Set Your Teeth on Edge

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Irving wears dress from SIRLOIN

Irving Cheung, Art Director, Costume Designer, Artist

Nominated for Best Art Direction at Hong Kong Film Awards in 2013 for “Rigor Mortis”, and this year for “The Empty Hands”.

What's your favourite Chinese idiom related to body & sensation?

如芒刺背 (prickle on the back) - means being anxious. Rather than pain, what I suffer most from is the spiral disorder since I was 11 years old, as well as undergoing three spinal fusion surgeries. I constantly feel itchiness under my skin that is impossible to scratch, resulting from mismatch of my sensory nerves. So for my MA degree project I’ve made an “Itchy Dress” by attaching markers on my fingers and scratch whenever I felt itchy; the dress was a body map of my day-to-day inexpressible discomforts.

How is body sensation has influence on your filmmaking work?

My complex body sensation leads me to understand that these type of hinges create who you are. I would try to live like the characters to understand how they function. I often try to visualize the state of mind of the person with different setting of everyday objects. In my work, there are often a mixture of abandoned objects like useless cable, dead flowers, empty bottles, broken chairs, all sitting quietly next to each other in their own rhythm. When surrounded by these objects, the character somehow sinks into it and becomes part of the set.

Your work often involves reinterpreting traditions. What traditions have influenced on you?

I spent my teenage life in Northern Ireland before I went to London for University. The boarding school I lived in was over 100 years old, I didn’t think it was so special, until I was back in extremely modernised Hong Kong. I miss every detail of the old times. I like the texture of the old walls, the rusty Chinese signs, that you could still find in the lively environment of Hong Kong.

Bobby wears bra, brief, boxer & socks from SIRLOIN

Bobby Shuk Pui Yu, Multi-disciplinary Artist

Awarded for the Best Actress at the 2014 Golden Sugarcane Film Festival in Taiwan, for her performance in “Room 12”.

What's your favorite Chinese idiom related to body & sensation?

體無完膚(injured all over the body) - often used figuratively for damages inflicted by verbal attacks. I had a big fight with my lover, my destructive words came out unconsciously and were like blades cutting through his skins.

Your works involve your own body or whose of the participants. How do body sensations influence your work?

My art is ambiguous; the direction is not always clear and can fluctuate. Often, my mentality changes the status quo through creation, however, creating more problems and making the situation more confusing. Every time I make love, I often tell to my partner: "I'm sorry, my vagina is too complicated and not turned on yet." This is exactly the same as with art. To achieve the central idea of works through the control and non-control of the body's emotions and desires can ultimately depend on the body's feelings for what can and cannot be done. I’ve become more obsessed with the authenticity, perhaps artistic creation is the constant pursuit of the freedom of uncertainty. This is not an avoidance of real life. Instead, it is a more positive attitude and behavior with the intention of seeking freedom in creation.

Kidney wears blouse & brief from MOTO GUO, with few of his most favorite pieces from his toy collection. Including, necklace DIY with a Energy Lock Seed from Japanese television series Kamen Rider Gaim, dumpling monster by Japanese toy artist Satoru Doki of Yamomark, Fuku Bear from Hong Kong-based Sofubi brand Don’t Cry In The Morning, and a buckle from Japanese television series Ressha Sentai ToQger (Left). Kidney wears jacket from SANKUANZ (Right).

Kidney CHUNG Social Phenomenon, Self-proclaimed “Internet Brother”

(Cantonese internet slang, an amiable way to address male user on forums)

Kidney creates visuals, T-shirts, pins & zines, filled with local Hong Kong elements. In his zine “The Monster City”, Kidney compares Momzilla, and Hongkongers who are encumbered by job & mortgage and all kinds of social pressures, with the monstrous creatures in the classic Chinese mythology “Shan Hai Jing” (Classic of Mountains and Seas). Kidney also collects art toys with bizarre characteristics, and wishes to create his toy design one day.

What's your favourite Chinese idiom related to body & sensation?

未學行先學走 (run before one can walk) - many people think that in order to start working on something, you have to first learn and become an expert. I think “walk before you can run” limits your ways of thinking.

What kind of creative would you like to be?

I want to speak with my work and not only through social platforms, to be persistent, producing the best quality with the least cost and implications and to do something related to my local culture.

Jayers wears gloves from SHUSHU/TONG

Jayers KO Tattoo Artist, Writer

JAYERS KO studied psychology at university, and is the author of “A Book About The Tattooed People In Hong Kong”.

What's your favourite Chinese idiom related to body & sensation?

