Rare words of excitement from Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor (you know the one, of mono.kultur #03 fame…), whose press statements usually read more like ‘new album is finished, enjoy…’:
‘I’ve been less than honest about what I’ve really been up to lately. For the last year I’ve been secretly working non-stop with Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder on a new, full-length Nine Inch Nails record, which I am happy to say is finished and frankly fucking great. This is the real impetus and motivation behind the decision to assemble a new band and tour again.’
While the tour dates are piling up to a year’s worth of shows, the first single Came back Haunted, after four years of silence, shows a Nine Inch Nails back in form, and frankly, it’s a surprise to see them back at all.
Hardly a new title with eight biannual issues under their vintage leather belts, Inventory is somewhat of a bible for those who appreciate hand-crafted mountain boots that will last you forever or anything else that has written ‘authentic’ in capital letters all over it. Based in Vancouver and attached to a fashion store of the same name, it’s sometimes hard to establish whether Inventory is just an exceptionally good version of a retail catalogue, or whether the store is just the logical extension of the magazine – but maybe it actually doesn’t really matter, because the magazine as such is really beautifully and lovingly made, visually but also in terms of content.
For anyone who is tired of fashion magazines dealing mainly with style and forgetting somewhat about the actual product, Inventory is pretty much the exact opposite – they are obsessed with products, the way they are made, their story, the philosophy behind them. Which is kind of refreshing and ties in neatly with the current trend for tradition, even if the choices are at times a little predictable, with a heavy focus on traditional American work wear (or Japanese brands reproducing traditional American work wear almost better than their original counterparts). Having said this, their current issue features a beautiful in-depth interview with Mark Borthwick as well as a loving feature on Gottlund Verlag, which both fit in nicely, but are very worthwhile nonetheless.
The experimental dance company of choreographer William Forsythe (who we have mentioned before) perform the two pieces N.N.N.N. / Study # 3 tomorrow and the two following nights in London. Study # 3 is a collection of sequences from Forsythe’s earlier works, reshaped and recontextualized.
N.N.N.N. / Study # 3
The Forsythe Company
18-20th of June
Sadler’s Wells
London, UK.
The title New Summer might already be enough to recommend this little gem of dreamy pop on a Monday morning, but the video is actually one epic feast of destruction that is oddly mesmerising and satisfying to watch – no small feat for an independent outfit like Canadians Young Galaxy. ‘Here it comes again, the beautiful, warm weather,’ indeed.
It’s one of those random bits of news that you stumble upon every now and then get stuck with, like, ‘While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages.’ Hold on, 800? Or have you ever heard of Vlashki, Garifuna, Mamuju? Neither have I, but someone in New York has, and what’s more, even speaks it. Weirdly fascinating.
Browse through any ‘Best Magazine Cover’ lists of the past five years, chances are you will find our favourite film magazine Little White Lies somewhere near the top. With its curious illustrative approach, it struck out from any magazine shelf and ‘inspired’ a whole range of offbeat printed matter. So it was somewhat sad news that its art director, along with creative team behind the sister magazine Huck, left their agency Church of London to found their own, stepping also down from the two titles. As a little parting gift, though, they are pitching in their Kickstarter campaign for a mouth-watering tell-all book which will actually only be available here and now, so this is your only chance to get it – by making it happen in the first place.
‘Welcome the the gas festival’, ‘There is a beach under the stones’, ‘There is a revolution going on here, Signorita’,‘I could not find a slogan’ were some of the slogans written on the walls of beauteous cities of Turkey, the land of pepper. All you have been seeing in the news was a part of the festival organized by the dystopian party of the Prime Minister. One night, in thepalace of the Sultan (!) where a gathering was held accompanied by rakı, food prepared with lots of pepper and dance − a mixture of what he adores − guests decided to write a theater play…
Humour is being spread in the streets of Turkey, still, on the 17th day of the protests. Today, mothers came to Gezi Park, to make a human chain between the police and the chapullers while the brutality was running wild on the streets of Ankara, the capital. One should also point out that every declaration of the government is like another episode of Monty Python.
Fairphone started in 2010 as an awareness project about conflict minerals in electronics and the wars that the sourcing of these minerals is fuelling in the DR Congo. 14 hours left to order the limited first edition of the Fairphone – made of conflict-free, fair resources.
Berlin based artist Tobias Zielony (born in 1973 in Wuppertal) is one of the most discussed German photographers of his generation. In a major one-man show, the Berlinische Galerie will exhibit his latest project Jenny Jenny (2011–13) and the series Trona (2008).
About the exhibition (from the website of Berlinische Galerie): For more than ten years now, Tobias Zielony has been taking portraits of young people encountered on the urban and social margins of Western welfare states. This is where he finds his themes, in places where the achievements of the modern age are falling apart and the promise of a community founded on solidarity has lost its enchantment (…).
The 18-part series Trona (2008) depicts young people from the desert community of that name not far from Los Angeles. When the former industrial town began falling apart in the wake of economic changes, many of its residents resorted to crystal meth as a drug to numb their senses. Trona is typical of many impoverished towns in rural America. Zielony asks what happens when social and institutional structures break down and people are thrown back on their own resources.
His latest project is called Jenny Jenny. The subjects are young women, some of whom earn their money by selling sex. But the facts are fluid, and so are the roles – both those adopted by the women themselves and those attributed to them by society. The idea that the true essence of a person or moment in time will be revealed is a myth. Zielony has evidently drawn clear conclusions about both the authenticity of the subject and the objectivity of the documentary image: neither is ever free of staging.
You have arrived at mono.blog by mono.kultur magazine. mono.blog is a rather eclectic summary of the things that are currently on our collective minds.
Rare words of excitement from Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor (you know the one, of mono.kultur #03 fame…), whose press statements usually read more like ‘new album is finished, enjoy…’:
