinking? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, that’s why I invented Psychomagic. Magic is in beliefs, in superstitions; it seeks to dominate the outside world with rituals and symbols. Psychomagic is the control of the internal world, of a world outside of all superstition, and of all self-deception. I am mortal, but how can I think that I’m powerful when there’s this enormous universe of eternity and infinity? What right do I have to talk about such power? My power is that of knowing myself. On the façades of Greek temples was written the phrase, “Know thyself.â€ One can’t know anything more than that. Reality is not what it was, it’s not what it will be, it’s not what you want it to be. It is what it is. There isn’t anything nonessential about it, just things as they are. When we enter into what things are, we are in magic. OLIVIER ZAHM — This symbolic world has been put aside. Symbols aren’t taught. We’re losing the sense of their importance. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — People want to have fun. So we give them entertainment, industrial cinema, television, internet. I address people who need to do work on themselves, and show them to what point I’ve come, to serve as an example of where they can go. Maybe they’re farther along than I am, perhaps not as far. In my films, I insert symbols for these people. OLIVIER ZAHM — Have you been influenced by Castañeda? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — I liked his first three or four books. It was a cultural shock, because he admired something that was despised: Mexican Indian culture. Art must use what is despised as creative material. Not what is despicable but what is despised. That’s why I did comic strips, and why I did a cowboy movie, things that are rarely exploited in an artistic way. Castañeda had wonderful ideas, but he went from ritualistic, symbolic art — something true to himself — to whimsy in order to publish books. OLIVIER ZAHM — He had the reputation of being very secretive. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, he was, but he was an icon because he succeeded in the United States. He was one of the first to bring shamanistic traditions to universities and anthropology. Later, he fell into guru madness. He had seen my film, El Topo, which was the underground film of the time. One day I was in an Argentinian restaurant in Mexico City, and a lady came over to me and asked, “Do you want to meet Castañeda?â€ He came to my table. We talked and set a time to meet again in a hotel, the Camino Real, where we talked and talked. Hollywood had made him an offer to make a film of his book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. He’d made seven million dollars, and wanted me to direct it with Anthony Quinn in the role of Don Juan. I said to him, “That’s crazy. Who’s going to believe Anthony Quinn as Don Juan? It would be fun, but not true to the book.â€ So I said no. He’s smart, and understood that it would be a mistake. I understand that when Hollywood makes an offer to make a movie, some people can be tempted. Lets go back to Psychomagic. Is it a form of free psychoanalysis? — Yes, shamanistic psychoanalysis. OLIVIER ZAHM — What’s your notion of Psychomagic? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — It’s an art; it’s not a science. It has nothing to do with scientific therapy. But I’ve healed many more people than any psychoanalyst has. I’ve made people happy. What is it to be happy? It’s very simple: it’s being what we are and not what others want us to be. I am what I am. I live as I feel. I search for myself in order to know who I am and I don’t act to satisfy my father, my mother, my family, my society, or my culture. I escaped from that, and I fulfilled myself. The best example of this is Joseph Campbell, who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He’s a major expert of mythology, one of the top American anthropologists. He read mythology and abandoned everything. He left his family and went into the woods to read. He lived doing odd jobs. Then, after seven years, once he’d read everything he needed to, he took an exam at a university and he was immediately appointed professor. He became what he was and discovered happiness. OLIVIER ZAHM — Does that mean you have to reach for your own limits? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. What do I want? What am I? Even your name and your definitions are artificial. You have to go beyond the definitions your family, society, and your culture have given you. This doesn’t mean breaking away from them. It means a metamorphosis, an expansion of consciousness. OLIVIER ZAHM — You also explored the idea of a genealogical tree. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Psychogenealogy. Humankind cannot not be a family. Humans are influenced by the past and the past is transmitted by the family. We are shaped by the forest, which is society and transmits time, history, the past, and culture. THE TAROT OF MARSEILLE OLIVIER ZAHM — How did you work on this research? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — For seven years I went to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. I studied everything. I thought it was a system of symbols that I was supposed to learn. But the purpose of the Tarot is reading it for others. It’s not a personal thing. I read this sentence by Buddha, “I don’t want anything for myself that isn’t for others. Man’s goal is to change the world. If he cannot change it, he contributes to its change.