血脈相連 (tied with blood and veins). Tattooing is a huge part of my life, not only does the visuals inspire me greatly, but the history, the spirit and of course the human interaction within this art form. I’ve always felt that I'm connected with the rest of the world, but with tattooing it's even more obvious. From the people who did tattoos thousands of years ago, and to those who I’m tattooing now. The second word in the idiom “脈” means veins, is pronounced the same way as “ink “墨” in Cantonese, so it also sounds like blood & ink are tied together, which describes how I feel of being in this family or even religion of tattoo.

What’s your most memorable experience story about tattoo?

A lower leg sleeve filled with 20 different kinds of vegetables on a chef. Obviously he's very passionate about his job just like myself. We became very good friends.

What do you love most about Hong Kong & Sham Shui Po, where your studio is located?

I love Hong Kong for its insane combination of the old and the new, the intense concrete jungle right next to a good hike in the nature, the mix of Western and Eastern culture. I have my studio at Sham Shui Po, because it is still one of the very few non-overdeveloped, super local old parts of the city.

Jason wears pants from PRONOUNCE & tank top of his own.

Jason MUI, Designer

Jason grew up in Birmingham, and moved to Hong Kong in 2010. In 2015, Jason and On-Ying LAI launched their own brand Yat Pit, (which means ‘one stroke’ or 'first start' in Cantonese.) The eccentric and visionary label began with a loose sense of the "lost Chinese-ness" that ended up at the core of the brand. Yat Pit’s designs are nostalgic with modern, androgynous twist; their first collection was photographed by the late Ren Hang. Rapper YoungQueenz made a song titled “Yat Pit” and had the MV shot at their studio.

What's your favourite Chinese idiom related to body & sensation?

身體力行 (practice what one preaches). I like to think of myself as very mindful, aware and awake. I’m very in tune with my own being and why I exist in this world. Everything I do is the puzzle pieces to my journey and my growth. How you carry your body shows what your mindset is. Yukio Mishima and Bruce Lee speaks a lot to me, their philosophy, art, and journey of creation; what I am doing is similar. Their bodies also refer to what to they preached. Be it karate or martial art, every muscle of them speaks what they are thinking.

What would you like to do with Yat Pit?

As a creative of this generation, we have a different elements and platforms to reach out to lots of people. Yat Pit is a language, a voice, a platform, speaking to the world, to look at Hong Kong in a different sense to China. We wish to preserve the cultures of Hong Kong. To make Chinese clothing relevant to nowadays life. Chinese clothing isn’t a trend. It can be merged into everyone’s wardrobe, becoming your daily wear, your suit, denim and t-shirt.

What do you like most about Hong Kong & Sham Shui Po where your home and studio are?

I like Hong Kong for the carelessness and that very unusual energy. It took me a long time to understand this catastrophic environment, you have to be with a certain kind of mindset and vision to spot and find the good things among all the chaos and craziness. The distracting environment of Hong Kong makes me more alter to things that I like.

Sham Shui Po presents a little bit of my personality. It’s madness but there is a realness to that place. It’s not fake.

It’s dirty.

It’s clean.

It’s rich.

It’s poor.

It’s loud.

It’s quiet.

I fall in love with it everyday. For me, it’s the perfect Yin and Yang of places to thrive as a creative person.

Culture

Alain Levitt’s Time Capsule of Early Aughts NYC (2000-2005)

Amanda Lepore, Alain Levitt

Beyond the exhibition, Alain’s book of the same name, available May 1st, acts as a time capsule, a snapshot of what he and his friends were getting into back then — figuring their lives out, meeting people, making memories and now, reminiscing on what was. Today, walking through Dimes Square where his and his wife’s restaurant, Bacaro, has become a premiere meeting hub for the neighborhood's youth, Alain recognizes that while “it’s such a different world,” youth is still the same.

“Young people are young people, man. It’s different being older and not really understanding what’s going on. I don’t fully feel like I’m part of it in the same way… but I love it and it seems the same, but one thing I see is it’s more colorful, it’s animated, and everything seems kind of to an extreme that I really love.”

When Bacaro first opened in 2007, there was no Dimes Square. He likens the emergence of the neighborhood to “the beginning of Williamsburg when that kind of popped off and all of a sudden, if you went down Bedford, it was just young people everywhere and everybody was dressing outrageous.” Back then, congregating in Bedford symbolized a communal rejection of Manhattan. What Levitt witnesses in Dimes, a neighborhood that’s become a bit polarizing amongst New Yorkers, is “more or less the same thing” — though the object of its rejection seems yet to be defined.

