TTA20Complete-ForOnlinePreviewONLY

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PERSONAL INFORMATION

name :

address :

city / post code :

country :

telephone :

et cetera :

emergency contact :

telephone :

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MEDITATION JOURNAL

MEDITATION JOURNAL

date/time location mood reflection/gratitude


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MEDITATION JOURNAL

MEDITATION JOURNAL



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MEDITATION JOURNAL

MEDITATION JOURNAL



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TABLE OF CONTENTS

guests

14

dark matters — Richard Catty

20

studio visit with — Diedrick Brackens

34

a conversation with — Grimes

52

studio visit with — Samuel Ross

70

through the looking glass with — Georgia Palmer

84

a conversation with — Ai Weiwei

104

a conversation with — Kaia Gerber

124

in the powder room with — Valentino Beauty

138

edible landscapes with — Dr. Mark Hyman

146

a conversation with — Francis Kéré

excursions

166

the bicycle saddle — Richard Catty

170

screenic tourism — Timothy Woods Palma

174

la collina di loredana — Pantelleria, Italy

176

the cold — The Andes, Argentinean Patagonia

180

there’s a place called kokomo — Indiana, United States

182

nietzsche’s last year in turin — Piedmont, Italy

186

super futures at selfridges — London, United Kingdom

188

clinique la prairie — Montreux, Switzerland

202

where are you based? — Colin Dodgson

220

lulu & leonard — Brooklyn, New York

232

the model world — Chiltern Hills, United Kingdom

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A LETTER

GUESTS

Dear fellow travelers,

at a moment in time when an unprecedented pandemic was slowly loosening its

grip on the global psyche, the world found itself in the midst of yet another crisis of

historic proportions. The invasion of and subsequent war in Ukraine have not only

led to unimaginable human suffering among the Ukrainian population but also resulted

in the biggest refugee crisis since WWII. Despite most of this issue having been

produced prior to recent developments, “minutiae,” the theme of this, our 20th issue,

nevertheless carries a universal significance—one that has defined TTA over the past

ten years. Awareness of and gratitude for small details in everyday life are not only

essential identifiers of a humane society, but common characteristics of the esteemed

personalities we are honoured to feature in TTA20.

Our guests this time around include musical prodigy Grimes in conversation with

TTA family member and acclaimed songwriter Eartheater, who discuss heavenly

bodies, the impacts of their alignments and the mutual evolution of technology and

human consciousness. A studio visit brings us close to groundbreaking artist and fashion

designer Samuel Ross, as we retrace his influential upbringing between the UK

and the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Saint Vincent. Iconic model Kaia Gerber

describes her earliest travel memories and how they’ve recently led her on a journey

towards acting. Inspiring artist Diedrick Brackens considers the meaning that different

sources of water impart on his masterful weavings, while visionary photographer

Elizaveta Porodina takes us through the looking glass in an enchanting photoshoot

with celebrated model Georgia Palmer. Superstar architect Francis Kéré, 2022 laureate

and first Black and African recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, contends the

importance of education in creating united visions at the heart of modern cities. And

last but by no means least, legendary Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei reflects on

everything from his personal struggle with political persecution and the current crisis

of war in Ukraine, to the importance of walking, details and language.

These are just some of the stories and journeys we are excited to share with you in this

milestone edition. Once again, I hope you’ll enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed

creating it,

The Editors

GUESTS

dark matters

Richard Catty

studio visits with

Diedrick Brackens & Samuel Ross

conversations with

Grimes, Ai Weiwei & Francis Kéré

through the looking glass with

Georgia Palmer

in the powder room with

Valentino Beauty

edible landscapes with

Dr. Mark Hyman

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PSYCHOLOGICAL SIGHTSEEING

DARK MATTERS

Dark Matters

The Intergalactic Potential of the Universe’s Most Elusive Substance

by Richard Catty

But no matter how long one spends around the campfire, gazing up at the starry-night sky in a low light–

pollution part of the world, dark matter will never expose itself. As the name suggests, it is completely

invisible. Yet, early evidence of its existence was first brought to light in the 1930s via an experiment which

relied on the detection of light. Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky was studying light emissions from more

than 1,000 neighbouring galaxies to determine the total mass of the Coma cluster of galaxies when he

came across a discrepancy that would become the foundation of dark matter theory. One of the methods

he used for determining the cluster’s mass measured the velocity of each individual galaxy by recording

shifts in the light they emitted. The second method used the total brightness of the cluster to determine

overall mass. When the two sets of results were compared, the sum of the galaxy velocity measurements

estimated a mass hundreds of times greater than the cluster brightness estimate.

What we hitherto believed to be the entirety of the universe suddenly appeared to be just a fraction of it,

at least to Zwicky. Such was the controversy surrounding his study, most scientists rejected his hypothesis

that the universe is governed by an invisible, undetectable dark matter—it wasn’t until nearly fifty years later

that the scientific community began to take Zwicky’s findings seriously. In the early 1970s, Vera Rubin,

“Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky was studying light emissions from more

than 1,000 neighbouring galaxies to determine the total mass of the Coma

cluster of galaxies when he came across a discrepancy that would become

the foundation of dark matter theory.”

The 1998 discovery of the universe’s accelerating expansion. The 2004 publication of the 10,000th scientific

paper using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The 2012 observation of a particle likely

to be the Higgs Boson at the LHC. The first ever images of a black hole—located in the Messier 87

galaxy—captured in 2019. The year 2020’s detection of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the

Milkyway. . .Despite these astounding achievements in the fields of astro- and particle physics, three of

which were Nobel Prize–winning, there’s still far more we don’t understand about the universe than we

do. Ordinary matter—the stuff that scientists have spent centuries studying—makes up around 5% of

the cosmos, according to astrophysicists. The general scientific consensus states that lurking in the cold

depths of space, something greater is waiting to be discovered. But unlike the discovery of a new species

or element, where there is first a visual observation followed by an assessment of that which has been

observed, it is the unexplainable behaviour of the universe’s known particles which has led scientists to

the conclusion that there must be something else interacting with them—that there must be dark matter.

an astrophysicist who had to overcome sexism and marginalisation within the US educational system,

began using an extremely sensitive spectrometer developed by research partner Kent Ford to measure the

wavelengths of light from stars at the edges of spiral galaxies. The measurements were used to determine

their orbital velocities and led to a surprising revelation: Contrary to predictions, these distant stars, lying

in sparsely populated areas of the galaxies, were moving at similar speeds to those located centrally. This

was peculiar because the visible overall masses of the galaxies could not possibly exert enough gravity to

hold such rapidly moving stars in their orbits. The conclusion was that there must be colossal amounts

of unseen matter at the peripheries of the studied galaxies, where collective star mass was relatively low.

At last, there was a study which supported the theory of dark matter. Over the coming decades, a flurry

of evidence backing Zwicky’s hypothesis would follow. Much of the supporting evidence from the ’90s

onwards was based on data collected from Hubble. The space telescope was able to demonstrate the effect

of gravitational lensing—the bending and distortion of light from distant celestial bodies by massive dark

matter–containing galaxies lying in its path. The phenomena creates distinct images on Hubble’s lightcollecting

mirrors, as if there were in fact two sources of light rather than one. Using mathematical models

derived from Hubble’s gravitational lensing observations, scientists have been able to predict the location

and properties of dark matter, demonstrating that the universe has roughly five times more dark matter

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DARK MATTERS

than regular matter. The models also reveal that, since the big bang, a network of dark matter filaments

has proliferated, at the intersections of which galaxy clusters are found. Nowadays, thanks to gravitational

lensing experiments, scientists estimate that visible matter makes up about 5% of the universe, the other

95% being comprised of 70% dark energy and 25% dark matter.

Still, in spite of all the evidence implying its abundance, dark matter has yet to be directly observed. But

why is it so important that man proves the existence of dark matter? Was the universe not functioning

perfectly well without it, just as Newton’s pre-gravitational world? In the words of Nietzsche: “Without

the perpetual counterfeiting of the universe by number, man could not continue to live.” In other words,

humankind’s compulsion to understand the world around us is the very thing that motivates us to endure

it. There are, of course, added technological advantages that come with an advanced understanding of the

universe. Though, it’s not only the acquisition of knowledge but its pursuit which hold value in today’s

fractured geopolitical world. A prime example of the benefits of such pursuits is the collaborative effort

surrounding the International Space Station—a research project now in jeopardy as a consequence of the

War in Ukraine. For decades before Russia’s assault on their fellow Slavic nation, the partnership between

“But why is it so important that man proves the existence of dark matter?

Was the universe not functioning perfectly well without it, just as Newton’s

pre-gravitational world? In the words of Nietzsche:‘Without the perpetual

counterfeiting of the universe by number, man could not continue to live.’”

Nasa and Roscosmos (Russia’s national space programme), as well as other national space agencies, have

helped forge closer bonds between the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan.

Science, like sport, has the power to unite the world in spite of nationalistic tensions. Across the globe are

scores of direct detection experiments, all working towards the same end: proving the existence of dark

matter. KIMS (Korea Invisible Mass Search), for example, is searching for WIMPs (weakly interacting

massive particles), a hypothetical particle some believe to be the only component of dark matter. Germany’s

FUNK (Finding U[1]s of a Novel Kind) is tasked with detecting “hidden photons,” a lightweight

dark matter particle thought to be closely related to regular photons (AKA U[1]s). And China’s CDEX

and PANDA-X experiments are attempting to discover dark matter inside an 18 km tunnel lying 2400 m

underground. In addition to these experiments, South Korea, Germany and China have been working

together by sharing dark matter data with GNOME (Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic

Physics Searches). The organisation has also collected readings from Serbia, Poland, Israel, Australia and

the US, releasing in December 2022 the first comprehensive collection of data from optical magnetometers—a

device used in some dark matter detection experiments. GNOME’s aim was to discern a correlatable

signal pattern of dark matter fields produced through these international experiments. While the

research heralded no corresponding results, according to the paper published in Nature Physics, it has

helped formulate parameters around the nature of dark matter, paving the way for a potential international

affirmation of its existence. Until such a time that these experiments ascertain the actuality of dark matter,

the best chance the public have of seeing it lies in the hands of pop-keyboardist turned–astrophysicist

Brian Cox. Via his 2021 BBC series Universe, TV audiences are taken on high-definition screenic journeys

through the early ages of the cosmos, in which the interlinking filaments of dark matter proposed by

gravitational lensing experiments are visually represented like an infinite tapestry quilt. In addition to

making complex phenomena like dark matter and black holes conceivable through his work as a presenter,

the former member of D:Ream—the group responsible for feel-good hits like Things Can Only Get Better

and U R the Best Thing—is known for his intense enthusiasm for astrophysics and unwavering reverence

for the universe. Perhaps it’s this passion which leads Cox to try to bridge the gap between the layman and

complex scientific ideas by regularly comparing the origins of the universe with creationist thinking. Or it

could be the ghosts of religious ideology unconsciously rooted in the mind of a person who many see as

the obvious successor to the venerable, 95-year-old naturalist David Attenborough. For despite God being

long dead in the eyes of Nietzsche, “given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in

which his shadow will be shown. And we—we still have to vanquish his shadow. . .”

The question of whether creationist sentiment has a place alongside scientific thought is a debatable one,

but there is no doubt about the significance of the ideas presented in Cox’s latest series, nor dark matter’s

potential for technological progression. From the advent of steam engines, through the invention of horseless

carriages, to the Wright brothers’ early flying machines (which paved the way for all forms of modern

flight), our ability to travel using man-made vehicles has advanced exponentially in line with significant

scientific discovery. Nowadays, mega-rich billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos battle it out to make

spaceflight commercially viable, while Elon Musk’s SpaceX sets its sights on the colonisation of Mars—

endeavours that were but fantasy at the beginning of the industrial era. However impressive these efforts

may at first appear, manned spacecraft remain limited to the exploration of our own solar system by fuel

efficiency capabilities.

“All of our past and current rockets are chemical-based. . .and that places tremendous constraints on

how far we’ve been able to go,” explains Ethan Siegel, Forbes science–section writer. With conventional

rockets achieving energy efficiency of 0.0001% at the very best, and nuclear fusion still only able to muster

0.7% efficiency, neither method of propulsion is anywhere near effective enough to transport humans to

a neighbouring solar system (the closest is 4.24 light-years away) within the space of a lifetime. But all

that could change with the harnessing of dark matter, professor Siegel claims. Since dark matter particles

theoretically have no antiparticle, if one were able to collect enough pairs and make them interact with

each other, there would be a finite probability that these pairs would annihilate each other, thus, releasing

an abundance of 100%-efficient energy. Given that science predicts dark matter pervades every corner of

the universe, the substance should not be too difficult to locate, should technology allow us to see it. Dark

matter, Siegel predicts, may indeed turn out to be the future’s source of “unlimited, free energy. . .no matter

where in the galaxy we go.”

As well as nurturing human curiosity and our need for exploration, intergalactic travel may hold the key

to preservation in the event that humankind were to succumb to climate change, food and water shortages,

or the constant threat of nuclear war. And while we may be centuries, even an epoch, away from

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Star Wars–esque spacecraft capable of achieving the speeds necessary to reach other galaxies, the search

for colonisable planets within our native Milkyway is already well underway. In fact, scientists have identified

a potentially habitable planet orbiting our nearest star, as well as three Earth-sized planets within the

habitable zone of a solar system that is just 40 light-years from Earth.

Just like dark matter, though, truly Earthlike planets still only exist in theory. While it is probable there are

numerous “Goldilocks” planets—those capable of supporting life—spread throughout the incomprehensibly

vast universe, finding one with conditions close enough to those on Earth is a completely different

matter. Yet with new technology, like that of the recently deployed James Webb Space Telescope, successor

to fabled Hubble Space Telescope, the chances of Nasa singling out the perfect planet-B increases.

Apart from capturing infrared images of potentially human-habitable planets, the $10 billion telescope,

with its array of precision-tuned mirrors, is tasked with observing how the universe’s very first stars and

galaxies developed over time and examining the effects of dark matter to determine where and why

stars form.

Assuming that humans will eventually be able to not only observe dark matter, but harness its power in

order to travel to a distant planet with a fresh supply of water and an atmosphere and soils capable of grow-

Juergen Teller: The Girl with the Broken Nose, Cuba, 2010

All rights reserved

“Imagine the melancholy of packing for a journey from which you might

never return. Given that astronauts regularly report ‘a cognitive shift in

awareness’ after seeing the blue planet from outer space, how would it feel

to watch one’s own solar system fading into the distance?”

Edition no. of 50

@thetravelalmanac

Postal Service

. . .will return in 2022

ing nutrient-dense foods, how might humans deal with the concept of interplanetary travel? Imagine the

melancholy of packing for a journey from which you might never return. Given that astronauts regularly

report “a cognitive shift in awareness” after seeing the blue planet from outer space, how would it feel to

watch one’s own solar system fading into the distance? With the human species lamentably divided along

national, political, religious and racial lines, how would being an interplanetary migrant affect one’s sense

of belonging? Would it be a fresh start—a chance to lean into the unknown of an alien world? Or would

the colonists find new lines down which to divide themselves?

In spite of the divisions humans have contrived for themselves, according to scientists, dark matter connects

every single corner of the universe. As we steadily learn to detect and manipulate this abundant yet

elusive substance, how will people ensure they remain connected to fundamental and spiritual truth in a

world evermore divided into particles, sub-particles and abstract measurements of their interactions with

each other? Will understanding dark matter help lead to a much sought-after unifying theory of everything,

emancipating humankind from the need to endlessly unpick the fabric of the universe? Or will its

discovery only add to the complexity inherent in the fields of astro- and particle physics, and indeed, life

itself? Perhaps, as manifestations of the universe, it is the destiny of humans to be endlessly “confronted by

the predominance of nature in all its forms”—the universe perceiving itself through our eyes for as long as

we manage to survive on this planet, or the next. •

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

DIEDRICK BRACKENS

Weaving together pasts, presents and futures is at the core of Diedrick Brackens’

work—literally. The Mexia, Texas–born, Los Angeles–based artist transforms

threads into tapestries, and strips of fabrics into quilts that explore contemporary notions

of and pay homage to the historic queer Black experience in the United States. Though

expertly trained in weaving, with a BFA from the University of North Texas and MFA

from California College of the Arts, technical precision takes a backseat to content and

experimentation in Brackens’ practice, using “weaving to create. . .visual, technical and

conceptual language.” This multilayered language is in dialogue with everything from

medieval European tapestries, through West African textiles, to the famous quiltmakers

of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who are still active today. Brackens’ work has been exhibited in

a range of institutions and galleries, including the New Museum in New York, the New

Orleans Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum in LA. Forthcoming shows include a

group exhibition curated by Legacy Russell at Hauser & Wirth, a collaborative exhibition

with D’Angelo Lovell Williams at the Lumber Room in Portland, Oregon, and a solo exhibition

at LA’s Craft Contemporary. Here, he discusses his artistic roots, how living in the

South and on the West Coast have shaped his practice, and his spirit animal: the catfish.

interview Emily McDermott

photography Stephen Schauer

I know you came to weaving during your undergrad studies, but to start, I want to go

back to the very beginning. Were you interested in art as a kid?

Yeah, I always made things. I can’t remember a time where I didn’t draw or tinker or

imagine playing at object making. I had frame looms as a child that I made with cardboard,

and I learned to sew when I was about eight—my grandmother taught me with

a needle and thread, at my request. The first thing I sewed was clothes for a Beanie

Baby, to be honest. I was always making these small, strange little objects for all my

imaginative play. I also took things apart, which my parents didn’t love so much, but

I was always tinkering with the physical world.

It’s a big leap to go from enjoying tinkering and sewing things to then actually enrolling

in art school. How did you decide to make that jump?

DIEDRICK BRACKENS

When I was in high school my art teacher was like: “The best school for art in the state

is University of North Texas.” I applied to the university as a biology and English major,

but I guess this was in the back of my mind, because when I got there, I dropped all

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“It’s almost second nature, or first nature, to weave. It frees up my

mental space to do six other things at the same time. That kind of meditative,

hypnotic space, the rhythm of the loom, really satisfies me.”

my bio classes on the first day and signed up for whatever was available in the art

program—there was an intro class and a senior level history of photography class. At

the time, I thought I was gonna study photography, but that class—although great, the

professor was amazing—disabused me of any interest in the form. So I floated around

until another professor in the art department was like, “Take a weaving class. I think

you’d like it,” because I was making sculptures with fabric and string. It all took off

from there.

You once said that even before you knew what to make, you loved the process of

weaving. What about the process made you really stick with it?

I imagine most creative folks find a vehicle to think inside of before they can really

articulate anything, and for me, it was taking a long drive. In the beginning, it was like:

‘Oh, this is a place where I can sit down, think about my problems, my relationships,

and my orientation to the world to the point of exhaustion.’ I was like, ‘I have infinite

hours a week to sit here at this loom and chew on problems,’ both creative ones and

personal ones. By the time I was done with making the thing, I’d had at least a couple

dozen hours to really come to a conclusion about something—and I still feel that way

today. It’s almost second nature, or first nature, to weave. It frees up my mental space

to do six other things at the same time. That kind of meditative, hypnotic space, the

rhythm of the loom, really satisfies me.

How was studying at the University of North Texas in terms of place? How did it inform

your early experiences as an artist?

Being in the South and not being in a large city center, the kinds of ideas I was thinking

about or being confronted with seem so different. Since then, having been a professor

and done talks at other universities, I’ve only encountered the sort of conditions

that I knew as a student when I was in Richmond, Virginia, and other rural places.

There is a particular way you interact with folks and the kind of reverence you give to

folks who are older or senior to you in ways that I was disabused of when I moved

to California—a place that is so much more relaxed and open to any kind of idea. So,

being a queer Black person in the South, which really shaped my worldview, there

were things I wanted from the work or myself that sometimes resonated with people

and then other times they were like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

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“It feels like a small way to pay respect to my ancestors, to those violent

histories and to the fact that I can sit in the comfort of my studio

and work with it as a choice. . .”

There was a certain kind of isolation, and I think that insular space can make you feel a

little like you’re just making things up.

I can imagine how experiencing those kinds of feelings or reactions as a young artist

could have been discouraging. How did you cope with them?

The University of North Texas is about an hour from Dallas or Fort Worth, which both

have world-class museums, so I would go there, and those visits were my first times

seeing artists like Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Nick Cave and Mark Bradford. It was so

bolstering to see there were successful Black artists in the world, to be like: ‘There are

people out there who have these ideas; you didn’t just make this up.’ This also set my

sights on moving to LA from early on. I never had the interest of moving to New York,

although I did go to see all the galleries and museums when I was in college. But I’m

not a city mouse. I can’t move to New York. I would get run over.

Now that you have been in Los Angeles for almost seven years, how has living there

shaped your practice?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. This year was the first that I have felt like an Angeleno,

and not that I just live in Los Angeles. I mean, my creative community is here.

The folks who I’m in constant dialogue with are artists, and they’re my friends and my

family at this point. There are also so many people working in craft in LA, so many

folks who are relying on the handmade and their hands and their labor. It’s a city that

is notably where artists come and get things fabricated, so to imagine that the primary

part of someone’s practice is sitting down at a loom or being in a ceramic studio or in

a woodshop is unrecognizable to folks, but I think LA is really becoming the center of

handmade craftsmanship. I’m glad I’m here because it’s also a city that moves a little

bit slower. It doesn’t take itself so seriously. There’s so much room to be inventive or

reinvent oneself here.

