S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 4
CULT
G E N E R AT I O N ( M E )T h e c a m e r a s m i g h t b e o f f - b u t t h e y a r e a l w a y s o nM A R R Y ( M E ) M i s h a p s a n d m a t r i m o n y
( M E ) P O L I T I C S T h e r a d i c a l s w h o w a n t p o l i t i c s t o r o l l o v e r
+ S E X A N D R E L I G I O NT a b o o s a t t h e t a b l e
ME.ME.ME.
SURPRISE
EXCITE
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ROI €3 NI £2
A SELECTION OF PAGES
FROM THELATEST
ISSUE
ÁINE BYRNEis a designer, writer and music reviewer. She writes for blog
dublinconcerts.ie and journals her reviews through culturevult.com. This
is her first contribution to Cult.
AIDAN O’NEILL is originally from Dublin and is now based in London. He studied at Dun
Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology and later taught art
and photography at a number of institutions in Dublin until 2009.
aidanoneill.com
KEVIN CURRANhad his first novel, Beatsploitation,
published in 2013 by Liberties Press. It deals with racism, ambition and modern Ireland. He has a Masters
Degree in Anglo-Irish Literature and teaches in Dublin.
PAUL J ENNIS obtained his PhD in Philosophy at
University College Dublin. He is the author of Continental Realism and
the editor of Post-Continental Voices: Selected Interviews, both published
by Zero Books. He is also the associate editor of online journal Speculations:
Journal Of Speculative Realism.
SAIBH EGAN Shot on location in Connemara, the city kids meet the wilds of the West.
Says fashion photographer Saibh about her Runaways shoot,
starting on page 70.
Editor/Publisher/Art Director Geoff McGrath
C U LT C R E W
WritingÁine Byrne, Alison Martin,
Alisande Fitzsimons, Colm Corrigan, Geoff McGrath, Joanne O’Connor,
Ken Francis, Kevin Curran, Leon Byrne, Neil Watkins, Paul Ennis, Reggie
Chamberlain-King, Ronan Tiernan
Photography Aidan O’Neill, Getty, Kerry Lywtyn, Luis Aviles, Saibh Egan, Tiara Rad,
Wendy Judge
Post productionRon Byrne, Vanessa Merrill
StylingRoísín Cagney,
Alisande Fitzsimons, Sarah Corcoran MUA/
Flora Psarianos
Models Mattias @ PRM, Ariana London
@ Nevs, Adam Gaffey, Reka Melegh, Adam and Bronwyn
@ Distinct Model Management
DistributionNewspread
Printed by Walsh Colour Print, Tralee, Co Kerry
About us...
Contact us Carol Tully: [email protected]
General enquiries: [email protected]
Thank YouColm Ennis, Dave Connolly,
David O’Callaghan, Gerry Stembridge, Alison Martin, The Windmill
Hair / make up Stephanie Jane, Giovanni Jimenez,
Helen Kenny
Sex, rel igion, polit ics. I f this issue was an evening of sophisticated f ine dining, this lot would be out on their ears in no time. But this ain’t no dinner par ty and these writers are l ike a dog with a bone - messy and getting their teeth stuck in unti l they reach the marrow. But, more on that in a bit . Let ’s star t, well , at the star t .
Sk ip ahead a few pages beyond the calendar section (tak ing note along the way, of course) and you wil l f ind some fascinating profi les and inter views, star ting with Danielle Ryan who has already brought some fascinating sights, sounds and fragrances to the world of theatre. Yes you heard that correctly. After re-releasing some beautiful ly bound books, she is now launching a range of fragrances on the market. When you read the piece it should make sense.
To cater to the other senses (sight and sound), there’s also an inter view with up and coming designer Aisl ing Duffy and Erik Ripley Johnson of the bands Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. We also profi le ar tist Wendy Judge who is bringing exotic destinations to an armchair near you.
In between we’ve got some great recommendations on recent music releases and things to do, before ending the section on another great language column. This t ime the topic for discussion is a language that doesn’t actually have words. Piqued your interest?
