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What inspired you guys to start the festival?
Alphan Eşeli – I think at the beginning it was a desire to create something where different worlds could meet, where we could meet our interests. Because I love cinema, I love literature, music, and Demet loves art and fashion. So I think the idea came to create something that would include a multidisciplinary environment. And Istanbul, it's a perfect place because it's always been a place where cultures collide.
Did you feel like Istanbul needed a festival? Did you feel like it was something that was lacking?
AE – As I said, Istanbul has always been a place where these multi-cultures meet. It's a very vibrant city. I mean it would be a big statement that Istanbul needed a festival, but I think it needed a contemporary perspective at the time. That was what inspired us, that was what drove us. So to give a contemporary spin to all that energy that was going around in the city at that time.
What were your initial hopes for it at the time? Did you ever picture it getting to this scale?
AE – Well, our initial hopes when we started the festival, to be brutally honest; just get over it and never do it again [both laugh]. Because very early on we realized that organizing a festival in that scope was a bit – I have to say more than a bit – it was very challenging. And I remember finishing the first edition, I couldn't even move for 10 days. We were so exhausted. How about you Demet?
Demet Müftüoğlu-Eşeli – That's so true. So it was kind of a dream. We lived in New York for 11 years, we moved back and that was kind of the idea to bring all those creative minds and that kind of energy to the city. When you're dreaming of it in New York, it looks like it's so doable, but when we come and try to do it, things are much harder than I was imagining. And then when we had the talks, the people were there, it was super challenging, but also such a good energy to feel that in the city. All the young kids are meeting the people who they never, ever imagined to meet. And it was free. And when you give that kind of a chance to the younger generation, I was like, ‘we have to keep on doing it.’
What do you look for when you're curating the artists and the voices and the people that are involved in the festival?
DME – Every year we start with a theme and we start to invite people around that theme. And this year it's, ‘what is really real?’ So Alphan wrote an amazing criterial story about it. And then we start inviting around that theme.
And what's the ratio of local artists and designers and people to international?
AE – Well, it's somewhere between 50-50. Sometimes it can be 60-40. It depends. So this year we're almost 60% international. And then 40% probably Turkish.
Have you ever considered expanding the festival outside of Istanbul?
AE – Well, we did it once in Rome in 2019. And, yeah, we're still thinking of expanding it into a global scale. Right, Demet?
DME – I mean the idea was definitely to bring it to other cities. So just before the pandemic, we did it in Rome, we did it at Maxxi Museum. And then the gala dinner we did at Galleria Borghese. So we loved it. So the idea is still there, but because it's the 15th anniversary, we thought even though we are going to bring it to the other cities, we just need to celebrate the 15th anniversary here back in Istanbul. But then definitely, yes.
How does the city of Istanbul itself influence the spirit of the festival? I imagine in Rome it's not the same feeling.
AE – I mean, it's impossible not to get inspired or affected by the city because Istanbul, when you come, you'll see it's a very special place. And I mean, I'm not from Istanbul, I'm not born here. I'm from Ankara. But every time, even as a kid, when I came to the city, it was something magical. I never forget one night when I was a kid, we were crossing the bridge. I was probably like five or six and it was midnight and it was a full moon. My mom woke me up and said, listen, 'we're passing from Europe to Asia'. And I was like, we are going from one continent to the other. And as a kid it was magical. And I never forget it. I mean, Istanbul, it's very historic, it's ancient, it's always energetic. And compared to where I grew up, which was like Washington, it was like going to the top of the world. I always felt like that.
Obviously it's grown since the first edition of the festival. Has it changed from your initial hopes for it in other ways? Has it shifted from what you initially thought?
AE – Yeah, of course. It's inevitable. I mean, it has shifted it, it's become bigger. Behind the scenes has developed into something much more professional. Because when we started we were a very, very small bunch of people and there was still the same amount of work. And now we have learned, and I think we've come a long way since the start.
DME – But the spirit is the same.
AE – Yeah, the spirit is the same. And that's the most important thing. I mean, coming a long way doesn't always necessarily mean it's a good thing but as long as we keep the spirit that we had in 2010, for me that's the most important thing.
What keeps you motivated to keep doing this every year? I know there was a break during COVID, but for the most part it's been year after year.
AE – I mean, personally I like to be surprised in life and learn new things. And I come up with the theme, but my ambition was always that at the end of the festival, rather than finding answers, that the panels would raise more questions. So I would be looking at my initial team from a different perspective and that's inspiring me as I'm doing the programming and the team and stuff like that. I am always going back to find out and come up with news questions at the end of the festival.
Do you have any personal memories that you'll never forget from the festival?