You reference varied types of weaving in your practice, including European figural tapestry,

West African kente cloth, and quilt-making. Can you tell me how you came to these

different approaches?

My fiber and textile background is so informed by the process and actual textile study.

In college, we would go to the Dallas Museum of Art, which is this huge encyclopedic

museum, and we weren’t necessarily walking through looking at the paintings. We

were down in the storage. They would take out historical pieces and we looked at them

trying to reverse engineer the techniques or identify things we knew about. I have reverence

and disgust for what I’m about to say, but we would look at the backs of woven

works like: “How was this made? Did the maker do a good job of tying their knots?”

It was about all these things that I don’t think a painter or a sculptor is obsessed with.

It was always about looking at the expertise, and for so long, this was the only way I

knew how to judge quality. I wasn’t necessarily taught to think about content.

Is this is something that now still informs your work?

I found my way to these various techniques by studying textiles and talking about these

technical things. In some of the very formative weaving work I did, I was already trying

to articulate the ways that strip-weaving and quilting were in kinship with each other.

Some of the strip-weaving works are unusual in their arc of textiles from around the

world. It was interesting to me to think about my own identity and see how folks in

West Africa and their descendants in the States were still piecing things together in a

collage kind of way. In terms of tapestry, there was an interest for me—and for my cohort

and for textile folks at large—in looking at tapestries as precursors to painting, and

the idea that you could take string and make it a face or a hand, or articulate realism.

So how did these references converge?

Eventually I started combining techniques that we were learning in isolation and

trying to build on top of them. Also, realizing that I could blend these cross-cultural

things started to speak to me about my very identity as a Black person in the States

who was inheriting all these traditions genetically and by virtue of being in this time

and space and place, where cultures have collapsed on top of each other.

In terms of materiality, you’re very specific in your use of cotton. On the one hand, it’s a

very cheap and accessible material. On the other, it’s steeped in histories of enslavement

and violence in the American South. Can you talk about why you’ve stuck with cotton as

your primary material over the years?

It’s my life’s work to use the material, to work with it. And I think as much about the

ideas of labor that are bound up in weaving, in crafts and in making anything. It feels

like a small way to pay respect to my ancestors, to those violent histories and to the

fact that I can sit in the comfort of my studio and work with it as a choice, as opposed

to being caught up in a system that forces it on me. I think that’s part of it.

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

DIEDRICK BRACKENS

mud bright sight – 2021 water and dreams – 2021

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DIEDRICK BRACKENS

“. . .if it’s important that it’s cotton not wool, it should also be

important that the water is drawn from this or that source. Water can

impart as much content, as much meaning.”

There is also an undercurrent that might not be the theme of a specific piece, but it is

something that is embodied in the practice of art.

You also source water for dying fabrics from specific bodies of water, right?

Yeah, but not always. I mean, I do still turn on a tap. [laughs] But there are times

where the water is important to me. Specifically, I’ve gone to the lake in my hometown,

the Mississippi, the Gulf and the Pacific Ocean, and made work with their waters.

As someone who uses materials for specific properties—and if it’s important that it’s

cotton not wool—it should also be important that the water is drawn from this or that

source. Water can impart as much content, as much meaning.

Could you tell me about the significance of Lake Mexia, the lake in your hometown?

I should write an essay about it, honestly. For me, it represents these extreme nodes

of the Black experience in the South, and in particular where I’m from. The lake is

manmade, but it has shaped the psychic geography of the town. There is a park called

Booker T. Washington Park that is made of land owned by the Black families who are

from the region. It was established right after the Emancipation Proclamation, and

both my maternal and paternal families are of the 41 folks who are in that charter;

they’re represented there, and also have land on the rim of the lake. To me, that’s as

close as I come to an ancestral belonging to a place. But also, all sorts of events—

weddings, funerals, baptisms, family reunions—are celebrated at that park, and the

biggest was Juneteenth. At one point, this was the largest Juneteenth celebration in the

country, so arguably also the world. Tens of thousands of people would come every

year. They would bring their families and stay for the weekend. But in 1981, three boys

in police custody drowned in there. Then the bottom fell out. People stopped coming.

To think about the lake as this site of liberation and freedom, and then to have the bottom

ripped out by the deaths of these Black men at the celebration was destabilizing.

It’s strange to think about this lake as the birthplace of liberation as well as the resting

place of these young men, and to then be like, ‘Oh, this is also the space that I’m from.’

The history of this country as it relates to Black folks really started to make me think

about that link so much, and to have a deep, abiding love and pride for it. Just to think

about all the sorrow that floats through this water is probably part of why I started to

work with water so specifically.

immersion circle – 2019

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

DIEDRICK BRACKENS

“In myself and through things I have been told, there was this idea

that I couldn’t be both a writer and an artist, that I needed to focus.

But I’ve always had a writing practice, at least for myself.”

You have a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Craft Contemporary titled Heaven is a

Muddy Riverbed. Judging by the title, it will also have something to do with water.

Can you tell me a bit about it?

In some ways, it is actually an extension of this idea of the lake. I’ve been using catfish

in my work for at least the last four years, and I’ve been thinking of them partially as

this spirit animal of sorts—as a way to put myself in the work without human form—

and also as a way to talk about these ideas of the South. I think of catfish as these creatures

that are uniquely southern and can put me in this landscape, and as spirit guides

in the ways that they can move at all depths of the water column and are scavengers.

For me, the show is really focusing on how I’ve used that figure in the work, with new

works and works from the past three years in conversation with each other. There will

also be poems that I’ve written about catfish. So my writing and the woven works will

be mingling in the same space for the first time.

I knew you enjoyed writing, but there isn’t much openly out there, and I’ve never read

any of your poetry in direct relation to your visual practice. Why did you decide to bring

them together now?

In myself and through things I have been told, there was this idea that I couldn’t

be both a writer and an artist, that I needed to focus. But I’ve always had a writing

practice, at least for myself. It was this thing that stabilized me. Even in sketchbooks,

there were more words than there were ever images. There is even this linkage between

weaving and writing at an etymological level: They both spring from the Latin word

textarea, so to write and to weave share that common ancestor. Also, there is so much

storytelling that happens in weaving, and the more I started to lean on that conceptually,

the more that I found myself writing again. I got to a point where I was like: ‘I can

be a writer and weaver. No one is telling me I can’t.’ I started taking creative writing

classes in January 2020 and I can confidently say I’m a poet now in a way that doesn’t

make me feel like I’m lying to myself or other people. So far, of the five poems I’ve

published, four of them are about catfish. I’m the catfish man—I never imagined that

would be my calling card. •

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

GRIMES

interview Eartheater

photography Charlotte Wales

styling Clare Byrne

hair Evanie Frausto

makeup Sam Visser

manicurist Mei Kawajiri

casting Bert Martirosyan

Button Up & Puffer Jacket – VETEMENTS

Green And Silver Necklaces – JUSTINE CLENQUET // Pink Pendant Necklace – PANCONESI

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A CONVERSATION WITH

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After graduating high school in 2006, Claire Elise Boucher relocated to Montreal to study neuroscience

and Russian language. It is here that she first began writing music, releasing early works in

2007 through her Myspace account. The degree was eventually eschewed, but the wheels were already

set in motion for a project of a much grander scale. Under the moniker Grimes, Boucher went on to

release her debut album Geidi Primes in 2010. But it was her third album Visions, released two years

later, which was undoubtedly Grimes’ breakthrough moment. Featuring synth loops and layered vocals

of tantalising complexity, the album became a platform for experimenting with other genres such as R&B

and drum&bass in later releases. Like her music production skillset, Boucher’s visual art abilities are

self-taught. This DIY mindset has resulted in a catalogue of albums with artwork in complete harmony

with its music while providing Grimes a much-valued sense of ownership over her identity and career.

Her inimitable, manga-infused style also features in her gig merch, a capsule collection of T-shirts for

Saint Laurent, and an innovative digital art collaboration recently auctioned through the blockchain. It

is perhaps Grimes’ adventurous spirit that leads her to so readily embrace the benefits of technology. In

addition to being one of the first musicians to profit from NFTs with her WarNymph Collection Vol.1

drop, she is a proponent of AI, questioning the assumption that it would be inherently hostile to humans

should it become self-aware. Grimes has aspirations for creating and touring a digital girl group named

NPC—a gaming acronym for Nonplayer Character. And the video for her most recent and Spotify most–

played release Shinigami Eyes is a digital masterpiece. Made possible by a recent switch to Columbia Records,

it features an augmented warrior-elf version of Grimes and was filmed using xR (extended reality)

technology. Given her willingness to venture into the unknown and passion for interstellar sci-fi epic Dune,

it is somewhat unsurprising that Grimes has expressed plans to follow Elon Musk to Mars; the father of her

two children X and Y—the latter of which was recently born by surrogate—has long been vocal about his

interplanetary retirement ambitions. In this conversation with TTA family member and former cover star

Eartheater, Grimes goes deep into heavenly bodies and the impacts of their alignments, the challenges of

juggling making art with being a mom, and the mutual evolution of technology and human consciousness.

So where are you right now?

I’m in Austin, Texas. Where are you?

I’m in LA, but I mostly live in New York.

I love New York.

It’s so brutal and it sucks my blood. But I

love it.

So we’re both gonna be on the cover of

The Travel Almanac. . .

Yeah, I can’t wait to see. Your makeup

looked so good when you sent me that little

teaser. So, I have some questions and shit,

but I feel like this will unfold as a conversation

or whatever.

Yeah, I should just stop doing interviews,

and if I need press, it’s just a conversation

with someone cool.

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m super piscine and

fucking passive a lot of the time.

Oh, you’re Pisces too?

Yeah. I just sort of throw myself into these

embarrassing situations.

Me too!

And I feel like there’s some weird sort of

masochistic thing there. This spirituality of

embracing embarrassment and how you

overcome it.

I literally agree. I’ve been trying to deny

horoscopes my whole life, and I’ve just been

relenting and falling into it lately. I don’t

feel Pisces, but I set up these things that I

have to endure somehow. And while I’m

doing it, I’m like, ‘Why did I agree to this?’

I have to learn how to say no to things soon

because I literally don’t think I can fit everything

in. I am about to start just saying no

to everything so I can go back to the studio

and start making music, because that’s my

fucking favourite thing to do.

That’s the big issue. I think when your art

project first blows up, the hard thing is

making the time to make more art. After

Visions, like before Art Angels, everyone

was like, “Why did it take so long?” It’s

like, “Man, there was two years of non-stop

Trello,” and at a point, I had to start saying

no to good things ’cause I needed to actually

make an album.

Yeah, I mean, because otherwise you’re sort

of threading the needle through itself at a

certain point. I don’t know where I read it,

but you isolated yourself for Visions, right?

Yeah, because there’s an aspect of, if you

want to get away from your old material—if

you’re just out there being the thing you

were—it’s really hard to come home at

night and take off that cloak and get into

something else. It’s very important, I think,

to break, break, break from the old thing.

I love the way you said that. I feel that so

hard because I’m right now making a new

album. Last year, I finally moved to my own

apartment, where I could live alone for the

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

“At this point in your life, when you have kids and stuff—it’s just, people are always

mad at you for it. When I make art, I’m almost in trouble for it or something. Which

isn’t bad, it kind of makes me want it more.”

first time ever. And I suddenly just felt it, like

a deposit, plopping out of me.

You have to create that space for yourself.

If you don’t do that, then you’ll never get

it. At this point in your life, when you have

kids and stuff—it’s just, people are always

mad at you for it. When I make art, I’m almost

in trouble for it or something. Which

isn’t bad, it kind of makes me want it more.

Yeah, I can’t believe you have kids. Oh my

God, for the first time in my life I’ve been

thinking, ‘Am I actually going to have a kid

or am I not?’

I think the biggest thing, honestly, is just,

like, food. It’s been a huge reform to have to

switch to healthy food and stuff.

Did you breastfeed?

Yes, I did breastfeed. I guess it was good. It

was rough, though. It made me like, when

people say they don’t want to breastfeed,

maybe don’t. Also, X is like the biggest baby

on the planet. And I’m like the smallest person

on the planet. So I feel like most people

wouldn’t have the same problems I had.

They have such healthy formulas now too.

They do have really healthy formulas. I feel

like people should chill on the guilty shit

about breastfeeding.

Yeah. . .So you’re just coming around

the bend towards astrology. When is your

birthday actually?

March 17th.

Wait! I’m March 16th.

What year?

1989.

You just missed the year of the dragon.

Yeah, I know. I’m year of the snake—another

scaly one.

Kind of makes sense though, that you’re

just one serpent off, because we’re very

similar, but you’re more sexually liberated.

I’m not like super sexy or something.

I definitely do get pretty heavy-handed with

like the sex thing. But I mean, sex is oozing

out of you. I’ve been watching you over the

years and just the way you move—you’re

slinky as fuck.

But I have literal Catholic repression or

something. I get this stress in my heart

that’s like, ‘What’s grandpa gonna say?’

But that just makes it even hotter, right?

Does it!? [laughs]

Wig – TOMIHIRO KONO

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

Top – BLUMARINE // Skirt – VINTAGE FROM GABRIEL HELD // Printed Bike Shorts – ALIX HIGGINS

Belt – VINTAGE VIVIENNE WESTWOOD FROM SICK BOY ARCHIVE // Ring – LORETTE COLÉ DUPRAT

Top – CH4RM // Belt – VINTAGE HYSTERIC GLAMOUR FROM SICK BOY ARCHIVE

Ring – LORETTE COLÉ DUPRAT // Face Mask – A1JEWEL // Pants – RAF SIMONS

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

Yeah, I mean, I was raised pretty religious. . .

Is your name actually Trinity from a religious

sense?

No, no. I named myself Trinity. My parents

call me Alexandra, but I added Trinity

because I felt that a name can be a form of

organisation, or it can be a form of activation.

And Trinity just activates me.

I feel you exactly. That’s how “C” is for me.

The speed of light—299,000 miles a second.

Fire! I love that. . .Now that I am in my early

thirties and experiencing the medium of time

in a different sense, I’ve been thinking about

perception of time. You can interpret this in

any way you want, but do you ever think

about time as vertical instead of horizontal?

Wow! That really changes the vibe. For

some reason, it scares me and gives me

anxiety. It’s kind of like, the stakes get

higher as you get farther from ground. But

it’s also interesting, because the further you

get from the ground, and the more in space

you are, the less it actually matters.

Do you know Time by the Pachanga Boys?

It’s like 11 minutes long or something.

I don’t know that. I’m going to write it.

Hilariously, I heard about this song because

Paris Hilton played it at Burning Man, and

I was like, ‘Wow! Paris Hilton is a pretty

good DJ.’ If there’s one thing Paris Hilton

can say to make herself more of a mystery

to me, it’s definitely, “Listen to the song

Time by the Pachanga Boys, which I played

at my sunrise set.” [giggles] Yeah, it’s very

deep, like a whole mood. Whenever I play

that song at a party or something, it just

takes the whole room into a vibe for a

10-minute period.

I feel like for the first time, I’m really seeing

how cool it is to play with time as a

musician. Especially in the time of TikTok,

where everything is like this tiny, little

squiggle-sound earworm that just penetrates

your brain and hits some sort of emotional

excretion. You get that thrill, and

then you just need to hit it, hit it, hit it. It’s

like that 15-second loop or whatever, versus

a sound creating space and atmosphere.

Top – VINTAGE JEAN PAUL GAULTIER FROM ARTIFACT NEW YORK // Pants – BALENCIAGA

Shoes – ACNE // Headpiece – CUSTOM BRANDON HURTADO SANDLER

What do you think about song lengths and

attention spans right now?

I was literally just working on two songs

that are both so long. Sometimes I go

overboard and make really long songs

and it’s not necessary. But I just so love

long-ass songs.

It becomes sort of a movie, right? It becomes

sort of a world.

Yeah, I super agree. One of the things I

love about dance music, it’s not for the

phone, it’s for being out. Y’know, it’s for

the real world. There’s this dichotomy of

creation at this point, where you make

stuff either for the phone or for the real

world. And the real-world stuff is rarer but

more valuable.

So, we should talk about what we will be

do ing together?

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

T-shirt – VETEMENTS // Pants – MARC JACOBS

Necklaces & Thin Silver Ring – JUSTINE CLENQUET

Thicker Silver Rings (Left Hand) – LORETTE COLÉ DUPRAT

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

“I used to dance a lot when I was younger, but I haven’t formally danced much as an

adult besides music videos. And it just reignites a part of my brain that was active

when I was a kid. It really gets you into your body.”

Yeah, so we’re just doing our song. We

really need to think of an extremely sick

music video for this.

Well your last video for Shinigami Eyes was

so fucking gorgeous.

Thank you.

How long did it take you to make?

It took a very long time. There was a lot of

pre-production detail. It was a very intensive

situation. A lot of stuff, pre and post.

But really cool technology.

Do you like choreography?

Yes, I do.

I feel like making something beautiful.

I just love the way you move. It’s very

intuitive. We should do like a dance or

something. I feel like our bodies could be

cool moving.

Some kind of choreo-orientated thing. . .

And that’s also just what I’m yearning

for. Like, my body just wants to move.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because

I have this feeling of being cooped up or

controlled for the last two years. But I have

this desperation for really splaying my

body out.

Every time I have to choreo for a music

video, my life changes. I used to dance a lot

when I was younger, but I haven’t formally

danced much as an adult besides music

videos. And it just reignites a part of my

brain that was active when I was a kid. It

really gets you into your body. I think it

would be a really sick idea if we did some

kind of dance video, but trippy somehow—

like meta.

Do you ever feel like you’ve left Easter eggs

through your work that connect?

Oh, I leave Easter eggs through my work

everywhere, all the time. Sometimes I

subconsciously leave them and I don’t even

realise it.

Exactly. I totally know that feeling. It is so

exciting when you realise you have popped

one on yourself.

Do you ever go back to your old work and

find little things? And you’re like, ‘I’m the

only person who will ever see this.’

For sure. But then I do love to see how the

mega-fans will decode a lot of it too. It is

really beautiful.

It’s really cool. But yeah, I’m especially

interested in the unintentional Easter eggs.

In Player of Games, having the knight be

in armour and me be naked—I hadn’t even

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

Top & Pants – VIVIENNE WESTWOOD

Ring – PANCONESI

dissected the symbolism there. Really, I

hadn’t looked at it at all. And then we put

it out and everyone was so crazy about

that; we were just going for pure aesthetics,

and then in retrospect, it was like my

hand was subconsciously painting this

picture or something.

I guess I’m also just interested, as time goes

on, in collecting data and making my own

study on it too. For instance, after I broke

up with my ex of many, many, many years,

the first three people I slept with were all

Scorpios, born in the same year, in the same

week. I guess it could be coincidence, but I

was like, ‘Well, I will just collect that data.

I’ll write that data down.’ And you know,

as time goes on and the data compiles,

you do see certain patterns, which is really

interesting.

The thing is, not that astrology is just real

point-blank—there probably is stuff that

abides by the laws of physics, that feels

like magic or that we refer to as magic:

the heavenly bodies are exerting gravitational

forces upon us; we have menstrual

cycles that sync with the moon; our bodies

are linked with time; we are subject to

the exertions of the universe. The time of

year that you’re born, you know, and the

mood everywhere when you’re six weeks,

or 10 weeks, or coming into consciousness—the

mood everyone exerts on your

being, there probably is quantifiable

effects to that.

Actually, I have a friend who runs a pretty

successful company, and she has a lot of

data on people and does, in a professional

setting, all the Myers-Briggs and everything.

And she was like, “30 percent of

my company is Capricorn,” or something

like that. She has very extensive data. I did

a podcast called HOMOTECHNO about

it with her actually. She’s trying to run

the horoscope-y stuff through math and

aligning it with personality tests. And it is

interesting, taking the scientific method to

these kinds of things that people assume

are antithetical to science.

I love seeing the aesthetic glory of patterns

in science that bridge these sort of esoteric

things. Like the helix, for instance.

The thing that truly made me a spiritual

person is when I did this class in college

called Psycho Physics—which is honestly

the sickest title and obviously the professor

was sick—and it was about physics in the

brain and how particles actually move at

a quantum level or whatever; the universe

seemed so organised, it just didn’t make

sense. I was like, ‘This is just super divine.’

Yeah, I remember watching videos of physicists

getting glassy-eyed talking about the

God particle—like certain things that are

just so beautiful. . .

It just makes you feel that we live in some

sort of organised universe, whether it’s by

nature or by design, something happened

here that’s not just random. It’s truly beyond

intricate, like, deeply intricate. And

if it’s accidental, it’s almost more beautiful

that it became this way. Have you read

Novacene by James Lovelock?

No, I’m gonna write that down too.

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A CONVERSATION WITH

GRIMES

“I know that when you are playing video games and you have your map on or you’re

using Google maps—so you don’t have to memorise the space but you can see where

you are—it deactivates a part of your brain and causes atrophy.”

First of all, he was 99 when the book was

published. I love the idea that you could

still be doing your best work at almost

100 years old. It’s a really, really cool book.

It posits that the consciousness now on

Earth is our brains coming alive and perceiving

ourselves. This is the universe opening

her eyes, as if each of us is a neuron in

the brain of the universe. When you look at

social media, and you look at the collective

society getting online and becoming this

like singular body, it’s like, ‘Whoa, is this

the universe actually waking up? Is this the

beginning of the brain of the universe?’ Just

sort of like connecting dot to dot to dot to

dot. ‘Is this just evolution?’