So, this brings us back to where we began. Sex and rel igion. So much has been written and said about Andy Warhol. What more is there to say? One thing rarely discussed is his devout Catholicism and the impact it had on his personal and ar tistic l i fe.
Also, Neil Watkins ended his ar ticle in the last issue on a high. This one sees him at a low point sleeping on his parent ’s sofa and a step away from sleeping rough. You wil l also f ind a couple more topics in our middle section. Not so much sex, as issues to do with the sexes. I delve into a debate about how men are treated on T V and in popular culture. While inequality remains among the sexes in terms of pay and promotion in the workplace, does this make it okay to be sexist against men? Are some cynical producers playing on this? Meanwhile, Joanne O’Connor gives her hi lar ious take on the modern marriage. On polit ics - the other topic to avoid as par t of polite dinner par ty conversation - Paul Ennis returns with another insightful piece and a potential solution to the disi l lusion most of us feel towards polit ics and polit icians. Yet the new radicals might be a bit l ike the old ones.
You wil l also f ind in the middle-mix a piece on Bret Easton El l is and the fascination with celebrity culture. El l is brought us the surreal American Psycho in the Nineties but an earl ier novel pointed to some predictions for today. As always, we end with some style to wow, thri l l and excite you. You probably wont f ind yourself at some polite dinner par ty in this get-up but who says you have to play by the rules?
H E L L O
THESE WRITERS ARE LIKE A
DOG WITH A BONE - MESSY
AND GET TING THEIR TEETH
STUCK IN UNTIL THEY
REACH THE MARROW
C o n t e n t s
C O N T E N T S
0 6 C A L E N D A R
From movies to music
- here’s some great
dates for all you
cultural carnivores
1 1 P E O P L E
Profiles of high-fliers and
ones to watch: Danielle
Ryan, Wendy Judge
and Aisling Duffy
1 6 T H E T A L E N T E D
M R R I P L E Y
An interview with Erik
Ripley Johnson of Moon
Duo and Wooden Shjips
2 0 M U S I C
R E V I E W
Recent releases - some
old ones too - and the
Tindersticks tunes
from a typewriter
2 4 L A N G U A G E
C O L U M N
Whether you’re a diva
or a dandy, find out how
your clothes can talk
2 6 S A V I N G A N D Y
How religion influenced
Warhol in his personal
life and made his
work pop too
3 4 T H E I R
B I G D AY
Weddings today: ideas
old and new, borrowed,
and a bride that’s
left feeling blue
3 8 G E N E R AT I O N
E X P O S E D
Bret Easton Ellis and
a generation primed
by MTV to be always
on for the camera
4 2 H I M B O S A N D
D I R T Y D O G S
Time for pop culture to
change the story and
ditch the dummy
4 4 K O C H H E A D S
The political radicals
who have all the
right answers
48 SHOT IN BRIXTON
Style one: the shoot
with the girl on the
cover from the Windmill
pub in London
66 ROCK CHICK &CHAP
Style two: Some looks
that will have him
and her rockstar-ready,
or just for a night out
68 COUPLE O N
T H E R U N
Style three: And they say
romance is dead. It’s
just headed for the hills
80 KITSCH
A N D T E L L
How a designer who
borrowed from the past
has France sitting on
some cultural capital
3 0 N E I L W AT K I N S
All he ever wanted was
to get married,
honeymoon in
Disneyland and go
on to win an Oscar
Phot
ogra
ph
by K
erry
Lyw
tyn
FRONT people
14 CULT
Aisling Duffy is fast gaining a reputation for her unique take on everything from textile design to visual merchandising and event dressing. In terms of her own projects, her clothing designs have attracted very positive attention. ‘At the moment my collection is unisex. I don’t want to say it’s male or female but someone I like, Grimes, is the kind of person I see wearing it. That’s the kind of style I would look to for inspiration; it’s costume; it’s dressing yourself up as an extension and expression of yourself.’
Could she see herself dressing musicians likes Grimes and similar figures in the future? ‘Stage costume is something I think of a lot,’ says the Dubliner. ‘In music videos they can wear wilder things, but when I brought the collection to the New Designers showcase in Islington last year there were quite a few bloggers who took an interest in it - it definitely appeals to a certain audience, which is really cool.’
