Issue 2

 
Featuring
 
Doubles
Vava Dudu and Theo Mercier
Tavi Gevinson and Diane Pernet
Keren Cytter and Dafna Maimon
Lauren Flax and Lauren Dillard
 
Singles
Kaisa Lassinaro
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
Leilah Weinraub
Benjamin A. Huseby
Eline McGeorge
Janis Pönisch
Anie Stanley
Andrea Ferrer
Devrim Bayar
 
Cover
Vava Dudu – La Chatte
Artwork by Les Mecs de L’Enfer
(Théo Mercier, Jeremi Piningre)
Photography by Alfredo Piola
 
 
Leilah Weinraub
 

 
Filmmaker Leilah Weinraub, 31, spent years working on a realistic portrait of Shakedown, an all-black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles. She filmed every Thursday and Friday night for a period spanning over seven years. Working with video, sound, gesture, choreography, new language, gay black culture, femininity vs feminism, and gay family, the movie explores how a queer, closed community works as a system, experienced from within. The whole project has been Leilah’s most important life achievement to date, culminating in getting the last part of it funded through Kickstarter, the 2.0 funding website.
 
Words by Jessica Gysel
Photo by Sophie Morner
 
 
Tavi Gevinson and Diane Pernet
 

 
In 2005, when Diane Pernet started her fashion blog, A Shaded View on Fashion, little did she know that she was about to almost single-handedly redefine the way the media reported about fashion. Paving the way for thousands of followers, Diane is the leading authority when it comes to exploring new ways of presenting fashion to the wider world. Diane’s age is probably fashion’s best kept secret, but one could respectfully call her the ‘grand dame’ of fashion journalism. We thought it would be interesting to hook her up with Tavi Gevinson who, at the tender age of 14, has also turned fashion writing on its head with her sparkling blog, The Style Rookie. Old meets new in this Q&A-ing between Paris, adopted hometown of American-born Diane, and suburban Chicago, where Tavi lives with her parents.
 
Words by Diane and Tavi
Photo by Daniel Trese
 
 
Keren Cytter and Dafna Maimon
 

 
Berlin-based, Israeli artist Keren Cytter, 34, and Berlin/Amsterdam based, Finnish/Israeli artist Dafna Maimon, 29, have attempted all sorts of things in the name of art. Keren creates videos, dance performances, drawings and books – and has even written a libretto for an opera. With ease, she blends high and low pop culture, referencing classic movies, experimental films and YouTube clips… it all makes sense to her. While Dafna Maimon makes videos, installations, and performances that illustrate the pseudo-amusing, yet tragic, human attempt to position oneself within the [art] world. Her actors are her friends, bodybuilders, dominatrixes and even ambitious, up-and-coming Hollywood actors. Together, they form the dance group Dance International Europe (D.I.E.) Now.
 
Words by Dafna and Keren
Photo by Benjamin A.Huseby
 
 
Lauren Flax and Lauren Dillard
 

 
We’d have featured Lauren and Lauren for their last names alone: Flax & Dillard. They don’t come more all-American than that. Although the pair have been buddies for ages, they only recently started to collaborate, resulting in their music production adventure, CREEP. So far, they’ve created songs that have featured Romy Madley-Croft from The xx and American twin singing sisters, Nina Sky. Lauren Flax, 32, already has an outstanding career as a DJ and remixer (think: Sia, Fischerspooner, Morningwood), while Lauren Dillard, 26, tried her hand at DJing, writing music, and making video art while spending time in Europe as part of !WOWOW!, the London art collective. For this interview, they met in a haunted room at New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel.
 
Words by Pati Hertling
Photo by Nina Mouritzen
 
 
Anie Stanley
 

 
Born and raised in the wooded upper Catskill Mountains, experimental filmmaker Anie Stanley, 42, now runs the homestead ‘Smokey Belles’, not so far from where she originally grew up. Describing itself as ‘a lawless camp for artists, operating in the storied tradition of creative colonies removed from urban centers’, Smokey Belles has been functioning not only as a queer artist residency, but also as a ranch, retreat, cottage, summer camp, cabin and general getaway. Curious to find out more about the person behind it, we went upstate and spent a weekend with Anie and her community. They included video artist Yvette Choy; video and performance artists Patty Chang and Lynne Chan; and Miriam Ginestier, the multi-faceted Artistic Director of Montreal’s Studio 303.
 
Words by Sara van der Heide
Photo by Mary Manning
 
 
Benjamin A.Huseby