There’s definitely steps in evolution, for sure.

I’m so curious to look at MRI scans of brains

pre- and post-social media.

Yeah, me too. Well, I know that when you

are playing video games and you have your

map on or you’re using Google maps—so

you don’t have to memorise the space but

you can see where you are—it deactivates a

part of your brain and causes atrophy. That

is so interesting to me, that you can be in

active mode and if you create a shortcut in

the real world—like Google Maps or the

map in your video game—it’ll start killing

the part of your brain that memorises the

streets. Because your brain is like, “There’s

an outside tool that does this.

I don’t need to do this anymore.”

It’s like an external hard drive.

We also approach that as if it’s inherently

bad, but maybe that is evolution syncing

with technology. Like, that part of the brain

is inefficient; do I really need to memorise

the streets of Austin? Or can Google Maps

guide me forever more, and I just don’t

know anything about the streets of Austin?

And then there is a lot more space for

other things.

More space for fantasy and love and beauty.

I feel like all the computing should definitely

be taken care of by computers—let our

brains just enjoy. . .

Yeah, computers are almost made for

exactly that. Maybe the future of consciousness

is like a symbiosis where, all of the

computation is outsourced. And then we

just get to be purely creative. •

Denim Jacket, Skirt & Pants –BALENCIAGA

Necklace – LORETTE COLÉ DUPRAT

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

SAMUEL ROSS

interview Jeremy Olds

photography Grace Difford

styling Maddie Kachurak

hair Blake Henderson

makeup Rebecca Wordingham

set design Louis Simonon

movement director Yagamoto

post production Ink Retouch


talents Jako Astrand, Ibraheem Howell

Mumin Jangani & Tsukasa Kakiudo

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

Samuel Ross is a man of precision. In his fashion and furniture design, he displays a direct and uncompromising

style, distinctive for its mélange of Brutalism, street culture and West African folk art. His

philanthropic giving has a Robin Hood-esque philosophy, taking the profits of his luxury-sector work and

distributing them to promising artists in need. Even his manner of speech is exacting; in conversation, Ross

has the controlled intonation and vocabulary of a seasoned professor. Born in Brixton, London in 1991,

Ross grew up in an artistic family that prized education. A descendant of the Windrush generation who

helped rebuild the UK following WWII, Ross spent a period of his childhood on the Caribbean islands of

Barbados and Saint Vincent. This exposure to his ancestral homeland strengthened his resolve to succeed

and provided a source of inspiration he continues to mine today. Ross is perhaps best known for A-COLD-

WALL*, the streetwear-turned-luxury clothing label he founded in 2015. Four years later, he established the

studio SR_A to oversee his furniture and sculpture work, and won the Hublot Design Prize. More recently,

philanthropy has become the object of Ross’ creative focus. Following the 2020 killings of George Floyd

and Breonna Taylor, Ross created a grant program to support Black British and POC artists. The scheme

returned in 2021 with the support of major institutions, including the Royal College of Art and the British

Fashion Council. November 2021 was a momentous month for Ross: it began with an honorary Doctorate

of Arts from the University of Westminster and ended with the death of his mentor and friend, designer

Virgil Abloh. It was Abloh who in 2012 plucked Ross from his job in Leicester after exchanging messages via

Instagram, and in short order appointed him as his first assistant. Abloh provided Ross with a blueprint for

successfully fusing the artistic, social and political, and pushed him to lean into the unknown—a refrain

that became part of his doctorate acceptance speech, which is where the following conversation begins.

In your honorary doctorate address, you

spoke about the importance of leaning into

the unknown, and that “crystalized shores

await those who dare to better follow the

impossible depths of unknown waters. . .”

You’re a descendant of the Windrush generation,

and that passage struck me as both

a metaphor and a description of the voyage

your family members would have taken.

Completely. When it was confirmed that

this title was going to be appointed, there

was this obligation to include language

which referred to being part of Windrush,

looking at the initial slingshot step that

generation took. A lot of the Caribbean

diaspora that came to the UK in the ’50s,

early ’60s, were pretty much middle class;

these were business people for the most

part, well-educated, they came incredibly

well dressed. I know that the first generation

of Windrush had a very difficult time

integrating into British society. My generation

has been afforded enough stability

and social integration to be able to pick up

where our grandparents left off.

What was your family’s experience upon

arrival in the UK?

My grandmother took a flight over, versus

a boat, which immediately talks about a

middle-class setup of sorts. My great-uncle

moved over and, after four years in the UK,

he had around seven or eight properties.

He became, like, a real estate mogul. So

there was already this business attitude

present within the psyche of the family.

That ilk of the family moved up into the

middle class because of his tenacity, his

drive. I spent a lot of time in the Caribbean

growing up. I was homeschooled between

the ages of seven and a half up until 11,

when you integrate into secondary school.

You get a real understanding, being surrounded

by people who are living in actual

poverty in the Caribbean, of the respect

for academia and intellect and institute

that is so omnipresent on the islands. This

is where my love of education first came

from. My mother is an educator. It was

because there was a lack of access to education

in her formative years that she became

an educator. Our family, through her, have

never known what it is to not have access

to free education.

Where did you spend those years while in

the Caribbean?

Barbados and Saint Vincent, primarily.

Barbados has had quite a subservient

history in terms of how it was used by the

British empire. Saint Vincent, in terms

of its terrain, it could never be harvested

correctly by the French or the English. It

was among those countries to refute the

imperial presence because, it’s said, the

guerrilla nature of the terrain could not be

subsumed by Europeans. Each island has

a totally different spirit. The cadence of

Barbados and the cadence of Saint Vincent

are at complete odds. Moving between

the two, one with partial integration with

the West and one with no integration, has

really informed my focus on education

and access.

What are some of your strongest memories

of your childhood years there?

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

“My father, now that both of his children are adults, he doesn’t really have a home.

He’s kind of like a nomad, traveling constantly. This idea of the nomadic spirit and

the atypical route has always been clear.”

The extreme poverty was one of the first

things I picked up on. The lack of access to

electricity up in the hills of Mesopotamia

in Saint Vincent, where my grandmother

was born. Seeing the shack that my mother

grew up in, in Barbados; it puts things

into context of the privilege I have, being

born in the UK. The threshold of adversity

here is not on the same equilibrium as the

threshold of adversity in a Third World

country. Once you’ve seen and been exposed

to that, you naturally want to excel.

Where does your sense of belonging lie?

I tackle this topic a lot in my sculptureand

art-work—being this product of a

British-English identity, but also being

a product of the Caribbean; it’s a weird

semblance. You don’t necessarily fit

into either. If I go to the Caribbean, I’m

referred to as English; if I’m in England,

I’m referred to as Black British, but not

English. You start to have this semblance of

ID that builds. I feel hyperdomestic when

I’m driving the Land Rover, when I want

my tea in the morning, and only want to

read the classics or listen to classic FM, or

make sure my daughter is in the correct

type of schooling. That is part of the British

value system. At the same time, when I’m

with close friends and family, I speak with

a cadence and more of a natural tongue

which is allotted to Caribbean. There is a

peace in understanding that you are a part

of both, versus trying to allot yourself to

fit to one category. I’ve been through that.

Understanding you belong in both worlds

is really what Du Bois talks about with

double consciousness. There’s a peace in

knowing that.

Did you have a political upbringing?

My dad protested against Blair invading

Iraq; I really remember that. He used to run

an anarchist, hard-left church in Brixton,

in the mid-late ’80s. So there’s always been

this esoteric prospect, something more

anarchist and a little bit decentralized. My

father, now that both of his children are

adults, he doesn’t really have a home. He’s

kind of like a nomad, traveling constantly.

This idea of the nomadic spirit and the

atypical route has always been clear. Even

the notion of my parents pulling me out of

school at age seven—one of the teachers

said that I would never go anywhere, so

they pulled me out and said, “We’re gonna

homeschool you.” Viewing information as

a political tool has been a constant. Within

my family, we all have first class degrees: my

mother is about to go into a PhD program;

father has an MA in industrial design and

went to Central Saint Martins; sister has a

first class degree in English literature from

King’s College. Intellect was always there. It

was the expectation of the household.

You mention an anarchist spirit in your

upbringing, and you have described your

beliefs as socialist and anti-capitalist—

values which seem at odds with your work

in the luxury sector. How do you negotiate

this tension?

Yeah, I mean, we use hypergrowth in

startup culture to funnel and start notfor-profits.

That’s the best way to put it.

We take the money that we know we can

produce in fashion, and then we set up

different silos that can really empower

hyperlocal community, hyperlocal politics

and government, a lot of CapEx or capital

to exceptional young individuals, or relief

investments or stipends. There’s a dynamic:

understanding the rules of engagement,

and then understanding how you can

propagate that and funnel back into a

much more socialist and anarchistic prospect

of equality. You almost rev an engine,

and then you siphon out all of the precious

resources and scatter that into fields which

need nourishing.

I want to ask about A-COLD-WALL*’s

ongoing collaboration with Dr. Martens.

Docs are a symbol of rebellion, of the working

class, of transgression, so it seems rich

territory for exploration. Tell me about your

approach with this project.

I went to school in the village that built

Dr. Martens, in Wollaston, in Wellingborough.

I would walk past the factory every

single day. Northamptonshire is the home

of heritage footwear: Tricker’s, Dr. Martens,

Church’s, they’re all from Northamptonshire.

It’s part of the local culture.

Dr. Martens is both a British heritage

axiom whilst also representing subversion,

punk culture, rebellion and freedom of

speech. All of those typically relate to connotations

of the working class, and being

part of that, and being able to have that

discourse on both sides, is incredible. Also,

being able to highlight what contemporary

punk is through the talents that we

chose, such as Slawn, who is an artist, and

the West African impact on punk culture,

which is now leading the UK. There’s so

much territory to pick from. Their team

is incredibly diverse, and they are willing

to kind of take these risks and have these

dialogues. It’s been an incredible partnership

which will continue to move forward.

Given the theme of this issue, I would like

to know more about the minutia of your design

process. Perhaps we could use an object

from the RUPTURE series you’re showing

at Design Miami 2021 as a case study?

Sure. Let’s do the freestanding chair, which

is orange steel and has an oval seat and

backrest made of Carrara marble. So, I had

this idea of encrypting signals which link

to the history, heritage and memory of the

diaspora, whilst having a parallel conversation

about the dislocation that the diaspora

faces, having been stripped from the West

African continent. How does one mentally

navigate being connected heavily by way

of genealogy and spirit, whilst also being

physically disconnected for 150, 200 years?

I’m taking cues from traditional furniture

and folk art, and looking at how those

shapes can be distorted and contorted and

skewed to reflect this off-kilter relationship

with the continent.

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

“With this chair, there was a shift in my channel of thought when it comes to art

and design. I stopped trying to be West African and understood that, regardless of

the regional displacement, I am West African.”

Where does your research start? Do you

travel? Visit libraries?

Online and literature. With this chair,

there was a shift in my channel of thought

when it comes to art and design. I stopped

trying to be West African and understood

that, regardless of the regional displacement,

I am West African. That completely

changes the authority you have in what you

produce and what you reference. There was

a preciousness prior to this, in which I felt

as though I didn’t have the authority to recontour,

eschew and decimate some of the

historic references that have informed my

position, in terms of the art that I make.

Realizing that I already have the authority

to do that, by way of genealogy and experience,

allowed my work to become far more

confident and expressive and experimental,

whilst keeping a continuity with the region

I wish to talk about. The forms and shapes

often link back to West African pictorial

references and uses of shape, which,

of course, heavily informed Cubism and

Modernism. But then I’m also looking at

Cubism, Modernism and Brutalism from a

very agnostic perspective. I’m not looking

at these monikers as monikers of oppression,

which can often be done from the

prospect of my generation, as Black artists

of the diaspora. I have a totally agnostic

prospect here.

How did this newfound freedom inform

your approach to the RUPTURE chair?

The RUPTURE series took about four

months to conceive, just in terms of sketching.

Once I decided what I wanted to talk

about, I looked at historical references

to make sure there was continuity and

respect for the lineage of the artworks being

produced, and what they represent in terms

of folk art. Once that’s acknowledged, it’s

time to move into iteration, which is hand

sketching, material swatches. I’m looking

for materials which celebrate organic

properties. I don’t like using plastic in art.

I’m looking at stone that can calcify and

deteriorate. I’m looking at oxidized materials

that rust. And then we’re looking at the

tension between folk art and the idea of

a craft spirit colliding with industrialized

processes, which are so reflective of the

Western psyche, and how those two can

coalesce and convey a tension that is linked

to the foreigner’s experience of existing

within the West but being from a different

scope of sorts.

What materials did you select for the chair?

We used an aluminum which is about two

inches in depth. It was CNC cut and MIG

(metal inert gas) welded before it was

shot-blasted and coated in a bolt orange,

twice. We use Carrara marble because it’s

the axiom of the Western prospect of taste.

It has this moniker of Western reverence:

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STUDIO VISIT WITH

SAMUEL ROSS

“We use Carrara marble because it’s the axiom of the Western prospect of taste.

It has this moniker of Western reverence: you think Carrara marble, you think

J.P. Morgan, you think of Grecian prospects on meritocracy.”

you think Carrara marble, you think J.P.

Morgan, you think of Grecian prospects

on meritocracy. The idea of playing with

those prospects and then integrating this

intense, skewed proportion, which carries

the tension of the diaspora experience in

the middle, is the perfect way to convey

what it is to live now as a product of Western

civilization. We milled the marble in

Carrara, then shipped it over. We manufactured

with a very small production partner

that I’ve worked with for years in South

East London.

The success is a byproduct of what is deemed

to be urgent and important, of the now. •

Is it an expensive operation?

I mean, this is where “leaning into the

unknown” comes up, right? Because before

signing with Friedman (Benda—Ross’

gallery), I’d produced all of the artworks

independently for the Hublot Design Prize.

I spent around £25,000 of my savings to

make those artworks, not knowing if

I would win. And I won, which is great.

It’s expensive, but, again, you’ve got to

look at how you want to live your life. The

successes that have come have not really

been about valuing money; it’s about using

money as a tool to produce conversations

of value. I was already just being an artist,

throwing all I had at this conversation,

because it felt like it was important to have.

The money was a response of the wider

community saying, “This is an important

dialogue we should be having.”

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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS WITH

GEORGIA PALMER

GEORGIA PALMER

photography Elizaveta Porodina

styling Clare Byrne

hair Kiyoko Odo

makeup Thom Walker

set design Afra Zamara


Top – VINTAGE JEAN PAUL GAULTIER FROM ONE OF A KIND ARCHIVE

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GEORGIA PALMER

Dress – LOEWE

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GEORGIA PALMER

Black Mesh Top & Patterned Sleeveless Dress – VINTAGE JEAN PAUL GAULTIER FROM ONE OF A KIND ARCHIVE

Yellow Mesh Dress –PAULA CANOVAS DEL VAS

Mesh Top – AVAVAV

Dress Overtop – VINTAGE GIVENCHY COUTURE FROM THE ARC LONDON

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GEORGIA PALMER

Mesh Tank Top & Pants – AVAVAV // Mesh Long Sleeve Top - MAROSKE PEECH

Denim Shorts - GOOM HEO // Shoes - PAULA CANOVAS DEL VAS // Bag - CHET LO

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GEORGIA PALMER

Mesh Top & Pants – AVAVAV

Dress Overtop - VINTAGE GIVENCHY COUTURE FROM THE ARC LONDON

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GEORGIA PALMER

Dress & Tights – STYLISTS OWN

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GEORGIA PALMER

Top – VINTAGE JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

Top & Skirt – VINTAGE ISSEY MIYAKE FROM ONE OF A KIND ARCHIVE

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A CONVERSATION WITH

AI WEIWEI

AI WEIWEI

interview Emily McDermott

photography Jack Davison

artwork Ai Weiwei Studio

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A CONVERSATION WITH

AI WEIWEI

As one of today’s most important activists and artists, Ai Weiwei hardly needs an introduction. He has

created more than 15 documentaries covering humanitarian crises, from state violence in China,

through the plight of refugees worldwide, to the lockdown in Wuhan following the outbreak of Covid-19.

With Herzog & de Meuron, he co-designed the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics,

only to later distance himself from the project, publicly declaring he had no interest in being part of the games

and the surrounding Chinese propaganda. He has produced sprawling installations, from 2010’s Sunflower

Seeds, featuring 100 million sunflower seeds handcrafted from 150 tons of porcelain, to 2016’s Life Jackets,

in which 14,000 fluorescent-orange life vests used by Syrian refugees were tied to Berlin’s historic Konzerthaus.

In another project, he began a citizens’ investigation to unearth details surrounding the casualties of

the Sichuan earthquake in 2008; the investigation revealed that over 5,000 students died due to the shoddy

construction of over 150 schools—a crisis the Chinese government tried to cover up. Taking a public stance

against one of the world’s most powerful and complicated countries, however, is no easy task, and not without

consequences. After the citizens’ investigation, Ai was beaten by police, which resulted in a brain hemorrhage.

In 2011, his brand-new Shanghai studio was demolished without notice and shortly thereafter he

was “disappeared” by authorities for 81 days. From his release until 2015, he lived under house arrest, and

when his passport was finally returned, he fled. Since then, he has been living in exile in Europe—first in

Berlin, then Cambridge. Now he is establishing a new residence on a plot of land in rural Portugal, with no

foreseeable ability to return to his birth country. Despite everything that has happened, Ai’s work always

manages to address powerful political topics with a sense of serenity and beauty. During a meeting in Cambridge,

Ai is the personification of his work; softly spoken and poetic, he reflects on everything from the current

crises of war in Ukraine and the global pandemic, to the importance of walking, details and language.

Since we’re sitting here in Cambridge—a

place where you’ve lived, had multiple exhibitions

and given multiple talks—can you

tell me what this city means to you?

Cambridge firstly means a proper place for

my son, who is 13 years old and traveled

with me from China to Germany, and then

to England. I think it’s extremely difficult

for a child from a Chinese language background

to come to Germany, it’s a tough

language. But to then come to England—he

has such an open attitude, and he said he

loves the school. He feels so happy here

with the teachers and students—the education,

we can say. That surprised me a bit.

It’s so difficult to adjust when you’re always

changing places.

My second impression is that I see so many

little flowers and plants blooming in the

gardens here, and so many kinds I never

see elsewhere. I have to use Google to

find out the names. That gives me a visual

pleasantry about England. I think it’s so

important to recognize little grasses or

flowers that are growing. They have nothing

to do with our daily struggles or happiness

or tragedies. We are both in a pandemic

and a war in Europe, but the flowers remain

innocent. They never miss their season, no

matter what.

You’ve lived in so many places and constantly

have exhibitions around the world.

Right now you have shows in Italy, Portugal,

Korea, Austria and the UK. What place

would you consider the most important to

you as an artist?

China. China has such a long history, but

what I know about China is very little. I

grew up during the Cultural Revolution,

which means they destroyed or ignored

what happened in the past. Gradually I’ve

noticed more about China. First, I noticed

antiquity and what material culture is left.

I started collecting jade and other ancient

materials—that has been my first approach

to feel, to go through five, six thousand

years of history. Fortunately, I have had

very good resources and have become

knowledgeable. But the more you know,

the more you realize you’re far behind.

I guess that’s where we get the saying “ignorance

is bliss.”

Yeah, but my fate is ironic. The first 20 years

of my life, my father was exiled, so I grew

up in a location where there wasn’t just a

lack of culture but a lack of life support.

We managed to pass those first 20 years

and then I went to the United States for

12 years, before going back to China for

another 24 years. In those 24 years, I approached

architecture, antiquity, underground

publications, curating exhibitions,

and other online activities. But then I was

forced out again in 2015. So, I still think

I know too little about the place that gave

me birth, and I will never have a chance to

really go back there.

But do you think that anybody in China

actually knows as much as they would like

to know about the country?

I think there’s very little desire to understand

China, both from outside and within.

The Chinese have already completely lost

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A CONVERSATION WITH

AI WEIWEI

“There were very few people who could leave, and they could only leave because

Nixon visited China—suddenly the biggest enemy between China and the US started

to melt like ice on fire. I was one of the first people who flew to the US.”

what they have. They are struggling to

become rich and more influential, but if

they don’t understand their own past, they

will never achieve what they should, which

is a self-identity.

What’s one of your strongest memories from

the time you first left China to go to the US?

To leave China in 1981 was very difficult.

There were very few people who could

leave, and they could only leave because

Nixon visited China—suddenly the biggest

enemy between China and the US started

to melt like ice on fire. I was one of the

first people who flew to the US. Before our

plane landed, it was evening and down below

I could see the electric lighting and energy

and cars. I never could have imagined

a city being made like that. It was stronger

than imagination, stronger than a miracle.

Everything the communists had educated

us about disappeared in one second. I was

so deeply impressed by the craziness and

energy that was coming from a human

society. Of course, that is capitalism, but at

that time I had no knowledge about what

capitalism is. The illusion, the surface, was

just so deeply impressive.

Your time in New York also connects to the

opera you’re directing in Rome, which just

opened last week.