â€ So I stopped reading the future, because that’s the defective and commercial version of the Tarot. There are thousands of possible futures, so I refuse to read the future. I also refuse to give advice, because it’s a way of taking power. The alternative is to offer options: if you do this, then there will be this result. If you do the opposite, then this. Also, I don’t think we can have the whole truth. At the end of the reading, I ask the person if they agree with the interpretation. I made huge progress this way, and my intuition has developed a lot. I did Tarot readings for 30 years in a café, once a week, every Wednesday. Except when I was sick or tired. People asked me when I’d be there and came without me having to advertise. I did Psychomagic and Tarot for free. OLIVIER ZAHM — This world of Tarot symbols comes from several traditions. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — It comes from every tradition. It’s a wonderful instrument because you find everything in it. Who could have built such an instrument? That’s the mystery. It was so advanced for its time. The first Tarot cards that we’ve found date back to around 1300. All kinds of origins are attributed to it: Arabic, Aztec, Jewish, Christian — everything’s there. In truth, Tarot is anonymous because it’s a sacred art, and all sacred arts are anonymous. It comes from dreams and the collective unconscious. OLIVIER ZAHM — I heard that you made your own Tarot. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — A descendent of the Camoin family came to see me. That family printed Tarot decks for two or three centuries. The father of the boy who came to see me was run over, when the boy was 13. The family sold the business and the printing press, and offered the cards to museums, to collectors. This boy was deeply affected by it all. He was sad. I said to him, “You’re deeply affected, but really what you want is to continue your tradition. You are a master of cards. Salvage your tradition.â€ I spoke with his mother. The family gave us access to the museum and to the original printing plates. As a result, we revived the Tarot of Marseille. We went back to 1400. There’s not a single Tarot we didn’t find. At that time, Tarot cards were made by hand, painted by hand, and the backside was white and people used them like calling cards. OLIVIER ZAHM — You were able to reassemble all 78 cards? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. Each Tarot deck has it’s own certain details. We looked for the hand-painted colors because when it came time to print them, the number of colors was reduced from 13 to four. If you compare an ordinary deck of Tarot of Marseille with a restored deck, you’d be shocked at all the details that have disappeared over time. For example, on the Hermit card there’s a blue hand. You might wonder why. The High Priest also has a blue hand. That’s something Camoin and I saw together. He saw incredible things because he was genetically a master of cards. On the High Priest’s blue gloves, there’s a little cross. The Hermit’s blue has a religious dimension; it’s the Pope who abandoned the Vatican and who withdrew from power. So, right away, the interpretation changes with the secret it gives you. OLIVIER ZAHM — And you think this is the oldest Tarot? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, it’s the oldest. All the others aren’t worth much because they’re simple, almost rational interpretations of the Tarot of Marseille. They don’t have the small details. Because sometimes there are three little dots somewhere or a small circle. They’re full of details that we don’t see at first. We think it’s a primitive deck, or defective, but it’s not at all. Because on top of it all, there’s a geometric grid. You can place one card on top of another. They all have the same geometric configuration. There are about 8,000 Tarots. Every old adventurer thinks he’s made one. Seventy-eight Argentinian painters got together and made a Tarot they call the Argentinian Tarot. It’s tasteless. Such a lack of understanding! When I saw one, I said, “Pardon me for saying this to you. I’m not insulting you, but you don’t know what you’re doing. The Tarot cannot be Argentinian — it doesn’t have a nationality; it’s anonymous.â€ OLIVIER ZAHM — So then why do we call it Tarot of Marseille? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Simply because the cards were printed in Marseille. The presses were in old places where the Knights of Templar were. Marseille was one of the only cities in France in the year 1000 where there were three very powerful religions that spoke to each other: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They shared knowledge. The Tarot is the result of all that. OLIVIER ZAHM — Tell me why the Tarot is so magical. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — The Tarot develops your intuition because it teaches you to see. There’s a rule of magic that says, “There, where you focus your attention, is where the miracle appears.