After training in textiles at NCAD, Aisling received an MFA from Edinburgh’s prestigious College of Art. When discussing the logic behind fine-tuning so many strings to her bow, Duffy makes it plain that her decision to tackle multiple career strands at once does not stem from indecision. Rather, she is interested in many areas of design and sees no reason in denying herself the opportunity to pursue them.
‘I initially went to Edinburgh to do a Masters in Illustration but over the course of the two years I found my work going back more to fabrics, which I’d worked with during my textiles degree in NCAD. With that in mind, I decided to transfer to textiles. I finished my Masters in June, producing a fashion collection and a photoshoot and catwalk show to go with it. In general I found the course really interesting but I know after six
years of education in fashion and textiles, it’s not just fashion design I am interested in. It’s not just textile design either, it’s design in general.’
The originality and quality of her creative work meant Duffy was not short of offers when it came to finding a job catering to the broad scope of her interests - and ambition. Her long-term goal is ‘to set up as a designer but also work on different projects with other companies using me to style or design for them’. ‘So it was a case of how do I get the best experience to prepare myself to do something like that?’ she explains.
For Duffy this meant a move to London and a production job at Millington Associates, Design Consultants. The firm is hugely respected in the industry and lauded by professionals and punters alike for its creative visual merchandising displays. If you stopped outside Harrods or Selfridges to take in the Christmas window displays, then you were admiring the work of Duffy and her colleagues. She is ‘really enjoying’ her time at the company, but what of her own design work? ‘In the immediate-term, I would love if stylists got in touch and asked could they use a piece for a shoot or a video, anything like that. That would be great.’ Twitter : @Aisling_Duffy.
A I S L I N GD U F F Y
W O R D S A L I S A N D E F I T Z S I M O N S
‘ I n m u s i c v i d e o s t h e y ca n w e a r w i l d e r t h i n g s, b u tt h e r e w e r e q u i t e a f e w b l o g g e r s w h o t o o k a n i n t e r e s t
- i t d e f i n i t e l y a p p e a l s t o a ce r t a i n a u d i e n ce’
Inspired: Grimes is the ‘kind of person’ Aisling Duffy looks to for inspiration
people FRONT
CULT 15
Johnson on the last night of the Wooden Shjips European tour at the Grand Social in Dublin
FRONT people
16 CULT
E R I KR I P L E YJ O H N S O N
I N T E R V I E W
À I N E
B Y R N E
T h e W o o d e n S h j i p s f r o n t m a n o n m u s i c , p r i m i t i v e s o u n d s , a n d s t a r t i n g a b a n d w i t h p e o p l e w h o n e v e r p l a y e d i n s t r u m e n t s b e f o r e
Looking as fresh as the cold winter’s day, we met in a dark room deep inside The Grand Social club in Dublin. Ripley was open, and friendly, yet his face concealed behind a long beard and under a baseball cap made him all the more intriguing. If the ears had walls they would surely have a story to tell, however the deer head hanging on the wall was certainly dead, gagged and bound in fairy lights, which leaves me to tell Ripley’s tale and the machine his two musical acts Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo has become.
Wooden Shjips have five albums since 2007, which is your favourite album and song?Well, I’d probably go with the latest one (Back To Land, 2013), the album we just did. I like to think, in some way, that we’re progressing all the time. Maybe not progressing, but it’s the one where I am closest to who I am right now. I don’t really have a favourite song to be honest and I don’t really listen to the album, because once it’s done I just move on and let go.
CULT 17
people FRONT
Duo was that Wooden Shjips can’t play all the time. Everyone has different things that they’re interested in, that they’re working on, but I just wanted to keep playing the music. So I started Moon Duo to work when Wooden Shjips wasn’t working.