Yes, the opera goes back to 1987, when

Franco Zeffirelli did Turandot at the

Metropolitan Opera. At the time, me and

my brother were looking for a job to support

ourselves, to pay for food and rent. A

friend of mine had a role in this production

and she said they really wanted to have

some Chinese faces in the opera. So, we

went to an open casting. I saw an old man

with silver hair look at us from very far

away and say, “Yes.” They used us to look

like Mongolians or something, and we were

assistants to the executioner. It was very

sensational and very glamorous. We were

happy, but we had also never watched one

single opera—we were poor students from

China—and didn’t pay attention to the

story. We just got our daily payment of $3,

went to 72nd Street where there’s a Gray’s

Papaya, and ate hotdogs.

But now you are directing an entirely new

production of Turandot. How did that

come about?

Some opera houses had approached me

before, but I always shook my head, ‘I know

nothing about music, I don’t know opera,’

until the Rome opera. They approached

my studio very sincerely and said they

wanted me to be involved in Turandot. That

brought back a bit of an ironic feeling, as

someone who was once an extra and was

now being asked to direct it. So, I accepted.

How did you feel accepting such a huge role

Ai Weiwei, Backstage at the Met – New York, 1987

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AI WEIWEI

Turandot, at Teatro dell’Opera – Rome, 2022

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A CONVERSATION WITH

AI WEIWEI

“And I learn from my cats: when I throw a paper ball to the cat, she puts it in a corner

under the table where it’s very difficult to retrieve. She always does this and has

great fun. I’m trying to be more like that.”

working with a medium you’d never worked

with before?

I often get myself into things I know

nothing about, into some kind of obstacle

or even danger, because those are the moments

when I have to learn. I like to set up

these obstacles. And I learn from my cats:

when I throw a paper ball to the cat, she

puts it in a corner under the table where

it’s very difficult to retrieve. She always

does this and has great fun. I’m trying to be

more like that.

Tell me about your approach while directing

the opera and how you made your mark on

such a famous story.

Puccini died in 1924 before he finished this

opera. So, I decided to stop where Puccini

stopped. I think he had his own reasons

not to finish it rather than just dying. I

also wanted to avoid everything kitsch,

everything from versions of Turandot as a

Chinese fantasy with a princess and palace

and “traditional” dress. This says nothing

about our time. I wanted to apply this

Chinese story to a global scale. So, first, I

made the stage floor into a global map. And

then in the story, there are many refugees

trying to marry Turandot, who is a refugee

from the Middle East. This gave me the opportunity

to integrate the refugee situation

and war, to ask: ‘What is war? What pushes

people out? Why does Calaf want to marry

Princess Turandot? Why did she hate him?

And why does she want to punish everyone

with love?’ After I had the concept, then I

designed everything: the set, but also the

costumes and the makeup and the hair.

But the opera was supposed to debut two

years ago, when there was no war. What was

it like then?

Well, at the very last moment before dress

rehearsal, the stage manager came up and

said: “Ai Weiwei, we have to stop because

of the pandemic.” I was so shocked because

right at the moment he stopped us, we had

just told all the actors to dress up in these

medical costumes, these pandemic-looking

clothes. At that moment, I thought maybe I

had pushed too far. Suddenly reality hit the

art. It was an unthinkable experience.

And now reality is once again hitting the art

in an unthinkable way.

Yes, and we had to redo the opera. During

the pandemic, we made three films:

Rohingya, which is in Bangladesh, about

the Myanmar refugees; Cockroach, which

is about the protests and uprisings in Hong

Kong; and Coronation, which is about the

response to the pandemic in Wuhan. All

the films involved so much energy and

passion to understand what is going on

today, so I decided to integrate images

from those projects into an hour-and-a-

half-long video that’s played from the first

second of the opera to the last. The stage

became very full—every detail in the stage

design, the lighting, projection, movement,

and costume design are completely packed

together as one. Fortunately, we also have

Oksana Lyniv, a Ukrainian conductor who

is very young, very bright. She’s like a newly

sharpened pencil—very sharp—and has

a clear definition about the music, which

merges with my visual concept.

Did you choose to work with her?

No, it just happened, but I’m very happy

about it, and that the cast is full of Ukrainian

actors. Time is sometimes a miracle.

This opera started with a pandemic, and

it was also stopped by a pandemic. And

exactly four days after we moved to Rome

to resume dress rehearsals, the war started:

February 24th. This project has been impacted

by the two biggest crises of our time.

In which ways do you think that the war

breaking out in Ukraine has given new

significance to the opera?

First of all, my lifelong experience and

struggle has been as a political refugee,

and making political arguments about the

importance of freedom of speech, human

rights and human conditions. It started

with my father’s exile and now I have a very

good understanding, with all the projects

I’m handling, of what I need to defend,

what is crucial, and what kind of language

and vocabulary is needed to carry out the

most essential humanity. But then the

crisis happened and it’s beyond imagination.

So, I have been forced to challenge

my perceptions about opera, about why

we give a performance, and to know what

kind of language is unsuitable to today’s

conditions. But at the same time, I have to

understand the classics of Puccini and why

he put out a show like this, a show about

love in a very different context. This is

about love but also about the impossibility

of love, about fantasy, and about a very cold

reality and sacrifice.

You said you were forced to challenge your

perceptions of opera, so what has shifted?

What have you been thinking about in the

last month?

When we talk about love, or the desperation

of love, it can be seen as a fairy tale.

But in the larger scale, you’re tested when

your relative is dying or your children have

caught a disease or your workmate, friend,

or colleague disappears—it’s so sudden.

And then we see over three million refugees

arrive within one month in Europe

alone. Of course, we all read the news and

see social media, we know it has happened,

but it’s both real and unreal. The realness

is that we believe all the numbers and we

see all the images. The unrealness is that we

still have the exact same lifestyle.

This says a lot about why art or information—art

is one kind of information—and

our philosophy or moral judgments are so

important: because life is so vulnerable, so

fragile. Life is not like how we normally

think about it—that it belongs to us, that

it’s giving us some kind of miracle. It can

be taken away suddenly by unpredictable

or unwanted situations. And in that sense,

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A CONVERSATION WITH

AI WEIWEI

Rohingya – Documentary, 2021 Coronation – Documentary, 2020

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AI WEIWEI

“When we see a crisis, normally we see it somewhere else, so we can easily cut off—

that’s their problem, sorry. But now we feel it for ourselves, we feel it could have been

avoided and wonder why we didn’t act earlier.”

it teaches people; it makes us think about

vulnerability and death. We don’t understand

death, and then we realize we don’t

understand life itself. Life is a struggle.

And it’s constantly a struggle with our

consciousness or awareness. Now, life has

once again become a daily matter for us to

think about.

In a crisis, life takes on a new significance.

And we only realize that once we are in

crisis. When we see a crisis, normally we

see it somewhere else, so we can easily cut

off—that’s their problem, sorry. But now

we feel it for ourselves, we feel it could have

been avoided and wonder why we didn’t act

earlier. Is our negligence a cause of these

diseases? We have to question this.

Knowing that you’ve made three documentaries

about refugees, I can’t help but wonder

whether you’re working on or planning

anything in relation to the current crisis?

I’m actually really bad at planning. Normally

a situation leads me into a sense of

needing to do something. But now I always

cautiously tell myself or someone says,

“Don’t even try it,” because once I get involved,

I get involved deeply. So I’m a little

bit careful with that.

I’d like to talk about your use of detail. As

you said, every single detail in the opera is

meticulously designed, and this meticulousness

is something that runs throughout your

practice. What is the significance of details?

What do they mean to you?

Details are the real connection to human

emotions and to our experience: How do

we sense something? How do we start to

ask a question? Why do we start paying

attention to senses? Details base our experiences

and even help with conflicts because

they’re so convincing. With details, we are

trying to find a language—meaning a texture,

or color, or touchable softness or hardness

that can carry our imagination. When

we see something unique, what makes it

unique? Is it the cutting or the texture or

the color? It’s detail, after detail, after detail.

When you have an overload of details, then

you give a very rich presentation, and it

becomes believable. We believe what we see

because our visual ability makes us believe.

Regarding finding the right language, as

you work with so many different mediums,

what is your process like when it comes to

determining the best way to give form to

your ideas?

Firstly, it is selfishness, and then it’s curiosity.

I also like to walk. Walking means your

foot touches the ground. The ground can

be even, it can be sand, it can be wet, but

walking can teach you so much. Of course,

nobody walks now; they go to the gym to

Cockroach – Documentary, 2020

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“Every morning I write for one or two hours. It is so meaningful to be by yourself,

to try and form your language in a way that correctly carries what you really want

to talk about. Very often, we don’t know what we want to talk about. . .”

use machines. But still, I think this very

essential thing makes us human, it makes

our legs legs, and this is something we don’t

really understand. So, figuring out those

details implies this language, with some

mediums having already been discovered

or been used in the past and others needing

more development to express different

concepts. That challenges me in two ways:

one is to understand the past, and the other

is to address the current situation. I’m

the middle joint, connecting the past and

the future. That gives me a little pleasure

because I’m introducing the past—I’m

learning knowledge from the past from different

cultures—but at the same time, I’m

challenging myself in the sense of, ‘Does

my knowledge work?’ If it does, it means I

can communicate very well with the audience

today. If it does not, you leave.

Do different forms have different meanings

to you?

Very different. Visual experiences—art,

installations, films, photography—are

very different from a written or spoken

language. Every morning I write for one

or two hours. It is so meaningful to be by

yourself, to try and form your language in

a way that correctly carries what you really

want to talk about. Very often, we don’t

know what we want to talk about; we just

use existing language. But nothing can be

more precise or gainful than dealing with

language. Photography, moving images,

and other mediums all have their own

nature, their own language.

How would you describe the language of

photography in comparison to that of the

moving image?

Photography gives the viewer a cut, like a

slice of sausage. You’ll see one surface, and

from that surface, you cannot see how a

sausage was made; you do not know the

process. Sometimes this is very attractive,

yet as a human, as an animal, just like

dogs and cats, we are attracted by moving

images. The moving image possesses both

a sense of discovery and danger. Nobody

knows what will happen in the next second

or next frame, and that’s why moving

images are often so much more attractive

than photos. But at the same time, photos

can tell us much more than moving images

because it’s a still, and nothing is still in life.

Nothing. A photo frames and expresses visual

details that we don’t normally notice. I

see you, but maybe I don’t notice your hair

or your ring, or how your hands are posed.

I cannot notice all this at once. When you

see a photo, you can see this and that.

In the show at Kettle’s Yard, one of your

most iconic photographs, Dropping a Han

Dynasty Urn, has been recreated with Legos.

I’m very curious about your use of Legos. . .

I started to like Legos because they’re a very

casual material and they’re associated with

children’s games or activities. One day, I

decided I wanted to do something about

prisoners of conscience, or political prisoners,

at Alcatraz. You cannot touch the walls

or do anything there because it’s a historical

building, so we got 176 images of prisoners,

but none of them had the same quality.

Some were so blurry, and others—like of

Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King—

were very sharp. Some looked like models.

I didn’t think we could present them if they

were all so different, and I thought Legos

could solve the problem: I made all the

photos in Legos so they all have the same

sharpness, and I could also play with color.

I have done many projects since then with

Legos. Although I never change what is in

the image, the Legos change the interpretation.

It becomes childish or playful. I

also hate when something is considered

“iconic.” So, if something becomes “iconic,”

I always want to destroy it with humor

or something else. The original photo

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn was taken

so casually—I wanted my brother to test

my camera to see if it could take multiple

frames at once. It isn’t well focused. It was

never intended to be an artwork. With

Legos, I wanted to make fun of that.

The idea of recontextualizing works makes me

think of your installation Sunflower Seeds.

Although you made it in 2010 in reference to

China, the national flower of Ukraine is the

sunflower. Have you thought about how that

work could now take on new associations?

Yes, it could be completely different.

Ukraine is also a big sunflower seed

producer, so the sense of the work could

evolve or develop on its own. There is a

clip of a Ukrainian lady talking to Russian

soldiers, saying: “Hey, don’t forget to put

some sunflower seeds in your pocket so

when you’re dead, something can grow next

year.” It’s kind of crude, but still. . .When the

piece was first made, many Chinese people

were asking for the sunflower seeds. We

sent out millions. People would give them

to their lovers for their engagement or make

earrings out of them. One person wrote on

Twitter that if you open your hands and the

sunflowers start shining, that’s the moment

when freedom comes. In China, people

think they are seeds of freedom. A lot of

people have them, and they always put them

in their pocket or their purse and carry the

seed when they’re moving or traveling.

As someone who has been traveling in exile

for so long, do you feel some kind of comfort

in Europe by now?

Inevitably, you always meet an unfamiliarness

that makes you recognize you’re in

a different location. It could be the feel of

a soft drink bottle or toilet paper, or the

water that comes out of the pipes. There

is always something other than just how

people behave. I am not someone who lives

in a permanent familiar-ness or somewhere

I can easily recognize—somewhere where

you don’t have to open your eyes because

you already know who the one passing by

is. No. I have to be alert all the time. To

have curiosity. To see how many mistakes

I make daily. I live in different hotels and,

you know, I can’t always find switches, or

it takes me a second to figure out where

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Sunflower Seeds– 2010 Sunflower Seeds, installation view at Tate Modern – London, 2010

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“Education in the universities of the West today does exactly what China does with

manufacturing: They are making copies of ideas or statistics from the past from different

locations, which actually took generations of effort to create.”

the bathroom is. I’ve become a very alert

person, but at the same time I never have a

sense of real comfort or safeness.

In another interview, you spoke about your

father, who was also in exile for much of

his life, and you said that what mattered to

him was “imagination and the spiritual and

the daily practice of language.” So, as a last

question and thinking in these very simple

terms, what matters to you?

so-called truth. We are alive and we have

the ability to gather information, to collect

language in our brain, and to communicate—this

is unbelievable. But what matters

to me is still being sensitive about things, to

try to understand. •

Mysteriousness. Life is about having many

hidden, unknown areas. Each individual

needs to find out their own answer rather

than receive a standard answer, which is

what education today does. With this, you

see that people have become a product, just

like products that come from China; you

just see copies. Education in the universities

of the West today does exactly what

China does with manufacturing: They

are making copies of ideas or statistics

from the past from different locations,

which actually took generations of effort

to create. Those efforts are the meaning

of knowledge. Now we try to escape the

effort, meaning we come to so-called correctness

and beauty directly—and I think

that destroys the meaning of life. Nobody

needs curiosity or knowledge anymore. For

everything, you say, “Easy, we’ll google it,”

but you forget that to come to that one sentence,

to that Google result, many people

argued for generations to determine the

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KAIA GERBER

interview & photography Carissa Gallo

styling Clare Byrne

hair Evanie Frausto

makeup Pati Dubroff

post production Ink Retouch


all fashion Saint Laurent

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A CONVERSATION WITH

KAIA GERBER

Kaia Gerber is the type of person who induces heads to swivel as she walks down the street, not only

because she is a successful and almost ubiquitously-known fashion icon, but as a side effect of her

enigmatic presence. Her striking beauty and natural ability before the lens led Kaia to begin modeling for

Raf Simons’ Calvin Klein collection at the age of 16. She quickly became one of the most sought-after models

in the industry, walking for all of the major brands, from Saint Laurent, through Alexander McQueen and

Louis Vuitton, to Celine. Despite appearing on several covers of Vogue in various countries, it is perhaps

the other side of Kaia that makes her especially unique. She doesn’t settle for what comes naturally or easily,

long ago striding away from the family affiliations which helped springboard her career. Instead, Gerber is

constantly checking in with herself, progressing towards a future-self and pursuing a meaningful existence.

From the beginning of her career, Kaia, daughter of Cindy Crawford, has been impossible to pin down as just

a model. Although only 20 years old, she has collaborated with designers on clothing lines, being a muse for

her casually chic style; she is co-owner of fashion publication W Magazine as part of a consortium of investors;

and she is an avid reader of poetry and prose, launching a book club on Instagram during the pandemic.

Gerber is also an activist, dedicating herself to volunteer work and supporting social injustice causes. More

recently she made the decision to revisit her childhood love for acting, occupying a space that women like

Anna Karina and Twiggy paved the way for. On screen Kaia demonstrates a palpable effortlessness, exploiting

the camera-awareness she acquired through modelling in a completely different way. Like her screenic

endeavours, her genuine curiosity and fastidiousness touch her various projects with a specific magic, while

a hard-earned love for travel takes Kaia to places around the world she never imagined she would see.

So. . .

Oh, we’re doing this. Okay.

I’m really awkward about good lead-ins.

It’s so hard. When I do my book club and

I’m basically interviewing people, I feel so

bad at it.

You’re probably good at it, people like to

watch them.

I don’t know. . .

How about a quick Q&A to kick things

off. Last thing you ate?

Honey Mama’s chocolate.

Which one?

Oregon Mint.

The best one. Last book you read?

I just finished Klara and the Sun.

Last place you visited?

Nashville.

Do you have a place you want to go back to?

Or for the first time?

I want to go to the Philippines. And India

as well.

I love India. It’s really special. Do you have a

favorite place you’ve been to?

Tanzania and Kenya were the most lifechanging.

That was a trip with my family

as a kid. It was really eye-opening for me.

Recently, Tokyo. There’s very few places left

that you can travel to that feel as untouched

by American culture.

Last song you listened to?

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, ’cause I just

watched the Beatles documentary. I’ve

always loved the Beatles, but then I watched

that and I was like, ‘Oh I really love the

Beatles.’

Last movie you watched?

Magnolia. I did a Paul Thomas Anderson

marathon: Boogie Nights and Magnolia back

to back without stopping.

It was a perfect double feature.

At the beginning of the pandemic I messaged

you because I had written a short that I knew

in my gut you would be perfect in. I thought

I was going out on a limb, asking you to layer

on an element in your career and try acting,

but serendipitously, this was exactly the journey

you were already embarking on. Can you

talk at all about what motivated this?

Well, before the pandemic, I had been

working so much. But I felt like I was

missing something really important and

I couldn’t figure out what it was. Before

I started modelling, I had always wanted

to act. I was in musical theater, I did little

independent films, so I was like, ‘Why not

try that again?’ Even though that was kind

of scary.

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“I don’t know if I had a thick enough skin for acting when I was that young. I was

really shy; I always felt really different from the kids I would see at auditions. So I

think it was for the best that I was able to grow up before coming back to it.”

Oh, so it was pre-pandemic?

Yeah, so February 2020, I called my agent

from when I was 13, and I was like, “Will

you still take me?” And I was actually going

to go in for an in-person audition for something,

but then, the day before, the world

shut down. So yeah, the timing was really

crazy. And then you messaged me like a

couple of months later.

So when you were young, you did act. Is that

what you wanted to do when you grew up?

Yeah, like at school, I said I wanted to go

to Juilliard and be an actor. My parents

were like, “Do it if you want to,” but they

were like the opposite of stage parents. I

saw modeling as like, ‘Oh I can travel, I can

experience new things,’ but always in the

back of my head I was like, ‘I want to act.’

A lot of people started examining their life

once the world shut down, but it sounds like

you were already there.

Maybe I just felt it coming. I was like,

‘Something’s gonna change really soon and

I want to get ahead of it.’ But yeah, I had a

moment where I was like, ‘Why did I put

that aside for so long?’ That was never the

plan. But I’m kind of glad I did. I don’t

know if I had a thick enough skin for acting

when I was that young. I was really shy; I

always felt really different from the kids I

would see at auditions. So I think it was for

the best that I was able to grow up before

coming back to it.

The theme of this issue of TTA is attention

to detail. What details do you look for in

scripts or projects?

Well, first thing is the people. With you, I

think I hadn’t seen you in like. . .

Since you were 15.

Yeah, so like 5 years. But I remember the

few times we worked together feeling so

much more creatively stimulated than I

normally did. So with you, I knew I would

love doing something together again. I

always knew you had a really interesting,

creative brain, so I wanted to see what you

could do without any parameters.

Aw, thank you.

And then I read the script. It was interesting

for me because I found a lot of things

about the character that I had experienced

for myself, a lot of feelings. And then

there were a lot of things that I couldn’t

relate to. So I knew I really understood

her, but that there was a lot more for me

to explore.

Do you feel when you get a script and

you’re going to an audition that there has

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to be something beyond the person in

order for you to want the part?

I think I have to take myself out of it and ask:

‘Would I want to watch this?’ And also, ‘Can

I empathize with this person?’ ’Cause if you

see the person you’re playing as like a caricature,

it would be impossible to play them.

When you audition, do you feel like there are

certain details you specifically orient yourself

towards in order to get into character?

It really depends. I don’t like to guess—

I want to know. I want to understand why

the character is the way they are. So if they

don’t tell you, I make it up. Because I think

a lot of that reads, even if it’s not being said

explicitly. I really like to listen in scenes.

When actors do it well it’s really powerful.

It’s a fun challenge to play someone who

is observing and taking everything in, but

it’s hard to do that on camera. I just don’t

want it to look like modeling, ever. I have

to really create those thoughts that make all

those moments real.

Yeah, I guess you have to really integrate

yourself in that way.

Totally. I heard someone say in an interview

that you give your best performance when

the camera isn’t on you, so the other person

knows you’re present and with them. That

really stuck with me. It’s really important to

be present the whole time.

You embody something physically, but I

can tell you aren’t thinking about what you

look like.

