Street Knowledge. King ADZ
was as it was so chock-full and difficult to get around. This was like no nightclub that I had ever been in before. The unseen sound system was pumping out tune after tune of which I’d never heard the like before. Mainly they were stripped-back extended mixes of shuddering electro tracks with soul divas’ voices on top; they almost made the Giorgio Moroder records I knew sound like kids’ stuff. Track after track, all seamlessly segueing into each other. Never a drop in the energy level. This was something else altogether. It was literally an ocean away from cheesy Euro disco or the soul-boy sounds that dance clubs would have been playing in the UK… On leaving the place I noticed that it was called “The Paradise Garage”.’
Bill Drummond ex-KLF
Over the sea in Europe, in 1976, a club called Amnesia opened on the Balearic island of Ibiza. DJ Alfredo Fiorito took over as resident DJ Amnesia in 1984 and changed the face of DJing. Turn to p122 to continue the story.
Designers Against Aids came to life in 2004 after long-time fashion journalist, Ninette Murk, and a photographer and music journalist, Javier Barcala, joined forces. Their idea was to build different campaigns that would utilize their serious network of friends (artists, fashion designers, musicians, celebrities) to create different messages of HIV/AIDS awareness using their talent and I vehicles of expression. Starting from fashion collections, they’ve also organized conferences, been involved in music festivals, created video-clips, photographs and moreover, two worldwide campaigns with giant retailer H&M that reached more than 30 countries. DAA have worked with Estelle, Katy Perry, Yoko Ono, Cyndi Lauper, N.E.R.D., Moby, Tokio Hotel, Robyn and Dangerous Muse.
DAA is now training students to start campaigns in regions with dramatic rates of infections (such as China, India, Russia, Ukraine, East Asia and South Africa) through courses at their International HIV/AIDS Awareness Education Center in Antwerp. They’re also looking into possible collaborations with sports celebrities, because they have the power to connect with the youth as much as musicians do and are very great role models.
‘Our goal was always to create messages that would keep the youth interested in AIDS awareness and wouldn’t make them look somewhere else or lose interest.’
Javier Barcala
dr.d is a street artist who specializes in billboard hijacking, which is one of my favourite mediums. Billboards are there to be fucked with (>Culture Jamming p40) and the good doctor does just that. dr.d’s work is a take on life:
‘It’ll either be funny or political, I think the most effective political stuff will have an element of humour that makes it work better.’
He started off just cutting bits from one billboard to stick on another, which was generally just funny or stupid, but…
‘After a while you find that it’s really limiting as to what you’ll end up with, as all you can work with is what the advertisers throw you. Now as well as being technically different (ie I’ll use stencils over posters and even do small scale collage that I then print up billboard size), I suppose my work now has more of a point politically or socially.’
I was introduced to Dot’s work when I was cruising the streets of LA (>p156) and ‘Day & Night’ (the tune he wrote & produced fwith Kid Cudi) was on heavy rotation on every urban radio station. I tracked him down and we hooked up at his brand new studio in Brooklyn.
‘I’ve been doing music pretty much my whole life. I went to music school from seven to like fifteen and from then till now I’ve been playing the piano. When I first got to college my roommate did electro/techno music and he gave me my first beat program to make beats on, called Fruityloops - a cracked version. That’s when I first started making beats. I just kept making beats and working with anyone who wanted to work with me, as I was just starting. My A&R first worked with Cudi when he first came to New York and he linked us and we made music for two years straight and then the song just took off.
‘I’ve been influenced by artists from Lily All en to Rick Ross. I was influenced in the beginning by the Neptunes, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz-the staples: the blueprint aseveïpfcne wants to attain that kind of success. All these producers influenced me to do my own thing. You have to jump from one genre to another. A lot of people make the mistake of staying in one lane.’
Chloe’s work will stop you in your tracks and make you look closer. This is what it’s all about. Her work is simply amazing and unites street influences with fine art sensibilities to create something unique. She grew up in Cork, Ireland, just outside the city.
‘It was beautiful in a mossy, green moist kind of way. We had a lot of space, we climbed trees, nature was close. The city was big enough to have great gigs, bars, clubs, and discovering all that as a teenager seemed like an Aladdin’s Cave of new delights. I think with painting there is always two strands to the work. Painting is an all-encompassing absorbing task, the process becomes the reward.
‘I think a lot about colour, mark making, movement, composition, form; these are the bricks out of which a painting is built. For the viewer the first thing they often relate to is the imagery. Previously, landscape was my primary subject but my emphasis has now switched to the figure. Oil painting and the figure seem to belong to each other and I take a lot of pleasure in painting flesh. But mostly my paintings are about the combinations of imagery I use, unexpected pairings and trying to create a narrative and then drown it out again in paint. It’s a tug of war.
‘When I go to Italy I love seeing extended families walking together in the evenings, talking to the neighbours. I’m sure it’s got a lot to do with the weather but also sadly I think here in the UK the streets are becoming homogenized as the same chains dominate high streets up and down the country, and even from borough to borough in London, it’s all starting to look the same. Perhaps, though, the same things I despair of are one of the reasons why street art and skateboarding have taken off so much in the west, as some kind of territorial way of reclaiming ownership and leaving a mark or belonging to our surroundings.
‘When I think of street culture I think of other countries. Where I live in London there is large African and Turkish communities, the Turks stand outside their barbers, bakeries and flower shops talking late into the night.’