So sorry to hear about the demise of legendary Interview magazine, one year before its 50th anniversary – one of the first magazines I ever subscribed to as a teenager, and a guilty pleasure since the redesign by Fabien Baron in 2009. Interview was of course orginally founded by Andy Warhol and up to its very last issue kept its uniqe blend of mainstream media celebrities, hollywood and fashion on the one side, and intellectual or artistic heavyweights on the other. In other words, a heady pairing of surface glamour and intelligence that mingled surprisingly well in Interview’s approach of publishing its conversations unedited and unpredictable – you never knew what to expect, and that was its charme. As was, of course, its old-school idea of beauty, a kind of 1940s Hollywood tearjerker in print.

Marsha P. Johnson (L) and Sylvia Rivera (R)

The German blockbuster-directer Roland Emmerich has just released a trailer for his new movie Stonewall, and it’s been already discussed controversially, particularly about its lack of authenticity. Just to quickly recap: The Stonewall Riots were a series of protests in 1969 against the police by the LGBT community in New York after a police raid in Greenwhich’s Stonewall Inn sparked a violent backlash. Stonewall is now referred to as the most significant event in the history of LGBT liberation. People critcize the movie as another example of whitewashing. Even though the film is billed as a “true story”, it appears to be told from the point of view of a corn-fed, white, cisgender boy called Danny who is kicked out of his house because of his homosexuality and retaliates by hitting the big city. In reality, Stonewall was started by black trans drag queen Marsha P. Johnson. While Marsha P. Johnson has been given a role in the Hollywood narrative, she is played by a cisgender male. She is only listed two places higher in the credits on imdb.com than “Woman with Poodle”, played by Nathaly Thibault. Fortunately people reacted promptly. Two days after the trailer’s release, a petition to boycott the movie popped up; by now it has been signed by over 23,000 people. Boycotters claimed that the film had “white-washed” and “cis-washed” history, erasing the significant contribution made by trans and queer women of colour and drag queens in the Stonewall uprising. The petition was created by Pat Cordova-Goff, a trans activist feminine person of colour. She wrote on the page:

“OUR HISTORY WILL NOT BE WHITE/CIS-WASHED. History classes throughout our nation have built a reputation of instructing young generations that white, straight, cis folks are the saviors and founders of this land. Wrong. We were taught that light-skinned people are the goal; the goal to assimilate to. Wrong. We were also rarely taught about queer history, but when we were, it probably revolved around white cis gay men. Wrong.”

Emmerich responded to the controversy stating, “I think we represented it very well[...] We have drag queens, lesbians, we have everything in the film because we wanted to portray a broader image of what ‘gay’ means.” His responds fail even more spectacularly when saying in a Facebook comment “We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”

No. We are not all equal in our struggle. People like Emmerich – cisgender, white people – are born into a world that gives them unqualified power. If you, Emmerich, cannot recognise that, you definitely should not be doing a movie about the most significant moments for transgender people of colour.

Says Bukowski:

(…) it needn’t be much, just a spark.

a spark can set a whole forest on

fire.

just a spark.

save it. (…)

The Austrian Heat has returned: As that heatwave is about to make us feel all sizzurp’d and lean as hell, we’re still shaking our heads over Moneyboy’s unlikely, purple colored, codeine-fueled rise to fame – what’s more: if anyone ever asks you for a Lubitz, now you (kind of) know – but luckily, we don’t post tracks like that on this blog (we do love the German language, after all), so here’s something else that’s also happening in Austria: tomorrow.

Please come July 4, 2015, 3 pm
to Kunsthaus Bregenz (Bregenz, Austria)

All are welcome, and entrance is free.

New face of Céline is the legendary writer Joan Didion… As a tribute to Didion, Vogue U.S. has re-published one of her essays on self-respect from the year 1961.

“…To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed wonder of someone who has come across a vampire and found no garlands of garlic at hand…”

Boston Bun “Time Bomb” from Lisa Paclet on Vimeo.

Hormonic fumbling and almost-missed connections punctuate the beats of Boston Bun’s “Time Bomb” in this luscious video. Director Lisa Paclet’s résumé includes Chanel, Dior, Kenzo, Y.S.L., so it’s not surprising that the film is all high style. Each shot is immaculately designed, from the crisp sporty outfits to the sensuous choreography and candy colors.

Dan Tobin Smith: The First Law of Kipple
13-21 September 2014

Dan Tobin Smith Studio
52C Whitmore Road
London N1 5QG

Maybe the most inadvertently accurate footnote on Ricardo Bofill’s architecture from the 1980s comes from Cyprien Gaillard, our interviewee of issue #24 who actually, at the time, introduced us to the work of Bofill. A mixture of fascination and skepticism exemplified beautifully in Gaillard’s short film The Lake Arches, shot, of course, at Les Arcades du Lac – see a few posts down.

Video: The Lake Arches by Cyprien Gaillard

A subsidized housing unit with almost 400 apartments, it was not only a vast undertaking, but a milestone in Bofill’s career, attempting a slightly different model for social housing projects to come. Instead of growing into the sky, Les Arcades du Lac expand in width, covering a stunning 31,000 sqm and arranged like a classic French garden on the shores of an artificial lake, with the buildings as sort of oversized hedges framing spaces for public life, whereas a vast underground car park keeps the streets above as pedestrian zones.

Incorporating Bofill’s curious blend of influences into one postmodern fantasy, Les Arcades du Lac not only influenced Bofill’s future housing projects, but also often served as example for housing models gone haywire – whether justified or not is a different matter.

All images by Taller de Arquitectura