Perhaps it’s more of an acceptance — of indulgence, of being part of something, of embracing the past, keeping alive this idealized perception of NYC.

left to right - Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, Kenji Ukigaya, Dash Snow

When Alain moved out here in the ‘90s, his older sister Danielle gave him a camera. At that time, he didn’t consider himself a photographer. He was just a younger brother emulating his older sister, who was shooting street photography and fashion parties for the Post. Alain recalls “showing up to Max Fish and being gently made fun of for his oversized paparazzi rig.” For his second job, Alain was working as a bar-back at The Cock and The Fat Cock (now known as The Hole), giving him “a front row seat to a wild NY that was quickly being choked out by Mayor Giuliani.”

On one of his first nights, he was assigned to the back room at The Cock, where patrons would do whatever drunk people do in the dark. As a kid “brand new to New York” flashing a light on people, he realized that suddenly, his life was completely different. And it was exciting. “I made more money than I could have ever imagined. I was working minimum wage jobs coming from LA, at movie theaters and all this other shit. In NY, I was able to live off two days a week which gave me room to do everything.”

Eventually, Alain started shooting for Nylon, PAPER, V Magazine, and other publications on his days off. Though they didn’t fully feel like a part of that world, he and his friends (skaters, graffiti artists, ravers, the trifecta of '90s subcultures) disrupted the fabric of the fashion scene. Reminiscing on some of those moments, he tells us, “Our group would show up at the fashion parties and make our presence known, even though they probably didn’t think we belonged there, that maybe we hadn’t earned it yet.”

left to right - Ryan McGinley, Chloë Sevigny

Then, Alain found his community on the Lower East Side, “Alife by day, Max Fish at night,” and “after starting a bi-weekly party, with Spencer Sweeny, at The Hole, planted his seed in the downtown scene.” The world that Levitt found himself navigating in his early years in New York City wasn’t new, it was itself a continuation of the pseudo-renaissance that emerged downtown in the ‘60s and again in the '70s and again in the subsequent decades. “It’s almost like a 10-year cycle and one good thing about New York is that it lets you be young a little longer. We were coming out here thinking about the CBGB’s era.”

And when looking through Alain’s photos, while humming with an inherent sense of nostalgia, it feels as if these images could’ve been taken yesterday. Skateboarding, bands playing one-off shows in dingy music venues, gallery openings that pour out onto the block, it’s all still here, just slightly different. While the internet has made us more connected, and distractions more frequent, much of what was, still is. And for Alain, there’s an innate resilience to this culture of “youth”, a culture somehow driven by a shared dysfunction. “Living in New York is so hard, rents are high, the weather is hard. It can be amazing but you have to put up with all this other bullshit to get the best out of it. You have to be willing to suffer. The people that I knew and the people that I connected to and was around — there was always a certain amount of fucked-up-ness we all shared.”

The people that I knew and the people that I connected to and was around — there was always a certain amount of fucked-up-ness we all shared.

left to right, Dash Snow, Kunle Martins (Earsnot)

Whether seeking self-discovery in New York City, escaping a toxic family, or generally curious to explore the city’s burgeoning underbelly, people here find their own, often forming surrogate families along the way. Levitt’s book, and the photographs on display at WHAAM! exemplify that family isn’t always clean-cut and you might bond with a person you’d least expect to: on the train, at a bar, laying on the grass at Seward Park, skating at Tompkins, or having a plate of squid ink pasta at Bacaro before heading to Le Dive for some overpriced house wine.

In the most ordinary moments, the greatest ideas and connections can spring to life and this was true even then. “I imagine creativity drives a lot of this,” Levitt says. “There’s a thread that we saw and maybe even idealized New York City to be.” It’s a thread that this generation hasn’t seemed to let go of: “I feel like my book shows our moment of coming into ourselves and now the kids today are doing it themselves. In 20 years, there’ll be a record of their time that the next group of kids will be looking at. It might not be the same, but the roots are.”

From Tim Barber, a former photo editor at Vice who edited the book, to Jesse Pearson, former EIC at Vice, Su Barber (Tim’s sister), Mike Piscitelli from Fucking Awesome and skateboarder Jason Dill, everyone involved in the book “from the editors down to the publisher was there in our circle, and pretty much all in the book too.” To Alain, everyone in the book was of equal significance, whether celebrity Chloe Sevigny or Marc Razo of Max Fish, who Alain recognizes as “a loving, wonderful person who’s been in the downtown scene forever.”

