The Wanderer

Matthew Adams Dolan’s Nomadic State of Dress 

There’s a certain uneasiness in the air as designer Matthew Adams Dolan pours himself a beer and stares out the window at the crowds flooding New York City’s Lower East Side. It’s a balmy Thursday evening in July, and with Black Lives Matter protests abound in the streets of Manhattan, it’s as if the pervading tension is reflected in the feel of the city and the ominous sky overhead—on the precipice of explosion at any given moment.
 

A designer known for denim, Dolan’s penchant for Americana and heritage feels strangely relevant given the current state of events. Born in Boston and raised in Sydney, Japan and Switzerland, he might be expected to reject American culture as a result of his early globetrotting, but in fact the designer does quite the opposite—he embraces it. His brand vision is comforting and democratic, with a sentimental nostalgia for historical references.
 

Harmony Korine

in conversation with

James Franco

I’m trying to get Harmony on the phone. Rather, I’ve got him on the phone, but as I’m realizing with heart-wrenching panic, the overlapping recording apps I’ve opened to ensure I capture the conversation have created an echo chamber, parroting every word we speak in psychedelic recursion. Harmony’s too entertained to be fazed. We’ve arranged for him to talk with actor and artist James Franco, a recent collaborator of his, who mercifully has yet to join the call. Meanwhile Harmony ad libs with the eerie sound effects, amusing himself as I scramble to sort things out.

Colby Keller

It’s easy to call porn star Colby Keller a bundle of contradictions. In fully reductive terms, Keller could be described as a Communist who’s voting for Donald Trump, a gay man raised in the Pentecostal church—his mother is still unaware of his profession—and an intellectual whose primary career and source of income centers around the physical. He’s tough to peg, although at one point during our conversation he does suggest that more women try pegging. 

But I have no interest in pinning Colby Keller down—in the abstract sense at least. (He is, after all, super hot.) Keller, like any interesting person, isn’t simply defined. The guy is highly educated, someone who speaks with authority on topics as wide-ranging as today’s current political landscape, the gay liberation movement, climate change, the fashion industry, the art world, and yes, sex. He speaks passionately, and he’s fantastically, almost viciously self-aware, making jokes about aging—he’s 35—and life in his chosen profession. Keller’s sense of humor may be one of his best qualities. He laughs easily and often, and he’s surely the funniest, most easygoing Communist I’ve ever met. While his political beliefs come from an honest, informed, and well-intentioned place, he’s still able to poke fun at them—like appreciating the irony in the fact that his partner’s name, hilariously, is Karl Marks. 

Maxine Ashley

In the video for her single Lobster, Maxine paces in reverse through the stairwells and front rooms of an austere apartment complex, staring into the camera with a look of laidback menace, passing through groups of friends and family as they drink, smoke, and dance. Over loopy, muffled chimes and brittle percussion she sings with a rapper’s territorial swagger, announcing her presence and dismissing the haters. The sentiment is simple enough, but consider the context—she wrote the track while signed to one of the various labels she’s worked with since she was barely a teenager, labels she claims have been keeping most of her music captive. By Maxine’s account her official releases, which include collaborations with Grammy-winners Pharrell and Kerry “Krucial” Brothers, and range from mellow neo soul to raucous baile raps, represent a frustratingly small fraction of her output. So eventually she tore through the red tape and posted Lobster to her own YouTube channel. The industry suits threatened to get litigious, but a year later the video is still up, sitting on over 100,000 views and serving as a defiant statement of her intentions—buck the labels, stick with the people she loves and trusts, and finally, forcefully, seize ownership of her art.

Maxine sat with me in the courtyard of her weathered Hollywood highrise, airplanes and AC units droning overhead, to talk a little about where she’s come from, and where she’s at.

Jason P. Grisell

Jason’s life story advances along a circuitous route. He seems to have traveled wherever the current takes him, whether that’s playing in the independent music scene of pre-millennial San Francisco or exploring the salt flats of Utah, in the ranks of a California prison fire camp or underground beneath the Kosciuszko Bridge. Along the way he’s created a progression of artworks, wending his way among the disciplines of painting, collage, music, literature and cinema.

Sean Price Williams, a director, cinematographer and actor who has worked with Jason on a number of films in recent years, met with him at KGB bar in New York to discuss his art and misadventures. 

For over fifteen years, Merrill Beth Nisker has been making brash, transgressive music and art as Peaches. Her brand of outrageous, synthesized dance-punk addresses topics of feminism, gender identity, and above all sexual liberation. The rights of the genderqueer community may be receiving increased media attention at the moment, but Peaches has been a major mouthpiece of the movement since long before it was any sort of cause célèbre.

She called us from Berlin to talk about what’s on her mind.

Growing up as a girl I learnt that being naked meant being vulnerable. Your body was something to hide, something that made you a target. Spending three days in the change room at Magic City I received a new kind of education in the power of women.

I’d heard people talk about Magic City like it was an urban legend. A strip club in Atlanta where women have huge influence over the music scene. Unsigned artists go with hopes their song will be chosen by the girl to dance to, which can quickly lead to radio plays and music deals.

The girls rolled in at 2pm to get ready, they compared stories and lled the room with happy bursts of noise. Make up was done dressed in their most comfortable clothes, which mostly meant none at all. I was waiting for someone to pull out a drink (I definitely felt like one), but no one did.

In a world where women are ghting for equality, Magic City is a place where women aren’t equal, they’re dominant. They’re in charge of their bodies, work on their own schedule, choose who’s allowed to give them money, they have fun and leave Magic City with a giant black garbage bag full of cash every night. Some of the girls drive Mercedes Benz and tell me about their business plans, the only person I ever see with a drink is the boss. Her name is Katrina and she watches over the girls like a protective lion while sometimes sipping a glass of champagne. On Sunday it’s Mother’s Day and everyone brings her flowers.

These are some pictures we made at Magic City, we hope you feel it too. 

The Work of Darren Bader by Cedric Buchet

During a panel for the seminal Primary Structures exhibit at New York’s Jewish Museum in ’66, sculptor Mark di Suvero claimed his “friend Don Judd” could not qualify as an artist. Judd, a participant in the show, had begun outsourcing the manufacture of his sleek, blocky sculptural designs to factory engineers rather than crafting them himself—a transgression in the mind of di Suvero, who declared “A man has to make a thing in order to be an artist.” Judd dismissed the accusation, explaining that who carried out the “making” was beside the point, but their disagreement, perhaps heightened by personal rivalry, brought up a series of enduring questions. Does art come into being the moment it is imagined? When it is delineated on paper? When it is manifested in its final, tangible form? And in which of these stages must one be present, or active, to “qualify” as an artist?

In the spirit of election day, check out our interview with political artist Francesco Vezzoli.

The artist Francesco Vezzoli has long been an observer of the grand political spectacle. His Trailer for the Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula (2005) was a satirical, celebrity-laden preview for an imagined reboot of the controversial 1979 film that chronicled the dissolute life and reign of its titular Roman Emperor. In DEMOCRAZY (2007), he cast Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Levy as US Presidential candidates in deadpan campaign spots that spoof the form by showing just how indiscernible an absurd imitation is from the real thing. In politics and beyond, his art plays with perennial themes of appropriation, vanity, and the subjectivity of the real. And so, in an age when the star-spangled big top of pop politics has blown open to reveal a circus of venal, hubristic cowards, we’ve invited the man whose work has cast a critical eye on the past and present grotesqueries of the system to try on the candidate’s shoes and step into the ring himself for something of a one-man debate.

Please welcome to the stage Francesco Vezzoli.