SPATIAL BODIES AUJIK Spatial Bodies imagines the Osaka urban landscape coming alive. Using 3D meshes, AUJIK distorts buildings into self-replicating organisms, creating a jungle of concrete chaos that recalls both the fluid movements of nature and the intimidating possibility of a robotic future. Ada O’Higgins catches up with Kyoto based esoteric sect AUJIK to discuss fashion and architecture, the future of cities, and what a ‘wiggly’ world means. Ada O’Higgins: I read that your work… [read more »]

LIFE SPORT Athens Sweats Everyone wears sweatpants. Beneath the loose, comfortable cotton, you could be anyone. A successful executive or a restless, jobless youth. Says Athens based collective LIFE Sport on their website ‘Sweatpants unite contradiction, they are a symbol of defeat or paralysis for some, a statement of ultimate resistance and emancipation for others.’ LIFE Sport is both a sweatpants shop and an art space. LIFE SPORT is a shop seeking to generate alternative… [read more »]

Vertiginously compelling Fabio Santacroce tells Ada O’Higgins about the ups and downs of his exhibition space, 63rd77th steps 63rd-77th STEPS or Art Project Staircase is a project space run by Fabio Santacroce. The staircase is located in the building in Bari where Fabio currently lives. The project title refers to the area between the 63rd and the 77th steps. It includes three walls, three small floors, a wrought-iron handrail, a door, a wood roof, a… [read more »]

Refined and nasty An interview with Vaquera’s Bryn Taubensee Patric Dicaprio drunkenly bought a sewing machine one night. Spurred by the lack of inventive clothing he could pull for his job as a stylist, he decided to start his own label. ‘Vaquera’ or cow-herder is what the cooks in the kitchen where Dicaprio used to work would call him, for his particular talent at bossing everyone into doing their job correctly. Dicaprio is now joined… [read more »]

SOLASTALGIA Bea Fremderman There is a place you call ‘home’. A place you leave in the morning and return to at night. But when you walk through the door, nothing is how you left it. And your once familiar clothes are overgrown, corroding on a body, which itself feels foreign. In Solastalgia, running through February 27 at Born Nude, Bea Fremderman imagines a world after all is lost. Hoodies and socks disappear beneath chia sprouts,… [read more »]

Inspired by the myth of Arachne, Dorothy Howard‘s recently launched eponymous webzine co-designed with André Fincanto explores the analogy of the internet network with a spider’s web (one that Dorothy Howard mentions started at the beginning of the internet when Tim Berners-Lee set the name “the world wide web” in 1989; he later wrote ‘Weaving the Web‘). Arachne explores various comparisons and intersections between mythology and the internet. I chatted with Dorothy about digital labour,… [read more »]

The “museum” was originally a temple to the Muses, a dwelling that housed religious votives to the goddesses. But colonized as they have been by the male gaze, contemporary museums are homes to artifacts of elitist male civilization, a place of fetishizing, gawking, and violence–all things women and their bodies are routinely submitted to. Fashion label Women’s History Museum is a paradox: a woman’s history written by Amanda McGowan and Rivkah Barringer and a rotating… [read more »]

“Hey, some of us are actually young, colored, and angry, but some of us aren’t, and we all have something to say” explains Elliot Brown Jr. over coffee at a midtown Starbucks near his part-time job assisting artist Hank Willis Thomas. When Elliott decided to start a magazine along with fellow NYU Tisch student Ashley Rahimi Syed, the two friends reasoned that whatever tone they expressed themselves in, they would inevitably be dubbed ‘young, colored… [read more »]

The price of debt Over 7 million student debtors are in default. Is the price of debt worth the promise of a college education? Nietzsche proposed in Geneology of Morals that humans are “animal[s] that [are] entitled to make promises.” Most college students sign promissory notes to pay for their education, thereby signing away a portion of their future. But while students were once guaranteed a practical skill-set and well-paying career, college graduates now find… [read more »]

AGNES is a bot, but she’s not out to mine your data. She wants to know more personal things: “Who was your first kiss?” “Which artist has influenced you the most?” “Who was your childhood enemy?” Get ready to spill your secrets to our new DISmiss. Created by artist Cécile B. Evans in late 2013 and currently living on the Serpentine Galleries’ website, AGNES was originally commissioned by Ben Vickers (Curator of Digital) and produced… [read more »]

Stoya is an adult film performer, feminist and writer. She has appeared in over 50 explicit films, writes a bi-monthly sex advice column for Refinery29 and is involved with the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, which pushes for better education and working conditions for adult performers. 178k people eat up her sass on Twitter, and yes, she has Instagram: “It’s all pictures of cats,” she warns us on set.  With DISmiss, we celebrate the It Girl—the cool, the uncool,… [read more »]