Which is really hard. When people ask

me what the hardest thing was, going

from modeling back to acting—the thing

I was most aware of was going from a

place where I always needed to know

where the camera is, to a place where

you’re supposed to pretend it’s not there

when it’s right in your face. Maybe I have

an advantage because I got to look pretty,

I got to do that. I don’t act because I want

people to see the way I look, it couldn’t

have less to do with that. I’m so happy to

not have to look a certain way. I really lean

into that.

I love when I’m watching an actor who’s

willing to look awful.

An ugly cry to me is so powerful and so

important. I love ugly crying.

You’re very comfortable seeing yourself on

camera, which I think is not always the case.

Modeling, you’re still hiding behind something,

because you’re not being yourself.

People saw my face without even knowing

who I was since I was 15. I had to just not

think about that. There were pictures of me

that I didn’t like all over the world, and I

just had to get over it.

I wonder if you have a better ability to disassociate

because it’s not Kaia, it’s a character.

I actually feel way more present acting

than I do modeling. When you’re modeling,

you can disassociate, and I did a lot.

Especially if I was uncomfortable or I was

showing my body in a way that I didn’t

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“I have gotten so much better at not working—it’s been a way that the pandemic was

really good for me. ‘What’s all the stuff you never dealt with? Let’s do therapy. Let’s

form relationships outside of work.’ ”

really feel comfortable with. With acting,

you don’t have the option to disassociate.

It’s fun: ‘Now I can really be here for this,

in a way that I haven’t ever been before.’

What performance do you watch and think

would be the dream to have as your version

of that opportunity?

Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under the

Influence.

I watched that two days ago.

Oh my God, you can tell her and John

Cassavetes work so well together.

Yes, there’s trust.

He really filmed the movies that best highlighted

her performances. That or Opening

Night would be it for me.

She’s incredible.

She’s perfect. I watch that movie all the

time, just to see there’s no limits to what

you can do while acting. People are like,

“That’s too much.” But no, you see her, and

you’re like, “That’s perfection.”

I just watched that and was also

reading The Ravishing of Lol Stein.

Oh, I love Marguerite Duras.

Just these women unraveling; it’s weird

because you watch that performance and she

taps into it so well.

She has these moments of complete insanity,

but you empathize with her so much.

Another good one is Isabelle Huppert in

The Piano Teacher. It’s interesting: they are

polar opposites of the tortured women.

You start to feel like, ‘Maybe I’m also a

little crazy.’

And that means she’s doing it right.

Okay, you just got back from Nashville and

you’re leaving tomorrow for Spain. What

else is coming up on the horizon?

Like, this week, or life?

Life.

I don’t know actually, which is cool. I have

gotten so much better at not working—it’s

been a way that the pandemic was really

good for me. ‘What’s all the stuff you never

dealt with? Let’s do therapy. Let’s form relationships

outside of work.’ Traveling when

you’re young, you don’t have too much to

come back to. I missed my family, but I

didn’t have a big friend group or a partner

to come home to.

What’s your relationship to travel now?

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“And the association is still there, with that feeling—traveling means being alone.

When I first started traveling I’d literally just go to these amazing places and work,

and then order room service.”

I was just talking about this today. Every

time I have to go somewhere—even if it’s

going on vacation—when I take out a suitcase

and pack, I have this deep melancholy

feeling that comes up. I think it’s because,

since I was 15, it meant I was going away

from my family, away from my friends. And

the association is still there, with that feeling—traveling

means being alone. When I

first started traveling I’d literally just go to

these amazing places and work, and then

order room service.

As I started traveling for work more and

more, I wouldn’t just stay in my hotel room.

I got older and was more comfortable being

alone and traveling. I’d go to museums, I’d

walk around, go find little cafes and things.

That made it more enjoyable. Even if I’m

going there to work all day, I have a coffee

in the morning at this little cafe, and I’m

finding this place for dinner. Now I love

travel—I’ve been able to go places I never

would’ve imagined. Places I wouldn’t myself

book a trip to, or think to go, but you get

there and it’s amazing. You kind of get to

taste test the world. •

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IN THE POWDER ROOM WITH

VALENTINO BEAUTY

THE POWDER ROOM

with Valentino Beauty

photography Rémi Lamandé

styling Clare Byrne

makeup Frankie Boyd – using all Valentino Beauty

hair Lucas Wilson

models Aiden Goldman, Alyda Grace, Chloe Oh, Precious Kevin

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VALENTINO BEAUTY

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VALENTINO BEAUTY

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EDIBLE LANDSCAPES WITH

DR. HYMAN

After graduating from the University of Ottawa and practising as a family physician,

Dr Mark Hyman eventually moved to Massachusetts in the early ’90s to

work in an inner-city ER department. It is here that he began pushing the limits of

his own body and mind, working 100-hour weeks and living off espresso shots, cookies

and pint-tubs of ice cream. Following a consequent bout of chronic fatigue syndrome,

Dr Hyman experienced a personal and professional awakening, becoming a devoted advocate

for healthier diets and lifestyles ever since. Central to his philosophy around personal

health is the notion that no one thing is more important than eating unprocessed,

nutrient-dense food. But diet doesn’t just affect us on a personal level. According to

Dr Hyman, it is key to the proper functioning of our societies. Through his New York

Times best-selling books, Hyman maps out the intersectionalities of global problems such

as chronic disease; environmental degradation; social and health inequities; and how

these link to our food systems and policy. For more day-to-day insights and advice, many

turn to his podcast, The Doctor’s Farmacy, which features discussions with prominent

health experts. As well as being a respected health professional, a self-professed nomad

and prominent public speaker, Hyman is the head of strategy and innovation at the Cleveland

Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, founder and director of the Ultra-wellness

Center and one of the foremost proponents of the food as medicine movement. Despite

so much on his plate, it is Hyman’s candid pragmatism and alacrity which shine through

when quizzed on everything from functional medicine’s critics, through a health revolution

based on eating delicious, nutritious food, to the viability of his controversial pegan

diet—a largely plant-based diet that includes a smattering of pasture-fed animal protein.

interview Richard Catty

photography Mark Hyman Studio

What sparked your interest in medicine?

I essentially studied Buddhism and Chinese in college. And then that led me to study

the Medicine Buddha—Buddhism as a healing system—and then that took me down

the rabbit hole of learning Chinese and being curious about Chinese medicine and

studying ancient healing systems, which I did in college. And that was way before I

went to medical school. In fact, I was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor.

DR. MARK HYMAN

You often point to the difference in the way eastern and western cultures view the function

of food. How can we draw on eastern philosophy to improve the health of our nations?

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DR. HYMAN

“I think we need to vote with our vote, we need to vote with our fork,

we need to vote with our wallet, and that we all need to be engaged in

the process of driving change in food policy.”

In the East, they really understood the role of food. The idea of food as medicine is just

embedded in there. In fact, the Chinese word Chī yào means to eat your medicine, and

I wrote an article called Eat Your Medicine: Food as Pharmacology based on a meal I

had in China in which every ingredient was carefully selected for its medicinal, healthpromoting

properties. I think we really need to get away from the idea of food as

calories, as energy only. It’s also information, instructions and code for your biological

software that can upgrade or downgrade it with every bite.

You are a practitioner and prominent figure within the field of functional medicine.

What is the essence of this alternative medicine and what would you say to critics who

claim a lack of scientific evidence?

You know, functional medicine is not alternative medicine, it’s not integrative medicine;

it’s a meta-framework and operating system. It’s a way of thinking about the

complexity of biological systems and ecosystems and understanding that health is

really about creating balance in our biological networks by optimising their function.

Functional medicine can include any modality, from diet, to medications, to surgery.

It’s really about finding the right medicine for the right person at the right time. It’s

dealing with the root causes of disease, the optimisation of biological networks, and

the emerging field of systems biology—now very much in the conversation and science

at the Institute for Systems Biology. Even at Harvard they published a textbook

called Network Medicine (Complex Systems in Human Disease and Therapeutics),

talking about a need to rethink our entire view of health and disease based on the

body as a biological network—a network of networks.

Your website talks about leading a health revolution. What would that look like to you?

I think we need to vote with our vote, we need to vote with our fork, we need to vote

with our wallet, and that we all need to be engaged in the process of driving change

in food policy. It’s an issue as important as a civil rights, women’s rights and ending

slavery; this is a massive effort that’s going to be required across the global population

to shift the food system to be more regenerative, more health-promoting rather than

disease-causing. I think it’s really important to understand that, you know, we are not

only in a pandemic of Covid, but a pandemic of chronic illness. In fact, 11 million

people die every year from poor diet, from not eating enough good foods and too

many bad foods. Chronic disease is now the leading cause of death—more than twice

as much as infectious disease—and it’s primarily caused by our food, food systems and

our policies around those things.

You’ve been quoted as saying “If God made it, eat it; if man made it, leave it,” which

gives us a flavour of the pegan diet you came up with for promoting health. What are the

tenets of peganism?

The pegan diet was essentially a joke, where I was on a panel with a cardiologist who

was vegan and a doctor who was a paleo doc, and they were fighting. And I’m like,

“Well, if you’re paleo and you’re vegan, I must be pegan,” and everybody laughed. Then

I began to think about it: ‘There are some guiding principles that we can all agree on.’

One—food is medicine, two—quality matters, and three—it’s about personalisation:

we can’t all eat the same things, based on our biology. So it’s really important to understand

that the pegan diet essentially focuses on a broad variety of foods and nutrients

to get a nutrient-dense diet. It’s about understanding that you need to choose the right

information that will optimise your hormones for gene expression, your brain chemistry,

your immune system, your microbiome and everything else.

One of the criticisms of the pegan diet is the inaccessibility of organic, pasture-fed

animal products, which the diet recommends over factory-farmed alternatives. Are there

any ways around this?

We’re in a transitional phase right now. It’s still marginal in our society, but there’s a

growing understanding that in order to address our food system challenges, our agricultural

challenges, climate change and the poor quality of food, we need to actually

increase the scale of regenerative agriculture. And in fact, the cost will come down like

everything else, the quality will go up and we’ll see this happen over the next few decades,

I am sure. There’s people who actually say, “We can’t scale this up. It’s not viable.”

That has been widely disproven. There’s a lot of people who’ve worked on this—from

Allen Williams to Allan Savory, to people like Tom Newmark and the Carbon Underground—who

are scaling these across not only individual farms, but whole countries

that are far more advanced than we are in America.

What about eating locally-sourced food? What are the benefits and how do we overcome

obstacles to it?

I think we should be eating food that is fresh, local and seasonal to get the most

nutrient density. If you eat a tomato that’s grown in your organic garden at the end

of August, that’s finely ripened and literally explodes with flavour in your mouth,

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DR. HYMAN

“We have really bred out nutrition from our diet. We’ve bred in

calories, we’ve bred in starch and we’ve reduced the overall nutrient

density, protein quality and so much more from our diet.”

then it’s very different in terms of nutrition density, quality, taste and flavour than, for

example, a store-bought tomato that’s been shipped across the country. It looks like a

tomato, but tastes like cardboard. So the key is really focussing on quality, and often

quality has to do with the soil it’s grown in, the length of time it’s stored, the distances

travelled and the degradation of nutrients. So ideally, local food is better. That’s not

always possible, but we probably shouldn’t be eating pineapples in the winter in New

Jersey, [laughs] and I think we need to focus on actually creating our own local, urban

and suburban, and rural gardens. In fact, the WWII victory gardens were the main

impetus that fed America: 40 percent of our diet came from victory gardens because

the government said, “Hey, we’re at war, everybody needs to grow a garden.” So all of

us have the capacity to do that, even if it’s a small pot of herbs or a tomato plant.

In your podcast, I’ve heard you discussing how humans once had access to something

like 800 different types of edible plants. With just a few staple crops making up the majority

of the global diet nowadays, how do we avoid the homogenisation of our food?

Wheat, corn and rice, and about 12 other crops make up 90 percent of our diet, and

there’s a few others here and there. We have really bred out nutrition from our diet.

We’ve bred in calories, we’ve bred in starch and we’ve reduced the overall nutrient

density, protein quality and so much more from our diet. This is all because of plant

breeding and optimisation for yield, and for all kinds of features that have nothing to

do with human nutrition, [laughs] and that’s a problem. So ideally we need to eat a

wide variety of foods. I always say, “Eat weird food.” If you go to the grocery store and

you don’t know what that is, buy it and figure out how to make it. [laughs] That’s what

I do when I go to the grocery store, I buy weird food.

As a respected health advocate and public speaker who travels the world, can you say

which cultures are most conducive to health and long life and if there is a regional diet

you hold in particularly high esteem?

I think Hawaii, particularly Maui, is profound for the variety of fruits and vegetables

grown in an organic way, with incredible soils, being in the energy of Maui, which

is said to be the heart of the world with its beautiful mountains, oceans and rainforests.

The abundance of fresh, local and tropical fruits and vegetables left me feeling

extraordinarily healthy after six months there. In terms of longevity, I was travelling

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DR. HYMAN

“I don’t want to sacrifice pleasure and joy and entertainment with

food, and I think it’s a myth that you have to. If you look at whole, real

food that’s nutrient-rich, you can actually have extraordinary flavour.”

in Sardinia, which has maintained its culture for thousands of years based on living in

close connection with nature, the Earth and each other. They still are shepherds, grazing

their goats and sheep in mountain areas on wild plants, which actually allows the

animals to produce meat, milk and cheese that is full of phytochemicals and beneficial

fats and nutrients. A special combination of traditional food, active lifestyles and community

drive overall longevity and good health, which makes it one of the key blue

zones in the world and the place where men live the longest. And their food is really

fresh and local and alive, in a way that it really isn’t in most parts of the world.

Humans can survive on a variety of diets, from high-carbohydrate to low-carbohydrate,

to high-fat diets like that of the Inuit in Alaska, but the key is whole, real,

unprocessed food that’s nutrient-dense, and that’s pretty universal.

There is the common misconception that the obesity epidemic in America could be

solved if people simply ate less. What is the reality and what are the solutions?

The reason we’re obese is because we eat the wrong foods. If you eat high-starch,

sugary foods—the emerging theory around obesity is called the carbohydrate insulin

hypothesis. Essentially, if we eat too many carbohydrates that are starchy like sugar

and flour, it drives up insulin. Insulin is a fat storage hormone; it slows metabolism, it

locks fat in the fat cells and makes you hungrier and crave food. In fact, David Ludwig

has pioneered a lot of this research which shows that it’s not overeating that makes you

overweight, it’s being overweight that makes you overeat. Because the fat cells in the

belly that start to form as you eat carbohydrate and starch actually drive the process

of weight gain in this vicious cycle of hunger-craving fat-storage. So it’s not necessarily

how much you eat that matters, it’s more what you eat that matters. And we know

this from studies; if you look at people given the opportunity of whole real food versus

processed food, the people who get the processed food will eat about 500 more calories

a day. It’s like they’re looking for love in all the wrong places—they’re trying to get

the nutrients from their food but it’s not there, so they keep eating, eating, eating. But

if you eat a nutrient-dense diet, you’re often very satisfied.

As well as excess starch and sugar, you are very vocal in opposition to food additives.

What are their effects and how should we avoid them?

There are over 3,000 additives that have been approved by the FDA. Many of them

have been grandfathered in, for example, like trans fats, which have been around

for decades and decades since Crisco was developed in 1911. A couple of years ago

it turned out that it’s not safe to eat. So we had over 100 years of this additive that’s

actually extremely harmful. In many other countries, they don’t allow the same food

additives that they do in America, like BHP or butylated hydroxytoluene, which is a

preservative, but may also be cancerous. There are other additives, like emulsifiers and

thickeners, and foods that tend to cause leaky gut, autoimmune disease and allergies.

So ideally, we shouldn’t be eating foods that have a bunch of ingredients that you can’t

recognise, pronounce, or are in Latin. You should just eat real food, in as close to its

natural form as you can, with the shortest distance from field to fork.

How important is it that the medical community embraces the healing effects of real food

and government food policy is reformed, for example, through education, the use of food

as medicine in hospitals and changes in food advertising?

I mean, this is really critical. We need to have a wholesale change in food policy and

health policy. We need to pay for food as medicine through Medicare and Medicaid.

We need to actually provide support for food as medicine programmes in hospitals.

We need to end all advertising and commercial marketing of junk food, especially

towards children. Many countries have done this already. In fact, Chile found that with

having a restriction on advertising for kids from six in the morning to 10 at night, putting

warning labels that highlight the dangers of certain foods like cereal, and taking

the cartoon characters off of the cereal boxes, they had a fourfold better reduction in

the consumption of these foods than with, for example, an 18 percent soda tax. So we

know that these things play a huge role.

Eating a healthy diet is often associated with sacrifice. How can people eat healthy without

feeling deprived and what small details should they focus on when choosing what to eat?

I personally love food. I don’t want to sacrifice pleasure and joy and entertainment

with food and I think it’s a myth that you have to. [laughs] If you look at whole, real

food that’s nutrient-rich, you can actually have extraordinary flavour. In fact, the more

flavourful a plant food is, the more nutrient-dense it is. For example, if you take a wild

strawberry—it’s tiny but explodes with flavour in your mouth—versus a store-bought

strawberry that’s artificially grown and stored in a box for a long time; it’s big and

beautiful, but it doesn’t actually taste like anything. And that’s because all the phytochemicals

and nutrients really are not there. We really should be focussed on delicious,

whole, real food. We should focus on learning how to cook. We should focus on understanding

the power of including all kinds of spices and flavours in our food. There is no

deprivation in Dr. Hyman’s diet. It is a delicious, abundant, health-promoting diet. •

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A CONVERSATION WITH

FRANCIS KÉRÉ

FRANCIS KÉRÉ

interview Edward Paginton

photography Robbie Lawrence

artwork Kéré Architecture

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A CONVERSATION WITH

FRANCIS KÉRÉ

On Sunday 23rd January 2022, Burkina Faso faced a coup d’etat, overthrowing President Kaboré and

leaving the country in a state of disarray. Less than two months later, in stark contrast to this turbulence,

Burkina Faso’s very own superstar architect Francis Kéré was announced as the 2022 laureate of the

prestigious Pritzker Prize, becoming the first African and first Black architect to win the award. His phone

has been ringing so much since that even Burkina Fasso’s new president struggles to get on the line with

him. Having grown up in the small rural village of Gando before spending the last 30 years in Berlin, Kéré

has, in a way, never really left home. Attuned to the Burkinabe people, with a focus on how education is

key in creating united visions at the heart of modern cities, he gives communities with very little resources

access to another world. For Kere, place-making is an act of building an identity and representation—the

founding principle behind his Burkina Faso National Assembly project. In the eyes of the architect, spaces

that are both rooted firmly in the surrounding environment and that continue to inspire people will remain

in place when the next revolution comes along. Keen to keep his feet on the ground amidst all the

excitement, The Travel Alamanac catches up with Kéré at Tempelhof Feld, the former Berlin airfield.

I guess we can’t begin without talking

about the Pritzker Prize. It must still feel

quite unreal?

Emotionally, yes. My brain hasn’t accepted

the reality of it. It’s unbelievable. Unexpected.

Being the first African Laurette, do you feel

a sense of responsibility?

A strong responsibility. Being an architect

you know what a big deal it is to have this

recognition. But what’s more surprising is

how suddenly the news is spreading—from

Brazil, Mexico to a little corner of Cape

Town. Everyone says, “You’re making us

proud,” as they relate to similar problems

and conditions like in Burkina Faso. It’s not

just professionals or designers, it’s a broader

mix of people from all backgrounds

trying to connect. Even the government

of Burkina Faso are trying to connect

through relatives after the announcement.

The president was trying to call and call

and call. It is because suddenly somebody

from Burkina Faso—the first one from

our culture—has won such a prize. The

people are like, “Okay we are capable.

We are someone.” There’s a big hope. All

across Africa—Dakar, Cameroon, Nigeria,

Ghana—everywhere, everyone’s talking

about it.

I can’t help but notice your studio is such a

multi-lingual space. Is this important to the

way you work?

I think there are nine or ten nationalities:

Korean, Syrian, Columbian, Italian, Spanish,

Swiss, German, French, and Chinese.

You must forget your mother tongue quite

easily then.

Exactly. I’m having to navigate between

French, German and English. Sometimes,

I’ll say something in Italian that I know, just

to push and make people happy. I might

say, “Andiamo, andiamo.”

You’ve said the role of an architect is to fix

and find solutions. Do you apply this to

other areas of your life?

This is actually what I do and who I am.

I’m always trying to find solutions or to fix

things. Not to just give up and say, “This is

impossible,” waiting for someone to come

and fix it.

If I’m working in Africa, I face scarcity. A

lot of things are missing. But instead of

running away or going crazy, I try to arrange

myself. For me this is part of reality.

How can I find a solution? Ever since I was

in elementary school, I’ve had to accept

things and arrange myself within them.

I’m curious to hear about your thoughts on

shared identities between both Germany and

Burkina Faso.

I am really comfortable in both places.

As you can see, I travel a lot. Living in

Germany, where everything in comparison

is very well organised. When you arrive in

Burkina Faso, it’s a totally different world,

completely relaxed and so much slower. I’m

so fortunate to be able to cross cultures and

enjoy it simultaneously. You have to try to

enjoy different places by adapting rather

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“In Burkina Faso, I feel very comfortable, but after time I get tired because a lot

of people hassle me. Berlin offers me a bit of privacy to be myself and to be able to

reflect. It’s a city where you can spend time being alone.”

than trying to get the world to fit you. In

Burkina Faso, I feel very comfortable, but

after time I get tired because a lot of people

hassle me. Berlin offers me a bit of privacy

to be myself and to be able to reflect. It’s a

city where you can spend time being alone.