â€ So it is very important to see the details in things. It’s a magical position par excellence. And the Tarot forces you to see such details. At first, you might understand the Major Arcana better because there are figures, but when you enter into the Minor Arcana, you see swords, staves, cups, and you don’t understand a thing. But after years of study you start to understand what they’re saying and learn to read the symbols. OLIVIER ZAHM — But can’t everyone read them in their own way? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, it’s an art that combines the subjectivity of the reader and the subjectivity of the person being consulted. That’s why I always ask the person whose cards I’m reading if he agrees, and if it resonates. If it doesn’t, I offer him another interpretation, because people have defenses. We are who we are because we’re not able to face the pain we hide inside of us, that we bury. We want the pain to be taken away, but without being told why, without knowing what’s causing the suffering. OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s better than taking antidepressants. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — It’s a magic and metaphysical aspirin. The Tarot is subjective because, little by little, we go forward with the person as far as that person can go, but always with the person’s consent. You can never force people to face truths they can’t handle. Little by little, when they want to know things, we will go there. OLIVIER ZAHM — Can it happen in one session? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, I do it in one session. It’ll have an effect immediately, or in four years. OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s followed by an action? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. For example, a woman came to consult me because her mother had an infection in her arm and no one was able to heal her. She asked, “What do I do?â€ I looked at the cards and saw that her mother had a deep bond with the great-grandmother. The mother felt guilt about her own mother. So I advised that her mother go to her mother’s grave, and to put honey on her arm, rubbing it in at the grave site and asking for forgiveness. It’s what she did and she was miraculously cured. When it’s psychological, you can take action. I don’t act on things that are a matter for medicine. I’m not a charlatan. I act on things that are only and deeply psychological. OLIVIER ZAHM — Where medicine isn’t so effective. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. I’ve just written a book, Le Manuel de Psychomagie, that will come out in France, in which I offer advice for a series of problems. SPIRITUAL COWBOY OLIVIER ZAHM — In the films you made around the time of El Topo, there is always a relationship between a father and a son. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. Remember that at that time there was Pinochet, who was like a Hitler or a Mussolini. These dreadful father figures led societies. Then there were the uncles like the French president François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac. Now there’s a brother at the head of French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is neither an uncle nor a father. He’s a guy like you and me who has a filthy mouth, who functions like everybody, who’s proud to say, “My wife is a model.â€ We no longer have the anxiety of being dominated by a father. OLIVIER ZAHM — Was the motivation at the time to kill the father? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. I set out to kill the father in El Topo — he gets castrated — and in the end to absorb him. You feel sorry for the guy. He begins to become aware and, at the end, he works with his own son. The son can’t kill him, so he absorbs him. OLIVIER ZAHM — There’s a very beautiful scene in which the son has to bury the portrait of his mother and his first toy. Killing the father, at the time, meant liberating oneself. Did it also mean to do so through drugs and sexual liberation? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — No, no, don’t mix up the terms. I have nothing against sexual liberation or against drugs, but I’m against the abuse of drugs, and I’m against the abuse of sexual liberation. All politicians should be advised to take hallucinogenic mushrooms once in their lives to open their mental state. In all the shamanistic religions, there’s a phase with drugs. It isn’t about the drug, but the ceremonial aid. I’m not against that at all. And I’m not against sexual liberation, but I’m against the abuse and disrespect of the sacredness of sex, because then it becomes an industry. So killing the father means killing Freud, killing Oedipus, who killed his father. So I start with that. I start with the vision that society has of killing the father, the clash of generations. But, after that, consciousness develops — consciousness about the other, about humanity. At that moment, the situation reverses itself, and there’s an absorption of the father, and of the values of the past, leading to a better future. Killing the father prevents us from moving forward. It means we are fighting against the past. America doesn’t believe in the past and therefore has become the most dreadful country in the world. OLIVIER ZAHM — From that point of view, America is also the most infantile of countries. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. OLIVIER ZAHM — But to embody this trajectory of killing the father and then absorbing him, you use the figure of the spiritual cowboy. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — A spiritual cowboy who is led to develop his consciousness through suffering. Through enormous emotional pain, he’s destroyed, and then he recovers. OLIVIER ZAHM — There are also several of those kinds of characters in The Holy Mountain. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — At the time, people didn’t know the enneagram. It was a symbol that Gurdjieff brought here, a symbol that comes from the Sufi group. It’s a circle with nine points, with a triangle inside, and a line. It’s a kind of “typology.â€ We are in a circle of planets. So I made an enneagram. There are nine characters with the master’s tent in the middle. The master in The Holy Mountain — a film based on the enneagram — has the enneagram sign on his chest. At the time, no one understood what I was talking about. Now Gestalt therapists use it. Claudio Naranjo is an important psychoanalyst who uses the enneagram. He divides his patients into nine groups and speaks to them about The Holy Mountain and asks that they see it. The enneagram symbolizes the planet as its opposite. For example, Mars, who is a man, becomes a lesbian woman, and Venus is a narcissistic man. Each is responsible for an aspect of mankind — laziness, pride, and so on. OLIVIER ZAHM — I read that John Lennon wanted you to make the film. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. He loved El Topo and he said to me, “You have to do what you want.â€ But I didn’t have money, so he said to me, “We’re going to talk with our producer Allen Klein and ask that he give you a million dollars.â€ I left with a million dollars and I made the film, thanks to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They found me the money overnight. OLIVIER ZAHM — Why did you stop doing fims for a long time after The Holy Mountain? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — The producer Allen Klein was angry with me. He wanted me to use the success of El Topo and The Holy Mountain to make the Story of O. I didn’t want to do an erotic film at the time. I wanted to do Dune. We were signing a contract for $300,000, but I left the check and I escaped. He said, “Okay, you don’t want to do this film? No one will ever see your other films again!â€ And he kept them. Then one day I found a good copy of the negatives in a Mexican lab. I called an English film pirate and said to him, “Listen, I’m giving this to you for free. Make it public!â€ He said, “But Allen Klein will come after me.â€ That’s why I did it. It was David and Goliath. There was a trial, of course, but I wasn’t looking for money. I didn’t want anything. I only wanted my films to be seen. Overnight I had an audience and I made a profit. So I saved money and stored it away to make a documentary on Psychomagic. Therapeutic cinema. Other projects came to me immediately. I waged a guerilla war. These bootlegs have been traveling across the world over for 30 years. OLIVIER ZAHM — That must be how they became cult, underground films, as only certain artists were able to see them. Did you meet Sam Peckinpah? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — No, but El Topo was made with everything Sam Peckinpah left behind in Mexico. He made The Wild Bunch in Mexico. Americans have money. When he wanted to film a small mountain, he said, “Clear the way until here.â€ If he wanted horses, he said, “Bring me horses.â€ If he wanted explosions, a Mexican Indian taught him about explosions. After he left I found the Mexicans who taught him to explode things, the horse trainers, and the stuntmen. I found them all, and took advantage of them. OLIVIER ZAHM — I’m surprised to hear than Peckinpah was more widely distributed than you were. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Of course he was! He was a Hollywood director and he worked in the movie industry. But what killed him was alcoholism. He went raving mad. He had his success, but he also had a negative vision of humanity, terribly cynical. I didn’t want that. I wanted the opposite. It’s easier to make a horrid, cynical film than it is to make a film that talks about mankind in a noble way. OLIVIER ZAHM — What is your next film project? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — It’s crazy. I’m involved with four different projects, including King Shot with David Lynch! OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s funny, because he directed Dune, a film which you wanted to shoot, but never did. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, but Lynch suffered a lot when he did Dune too. It wasn’t his fault. It was the producer’s fault. OLIVIER ZAHM — Does Lynch like your films? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — He likes my films and I like his. We like each other a lot. When we met, we fell into each other’s arms. After that project, there’s The Children of El Topo, which is a Russian-American co-production, but will be titled Abel and Cain. Then I have Bouncer, the adaptation of my book, which was illustrated by François Boucq. It’s a classic western, which we want to produce in Spain. And there’s a Mexican who wants to produce Juan Solo. Soon we’ll see which one I’ll be doing — it’ll be the first one I get the money for. Stars participate as soon as they think you’re financially viable. But they want to act for me. First, I have the Pyschomagic documentary, which I’ll start filming at the end of the year. I’m going to make it with real people, a digital camera, and sound, and that’s all. You’ll see how crazy Psychomagic is. It’s wild but useful surrealism — theater taken to its furthest extent. OLIVIER ZAHM — Besides your films, how do you put Psychomagic into practice? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — I’ve invented what’s called Social Psychomagic, collective acts to heal events that have affected a life or a country, like the slaughter of 2,000 students in Mexico. Or the healing of Guernica or Hiroshima. Suffering should be erased with a positive act. OLIVIER ZAHM — That’s a very good idea. I went to Nagasaki and everything is set up so that people forget. There’s the museum, but you still feel like the past has been erased. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — The Japanese have chased out all the people affected by the atomic bomb, as if it’s a national disgrace. They don’t want to see them anymore, which is tragic. I’m going to make this movie and if I live long enough, I’ll do the four films. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT OLIVIER ZAHM — The last things I want to talk about are women, love, and sexuality. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — You want me to call my wife, Pascale, who’s 40 years younger than me? You know, now, at 80 years old, I’ve found my ideal woman. I don’t come from love; my mother never touched me. In a certain way, she had contempt for me because my father raped her. I’m the second child. She told me, “After you were born, I got my tubes tied so I wouldn’t have any more of that bastard’s children.â€ So, I never knew maternal love. I talk about that in my books. I grew up in a man’s world, with masculine values, with a total lack of knowledge of women. I thought of women as peripherals who always wanted to chop off my head. A peripheral is always competitive. A peripheral always wants what the man has. So I went from one Vietnam War to the next, until I ended up with a Eurasian with Vietnamese roots! And that’s when I began to understand that women are slaves in this world. It’s a terrible thing, the way religion, the economy, and society keep them out or make them play a terrible role. There are a few women who fight it, but many partake in it, like women who wear a chador. I wasn’t finding the woman I was in harmony with spiritually. There was always doubt and effort. I made an effort to adapt myself. I never had an obvious encounter, one in which there wasn’t explanation, in which things were what they are. OLIVIER ZAHM — Then it happened? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes. PASCALE — Clear is the word. Anyone who reads Alejandro’s books realizes that, despite the problems, he has a very strong ideal of love. He told me once that his conception of love was similar to that of mythology. I also had a very strong ideal of love. I lived with the promise, with the certainty, that I would experience a love story like this one. When we met, it was obvious right away. I’ve always been convinced that important things present themselves in a totally obvious and natural way. It’s like the artistic vocation: you don’t choose to be an artist. You are one or you’re not, it’s clear. Anyone can see that Alejandro is very strong, very fulfilled, and accomplished. The difference in our ages is, for me, a stabilizing factor. We never battle each other; we’re not rivals; we have an absolutely harmonious and complementary relationship. And I think that in a love relationship, you really have to have settled a lot of things. To feel well with the other person, you have to feel well with yourself. OLIVIER ZAHM — Was it love at first sight? ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Yes, it was incredible. Everything was written. It was strange, because I was reading the Tarot. I raised my head and I saw her. PASCALE — It was like a movie. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — I was with another woman so, we waited a year without being lovers or anything. I wasn’t in a state to play out the secret and cheat. PASCALE — He’s always dignified. I felt that we were connected beyond any kind of relationship based on seduction or age. There wasn’t any seduction. When I left the reading, I cried. I felt that he was passing something on that was very important. I was overwhelmed. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — Our lives changed. I’m immersed in emotional tranquility. I know we won’t have children, unless there’s a miracle. She’s a painter. I make drawings, she colors them, and we both sign them. They are our children. When you find the sacred relationship you still think women and men are beautiful, but you don’t have the desire to have other relationships. It’s not a moral choice, you’re just naturally full. PASCALE — I really think that the key to sexual fulfillment is love, because with love there’s the trust and abandon which allows you to give deeply, whereas in the search for pleasure with many partners and experiences, you always stop midway. With love you go as far as possible, as high as possible. As a result, sexually, it’s wonderful, because everything comes together, everything is interwoven. ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY — There’s the mythology of a relationship that goes beyond death. That’s why it becomes sacred, because you enter into the mythology.