How did the bands come about?Well Wooden Shjips started....Do you want me to go way back from the beginning? (Yes!) It started, well... I took a period where I wasn’tplaying, and was sick of being in bands... and I just stopped playing with people and got really into listening to music. After a while I got inspired to start a band, I had a sort of epitome sort of about what I wanted to do and specifically what music I wanted to make. It was great because before that I had been in different bands and didn’t really have any real focus. So, I started Wooden Shjips with all non-musicians. The idea was to create very primitive rock ’n’ roll, but with people who didn’t know how to play but at least play a chord or two... there was a co-worker I spoke about the idea with and she thought it sounded great, she had never played an instrument or had ever been in a band and she was excited to do this. Then I got my brother to play drums, my little brother.
Were you teaching the bands how to play or were they learning from you?Well a little bit, the idea was not to really learn too much - to just let. I had this idea that anyone can make music intuitively, people respond to music. You see children, they just respond to music in a certain way. Sometimes people learn it [music] like it’s a language, it’s like you are taught how to speak, you are taught the language of music and you just fall into these patterns. I mean our whole western system of music is very structured, there are notes and the scales, and in other cultures there are different scales. It is hard to break away from that and do something really free, after that. I mean people do it, I was inspired in part by the free jazz movement of the late-1960s and Seventies where these really accomplished musicians who had gone through all this training to play this really complicated post-bop jazz, decided to go totally free. They made what a lot of people thought sounded like a bunch of noise, but these were really accomplished musicians who had gone beyond the point where they were not thinking about the music as much, you know. They were just going totally free, improvisation. I just loved it [the free jazz movement] when I wasn’t playing music and I listened to it all the time. So, that element really inspired me, I just had this idea that you could skip the learning part and go straight to the free
I STARTED WOODEN SHJIPS
WITH ALL NON-MUSICIANS. THE
IDEA WAS TO CREATE VERY
PRIMITIVE ROCK ’N’ ROLL
How do the songs come about - do you plan or does it just flow?I don’t have any plan; I just sit down and start writing for thealbum. It’s like, I don’t take any songs that I have written before, it’s just sit down and try to let it flow.
Has the tour influenced you and have you thought of any new songs you would like to do now it’s over?Not really, as right now we’re thinking about the next Moon Duo record, that will be the next thing that I work on. It’s more about getting inspired from being on the road, to going home and then not being on the road. There has to be some sort of remove from the process where you just don’t think, and you let it just happen. So, I get excited to just go do that and certainly I get inspired by different things when we’re on the road. I take some notes here and there.
When you’re on the road, do you get the opportunity to see other bands play?A little bit, the support bands, especially when we’re touring. We played with Dirty Beaches when we were in France. They’re not a French band though, they’re a Canadian act - well he [Dirty Beaches] is a guy on his own. He sounds a little bit like Suicide, I’m sure he gets that all the time, he sings in that creamy style, with lots of minimal beats.
Do Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips ever collaborate?No (laughing), it’s completely separate. I mean the original impetus for starting Moon
FRONT people
18 CULT
OUR WHOLE WESTERN SYSTEM OF
MUSIC IS VERY STRUCTURED,
THERE ARE NOTES AND THE
SCALES, AND IN OTHER CULTURES
THERE ARE DIFFERENT SCALES.
part. It’s like automatic writing. Anyone can sit down and start writing the thoughts coming out of your head, which doesn’t mean it will be good but something will come out that you don’t expect.
If there was a time in music that you could go back to, when would it be?Yeah, maybe I suppose the Fifties would be fun.
Would you ever collaborate ?I’m not much of a collaborator. You know when I meet people that I admire, I tend to just watch them, enjoy them and not muck around withit myself. I can’t think of any, we’ve done somethings off the cuff... We did a show with Spectrum and Pete Kember from Spaceman 3.All of his synths broke ten minutes before his set and all his backing tracks; we sort of just had to back him up on that. We had to just come up with something, and had just five minutes to learn some of his songs and play in the background. We have done some otherthings where you just go up on stage with some band... we did that with Jarvis Cocker. (And) They’re all really nice and the wanted us to play on their last song. However, their stage manager sent us on during the wrong song, we started playing in E, but it was okay in the end. I don’t know much about Jarvis Cocker’s other band Pulp though, but I will check them out.