But if I’m in the village in Burkina, I will

never be able to sit a few minutes alone

without someone coming up to me. Which

is also great. Sometimes I need that driving

energy of people being around, asking for

your support, not only in construction but

also in societal issues and education for

kids. It makes me feel alive—that people

need me. I exist.

How do the remote African landscapes

of Burkina Faso have an impact on you

emotionally?

Driving through the desert, across the

Sahara from Gando, you pass through cities

like Ouagadougou, Ouahigouya, then Kaya,

toward Mali. Throughout, you start to see

how the vegetation changes. You start to see

the size of trees getting lower and smaller

and then the vegetation disappears. Also

the animals change—you start to see goats

climbing the trees to eat leaves. And then

there are no more donkeys, but instead

camels. Then it’s just desert. When you step

from the car in the early morning on to

the sand, you just run. It’s so beautiful. The

desert is so powerful and so monumental

to me. It contributes so much to my work.

In the Dogon land, you see these Toguna

landmarks in really arid landscapes, built

just to provide shade. It’s really powerful.

These cultural observations are discovered

through this kind of travel and it’s really

essential to my practice. But also the

landscape—understanding how important a

tree’s canopy is or the surrounding vegetation.

These are all very elemental. Do you find

urban environments influence you in the

same way?

Of course, Venice—how were they able to

build this incredible city that has lasted

over time. There’s a place called Ganvie in

Benin that also exists on the water after

people escaping war and slavery settled

there. They installed themselves in the

water so no one could get to them. It’s impressive

to see how families have different

boats for different needs. The kids need one

to go to school, the mother has a boat to go

to the market, then the father needs one for

work, whilst another boat provides water.

Looking here, you see the power of human

beings in how we create places. Compare

this to the scale of Venice and how organised

it is—it’s been a power throughout

history. But in both places, you can see how

human needs are fed. How human imagination

can help to shape their existences. That

to me is so inspiring. Seeing the primitive

version of Venice in Ganvie, made from

scarcity, then seeing this urbanised floating

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city made from deep wooden columns in

the water. When working, I think about

how they were able to do that. It’s creative

energy for me.

Are you fascinated by the resourcefulness

that arises out of a crisis?

In these settlements, they had nothing, but it

gave them protection. We’re always learning

from limitations in order to create comfort.

In a project called Opera Village with Christoph

Schlingensief, we had been talking

about the idea of “social sculpture.” At the

time, I have to tell you, I didn’t know much

about it. It’s an idea created by the artist

Joseph Beuys to get people to be part of the

process and to create things for themselves.

For instance, it creates a sense of security

when you are actively contributing to build

a shelter for yourself. That was the idea.

When we started the project, Burkina Faso

faced flooding that displaced people. So

Christoph said, “Let’s make our project

about learning. Design a small prototype.

Those who have had their own houses

destroyed can learn from what we do and

create their own houses.” Every time you

empower people, it’s life changing. From

a passive receiver you become an active

protagonist. It helps create an identity.

As an architect, I’d love to hear your thoughts

on whether you think transitory spaces such

as airports have an effect on the psyche.

These spaces are gaining more importance.

You have more people travelling now, even

though we thought Covid would change

this. But it won’t, and happily so really.

Though we have to address how to make

travel environmentally conscious. If you

think about these spaces, there’s a lot of

people moving through and spending time

there. My own feeling is if I arrive in a space

like this, I look to see if there’s a cosy corner

to sit. It should not just be a technical place

because it’s become more fundamental for

these spaces to pass on new messages. Spaces

that speak to our senses evoke emotions.

Nowadays, we are working abroad remotely

more often. We work while travelling. We

will fail if we keep seeing these as technical

spaces, so we need to be much more generous

and consider how these places facilitate

new encounters with people. It is where the

world meets. Nowhere else do you get such

diversity. Locals and tourists—in transition

from all over the world—meet here. These

spaces need to be much more.

You arrived in Berlin just after the wall fell,

right? In your eyes, what was the city like

back then?

I arrived just before the end of the Cold War

and I discovered two types of Germany. You

could really see there was a lot to be done

in order to weave the boundaries together.

But there was an energy to be optimistic

and grow together. That spirit of rebuilding

was there, you could just see it. Potsdamer

Platz being rebuilt, I would go and watch

when I was a student, all the while thinking

of my home in Burkina Faso. You have to

remember, I made my first project when I

was a student. So to see this transformation

of Berlin with my own eyes emphasised that

it can happen in my home too.

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“For a young man or young woman in Burkina Faso, to learn something you’ve got

to follow someone who will pass on the knowledge, and when you are an adult, you

become the master. But in my case, I came and said I’m going to build a school.”

This visionary reimagining of a city, which

you describe as “food for creativity,” is

similar to your approach for the National

Assembly in Ouagadougou. Did you look

beyond architecture for inspiration too?

The mythological story The Tower of Babel

has inspired me a lot. It’s a vision of building

a nation. But it is also a vision about

working vertically. A vital vertical city. I

don’t think of Le Corbusier when working,

I’m thinking of Babel. A big city with

human imagination at the core. That’s what

we’re doing with the National Assembly in

Burkina Faso; it is a pyramid. And like the

pyramids that exist in Africa, they resonate.

Of course, It will be a different type of pyramid—not

a tomb but a public space. It is a

place where debate will happen. The stairs

will be like a stage for music or political

debate, with terraces that mimic rice fields.

The idea was that every region can come

and contribute. It is a vision that connects

Burkina to its strong agricultural heritage.

You give them another viewpoint too, another

way to see their city because they are

elevated. The country is flat and not many

people have flown before—maybe less than

10 percent—so they don’t see an aerial

perspective of their city. The National Assembly

offers people views of the surrounding

city. They will also see metal sheets on

the roofs of houses everywhere. It’s really

ugly. And then doing so, people will start to

make changes. It raises your spirits, not just

in terms of architecture, but intellectually

and emotionally. And that is fundamental.

You’ve given a lot back to the community of

Gando. Is this ongoing exchange still just as

significant for you?

I’ve benefitted from their belief in me.

For a young man or young woman in

Burkina Faso, to learn something you’ve

got to follow someone who will pass on

the knowledge, and when you are an adult,

you become the master. But in my case, I

came and said I’m going to build a school.

No one had ever seen me on a construction

site in Gando, so how could they know

I knew what to do? They just trusted me.

Trust is love. It’s so fundamental wherever

we go. It gave me the power to say, “Hey, I

am someone. I can build things. I can lead.”

You don’t know what confidence that gives.

It helped pave my career.

Your projects are often very site-specific,

adapting ways of working in that environment.

How do you prepare for these kinds of

special conditions?

You have to go to the place and feel the

spirit of the space. Even for a little project,

I have to go. It will teach you a lot. The environment

comes before the idea. Then the

conversation with the people follows. You

have to talk and to listen to the people from

the place. When you’ve lived with these

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Benin National Assembly – Porto-Novo, Republic of Benin

A CONVERSATION WITH

EXCURSIONS

“Even for a little project, I have to go. It will teach you a lot. The environment comes

before the idea. Then the conversation with the people follows. You have to talk and

to listen to the people from the place.”

elements, you learn from them, and this is

what you get from the community.

And why is it important to still embrace

local methods for you?

It’s about a level of craftsmanship and

ability you always find in communities, no

matter where you look. In cities across Africa,

you’ll find people who have migrated

from the same region, perhaps following

different trades—craftsmen or other

community leaders. So when a project like

ours comes to their village, they want to

get involved. Of course, modernity is about

trying to create settlements, but in cities

that have grown organically across Africa, it

is always the same thing.

Do you think there is a danger of “politicalgreenwashing”

in architecture and urban

development, as opposed to helping reshape

the core of an architectural practice or the

construction process itself?

That is a big, big danger. Myself, firstly, I

am trying to make sure people know I have

studied architecture and am not being an

expert in mud. I am a resource opportunist

in terms of material but I will not let myself

be pushed into one corner as the expert of

clay. I will make sure that people see the

job of an architect may even be to create

furniture or different objects. I’m moving

myself within all these broader fields. I’m

always making sure that what I do is not a

burden to the environment. You’re actually

sitting on a chair that I made for a school in

Burkina, made from leftover materials from

a construction site. This is now in the Philadelphia

design museum, originally made

in Gando. Norman Foster, who is one of

the greatest architects and designers of our

time, said to me, “Francis, I can’t stand this

overused word of sustainability.” It’s those

who can afford financially to use the word

sustainability, to keep working in the same

way, just portraying it as “green.” This is very

dangerous. It is up to ourselves to be clear

and not be overwhelmed by this overused

word. Are you buying a slogan or are you

buying the truth? It’s not about the material

in itself, it’s about how we deal with it, how

careful and how smart we are with it.

In terms of construction and the hugely

growing population of Africa, if you want

to adapt to the Western way of living, we’re

going to fail. There won’t be resources left

for the rest of the world. Let’s try to see how

we can learn from technology but also from

the failures of the Western world. We need

to create spaces that are so inspiring to

our people; that provide luxury in terms

of comfort without causing a burden to

the environment. •

EXCURSIONS

the bicycle saddle Richard Catty

screenic tourism Timothy Woods Palma

la collina di loredana Pantelleria, Italy

the cold The Andes, Argentinean Patagonia

there’s a place called kokomo Indiana, United States

nietzsche’s last year in turin Piedmont, Italy

super futures at selfridges London, United Kingdom

clinique la prairie Montreux, Switzerland

where are you based? Colin Dodgson

lulu & leonard Brooklyn, New York

the model world Chiltern Hills, United Kingdom

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THE BICYCLE SADDLE

The Bicycle Saddle

A Vehicle for Transportation & Communication

by Richard Catty

While the groupset is an important feature of any geared bike, its presence tends to say a lot more about

brand loyalty and disposable income than the type of riding experience the owner is looking for. Nowadays,

performance between entry-level and top-of-the-range groupsets varies little, with price disparities

being justified mainly by minor weight savings. The only real beneficiaries of these incremental differences

are genuine racers—a small minority of the luminous, Lycra-sprayed peletons that are more and more of a

common sight in cities and suburbs around the world.

Of the more than 30 major components that comprise a modern bicycle, one of the best indicators of a cyclist’s

priorities rather than their budget and allegiances is the saddle. It is one of the most cost-effective aftermarket

adaptations that a rider might make to their bicycle, matched only by a change in tyres in terms

of ability to affect the overall feel of a bike. In one sense, the bicycle saddle is a fairly standardised piece of

kit, consisting of a frame, base, padding and cover. But within those seemingly narrow design parameters

exists a huge range of saddle designs, all of which, consciously or unconsciously, broadcast something

about the riders that use them; just as a pair of wrecked converse deliberately worn past its expiration date

is a sure sign of a love for live music and cheap beer.

“In one sense, the bicycle saddle is a fairly standardised piece of kit, consisting

of a frame, base, padding and cover. But within those seemingly narrow design

parameters exists a huge range of saddle designs, all of which, consciously

or unconsciously, broadcast something about the riders that use them;. . .”

From a simple first glance, there is much the average person can tell about the kind of riding a cyclist

engages in, from bike type—road, city or mountain; through the clothes they wear—old T-shirt paired

with tracksuit bottoms or replica pro-team jersey and shorts; to whether a rider dons a helmet or not. For

the experienced cyclist, however, much finer details permit a more precise assessment of a fellow rider’s

level of experience and riding preferences. For a bicycle is not just a bicycle, but an assortment of individual

components that work together to dictate overall performance and allow a cyclist to express themself.

One of the first things to grab a seasoned cyclist’s attention is the groupset. Commonly referred to in bike

lingo as the “gruppo,” it is essentially a collection of matching mechanical components that make a bicycle

go and stop. The leading manufacturer in this field is Japan’s Shimano, whose market dominance has set

the standard for bicycle component sizing and inter-compatibility across manufacturers. Other popular

brands include the emerging SRAM and the prestigious yet expensive Campagnolo, famed for its sleek Italian

looks and unique thumb-switch shifting system. Each of the three brands competes for market share

with a hierarchy of groupsets that they market to customers with varying levels of experience and budgets.

Take an off-the-shelf aluminium mountain bike, for example; the kind of nifty-looking $300 vehicle that

looks the part but comes with the cheapest of cheap components, such as a very wide, squishy and comfylooking

saddle. What might seem like a natural choice for any cyclist—a saddle which puts plenty of padding

in close contact with one of the most delicate areas of the human body—may actually be an indicator

of a novice rider. Over long distances, excess cushioning actually delivers the opposite of the desired effect,

deforming and exerting extra pressure on the soft tissue between the sit bones and creating discomfort.

Moreover, the longer a cyclist spends on their bike, the less padding they need because of the strengthening

of the leg muscles and their ability to support a greater proportion of the rider’s weight. For a cyclist

that moves up from casual to a more recreational level, the soft off-the-shelf saddle quickly becomes a

hindrance rather than a help and needs to be replaced.

For many a cyclist, it’s not just the feel of a saddle, but how it fits with the overall aesthetic of their bike

which is paramount. A vintage racer salvaged from a dumpster by a bearded DIY bike enthusiast, for

example, is more likely to be adorned with a re-release of the legendary Selle Italia Turbo, rather than an

ultramodern, lightweight saddle that would simply look incongruous on a classic frame. The form of the

Turbo, first popularised in the ’80s by five-time Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault, is much longer

than the short-nosed saddles that are popular on modern race bikes. Its high sidewalls allow for smooth

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THE BICYCLE SADDLE

downward strokes of the inner-thigh, and the padding is adequate yet firm enough to prevent pressure

caused by short- to medium-distance rides. The sidewalls also do an excellent job of hiding the rails—the

awkward and antiquated industry-standard solution for attaching the saddle to the seatpost—dipping and

sloping, and vying for attention against the distinctive Turbo logo embossed on no less than five points on

the saddle. Despite its multiplicity, the logo achieves a deft subtleness due to only two copies being fully

visible from any one angle. “This bike is quick!” scream the thick white bands of looping calligraphy, even

when the saddle is seen bobbing along cobbled Berlin streets, attached to a refurbished and slightly rusted

single–speed that weighs several kilos more than a modern 22-speed carbon road bike.

The Turbo possesses a blend of vintage sex appeal and short-ride comfort that is hard to find in modern road

bike saddles. However, its design lacks a centre channel—that elongated slit down the middle of the saddle,

designed to relieve pressure on the soft tissue between the sit bones during longer rides. These channels are

most often found in modern saddle designs such as the Supacaz Ti Ignite in “Oilslick” colourway. Stubby and

butterfly-shaped, suited to serious riders who seek an optimum riding position from which not to deviate,

this ostentatious model comes in a purple and blue two-tone sportscar–style finish with overlaid geometric

shapes. It’s the kind of saddle one might find with matching handlebar tape, sitting high on the aerodynamic

“This ‘serious’ cycling culture, which has exploded in recent decades,

is partly rooted in the successes of Colombian cyclists such

as Lucho Herrera, the first South American to win a grand tour in

1987, and Egan Bernal, the first to win the Tour de France in 2019.”

seatpost of a $3,000+ bicycle belonging to a wealthy Bumanguesa—a person who originates from the city of

Bucaramanga, Colombia. Here, it is hard to find a steel frame anywhere, let alone discarded in a dumpster.

Cycling is less of a mode of transport or casual past-time than a sport taken seriously by all those who

partake. This “serious” cycling culture, which has exploded in recent decades, is partly rooted in the successes

of Colombian cyclists such as Lucho Herrera, the first South American to win a grand tour in 1987,

and Egan Bernal, the first to win the Tour de France in 2019. But perhaps more decisive in the culture’s

evolution are Colombia’s mountains and valleys, and the perilous roads dominated by 18-wheel trucks and

speeding motorbikes, all of which demand an elevated degree of courage and concentration from cyclists.

A serious cycling culture calls for serious kit—lightweight aluminium and carbon frames are most commonly

found in Bucaramanga, with riders paying top dollar to own the latest eye-catching bikes and gear,

and for the ability to compete in race events or keep up in challenging semi-amateur group rides. Take the

60 km ascent to the Berlin of Santander, Colombia, for example; with an elevation gain of over 2,700 m,

the route reaches an altitude at which trees struggle to grow. Here, the terrain and temperature resemble

that of the bare Scottish Highlands; the cold, thin air lightly fragranced by wagon-loads of recently harvested

scallions on their way to markets throughout the region. Then there is the weaving, pothole-pocked

road to Chicamocha Canyon, the pebbled riverbank fading into patches of arid vegetation overshadowed

by huddles of squatted mountains. A roadside refueling station on the return leg regulalry sees truckers

hosing the dirt from their big-wheels, or the baked-on salt from the faces of cyclists enduring the scorching

midday sun. Spending hours saddled in these challenging environments, everything from bib shorts,

to helmet ventilation, through shoe design can affect performance. Whereas casual riders may lean towards

gear that provides the greatest level of endurance-comfort, those more race-oriented have a greater

likelihood of prioritising weight savings. One weight optimisation in the saddle department is Selle San

Marco’s Mantra Superleggera, clocking in at just 112 g. Compare that to a decent off-the-shelf road bike

saddle and that’s a weight difference of at least 180 g. Owing to its all-black design and relatively conservative

shape—long and flat with just a slight look of a hyperdrive-equipped E-wing Starfighter from the Star

Wars franchise—the saddle is harder to spot than the conspicuous Oilslick Supacaz. But once one’s sights

have locked onto its logo, it is a clear indicator of an often-ridiculed type of rider: the weight weenie—a

cyclist obsessed with reducing the cumulative mass of their machine to the absolute minimum in order

to obtain marginal gains in race situations, no matter what the cost. In this case, it’s a cool $400 due to its

full carbon construction.

In flatter parts of the world, where weight savings are not so much of a concern, there are cyclists who can

afford to choose classic looks and build quality over modern materials such as carbon and titanium. For

such a market there exists Brooks of Birmingham, UK. A manufacturer of quality leather saddles since

1866, a time when cowhide was the only material used for outer shell construction, their saddles are oftentimes

paired with steel touring bikes— those with racks for securing special bike bags called panniers and

manufactured by top-end custom frame builders like Tommasini of Italy or Mercian of England. Steel is

the material most often used for touring bikes for its durability, repairability and shock absorption properties,

the latter creating a more leisurely experience for touring cyclists taking in the sights on established

cycleways such as the Danube. One of Europe’s most popular multi-day touring routes, the river spans 19

countries and dissects cultural hotspots such as Budapest, Vienna and Bratislava.

The Brooks B17 is a top-seller amongst touring cyclists, the generally less aerodynamically-dressed rider,

and is famed not only for its classic looks but the superior level of cushioning the leather provides. It is

a feat achieved by stretching the material across a powder-coated steel frame, a little like the suspended

nylon shell of a tent. Following an initial break-in period, the leather begins to supple, suspending the rider

in a hammock-like fashion and eventually moulding itself to their posterior. The natural leather also offers

excellent breathability, unlike the synthetic coverings of padded saddles.

For riders who desire yet another level of comfort, or simply to make a cycling fashion statement equivalent

to combining a pair of Nike Shox with thrift shop–bought brogues, there is the Brooks B67 England

Flyer—a spring-loaded saddle that makes dull murmurs out of cracks and divots in the tarmac. It’s the

type of saddle you might find paired with matching tan-coloured saddle and handlebar bags on a boutique

Dutchie, leisurely ridden through Hyde Park by a smartly-dressed young professional with a latte in hand

and a poodle in tow. Should that latte be foamed with oat rather than cow milk, the drinker may prefer a

more contemporary-looking Brooks Cambium saddle. Constructed with flexible natural rubber padding

and an organic cotton cover, the Cambium brings a vegan-friendly option to Brooks’s extensive product

range, standing as a fine example of how a saddle isn’t always just a saddle, but a vehicle for communicating

something fundamental about the person it transports. RC

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SCREENIC TOURISM

Screenic Tourism

At the Intersections of Screen Culture and Travel

by Timothy Woods Palma

In the fifty years since, there has been a striking lack of development in both the technology and experience

of transportation. We fly in the same medium- and wide-bodied aircraft, at the same speeds, in the

same seat configurations. The same four-wheeled vehicles are driven in the same fashion on the same

roads. “Where the Hell Are the Flying Cars We Were Promised?” asked the title of a recent Motortrend

article, echoing a multi-generational concern. Taking into account new airport security protocols and

discontinuations of both the Concorde and Airbus A380, one observes a collective travel experience that

has not merely stagnated but worsened.

While a certain inertia has ironically marked the field of transportation, that of telecommunications has

boomed. Human bodies move no faster than they did half a century ago, but the speed of human ideas has

increased at an astonishing pace. In the 21st century, emails, texts, voices and videos arrive instantaneously

anywhere on Earth, with nothing more than an internet connection and a mobile device.

In fact, the greatest (technological) change to the travel experience is not within the modes of transportation

themselves, but rather the tools of its facilitation. From the process of booking it, to navigating and

documenting it, to distracting and entertaining ourselves through its discomforts, travel has been most

acutely altered by a single element: the proliferation and prevalence of screens.

