By the way, ptichfork.tv is still awesome. Check out this RJD2 track and this session with Bon Iver (who is currently touring).
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Archive for May, 2008
For a long time project (red) was kinda’ lame. An interesting Idea. Good intentions. But just not the kind of stuff that you would actually pick up and wear. And it felt like the only place you can get the stuff was at the Gap… and honestly, who shops at the Gap? (The company has tanked over the past few years with the rest of clothing retail and has consciously given up trying to court any kind of hip niche, moving towards over-sized, overpriced threads for 30-somethings in the suburbs.) Fortunately over the past few months this well-meaning project has removed its Gap albatross and moved closer the to where it needs to be - building up its high/street-fashion cultural cache. In doing so they have enlisted a number of artists to take part in (red)-sponsored events. For instance, this past valentines day $42.58 million was raised at a Sotheby’s auction that Damian Hirst, among others, put together to benefit project (red). He contacted a number of artists asking them to contribute works inspired by the color red and the concept of love. The artists included Takashi Murakami, Ed Ruscha, Richard Prince, Marc Quinn, Banksy, Jeff Koons and Andreas Gursky, to name a few. Hirst himself included 7 works that sold for $19 million and change in total. Great idea. Making buck and empowering the “(red)” name.
Also of interest is the 1HUND(RED) artists initiative with Converse, a brand with some serious street cred of late. This initiative asks 100 different artists to design their own Converse shoe, which they then produce in limited number. 10% of the wholesale price is then donated to (red). Caught the story on SuperTouch a little while back with Dr. Romanelli’s contribution.
And by the way, SuperTouch got a total redesign recently… looks good. Maybe change that banner. The contributor line-up is pretty incredible - James Jean, Lupe Fiasco, Jamie O’Shea (editor), and Dr. Romanelli, among many, many others. Taking an incredible blog to the next level. The site is definitely still in the works, but so far so good. And speaking of reworks, my man Dr. Tron over at The Aesthetic Poetic gave the site a face-lift. Really clean looking, a lot of nice white space. Classy.
Some really cool images of San-Zhr Pod Village in Taiwan by photog Craig Ferguson. The project was commissioned by the government in the 1960s. After a number of deaths at the construction site, public opinion turned against the housing development and it was abandoned. The photos are really eerie and locals say ghosts of the dead construction workers haunt the site (of course). I caught the images on File Magazine’s site. Enjoy.
-Really funny/interesting/sad look at Brooklyn’s infamous McKibbin Lofts in the NYT. The best/worst part is the end; in a junkyard of a building populated by young 20-somethings we have this:
The oldest residents are believed to be Mel Smothers and his wife, Lizzie Hansen, who are both 61 and live at 248. Mr. Smothers moved from California three years ago to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming an artist in New York, and Ms. Hansen later followed, reluctantly. The McKibbin had the only loft space that Mr. Smothers could afford. The previous tenants were skateboarders, so he had to disassemble the ramp they had -built and the four doghouse-like structures they had slept in. He has since lined his and Ms. Hansen’s tiny bedroom with insulating foam.
“Here’s why I stay. It’s still the cheapest lofts around because it’s so badly managed,” Mr. Smothers said. “Once I make enough money, I’m moving out of here.”
-In my opinion, The Fader is the best music blog/mag out there. Not content with simply offering their well-done physical magazine in .pdf online, they came out with an online-only form of the magazine: F2. At first I wasn’t really sure why they went through the trouble, but looking at it makes their purpose a little clearer. Technically its not really a magazine, or it is, though with minimal text and really image heavy. This is a cool concept, a magazine that really couldn’t exist in physical form (pictures too big and text too small), but on the computer looks really good and is manageable. I like it. It is being produced by Timberland and each issue (it’s a quarterly) focuses on a different movement in contemporary music and profiles 5 different artists that are part of it. Issue 1: The New Disco.
-psfk posted an op-ed from Monocle’s founder and king of lifestyle-porn, Tyler Brûlé. I think it’s interesting and gets at what luxury really means to people (ideas pushed by ads and trendsetters versus what the thing is actually made of and how it is made), especially in today’s outsourced world. He talks specifically about the locally produced goods movement and how its getting people to think twice about why they are paying premium prices for poorly-made lux goods that are being produced in developing countries. It is funny that these brands get some kind of “Italian-made” cache when their stuff’s being made in China next to Old Navy t-shirts. Anyway, I have copied it below (probably illegally) underneath the Vuitton storefront pics from the 5th ave. store in NYC (via psfk).