Printed Publication Study — Culture & History: Africans & Indians
These are my two most favorite books in the world. So many images, awesome archeological & ethnological research. National Geographic is a household name & 10 Speed Press is a part of The Crown Publishing Group, these two books are massive with regards to the impact of those working on it. Our complete history of spirituality & ways of culture are basically summed up in the lives of the people involved with these two books. The Native American’s, from this American Indian book, really related to my blood. Looking at the pictures of taboo practices & taking in similarities [David Blue Cloud] w/ myself just naturally attached to me. The things I grasped were the trials of the elders, the pain they as a people dealt with. The symbols especially the front design always give me memories of Mexican art, these connections bring me to the title of this blog posts, the connection between Asia, Mexico, the America’s & Africa. The pyramids, the mounds, the artifacts are all linked in some form. The amount of craft that you can visually see, from these American Indians, you would think – how is this ‘not’ a society? It is what the America’s looked like in the past, this is what they have evolved into. In my opinion, the west is innovated & the east is stationed. The native’s practiced so many dark arts, the piercings the blood & the fashions were what we today see as tattoos or sadly sneakers. Sneaker culture has morphed into a brand-whore allegiance like no other. Its an ‘active resistance’ toward the ethical tradition of barter & trading. We really need to go back to survival pamphlets + silver/gold eating & trading…raw life. This raw life is lived in Africa to this day – primal. Think about the depth’s of the core of the darkest area’s here…Time stops in Africa, sure there is the high technology, chemical & finance/banking industrial reality – but there is the essence of the magic that exists in every facet of thinking-green or secret-think-&-grow-rich ideologies. Daneil Laine captures the reality that Walter van Beirdendonck, Ann Demeulemeester & Margiela may have been a part of the Antwerp Six but Bouba Abdoulaye – Sultan of Rey-Bouba – Cameroon currently oversee’s 55,000 subjects which are on land the size of Belgium & Luxembourg combined. Gives you another idea of fashion purpose & powers. No shots at the ‘Queen’ but that is completely different idea of Royalty, some crowns are Usurped, some are Inherited.
Printed Publication Study — Art & Culture: untitled no. 8 “The Infinity Book”
The 8th installment of the “untitledâ€ book series that is accompanying the “untitledâ€ No. 8 exhibition – like the latter – has ‘infinity’ as its main theme. And with this books release, Magseven is proud to present to you another heavy collection of pure beauty; a genuine print nugget that could be easily classified as an art exhibition on its own. In terms of styles, a broad variety is showcased, as each exhibition focuses on a specific theme and presents collective works from diverse artists, always with special attention to new motifs and unique display techniques. Let’s take a look inside: First, La Grande Dame of hiphop documentary, Martha Cooper, delivers you some of her unreleased photographic “good stuff”. Then we have fresh design blueprints by Element artists Andrew Pommier, Don Pendleton, Jeremy Fish, Matt Irving, National Forest, Paul Urich, Randy Laybourne, The Mountain and Todd Francis. Subsequently, you’ll be able get an insight into Selim Varol´s (Toy Giants) passion, fascination and deep obsession with toys. Another definite highlight is the documentation of the theme-based canvas interpretation. Eight different artists were asked to create a canvas around the ’infinity’ theme. These incredible pieces by CemOne, Zedz, Florian Boehm, Ryan Monihan and four others are also presented in this book. And to broaden your horizon even more, Romero Timm Steinhauser delivers his academic take on sneakers. via – untitled-documents My take on this book is much different from what others probably felt about it. My work was featured in it & naturally I became adored with the whole idea of it all. You have Futura’s (FLOM) which I only know about because in this book it states “8000 USD” on ebay for these sneakers no matter the condition. This gives way to the occupational advantages 13th Witness & Tabatha have as a result of this Style Wars fame…I’m not saying its nepotism, Lenny is an orphan, I love Oliver Twist & the Artful Dodger. Speed forward to today, I still get that hungry orphan feel from people like A Child of a Jago, anyway, its a privilege to be exhibited amongst this Graffiti Great! He does promote non-vandalism… Next thing that sticks out to ME, this was shown at Bread n’ Butter Barcelona ’08 – so everyone w/ a clothing line is out here trying to push their goods, I