“Human bodies move no faster than they did half a century ago, but the

speed of human ideas has increased at an astonishing pace. In the 21st

century, emails, texts, voices and videos arrive instantaneously anywhere on

Earth, with nothing more than an internet connection and a mobile device.”

We approach the end of a century of tourism that will see the number of global travelers rise from

25 million in 1950 to a projected 4.2 billion by 2050. While this escalation speaks to a massive

change in quantitative terms, what can be said about changes in the quality of our travel? From the

development of national highway systems to the commercial release of transcontinental jetliners, the early

period of this touristic century saw a drastic transformation in the technology and systems of transport;

airline passengers and road-trippers across America began experiencing something entirely new.

According to media historians, the screen has long been closely related to the concept and experience of

travel. Finnish media archeologist Erkki Huhtamo coined the term “screenology” in 2001 to establish an

academic subfield focusing particularly on manifestations and development of the screen through the centuries.

His foundational text on the subject Elements of Screenology traces the history of the screen going

back to the first half of the 17th century, chronicling the use of magic lanterns and phantasmagoria—a

form of horror theater that cast dreadful images on screens before terrified audiences. Huhtamo pays

specific attention to stereoscope technology, which synthesized 3D pictures and was a Victorian-era tool

of “virtual voyaging.” Included alongside maps and guidebooks in “package tours” of foreign lands, stereocards

were an early screen technology offering touristic vistas to those otherwise unable to travel and see

the marvels of the world.

The advent of cinema allowed an even wider public to virtually visit far-off destinations via screened projections.

Much scholarly attention has been paid to this transportational quality, not least to the center

stage taken by travel technologies within the earliest cinematic masterpieces. The Lumiere Brothers, for

instance, famously initiated the cinematic age with a film depicting the arrival of a locomotive train in

station. Soon after, their compatriot George Melies wowed audiences with a travel narrative more extraterrestrial:

his fantastical motion picture Voyage to the Moon.

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SCREENIC TOURISM

Cinema’s transportational quality has been most directly framed by French film theorist François Niney.

In his 2002 volume L’épreuve du réel à l’écran (The Test of Reality on Screen) he declared: “Cinema is a new

form of transport. . .It is no longer the voyageur who moves, but the world that comes into his view. The

new Copernican revolution: one can see a place without having ever been there!” Due to its fast-growing

affiliation with travel, French magazine Le Cinema would in 1912 go on to suggest that “Cinema will be

the future’s best agent of emigration.” This theory was only strengthened in the ensuing decades when

developments of sound and color cinema were able to more fully capture and depict the experience of

faraway destinations.

The relationship between screens and travel became even more dynamic during the television age, which

saw the function of mobility shift from visual content on cinema screens (and its effect on viewers) to the

mobility of screens themselves. Their migration from the cinema theater to the living room had a profound

effect on both spaces, and society at large. Televisions replaced fireplaces and radios as the new hearth of

the modern American home. Likewise, the cinematic industry adapted to the sudden competition for

audience attention with the invention of Cinemascope and the extra-wide, increasingly immersive movie

“On-screen content inspires audiences to become real-world tourists, and

studies have focused, for example, on the effect that franchises like Lord

of the Rings and Harry Potter have on tourism in New Zealand and the

United Kingdom respectively.”

screens we associate with cinema-going today. And in the ensuing decades, developments such as the

remote control, personal computer and, finally, the touchscreen only further amplified screenic mobility

and interactivity.

The history of the screen has thus comprised a double migration: on-screen content has facilitated “virtual

voyages,” while screens themselves have also voyaged, from the theater, to the home, to the pocket. Screens,

like the people that create them, can now be characterized most essentially by their patterns of mobility.

This overlap of human and screenic migration can be observed most acutely in the emergent academic

field of “screen tourism.” Within it, the nominal “screen” has so far referred exclusively to the causal factor,

i.e., the reasons why people travel. On-screen content inspires audiences to become real-world tourists,

and studies have focused, for example, on the effect that franchises like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter

have on tourism in New Zealand and the United Kingdom respectively. Research has most recently

extended to include some of the most well-known global organizations, such as Netflix and the UN World

Tourism Organization, who in October 2021 announced a partnership to “rethink screen tourism.”

The recent development of more interactive and immersive screen technologies calls for a shift of attention

from the real-world phenomenon of screen-inspired tourism to the virtual phenomenon of on-screen

tourism. In 2019, theorists Liestøl et al. published an article covering trends in “cross-innovation between

the screen industry and the tourism industry.” As part of what they called “the gradual mediatisation of

tourism,” a once real-world activity has become increasingly screen-based through the inclusion of video

games and augmented and virtual reality technologies, “transcending the divide between screen-framed

and physical experience.” While screen tourism has focused on the connection between on-screen content

and extra-screenic touristic activity, studies like Liestøl’s explore the virtualizing process which relocates

tourism from a real-world experience to one that is on-screen.

Phantasmagorias. Stereoscopes. Cinemas: silent, audible, and technicolor. Television and the remote

control. The Internet. The Home Computer. The Mobile Phone and touchscreens. The dynamics of

screenic travel have through modernity been driven primarily by advancements in technology. However,

the last years have shown that the screenification process is hastened not only by the technological but

the virological.

In 2020, the global corona-pandemic accelerated a process which Liestøl only a year earlier had described

as “gradual.” With the tourism industry crippled by pandemic restrictions, local vendors were left with

limited digital infrastructure to simulate their professional activities online and began to use those simple

tools found within their own personal screens. Forbes Magazine and Google both published articles in

the early months of Covid-19 covering how Street View was helping tour guides go virtual and remain in

business. “If I couldn’t go outside,” explained one London tour guide, “I could offer people the next best

thing, through a screen.” She also noted the advantages of on-screen tours, such as the ability to visualize

the changes to a place over time and the fact that “you can jump a mile down the road and people don’t

have to get on a bus or actually walk, so you can cover a lot of ground.”

In those initial months of the pandemic, screenic tourism trended beyond the work of individual guides

to include government- and industry-level adaptations. As early as April 2020, for example, the Faroe

Islands tourism board began running twice-daily virtual tours. Agencies normally marketing in-person

experiences shifted to the virtual, with on-screen tours becoming available for museums, gardens and even

nature, such as the VR hike of the Appalachian Mountains produced by Lonely Planet.

A year into the pandemic, the supranational World Economic Forum began calling explicitly for infrastructural

changes to the global tourism industry. “Augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies can

offer alternative ways to travel the world and an exciting new model for the industry,” they heralded. “The

design principles will create a frictionless digital user experience and construct a positive perception of a

tourist destination.”

There are those who may well question the value of a mountain hike without the crunch of earth underfoot,

the crisp smell of timber or lungs full of fresh, Appalachian air. While concepts such as “virtual

hiking” and “frictionless” travel might at first seem contrary to traditional tourism, valued for the full

sensorium and friction of its experience, screenic tourism is perhaps best understood not as competition

but rather a complement. With 1.5 billion travelers in 2019, the global tourism industry is well on the way

to its 2050 projected peak. In the decades to come, screen and virtual technologies will exist not only as a

supplement within the post-tourism ecosystem, but as a tool of expansion, extending the richness of travel

and intercultural experience to an ever-growing segment of humanity. TWP

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LA COLLINA DI LOREDANA

La Collina di Loredana

A Legacy of Love and Artistic Germination

by Marco Galvan

Rappa’s bond with Pantelleria was formed in 1971 when he and his wife Loredana honeymooned on the

island. Charmed by their time there, the couple returned shortly after and bought a ruined dammuso—a

simple, dome-roofed stone dwelling typical of Panterellia—with the intention of renovating and expanding

the building. Later, the area was designated a nature reserve; hence, their decision to turn the surrounding

terrain into a space dedicated to art.

La Collina di Loredana is Attilio Rappa’s place of the soul. Initially conceived as a private haven for the

couple’s growing art collection, the first work was installed in 1995, and every year since, one artist has

been invited to produce a new work in dialogue with the island. Following the untimely death of Loredana

in 2006, Rappa decided to honour the memory of his wife by offering more of his personal collection to

the island and opening the park to the public. The absence of physical enclosures now permits access to

anyone curious to discover its rugged allure. Despite this, the park remains relatively unknown to tourists.

It is unusual for one to find other visitors there; a stroll through the 30 artworks, spread across four sunsetexposed

hectares, can be a solitary and suggestive experience, the lunar rooves of the dammusi lending

themselves to the otherness of the location.

The walk from the collector’s house to the park is an initiatory journey in itself, the warm wind blowing

“One of the most emblematic scenarios to open up during the walk is a series

of 27 dead branches planted in the ground—Not Vital’s Untitled, 1999.

Every time a branch falls, the artist then casts it in bronze—a material so

often used in human statuary, here employed to immortalise nature.”

On a remote hillside, mosses and lichens of green and yellow coalesce on small, white rocks encircling

an olive tree. The arrangement stands as a monument to the wind, the dominating

element and ruler of Pantelleria, the island where this land artwork by Mario Dellavedova

is found. Art and nature permeate and complement each other on La Collina di Loredana, a

little-known contemporary sculpture park on Pantelleria, an island halfway between Sicily and

the coast of Tunisia. On this isolated strip of land, nature in its most archaic and poignant form

has been populated with artworks and installations from the private collection of Attilio Rappa.

relentlessly. A rough path leads to a wide, open hill before scrambling up further to the highest area of the

district. Once reached, the art emerges in nature—at times, in stark contrast to it.

High on the hill, embedded in a dark niche of black lava stones, a crimson-red sign from Claire Fontaine’s

2008 work Pay Attention Motherfucker flickers to life. It reads: “Merci de votre vigilance,” [“Thank

you for your vigilance”] and consists of neon lights activated by human presence. Further through the

shrubs, a solemn door in white concrete—Michael Dean’s work Untitled, 2010— has seemingly crashed

to the ground, transformed into a walkway leading towards a small valley enclosed by drystone walls. The

fallen door evokes human civilisation giving way to an Eden where wilderness dominates, emphasising

the ephemeral essence of humanity in the face of nature. One of the most emblematic scenarios to open

up during the walk is a series of 27 dead branches planted in the ground—Not Vital’s Untitled, 1999. Every

time a branch falls, the artist then casts it in bronze—a material so often used in human statuary, here

employed to immortalise nature.

Immersed in silence, La Collina di Loredana is as much an ecosystem as it is a sculpture park, an environment

where all elements remain receptive to novel organic and inorganic encounters. Carried by the wind,

settling on the island, Attilio and Loredana became artistic seeds germinating in the fertile ground. Their

legacy is a place where one can embrace the openness and porous mutations of Pantelleria, an island on an

island, where human endeavours are confronted by the predominance of nature in all its forms. MG

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THE COLD

The Cold

Meeting a Force of Nature

by Juan Fernando Moreno

From Chacra Wharton, 15 km to the north of El Bolsón, a group of hikers embark on a journey, seeking

to conquer the glacial peaks of the Andes that straddle both Chilean and Argentinian territory. The route

takes them along a dirt road that soon meets the renowned beauty of the Río Azul, a stunning river born

from the Hielo Azul glacier at about 2,250 m of altitude. With an emerald glaze, piercing-cold water and

girdled by massive rocks that create natural pools, the river captures the hikers’ attention as they trail

through the circuit of shelters spanning its course.

A place called Confluencia, where the river converges with the Encanto Blanco stream, is the first checkpoint.

Here, the Mystic Fog bar serves those who are both starting and ending their treks with typical

Argentinian pastry, roasted meat and burgers, and beers from a local brewery. After a meal of tortas fritas

and several rounds of mate, an infusion of yerba mate that’s ubiquitous in Argentina, the hikers cross the

river for the first time on their journey and set their sights on the shelter Cajón del Azul, one of the dozen

or so that can be found in the area, situated 10 km up the mountainside.

The trail tilts upwards as the hikers make the 1.2 km ascent through the Andean Forest. Vast images of

mountains thousands of meters away flood the eyes as the path approaches the open cliffs. With cold and

fresh air, wide open skies, dark lakes and frozen peaks, these mountains foster a sense of strength and

“Cold produces a keen and biting sensation, sharpening the skin and forcing

it to lose heat rapidly. As the body reacts to these extreme conditions,

accelerating metabolic and neuromuscular activity, the boundary layer of

pain starts to move further away.”

The Andes region of Argentinean Patagonia is synonymous with extremely cold weather, all

the way down to the tip of South America and the beginning of the frozen continent of Antarctica.

Yet the challenge of crossing, walking, hiking, biking, swimming and diving in these conditions

has become an ever-growing ambition of visitors to the area. Cold is a powerful, healing force

that can arouse one’s hidden strength and resilience. On treks through patagonian trails it becomes

the goal as well as the fuel. The ambition as well as the force; the hardship to endure and the reward.

In the southern region of the Río Negro province, El Bolsón sits in a cozy, nest-shaped valley of the Andes,

surrounded by steep hills, where light reflects at different visible angles throughout the day. To the west,

behind the hills, a long and mighty range of mountains climbs up north until they reach the Caribbean,

carrying over the very spirit of the peoples that for thousands of years have inhabited this region

of the world we today call the Andes. Surrounded by a protected area of Bosque Andino Patagónico,

close to the Lake District and just across from the infamous Route 40, the town of around 18,000 inhabitants

attracts hikers and travelers with nearby mountain circuits and mesmerizing landscapes.

resilience that’s almost ever-present in Patagonia. A feeling that seamlessly overtakes the hikers’ minds and

pushes them forward until, after almost three hours of walking, the first riverside shelter called La Playita,

600 m above their starting point, is reached. At this point, the river is flanked by a pearl-white stoney

beach, the perfect place for snacking on some fresh fruit and sandwiches and, most importantly, plunging

oneself into the water for the first time during the journey.

The hikers’ encounter with the water feels like getting ever closer to life itself. Cold produces a keen and

biting sensation, sharpening the skin and forcing it to lose heat rapidly. As the body reacts to these extreme

conditions, accelerating metabolic and neuromuscular activity, the boundary layer of pain starts to move

further away. A sense of relaxation and calmness eventually sets in, but also draws closer the risk of hypothermia

should movement cease or too much time be spent in the water. After the immersion, the body’s

quest for reheating begins. Shivering and trembling stimulate cells to work in such a way that more heat

is produced internally. The lungs are prompted to take in more breath, while the skin feels vivid and more

sensitive to light and shade.

Interest in cold exposure is developing rapidly among biologists, sports scientists and athletes, triggering

research into its claimed benefits, such as enhanced muscle tissue recovery, boosting of the immune

system, metabolic rate enhancement, and prevention of overheating, which in itself decreases muscular

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and connective tissue injuries. Everyday folk searching for wellbeing and empowerment are also taking advantage

of ice baths, cold showering protocols, open water swimming and winter swimming, not only for

physical health, but to ease symptoms of anxiety and depression. Whether used for athletic recovery and

fitness goals or as an aid for mental health, a growing community of people are looking for an increased

sense of vitality and energy through therapeutic exposure to freezing temperatures, taking to open waters

in different corners of the world, from Scotland to South Africa, Finland to Patagonia.

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As the trail draws closer to the icy hills, the breeze starts to cool. All along the path the river swirls around,

whispering and shouting; whenever it makes itself visible, its emerald brightness is unveiled. Deep, green,

clear, nippy, the water running down with patience seems as if it comes devoid of any speculation, any

secrets. The road to the second shelter, La Tronconada, is harder and steeper than the trail behind. In just

over a kilometer, the hikers ascend another 600 m, though the effort seems a little lighter this time, their

bodies having recovered in accelerated fashion; they can only think of the next immersion. At the next

access point, the river basin is wider but shallower, making it more suitable for swimming rather than

plunging. A short stop for a quick dip and hot drinks before setting off again. After almost five hours,

“All along the path the river swirls around, whispering and shouting; whenever

it makes itself visible, its emerald brightness is unveiled. Deep, green,

clear, nippy, the water running down with patience seems as if it comes

devoid of any speculation, any secrets.”

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the hikers approach their final destination, the third shelter in the main route between Wharton and Los

Laguitos, the farthest lying around 25 km from the starting point. It’s known as the Cajón del Azul for its

amazing scenery, where the mountain encloses itself around the river, creating a 40 meter–deep canyon as

if the river is running through an underground rock tunnel. The shelter is a basic, bedless wooden cabin

with a stove and floorspace for those who choose packing light and roughing it over the relative comfort

of pitching up around the cabin. Whether sleeping indoors or in a tent, all must pay their board to the

shelter-keeper who inhabits the cabin during the summer months. In wintertime the mountain circuit is

closed as many of the shelters become unreachable.

After setting up camp, a starry night and a campfire awaits the hikers in the cold, dark mountains of the

Andes. An overwhelming feeling of joy and energy ignites inside them, as they set themselves to rest and

contemplate the horizon. For all there is to be endured, extreme cold seems to hold the key to an invigorating

sense of wellness. The stressful sensation it delivers is an empowering and energetic stimulus, eliciting

inner strength: mental, physical and spiritual. Cold is a teacher that nurtures the self in resilience, enhancing

its faculty to take on greater struggles, eliciting the bravery and assurance required for stepping into

new horizons and discovering the rewards. JFM

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A PLACE CALLED KOKOMO

There’s a Place Called Kokomo

A Capital of Flyover Country

by Angela Waters

According to the local historical society, the original city name comes from a member of the Miami Indian

tribe, who signed a treaty in the 1800s, part of the forcible removal of Native Americans from the land. But

as the “Kokomo” spelling fails to relate to the linguistic patterns of the Algonquian language spoken by the

Miami people, it is assumed that the translation is one of the “close enough” Anglicizations frequently used

by settlers who could neither understand nor pronounce native names. Today, with only 0.3% of people in

Indiana identifying as Native American, the name is further Americanized in the regional Hoosier accent:

/ˈkoʊkəmoʊ/ KOH-kə-moh.

In some ways the Midwestern town is remarkably average—so much so that fast food companies have used it

to test how Americans would respond to new business propositions, like in 2001 when McDonald’s opened

the first (and probably only) McDonald’s Diner, South of the Kokomo Creek, to gauge whether or not people

craved sunny-side-up eggs and table service alongside their Big Macs. The nostalgic chrome-tabled, checkered-floor

McDiner was eventually converted into a regular McDonald’s as customers were mostly using

the retro rotary-dial telephones at each table to order burgers and chicken nuggets from the standard menu.

Despite the corporate assessment of Kokomo as a normal American town befitting a normal American

McDonald’s, the town sees itself as exceptional, taking on the title “City of Firsts.” While Kokomo was not

“When it comes to Kokomo’s pride and joy, that can be found along the

creek in Highland Park: Old Ben. . .Although not a Kokomo native in life,

after his death and subsequent stuffing in 1910, the more than 5,500 lb

steer came to the city where his fame only grew.”

Maps can be misleading when navigating the United States. While the country’s coastlines have their

fair share of picturesque stopping points, South Boston’s Pleasure Bay hardly delivers on the promise

in its name, with its pebbly beach and view of shipping containers. Driving down Interstate 395 from

Massachusetts through Connecticut, travelers will pass Oxford and Lisbon, ending up at the port of New

London, where a ferry provides passage across a Thames River to the Hamptons. Roughly 13 hours inland

from here lies Kokomo. The city is not, as the popular song would suggest, a tropical hideaway “off

the Florida Keys,” but a drive into the heart of the Midwest. Still, locals will insist there is a trace of the

true Kokomo, Indiana in the dreamy island tune. The town is home to large production plants for two of

America’s “Big Three” motor companies, General Motors and Chrysler. In the 1970s, the Beach Boys filmed

a commercial for a subsidiary of GM, Delphi Delco, and supposedly got the idea for the song when they

saw the name “Kokomo” printed on the check for the project. Out of the rhythmic name, the band created

such a convincing picture of Caribbean paradise that the Sandals luxury holiday chain actually opened

up a Kokomo resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica before eventually changing the name to Sandals Clay.

the site of unprecedented lunar missions or commonly-cited inventions, its moniker celebrates achievements

such as the 1884 test drive of Elwood Haynes’ first “horseless carriage,” featuring a combustion

engine; his design of stainless steel silverware in 1912; as well as Walter Kemp’s creation of the first

canned tomato juice in 1928, among other industrial advancements. Naturally, accounts of these events

have been chronicled in the town’s Elwood Haynes Museum, Howard County Historical Society and the

Seiberling Mansion.

But when it comes to Kokomo’s pride and joy, that can be found along the creek in Highland Park: Old

Ben. Housed in a pavilion next to the Sycamore Stump—a 1,500-year-old tree trunk with a circumference

of over 50 feet—the stuffed steer became a sort of town mascot. Although not a Kokomo native in life, after

his death and subsequent stuffing in 1910, the more than 5,500 lb steer came to the city where his fame

only grew. A photograph of Old Ben with pinup Phyllis Hartzell was sent to US troops during WWII, and

in the ’60s he made it into Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” show. While his original tail was stolen by vandals in

2004, a new one was crafted from three separate tails to replicate the size of the original.