From Melbourne to Gothenburg to Minneapolis, retailers of everything from vegetables to fine knitwear are surveying the landscape, speaking to consumers and responding accordingly. When these businesses venture out into the wholesale market to purchase goods they’re disillusioned by rails filled with expensive, shoddily stitched garments made in countries with dirt-cheap labour costs and questionable employment laws. They’re unimpressed by porcelain companies that still sell their Swedishness but manufacture in Thailand. They’re worried that there’s no respect for finish or detail and that some of the world’s most respected premium brands (many gobbled up by dim private equity firms all working to the same, short-term strategies) have squandered everything in order to improve their margins while unwittingly offloading the real intellectual property - the painters, pattern makers, seamstresses and master carpenters.
I once asked the owner of a major Italian luxury goods house if she felt she was duping her consumers by playing up her brand’s Italian heritage while quietly manufacturing in China. She responded by saying she was creating jobs in China and that customers no longer cared where things were made and didn’t think about things like “mark-up”. I then asked her why, if she was so proud of her job creation in Shenzhen, wasn’t she proudly promoting this fact on her hangtags and labels? At this point the interview was brought to an abrupt close.
Few companies want to confront the follow-up question. Other than price, what’s the difference when both an original and a fake are cut, stitched, glued and bolted together in China, Vietnam and other low-wage markets? Is it really justifiable to get angry with consumers for opting for a fake when the mark-up for an original is extortionate and there’s no real difference in quality or the working conditions for the people that made the items?
-T. Brûlé
Was gonna do a review of Santogold, but this was just too much. Picked this up on BLDG BLOG the other day…
“Anybody know if people are still fishing in Manhattan basements in buildings constructed over still flowing streams? Recall a story about that in the NYT some 30-35 years ago.”
More here.
Much of all of this “fishing in basements” craziness centers around something called the Vielé Map, named for its maker Egbert Ludovicus Viele. Vielé was a civil engineer (among other things), who basically superimposed Manhattan’s street grid on its once above-ground water systems.
There have been reports over the past century or so of basements in Manhattan flooding on account of underground water systems finding their way through cracks in the foundations of buildings. One can imagine situations where maybe a forgotten waterway leads under a given residence, as many of these streams were simply built over in creating what is now New York City.
The idea of the possibility of people actually taking advantage of these underground streams by ice-fishing through the foundations of their homes is absolutely crazy. I’ve really got to add that this is basically speculation and urban legend based on stories passed down… but possible?
Actually there are places where this happens. At the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul you have a cathedral sized room underground that is lined by 9 meter high marble columns. The room can hold 80,000 cubic meters of water, which is just ridiculous if you think about it. And I think you can catch fish in it.
I am reading Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends where he talks briefly in one of his essays (its a book of essays, his first nonfiction publication) about how until very recently, there were still dark spaces on maps to be filled in. This inevitably conjures up a depressing, its all been done/nothing new under the sun/Indiana Jones was a big lie - gut feeling. But in filling in those dark places, we have inevitably created new ones that lead inside, and underground, and, maybe, as bldg so nicely puts it, into large rooms that smell of water where six men sit around an opening in the floor “holding fishing poles in the darkness.”
Geoff, man. Keep it up.
two.one.five mag is a real stickler when it comes to reviews. So, when I saw that they reviewed a song by a group called Parken 10 out of 10, I had to look into it. Supposedly produced by “the Swedish Timbaland” Rigas, At Helvete Med Himlen (translated: At Hell With the Sky) is a pretty catchy euro-electro-pop-thing. The beginning kinda sounds like The Knife’s Heartbeats… a little? (an incredible song itself).
Get At Helvete Med Himlen Here. (Direct Link).
two.one.five also has pics up of Mojito on the Moshulu, which is basically a big ‘ol boat on the river that hosts awesome parties on the weekend. The Kanye after-party next week and MMP over memorial day weekend? Anyone? Anyone?
Got a new appreciation for Justice after seeing them at the Electric Factory a few months back. This vid by Romain-Gavras is awesome. New standard for music videos. The D.A.N.C.E. cameo is hilarious and was a good move on Justice’s part to keep them from being too defined by one song (which, it needn’t be said, really isn’t representative of their music at all). See Gavas’ Myspace here. His site here.