somewhat feel like I’ve made it. My love for this book is absent of the sneaker worship, I’m not a fanatic & really don’t know anything unless I pick it back up to read & find out. What I do know are certain figures involved. I do know that on the back of this book it says ‘streetwear’ — so this young fellow, from Delaware, with an experienced background in design & engineering is giving an analysis on the entire culture but I don’t posses the cult-lust of any subject in particular. I like this, I like that, but its all surface…my true love is in the arcane science of craft & esoteric philosophy. My work is titled S U S C I T A T E — inspired to invoke + evoke certain spirits & wake up the sleeping heads, not so much to the masses which is also spelled them asses. I’m not so much into art theory unless its family around, we are all of similar style – speaking w/ & w/o colloquialism, conundrums for communicable enjoyment…but my work uses these ‘bubbles’ because thats all streetwear is about. The BUBBLE, Facebook bubble’d, googled did it, microsoft did it, Steve Jobs did it then died. Its about direction, this is the space that you see between the letters. This is the right page opener for Trusting Infinity. “In the Age of the New Creative Class: Brands become devices, allowing their creators to pursue immortality. Those which practice this pursuit are called ‘The Infinites’. In the pursuit of immortality, new laws govern. These modern laws are based upon the ancient laws of craft. These laws are called ‘Future Craft’.”
Printed Publication Study — Commerce & Luxury: Garments & Textiles + Louis Vuitton
Two things we’ve taken a respectful look at, deal with these two area’s of indulgence, Commerce & Luxury. I think because of obvious strategic techniques, the borders of value have skewed the reality of the through-line that exists with buying something expensive because there is quality of production. In the sense that we as a people buy something expensive because someone says to w/o investigating the origins of the thing. Remember Jesus? He was a Nazarene…so why don’t we hear about the Nazarene[s] as opposed to the X-tians? My answer is Ritual Practice, Amen [no pun intended]. I don’t have specific information [that I can share] to the holes within these brands, I can only assess from the experience gained in my past, there is a very wolf / sheep polarity that exists in this world. Wolf’s could go back on the endangered species list, & I’m sure the sheep will continue to become a prey to some ravenous animal. If I can buy from them, what you have…This is the reality of our world, they are all telesales & collection agencies screaming BUSINESS IS WAR!!!! We are currently listening to someone give us a lecture about technology whilst the line has an error throughout the length of the conversation. Hypocrisy or some surreal conspiracy disposition, since I’m a man & we use logic [via status quo / political correctness], I go w/ the former. Pardon my objective reality. You want LV I want SV. Where does your favorite company create their images, products, employment etc. The lot of these things aren’t on display because of competitor advantages & industrial espionage. Its a numbers game, there is a science to it, these teams are strong & marching. My thoughts extend to Sun Tzu, this is a game played over years/decades of lifetimes & one is many so there is only an esoteric thought process after a certain point because meta-physics are the only reality. So what does that mean? Don’t get initiated? Nahhh…do what you want, thats the key though, do what YOU want. Go to Global Sources, buy the equipment, get the textile/zipper or whatever you need & make the shit. I mean listen, drink some water, make your things & contact a VC & make your thing BIGGER. But don’t front on people w/ low-quality goods at ridiculous prices. There can only be but so many Alexander Wang’s & in my opinion its too many of them, we need diversity not so much in industries, just period – in order to find balance in this wasteful landscape. Then you think, what is value, what makes a Sotheby auction a community value…what community is that? These are the question that come up in the mind of a child of the first state, small-wonder – blue diamond Delaware. Well I have the answers, these guys are fighting each other, the books changed from Civil War to War Among the States, mcLuhan’s brain was wiped, Neil Postman said technology is Faustian & we should be using our fax machines…Life is real. LV has material from around the corner at times & at times from way around the globe, but their process is high-industrial, as far as I know…remember the thing, Tailors against Taylorism. Capitalism is contrived from social engineering, Freud made women feel independent w/ a phallic symbol, this is nothing other than primal social science. How deep do you look into your look-books.