Despite its well-chronicled history and distinctive name, Kokomo, like so many places between the coasts,

falls short of being a destination. But it more than fulfills expectations of a roadside attraction, drawing in

drivers for a short mental and physical break from the road; a stop worth seeing along America’s 164,000

miles of highway, before moving on to Last Chance, Iowa; Paris, Texas; or even Paradise, California. AW

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NIETZSCHE IN TURIN

Nietzsche’s Last Year in Turin

Bad Nerves and Superb Minestrone

by Trine Riel

The building is entered through the attractive Galleria Subalpina, with marble floors, cast-iron balustrades

and a high glass ceiling. Outside lies “the most wonderful sidewalks in the world,” and five minutes’ walk

down the street, the big Rosenberg and Sellier bookshop (“I have never seen anything like it!”) The people,

Nietzsche notes, “are very tender to me here.” Even his peddler woman, “will not rest until she has found the

sweetest of all her grapes for me.” The courtesy of the locals suits Nietzsche’s own polite nature, and his vanity.

To Nietzsche, a sufferer of terrible gastric problems, Piedmontese cuisine is a revelation: “Solid, clean, and

sophisticated,” the antithesis to the dismal diet of the Germans, which Nietzsche blames for the lame feet

and dyspeptic nature of the German spirit—all the beer and overcooked meats, vegetables prepared with

fat and flour, and the “degeneration of pastries and puddings into paperweights!” In Turin’s trattorias, he

is served large helpings of minestra, dry or as bouillon, “of immense choice and variety,” Italian pastas of

the very best quality, “then an excellent portion of tender meats, above all, veal, better than any I have ever

tasted, with a vegetable—spinach and so on; three rolls, very delicious here (for the fancier, grissini, the

very thin little pipes of bread, which Turin people appreciate).” To drink, just water. Turin water is simply

“glorious.” Nietzsche satisfies his very sweet tooth with a strong hot cocoa and bonbons at his favourite

cafe, Al Bicerin, across from the small church at Piazza della Consolata.

“To Nietzsche, a sufferer of terrible gastric problems, Piedmontese cuisine

is a revelation: ‘Solid, clean, and sophisticated,’ the antithesis to the dismal

diet of the Germans, which Nietzsche blames for the lame feet and

dyspeptic nature of the German spirit. . .”

In the spring of 1888, Nietzsche arrived in Turin. He wrote to a friend of his excitement: “I have discovered

Turin. What a serious city it is! Superbly quiet. From the middle of the city you can see the

Alps.” A delicate man, prone to fits of migraine, colic and nervous exhaustion, Nietzsche spent much

of his mature life in search of the right place to live. In Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One

Is, his outrageous autofiction composed in Turin, he warns: “Nobody is free to live everywhere, and

whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength, actually has a very restricted choice

in this matter.” At 43, Nietzsche has finally found a climate suited to his sensitive constitution, with

clear skies, ice creams “of superb quality” and the perfect air—“dry, exhilarating, happy.” In Turin Nietzsche

is at his most productive, and in an almost constant state of euphoria. This city, he exclaims,

is “the first place in which I am possible.” A perception painfully at odds with reality: within a year,

Nietzsche’s mind is to become utterly undone. Settling into Turin, Nietzsche, the self-appointed antichrist,

takes a room on the third floor of an elegant building on Via Carlo Alberto. “My room, best

position in the centre, sunshine from early morning until afternoon, view unto the Palazzo Carignano

and across and away to the green mountains—twenty-five francs a month, with service and shoes

cleaned,” far cheaper than his former residence in Nice and most other large European cities at that time.

In spite of his raving about the Torinese diet, which he credits for giving him “the digestion of a demigod,”

in reality Nietzsche cannot live without the cured pork products of his birth country. As Michel Onfray

points out in his small book on philosophers and food, Appetites for thought, Nietzsche receives six kilos

of Lachsschinken in the post from his mother, and supposedly hangs the German sausages, “tender to the

touch,” from a string in his room.

Having discovered sedentary life to be “a sin against the holy spirit,” daily walks—one in the morning and

a longer one in the afternoon—become an essential part of Nietzsche’s Turin routine. “Dear Friend,” he

writes, “Yesterday, with your letter in my hand, I took my usual afternoon walk outside Turin. The clearest

October light everywhere: the glorious avenue of trees, which led me for about an hour along beside the

Po, still hardly touched by autumn.” Strolling along the riverbanks, in laced shoes and a light overcoat with

blue lining, the foliage of “glowing yellow” and delicate hues of both sky and water give the impression of

being immersed in a painting by Lorrain, “such as I never dreamed I would see.” On rainy days (around

107 a year), walks are taken under the grand colonnades that stretch for over 10,020 metres, easily providing

“two good hours of walking.” In Turin, the streets seem to run all the way into the Alps, and each day

“dawns with the same boundless perfection. . .In every way, life is worth living here.”

During the summer months of 1888, Nietzsche intermittently swaps the heat of Turin for the refreshing

Alpine air of Lake Sils in the Upper Engadin, Switzerland. This proves to be a disastrous choice. His letters

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of July describe an extreme irritability brought on by meteorological influences, and a certain pervasive fatigue.

“I am not suffering from headaches and stomach troubles but under the pressure of nervous exhaustion.”

The deterioration of his overall wellbeing sees the return of a deep sense of isolation, the enduring

pain of loneliness which Nietzsche has suffered his whole life. “I involuntarily have no words for anyone,

because I have less and less desire to allow anyone to see into the difficulty of my existence. There is indeed

a great emptiness around me.” He returns to Turin.

Back in his rented room at Via Carlo Alberto, Nietzsche finds himself, once again, in excellent form: “I

have just seen myself in the mirror—never have I looked so well. In exemplary condition, well nourished

and ten years younger than I should be.” The weather is mild, even at night, and the difficulty of existence,

so overwhelming in Sils, seems to have evaporated. “Everything comes to me easily, everything succeeds,”

he writes. “I am now the most grateful man in the world—autumnally minded in every good sense of the

word; it is my great harvest time.”

In November 1888, with the surrounding mountains snow-capped in “vestigial wig,” Nietzsche purchases

“magnificent” English winter gloves, and a stove is ordered from Dresden: “You know, natron-carbon

heating—without smoke, consequently without chimney. I am also having my books sent from Nice.”

“He is at his most productive and in an almost overwhelming state of exuberance.

‘Never before have I known anything remotely like these months from

the beginning of September until now. . .my health, like the weather, dawns

every day with boundless brilliance and certainty.’ ”

By December, everything is going “wonderfully well.” He is at his most productive and in an almost overwhelming

state of exuberance. “Never before have I known anything remotely like these months from

the beginning of September until now. . .my health, like the weather, dawns every day with boundless

brilliance and certainty. I cannot tell you how much has been finished—everything.” Nietzsche’s optimism

(“anything is possible in my life now”) swells his sense of self out of proportion. Everywhere, he claims in

several letters, he is treated, comme il faut, as a person of extreme distinction—people hold doors and tip

their hats to him. When he walks into the big shops every face changes immediately, the moment he enters

the foremost café, someone “instinctively” brings him the Journal des Débats (a journal which, being in

French, Nietzsche would likely have difficulty reading). “The remarkable thing here in Turin is the complete

fascination which I hold for everyone, although I am the most unassuming person and ask nothing.”

In a letter to his mother, his self-assumed status becomes astonishing: “Today no other name is treated

with so much distinction and reverence as mine. You see, that is the best trick of all: without a name, without

rank, without wealth, I am treated here like a little prince by everyone. . .my health is really excellent;

the hardest tasks, for which no man was yet strong enough, are easy for me.”

Two weeks later, Nietzsche was admitted to a mental asylum in Basel where a debatable diagnosis of general

paralysis of the brain (tertiary cerebral syphilis) was made. He never wrote or spoke again. He stayed

in the care of his mother and sister until his death 11 years later, in 1900. TR

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SUPER FUTURES

Super Futures at Selfridges

Oxford Street, London

by Angela Waters

Like Reference Festival, the Selfridges installation will mix physical and virtual reality to rethink fashion.

The experience will include interdisciplinary talents such as eyewear brand Gentle Monster, interdisciplinary

artists Joey Holder and Jakob Kudsk Steensen, installation artist Katja Novitskova, publisher Ignota

and singer-songwriter Sevdaliza, amongst others. These creative voices will examine ways for people

and the planet to exist together.

Since science clearly demonstrates how human activity is endangering the Earth and its ecosystems, it

is now the responsibility of those with a platform to ask the big questions. The Super Futures exhibition

looks to leverage the Selfridges audience to challenge the human-centric perspective and redefine a linear

understanding of time in order to inspire collective change. The goal is to transform the human role from

a singular species into a new, organic genus that exists in an ever-fluctuating cycle of existence, use and

observation. The Universes presented within the exhibition illustrate studies of mutation and cohabitation,

where boundaries are broken down to encourage cross-pollination, and established notions of consumerism

are called into question in exploration of a sustainable future. The Selfridges windows have a long

history of broadcasting culture onto the streets of the Mayfair neighborhood, projecting activist messaging,

modern art and theatre sets alongside of-the-moment creations from the world’s catwalks. Former

“Like Reference Festival, the Selfridges installation will mix physical and virtual

reality to rethink fashion. The experience will include interdisciplinary talents

such as eyewear brand Gentle Monster, interdisciplinary artists Joey Holder and

Jakob Kudsk Steensen. . .and singer-songwriter Sevdaliza, amongst others.”

From the moment the department store’s doors opened on London’s Oxford Street in 1909, Selfridges

has made a name for itself as more than a retailer, taking on the roles of museum, theme park, art gallery,

music venue, lecture hall, Shakespearian theater, cultural institution, retail activist and party venue.

Continuing on with this shape-shifting spirit, the iconic department store teams up with Berlin’s Reference

Festival to bring Super Futures—an exhibition that looks at prototypes for the future by creating experimental

spectacles and surreal interventions—to Selfridges’s flagship location. Super Futures aims to

question and reframe the pre-existing distinctions between humans and their relationship to nature, objects,

technologies, possessions, non-beings and place, in the physical, virtual and spiritual realms—some

concepts based in reality, others hypothesised in purely unadulterated fantasy. The experience, running

from June to September 2022, is curated by Agnes Gryczkowska—whose work includes exhibits at the

Serpentine Galleries and Schinkel Pavillon—and brings to London elements of the Berlin-based Reference

Festival, created by Mumi Haiati, founder of the holistic communications agency Reference Studios.

Beginning in 2019 in an abandoned parking lot in Berlin’s Neukölln district, Reference’s trailblazing interdisciplinary

experience has, over four editions, boasted contributors such as Comme des Garçons, Gucci,

Balenciaga, Anne Imhof & Eliza Douglas, Amnesia Scanner and super-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

voices showcased along Oxford Street have included musicians like Florence and the Machine, artists like

Yayoi Kusama and digital creators like DIGI-GAL. Whether physical installations or portals into virtual

worlds, the windows provide a snapshot of contemporary culture, serving as a public gallery to the world.

After more than a century since its founding, having expanded across four stores in England and with a

global online presence, Selfridges remains connected to its origins. This concept-driven approach harkens

back to the original vision of Harry Gordon Selfridge, which intended to democratise the experience of

shopping. Central to this vision was the pursuit of innovation and a categorical unwillingness to blindly

accept the status quo. After all, Selfridge was no stranger to creating firsts; the mindset that put fragrance

and beauty on the first floor to counterbalance city smells also thought to display the first plane to cross

the English Channel and sell the first televisions.

Still, art has always been core to the Selfridges experience. With the belief that “art is for everyone,” the

department store has a history of placing cultural work in unexpected public places. As far back as the

1930s, they hosted a sculpture exhibit on the roof garden, and there are still regular artists in residence, art

performances and outsider art installations taking over the windows, not to mention the jewel-encrusted

Damien Hirst Pegasus that watches over the Brasserie of Light restaurant and bar.

While traditions of questioning the status quo and promoting expression should be maintained, there is room

to take a second look at the relationship people have to the planet in order to carry this world into the future. AW

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CLINIQUE LA PRAIRIE

MONTREUX

CLINIQUE LA PRAIRIE

photography Lukas Wassmann

text Paul Kominek

I

n the quest for health and wellbeing, there is one institution playing a vital role by advancing preventive medicine

and promoting longevity. Located in the picturesque town of Montreux, otherwise famed for its annual

Jazz Festival, Clinique la Prairie has long been one of Europe’s most acclaimed spas, specializing in a wide variety

of medical, aesthetic and wellness programs. The history of the institution dates back to 1931, when Swiss surgeon

and scientist Professor Paul Niehans developed an innovative cellular therapy in an effort to slow the aging process.

Soon after, word of these potentially life-prolonging therapies spread, and the Professor began counting celebrities

such as Pope Pius XII, Marlene Dietrich and Charlie Chaplin amongst his illustrious clientele. Almost a century

later, the institution hasn’t lost its focus on innovation and experimentation, always looking for new products and

technology to better serve its guests’ most important mutual desires—to live healthier and longer. With a staff of

more than 350 individuals serving a maximum of 50 clients at any given moment, attention to detail is not only

fundamental to its medical program, but palpable in every aspect of one’s stay. While the Revitalization program,

which focuses on age-defying endeavors, continues to be the institution’s signature offering, other specialized

therapies that focus on detoxification, weight management and healthy sleep have been introduced, allowing the

clinic to cater to the changing needs of its discerning guests. And although it’s difficult to top the complimentary

health benefits of a trip to the Swiss Alps, with its crisp air and crystal clear waters, there are other ways to indulge

in the high-tech offerings of Clinique La Prairie. The fabled wellness brand is in the early stages of an ambitious

expansion plan that will see medical spas and clinics open all around the world. Currently, there are health

centers operating in Madrid and Bangkok, with more tempting locations already in the pipeline. For those travelweary

souls who prefer to rejuvenate in the comfort of their own homes, Clinique la Prairie now offers a line

of Holistic Health Supplements, bringing a taste of the Swiss-made, revitalisating magic right to one’s doorstep.

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A TRAVEL DIARY BY

COLIN DODGSON

WHERE ARE YOU BASED?

photography Colin Dodgson

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TAILORING TALES WITH

LULU & LEONARD

LULU & LEONARD

photography Ned Rogers

styling Clare Byrne

hair Tomo Jidai

makeup Susie Sobol

manicurist Maki Sakamoto

set design Todd Wiggins


talents Lulu Tenney & Leonard Logsdail

Necklace – MARC JACOBS // Shirt & Top – STYLIST’S OWN

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LULU & LEONARD

Knit Sweater Vest – VINTAGE RAF SIMONS FROM ARTIFACT NY // Shorts – SILPHIUM // Socks – COMME SI

Fringe Top – VINTAGE YOHJI YAMAMOTO FROM ARTIFACT NY // Gloves & Shoes – MARC JACOBS

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LULU & LEONARD

Top & Skirt – THOM BROWNE

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LULU & LEONARD

Full Look – MIU MIU Credits on page 222

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LULU & LEONARD

Full Look – MIU MIU

Shoes – MODEL’S OWN // T-Shirt & Jeans – STYLIST’S OWN

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LULU & LEONARD

Necklace – MARC JACOBS // Shirt, Belt & Top – STYLIST’S OWN

Skirt – VINTAGE COMME DES GARÇONS // Shirt & Top – STYLIST’S OWN

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THE MODEL WORLD IN

CHILTERN HILLS

THE MODEL WORLD

photography & text Hill & Aubrey

I

f one were to find themself in the Chiltern Hills of rural Hertfordshire, England, on a day where the

sun is shining and there is a light breeze in the air, it would be wise to take a moment to look up at

the heavens and listen out for the faint splutter of an engine. Luck permitting, one might find, darting

merrily amongst the red kites and buzzards, a great “flying machine,” piloted by the men of the various

model flying clubs dotted around the local villages and towns. These explorers of the skies are rare

beasts—garden shed physicists, basement engineers and village hall mavericks—diligently tuning, fixing,

repairing and waiting for the call to go around: “Westerly wind tomorrow. Conditions looking good. We

fly!” Propellers are greased, fuselages are polished and batteries replaced. Long-suffering wives usher out

husbands laden with wood and metal. They wave goodbye to their “fly boys” who throw on their jackets,

swap their reading glasses for aviators and head off in their Volvos. It is a hobby of contradictions:

nerve and patience, delicacy and power. The detail and craftsmanship is breathtaking. Gates are unlocked

and wind conditions debated. Everything is triple-checked and checked again. “Right, let’s see if you can

make her talk,” someone says, as a plane takes off with a hurtling scream of disobedience. The concentration

is intense. Now it’s about the skill of the pilot and a Rubik’s Cube of controls for any number of

rolls, dives, spins and aerobatics; a symphony played out with gadgets and aerials. For a few minutes,

it is said, one is not of this world, dancing with the clouds and surfing on the wind. Nothing else matters.

There is, of course, the small issue of coming back to Earth (physically and metaphorically). Someone

mentioned banana sandwiches and tea, but that can wait a few minutes longer. No guts, no glory.

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THE MODEL WORLD IN

VISUAL DIRECTORY

Visual Directory

1, 85 & 103

Cover 1, Ai Weiwei photographed by Jack Davison

89

Ai Weiwei, Backstage at the Met – New York, 1987

90-91

Ai Weiwei: Turandot, at Teatro dell’Opera – Rome, 2022

94, 95 & 97

Ai Weiwei documentaries: Rohingya, Coronation & Cockroach – 2020-2021

100

Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds – 2010

101

Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds, installation view at Tate Modern – London, 2010

1

Cover 2, Grimes photographed by Charlotte Wales.

35, 40-42, 44-45, 47, 48, 51

Grimes wearing select pieces by Vetements, Justine Clenquet, Panconesi,

Blumarine, Alix Higgins, Lorette Colé Duprat, Raf Simons, CH4RM, Balenciaga, Acne, Brandon Hurtado Sandler (custom),

Marc Jacobs, KNWLS, Vintage from Gabriel Held, Vintage Vivienne Westwood and Hysteric Glamour From Sick Boy Archive,

Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier from Artifact New York.

1, 147, 156, 161

Cover 3, Francis Kéré photographed by Robbie Lawrence

150-151

Francis Kéré: Primary School – Gando, Burkina Faso

154-155

Francis Kéré: Burkina Institute of Technology – Koudougou, Burkina Faso

158-159

Francis Kéré: Surgical Clinic and Health Centre – Léo, Burkina Faso

162-163

Francis Kéré: Benin National Assembly – Porto-Novo, Republic of Benin

1, 105, 109-114, 117-121, 123

Cover 4, Kaia Gerber photographed by Carissa Gallo wearing select pieces by Saint Laurent

20, 23-25, 28-29 & 33

Diedrick Brackens at his studio in Los Angeles photographed by Stephen Schauer

28, 29, 31 All artwork by Diedrick Brackens, courtesy of Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

53, 69

Samuel Ross photographed by Grace Difford

56-61

Samuel Ross, all pieces of his label A-COLD-WALL*

64, 65

Artwork by Samuel Ross: Series Signal (Trauma-Chair & Signal-3)

69

Artwork by Samuel Ross Series Rupture (5DS)

71-83

Georgia Palmer photographed by Elizaveta Porodina wearing select pieces by Loewe, Paula Canovas del Vas, Avavav, Maroske

Peech, Goom Heo, Chet Lo, Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier and Issey Miyake from One Of A Kind Archive, Vintage Givenchy Couture

from The Arc London.

125-137

Valentino Beauty photographed by Rémi Lamandé

138, 143

Dr. Mark Hyman, photography by Mark Hyman Studio

186

Raving Dahlia & Sevdaliza – Photographed by Sevdaliza

189-201

Clinique La Prairie in Montreux, Suisse photographed by Lukas Wassmann

203-207, 209-213, 215-217, 219

Photographed by Colin Dodgson

221-231

Lulu Tenney & Leonard Logsdail photographed by Ned Rogers wearing select pieces by Marc Jacobs, Silphium, Comme Si,

Thom Browne, Miu Miu, Vintage Raf Simons and Yohji Yamamoto from Artifact New York, Vintage Comme des Garçons

233-264

Photographed by Hill & Aubrey in Ivinghoe, United Kingdom, February 2022

14 & 166-182

Illustrations by Zoe Keller

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IMPRINT

THE TRAVEL ALMANAC

spring/summer 2022

issn-2192-0672

editor-in-chief

Paul Kominek, V.i.S.d.P.

fashion director

Clare Byrne

executive editor

Richard Catty

casting director

Bert Martirosyan

managing editor

Marta González Silla

cover photographers

Ai Weiwei by Jack Davison

Francis Kéré by Robbie Lawrence

Grimes by Charlotte Wales

Kaia Gerber by Carissa Gallo

contributing writers

Richard Catty, Emily McDermott, Eartheater, Carissa Gallo, Marco Galvan, Juan Fernando Moreno

Jeremy Olds, Edward Paginton, Timothy Woods Palma, Trine Riel & Angela Waters

contributing photographers

Jack Davison, Grace Difford, Carissa Gallo, Hill&Aubrey, Rémi Lamandé, Robbie Lawrence

Elizaveta Porodina, Ned Rogers, Stephen Schauer, Charlotte Wales & Christian Werner

art direction

TTA.Studio

art advisor

Roman Schramm

graphic design

Juliane Petri

assistant fashion editor

Maddie Kachurak

printing

KOPA

cover paper

Efalin Neuleinen by Reflex

copy editor

Matthew McKeown

advertising & collaborations

Aurelia Eklund

aurelia.eklund@tta.studio

publisher

The Travel Almanac Publishing

Michaelkirchstr.16, 10179 Berlin, Germany

tel. +49-(0)30-98323-440

fax. +49-(0)30-98323-441

meet@tta.studio

international distribution

Whitecirc

kelly@whitecirc.com

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