Are there any new things coming up in the next year?We have more touring, we (Wooden Shjips) do the West Coast in January and then Europe again in February/March (2014). And then Moon Duo writing and recording in between, and then touring. It’s quite transitional, usually we support a record, maybe not a whole year, itdepends; but periodically we do an album as people can get time off work and things like that to support the record and transition into making the next record.
Would you spend a lot of time working at home or in a studio?I like to work at home, we moved to Portland recently, my wife and I, and we have a basement we record in. It’s really nice, we can set up a drum set and our amps, make a cup of tea and just go downstairs and make as much noise as we want, something we’ve never had before. I’m an early bird, I like to start early. I’m a believer in making the time to make things happen, otherwise you can just be distracted. I try to go do stuff, but if nothing is coming then you just go mow the lawn or get on with your other chores you have to do.
For more about ErikRipley Johnson and his music projects visit moonduo.org and woodenshjips.com
Photography: Luis Aviles
CULT 19
people FRONT
IT DOESN’T HAVE WORDS, AND IT
GENERALLY ISN’T DESCRIBED AS A
LANGUAGE. STYLE: WHAT THE CLOTHES
WE WEAR SAY TO THE WORLD
L A N G U A G E
language and it is read mostly top to bottom like Japanese. Although, to really gauge a person, one should start with the shoes - that’s what my mother always taught me.
A reading was never gentle, it was forensic and ruthless - Zebra Katz would later rap ‘Imma read you, Bitch; Imma cut you, Bitch,’ which captures the intonations – but it was never flippant: it was important. The nature of the ball and its various displays was not simply drag as representation of women,
Words REGGIE CHAMBERLAIN-KING
In Paris Is Burning, the great documentary of 80s’ New York ball culture, clothing is a language. Young gay men of the black and Latino communities would compete for prizes by catwalk-strutting and representing their drag ensembles before a panel of judges. Scores were attributed on grounds of beauty, elegance, and the ‘realness’ of a participant.
In the argot of the underground, they ‘read’ each other: to read is to take in and take apart a person and their ensemble. Clothing is a
FRONT column
24 CULT
it was a reflection of the society from which the contestants felt distanced. There was an evening dress category, daywear, military wear, etc, all the functions of the straight world, in all the meanings of the word straight. ‘Realness’ was more than the ability to ‘pass’ for a woman – or, in some interesting forms of play, as particular types of straight man – it was about the literal translation of the language of clothes: translating the dress of women to the body of gay men so that the details conveyed the same meaning, or as close as possible.
Equally, in these pageants of the glamorous and the mundane, one might translate a soldier’s uniform onto the frame of a rent-boy, a suburban housewife onto a homeless youth, the outfit of the First Lady onto a pre-operative transsexual. Whatever the truth is, the reality is in the details.
Clothes may not convey a whole personality, but they can add up to a ‘personage’ or a type of person: a stock-player. Uniforms denote trades, jobs, and skills; they denote affiliations too. By extension, they suggest, in the wearer, qualities that one expects from people in that profession, way of life, or social group. A soldier may appear efficient; a police officer, conscientious; a priest, empathetic. Or, depending on where or how you were raised, the opposite of all three.
Consider meeting a gentleman for the first time; he is in casual wear. The next time you meet him, he is wearing a clerical dog collar. This simultaneously broadens and narrows your view of him: you are open to him expressing (and, indeed, expect that he will) sacerdotal qualities. This expands on what you know of him, but constrains what you assume of him.
These are the details over which the New York balls would argue endlessly.
‘Come on now, it is a known fact that a woman do [sic] carry an evening bag at dinnertime. There’s no getting around that. You see it on Channel Seven between All My Children and Jeopardy, Another World, Dallas, and the whole bit. An evening bag is a must. You have to carry something. No lady is sure at night.’
In the quest for ‘realness’, the body was practically neutral; the outfit did the work. So, the body, like a Buckaroo bronco, is gently loaded with symbols. Each one adds to the ‘realness’, but one too many and the bronco bucks: the outfit has become a costume. Like a sentence burdened with too many adjectives,
it becomes unreadable – the wrong outfit looks how Jilly Cooper writes.