AE – I don't like the word favorite, I have a lot. But one of my best memories was when Thurston Moore performed with this Turkish improv jazz band. We got in touch with Thurston and he accepted and he came to the festival and he didn't want to do a panel or something. He said, “I want to perform. I want to perform with this Turkish band.” And I don't even know if they had met before. I don't think so. But the guys were sending him emails and blah, blah, blah. And to be honest, I don't even know if they did the sound check.
So they went on stage and, I mean, it was incredible. I had goosebumps. They recorded it and I think they even released a limited version of that performance. And after he came back they did a few more gigs. So we connected a local talent with an international talent and they started an incredible collaboration. And for me, that's the best thing about the festival.
Alice Mercy— What drew you to be part of a shoot involving shibari and fashion?
Diana Lukash— I found myself as the bridge between two amazing artists: Julien Boudet, the visionary fashion photographer behind Bleu Mode, and Marie Sauvage, the shibari artist.
I had worked with Julien before, and at some point he mentioned that he wanted to collaborate with Marie. Since I was in close contact with her, I naturally became the link that brought them together and set this collaboration in motion.
AM— Do you have any previous experience with shibari - either personally or artistically?
DL— Yes! Marie did this for me as part of our personal artistic shoot.
AM— Were you curious, cautious, or confident going into it?
DL— I was very curious! I remember the first time I saw Marie’s page with her shibari art — it sparked something inside me. I wanted to be part of this world and discover more. So I followed that curiosity and met Marie for the first time in Berlin a year ago.
AM— What does it mean to you to be the subject of an image involving shibari?
DL— The first thing that came to my mind was experimenting with movement. For me, as a movement artist, shibari creates certain boundaries that I love to explore and play with — creating different shapes and dancing within the ropes.
AM— How did the ropes shape your sense of agency - did they feel like an amplification of yourself, or a transformation into something entirely new?
DL— No, it’s still me, but yes — a more amplified version of myself, because the boundaries make me stronger.
AM— Did the ropes feel like costume, constraint, or choreography?
DL— It might look like a costume, but it never really feels like one, haha. It can be challenging, even painful at times, but I love it because it opens a new experimental space for my body and creates choreography within constraints.
AM— Do you think shibari in fashion can be understood as beauty, danger, or intimacy - or something more complicated after this experience?
DL— I dream that shibari could become part of fashion as a symbol of beauty, danger, rebellion, and power. Maybe we could even create a brand with Marie, haha — it would be amazing to wear shibari-inspired shorts or tops on the streets, I know I would!
AM— What did you take away from this shoot about yourself as a model and as a person?
DL— This shoot gave me so much love and inspiration. Working with a team that felt like family — Marie, a true master of shibari; Julien, a visionary of concept and style; Alex Feller, brilliant in nails and makeup; Eva Silatsa, a talented stylist; and many others — we created a unique project that inspires experimentation with shibari, fashion, and the art of movement. For me, it was a chance to explore my body in new ways, discover fresh shapes and movements, and step into a completely new creative playground.
It’s interesting to talk about Index right before Vaginal Davis’s retrospective at MoMA, as you published Davis three times during a period when no one in the art world was taking her work seriously.
She’s so much fun. I met her a few times, and she has this great sense of humour – just a pleasure to hang out with. It was a similar thing with Genesis P-Orridge in the art world. I had seen them perform and after her interview someone said to me, ‘I think you’re the only magazine who would have interviewed Genesis and not ask them why they wore a dress’.
You once said it was boredom which made you start Index.
Along with that, the desire to connect with people outside the art world. As an artist, I was always interested in other genres like film, architecture and music and I felt it was important to say that fine artists can be influenced by these genres – now it’s everyday to see such collaborations happen. The art critic Bob Nickas who I co-founded Index with was also into some very interesting things. Through that we arrived at a magazine that dealt with the whole range of culture.
What made you position Index as a kind of anti-Vanity Fair?
It’s funny, because in the last few weeks – partly because of the exhibition in Paris – I’ve been reading books by Tina Brown – who was a groundbreaking editor – and Graydon Carter. They produced terrific magazines, but they were totally involved with Hollywood and stardom. In a way, we were the anti-Vanity Fair. People always talk about Interview, and that was our inspiration. We definitely weren’t mainstream, but we also interviewed people in the mainstream who we thought were interesting. One thing I used to say is whether you're doing something for money or because you believe in it, makes a big difference. So, the people in the mainstream that we interviewed, we thought they had integrity as opposed to just being commercially viable or in it to make a lot of money.
Many of the indie stars you interviewed were just starting out and would become big names. How did you scout them out?
