Vice Magazine Fiction Issue 2015
It is a themeless issue—meaning the stories aren't by people who live in LA, or by women, or all horror stories, or written by writers who have stayed in hotels (all ideas we have employed or considered, and reserve the right to use in the future)—and so we were having trouble introducing it without writing about ourselves. We even argued with each other. We questioned the whole enterprise of writing an introduction.
Nicolas Poillot Photography
Nicolas Poillot (born 1978) lives and works as a photographer, curator and editor in Paris. He is one of the co founder of Études Books. Études Books is an independent publisher, which produces books that focus on photography. By promoting this medium, they are committed to presenting a new scene in photography. Poillot also collaborates as Photo Editor for magazines, like Vice and others. Besides he’s working on his own book that will be published by Shelter Press in early 2013.
People Who Watch People Having Sex in the Park
Kohei Yoshiyuki is a Japanese photographer best known for The Park, his series of photographs of people watching other people have sex in the public parks of 1970’s Tokyo. It’s that exact mix of hilarious, depressing, and creepy you’d expect to get from pictures of people hiding in bushes and touching themselves.
The photos are currently being exhibited in Liverpool’s Fact Gallery and are displayed in a darkened room. Once you arrive, you’re given a torch to guide your way around the space and witness the peepers in their natural habitat – darkness. It’s a creepy but oddly intimate experience, and adds another layer to the project, turning you into the voyeur as soon as you start perving on all the perverts.
Shooting the Shit with Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramović, the 65-year-old grandmother of performance art, says you know you’re still relevant when young people show up at your art shows. Her private dinner parties are another matter altogether. I was somehow—and surprisingly—invited to her VIP private dinner party at a classy Viennese restaurant after her latest opening Thursday night, “With Eyes Closed I See Happiness, 2012” at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna. Correction: I crashed the dinner party with three of my artist friends, and we were probably the youngest people there.
I only managed to snag a 12-minute interview with the art world superstar. But it was cool. She was hungry and people were wearing big glasses, snorting tobacco, and spilling red wine all over the white tablecloths. Abramović managed to keep her composure, even while star-struck fans were taking photos as she ate sugar powder-covered pancakes.
It’s not hyperbole to say that Yves Saint Laurent is the greatest, most evocative name in the history of fashion. Stefano Pilati has been the company’s creative director for the past decade, defining yet another era with his analytic eye for design and plainspoken opinions about fashion’s place in modern culture. Before taking the helm at YSL, Stefano worked closely with Tom Ford and Miuccia Prada, perhaps the most innovative figures in Italian fashion of the past 20 years. While Stefano was the most suitable candidate to take over the billion-dollar fashion house after Tom Ford’s departure, that doesn’t mean he didn’t piss off a lot of people in the process. And while writing about and interviewing those in the fashion industry can very quickly veer into pretentious nonsense, to be honest, for people who– like me – live fashion the same way others live music or art, Stefano’s as real as it gets. So far he’s managed to keep YSL economically viable while flying the banner of elegance and weirdness first raised by his mentor and master, Yves – a psychotic genius whose madness created a new way of communication. But things are changing for designers; times are tough and battles must be picked carefully. As Kim Jong-il used to say, “He who is afraid of a challenge will never be a good revolutionary.” Stefano is undoubtedly a revolutionary figure, and he’s not afraid of provocation – whether that means serving up controversy or sitting back while fashion bloggers bitch about him. I conducted the following interview with Stefano via Skype. He was sitting in his office in Paris, dressed to the nines, while I wasted away on my bed like a Nan Goldin photograph.
VICE U.K. picks its top 50 albums of the year….well, kind of. Click here to read it.