In the Affected Provincial’s Companion, Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy observes that the Bohemian lives by fewer rules than the rest of society, while the Dandy lives by more. In terms of clothing and, seen through the lens of Paris Is Burning and the voguers and contestants at the New York balls, we can interpret it slightly differently: the Dandies – those for whom dress is a conscious statement – are aware of more rules, set more standards, and act upon them: they not only read the language, but they speak it too. The mainstream speaks quietly, but it speaks volumes.
It is natural that subcultures must speak dress louder, if they are to be heard. The ball culture was cleverer than most, playing with the details of the dominant culture to entertain its own inner sanctum: most competitions took place indoors, away from the prying eyes of the norms and the rubes. In public, it does not work to play the game of details; all subcultures create their own details that do the work of an evening bag or a dog collar, achieving their own ‘realness’, as well as elegance and beauty. The mod’s parka; the punk’s pierced eyebrow; the goth’s black eyeliner. At once, set apart, but engaging in the same conversation.
In all subcultures, there are those who try too hard, who overload the Buckaroo; if they have failed the test of ‘realness’, they have failed to convey the message of who they are. Like a priest without a dog collar, it is not a lie, but it is not enough. The truth helps to make difference understandable; the reality is in the details. Shoes are words; ensembles are sentences. This is how Ms Lurie explains it in The Language Of Clothes. Accessories are like adjectives and adverbs.
The above-named Lord Whimsy suggests we think of ourselves as ‘walking sonnets’. Clothing is a language and our speech should be lyrical and coherent, for, when we dress, we are speaking to other people.
T h e m o d ’s p a r ka ; t hep u n k ’s p i e r ce d e ye b r o w ;t h e g o t h’s b l a c k e ye l i n e r.A t o n ce, s e t a p a r t , b u te n g a g i n g i n t h e s a m eco n ve r s a t i o n
CULT 25
column FRONT
AT THE WINDMILLPhotography Aidan O’NeillStyling Róisín CagneyHair Stephanie Jane using Bumble and BumbleMake-up Stephanie Jane using MACPost Production Vanessa MerrillModels Mattias @ PRM, Ariana London @ NevsShot on location @ The Windmill, Brixton www.windmillbrixton.co.uk
50 CULT
STYLE windmill
White leather biker jacket, Zara. Noma abstract printed silk tee, 39-39 Shop. Leather and latex printed shorts, Helen Lawrence. Leather and metal cuff, Cos.
CULT 51
windmill STYLE
Check polka dot shirt, Urban Outfitters. Acid wash denim jacket, stylist’s own.
52 CULT
STYLE windmill
CULT 53
windmill STYLE
T h e
s e n s e o f s m e l l w a s w h a t w a s m i s s i n g f r o m t h e t h e a t r e , s o w e w e r e l o o k i n g a t h o w t h a t c o u l d b e
i n c o r p o r a t e dP A G E 1 1
P A G E 4 4
H e d o e s t h i s b y a p p e a l i n g t o w h a t t h e y
k n o w i n t u i t i v e l y : n a m e l y t h a t
greed is a moral good
P A G E 3 8
P A G E 2 6
P A G E 1 6
T h e r e w a s n o g r e a t f l a s h e s o f c o nv e r s a t i o n , e n l i g h t e n i n g r e m a r k s a b o u t h i s w o r k
W h a t ’s t h e p o i n t i n o w n i n g
a l l o f t h e c o o l t h i n g s i f n o o n e n o t i c e s y o u w i t h t h e m ?
W E S TA R T T H E CO N V E R S AT I O N ,N O W, O V E R TO YO U . . .@ t h e c u l t m a g
P A G E 2 4
O n e t o o m a n y a n d
t h e b r o n c o b u c k s : t h e o u t f i t h a s b e c o m e a c o s t u m e
T h e d e e r h e a d h a n g i n g o n t h e w a l l w a s c e r t a i n l y d e a d,
g a g g e d a n d
b o u n d i n f a i r y l i g h t s