We just had a great network. We weren’t really interested in the ‘cool’. In our case, somebody would read a book or go see a movie or bring in their favourite band. We interviewed Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth as that’s what people at the magazine were interested in. I used to joke around in the ‘90s that we don't need the worldwide web because what we had then in New York City was a wide intersection of people coming together.
Did you and Chloë Sevigny – who was the underground It girl then – ever cross paths?
Well, this is a little embarrassing! We never interviewed her because in our circle, she was too famous – she'd been on every cover of all other indie magazines. Or, you could say we were too late, and she had already become an indie star. We were very competitive – if purple or any other indie magazine did something after we did it, we'd be very happy that we had been the first ones. We introduced Scarlett Johansson which was a surprise as we wanted to interview the director of her film ‘Ghost World’ and he wouldn’t agree. So, they said, do you wanna interview this actor, Scarlett? We said, sure. She was seventeen.
One of your photographers Leeta Harding would define the rave aesthetics of the 2000s. The picture of Björk she took with her pretending to sleep with her teddy bear is something we’d see today. How was Index transforming magazine photography?
The big inspiration was Wolfgang Tillmans. Juergen Teller was already well known when he asked if he could shoot for us. It was a magical situation where a photographer like that would work for us for a very small fee, because we gave them creative freedom. Wolfgang photographed our covers for the first year and I realised that most of the well-known people he photographed was through Index. I think what Wolfgang really wanted to do was photograph real life – not in the studio with studio lighting and styling. That really set the stage for our photography, and it really went with the interviews we wanted to do, which was really about what these artists thought about their work and life in general.
That was the vibe of the Marc Jacobs interview right before his menswear show in 2001.
Mary Clarke, who interviewed him, was his friend. It was nice to humanise somebody like Mark Jacobs, as having personal connections and not always being on the runway. The other day I had a talk with an American actor – I can't mention her name – and I said, could I do an interview with you about a past interview that had been in Index, and she said, no, I can't do that Peter, because with social media people will take it out of context. That really wasn't a problem back then.
We read a lot about Interview’s office with artists popping in and it being a busy place – what was the Index office like?
It was in my studio (laughs), and I spend most of my time working on my paintings, but people would be coming in and out all day. Most of the people who worked at the magazine were in their 20s, and I'd always hear about all the drugs they were taking and their extracurricular activities when they weren't at work (laughs). It was quite lively, but it was difficult because there were always money problems. Initially it was funded through my work as an artist and then twenty-five-year-old Michael Bullock came in with a real talent convincing people to advertise in Index. The magazine stopped after I became the Director of the MFA Painting program at Yale in 2002 and I wasn’t in a position to put together a new team after our editor stepped down. We had fun – we'd have a party for every issue in clubs or restaurants that were just opening.
It’s refreshing to find individuals like Octavia Butler and Slavoj Žižek in Index – not many indie magazines would consider an interview with them either, considering they slide more into the realm of cultural criticism. How did that become a significant part of Index?
What I did right as a publisher is let editors have their own voice. If Ariana (Speyer) wanted to go in the direction of politics, that was great. My own suggestion was a playwright named Eduardo Machado who wrote plays about his family's history in Cuba. And I also interviewed a poet named Wayne Koestenbaum, who was one of the real heroes of queer Theory in the ‘90s. In the first years of Index, somebody asked me, ‘Peter, why are you publishing a gay magazine?’ I said, well, it's not a gay magazine, but I really think Index had a queer sensibility. Queerness to my mind isn't a question of who you sleep with, but it's a certain kind of attitude towards culture, and it did emerge in the ‘90s when the sort of ghetto between straight and gay had really broken down.
It was interesting how designers were able to staunchly express their political views through this direction – like Tom Ford’s interview right before the 2004 elections when Bush was re-elected.
He had bought a painting of mine. It was the worst of the Iraq War and one reason Tom did it was because of the election. We really didn't want to see George Bush get re-elected and it seemed like John Kerry could win. We oriented his interview around it, and we were also able to interview Keyy’s wife – Theresa Heinz Kerry – who is a really interesting person. We also interviewed Patricia James who was on the city council and now she’s Attorney-General for the New York State and may run for governor. When I took back, Ariana really had her finger on the pulse of what was going on in politics.
Did this also influence the kind of individuals you’d profile in music? Considering riot grrrl’s Kathleen Hanna was your cover girl.
I was there for that, and she was terrific. Her father was a union leader, and she really had a socialist leftist take on the world, which really impressed me because her politics were almost like mainstream Democratic Socialist. A lot of musicians are interesting, but she was really political, and that made a big impression on me.