“Some of those people have definitely become legendary, which is awesome,” says Levitt. “But with them, it’s like me, I felt special to be there. I wanted to be with these people and we all had all of these lofty ideas of ourselves that were shattered over time. I think it’s good to break through those delusions of grandeur and get a real sense of what the world is. But at that moment, it was pure. We all thought we were special.” And maybe we still do.

NYC 2000-2005 is on view April 18 - May 25, 2024 at WHAAM! at 15 Elizabeth St # 113, New York, NY 10013.

Culture

At Planned Parenthood's Annual Gala, Megan Thee Stallion Shines Bright

April 18, 2024

Under one of the first truly warm evenings of New York’s spring season, guests, organizational supporters, and a grab-bag of celebrities (who saw Molly Ringwald?) gathered at Cipriani’s South Street outpost to ring in another year of action and advocacy.

In a regressive landscape that has recently seen the rollback of the right to protest in three states, as well as the upholding of arcane abortion legislation in Arizona, Planned Parenthood’s call to action is eerily more apt than ever.

At an interactive exhibit during the cocktail hour, Judy Chicago’s interactive work, produced in partnership with DMINTI, invited guests to share their voices during an urgent time in the fight for free bodies. Participants in the videos will become a permanent piece of the historic artwork as it travels worldwide on tour.

By Sam Falb
Photography by Nikki Burnett

After guests settled into their seats, the night’s honorees Patricia Arquette and Megan Thee Stallion lauded the organization’s work and the manifold ways it has affected their lives for the better. Overcome with emotion, Megan accepted the Catalyst for Change Award, in recognition of her choice to advocate for bodily freedom and sexual liberation through her platform, and inimitable tracks like Plan B.

“Planned Parenthood has been a leader while abortion rights are under attack. Y’all are the true heroes,” Megan shared in her acceptance speech. “I’ve always known that I have a bigger purpose than just being a musician, and to speak up when people need our help.”

The second of its kind, the gala celebrates the work of the organization while honoring particularly devoted advocates, hosting an auction to raise funds for annual operating costs, and rounding out with an afterparty featuring host Patia of Patia’s Fantasy World, and DJs including Boston Chery and river moon.

“They’ve been there for me and a lot of my friends, especially when I first came to this country and needed healthcare,” Moon said. When the lights went down and guests trickled out onto the street, the event’s urgent appeal was in clear and energizing focus, primed for a productive year ahead.

Culture

“This is the most cracked-out shit I’ve ever been to”: Inside Harmony Korine's EDGLRD Party at Elsewhere

April 17, 2024

When do Travis Scott fanboys hang out with BDSM gear-wearing leather heads? At Harmony Korine’s Tuesday night party at Elsewhere, where EDGLRD, Korine’s multimedia design collective, screened their latest film, AGGRO DR1FT. It’s an acid-bath wet dream of luxury cars, gore, and strippers in chain mail — a Miami take on the classic Korine narrative. The film says it best: “There is magic in this brutality. I am mesmerized by it. Right in front of my eyes, we are turning into animals.” With the film’s minute-long beheading scene and a confused Travis Scott asking, “Julius Caesar wrote the Bible?” we were primed to party with that same “magic brutality.”

Between the bored strippers, fashion fanatics, and the guy in the booth with AraabMuzik conspicuously rubbing his nose, not an ass was left unshaken. Everyone wanted to be “the belle of the EDGLRD ball” — evident through the girls trying to be the next Korine muse, fancying him a sort of new-age Warhol. Amidst airborne dollar bills and monster masks, all were pleasantly surprised when Korine’s DJ set had that same animalistic feel as AGGRO DR1FT. A guest's sprained ankle serves as a testament to the fact that Korine’s DJing goes as hard as his filmmaking.

By Izzy Capulong
Photography by Liv Solomon

We got some input from partygoers — some anonymous, some less so.

Anonymous — The film was like a three-hour-long trailer for GTA 6.

Anonymous 2 — We’ll call tonight, “Harmony Korine’s goon cave.”

Aidan — I came here kind of old-new to New York, and I haven’t lived here in eight years, but I’m here again and this is the most cracked-out shit I’ve ever been to.

office — In a good way or a bad way?

Aidan — Always good.

Claire — It’s a rare evening that you find yourself the perfect amount of drunk to be in the space that you’re in, but I happened to experience that tonight, so for me, it’s pure Nirvana. But they stopped playing All Star mid-song. That was upsetting. But at one point in the evening, a rogue, brave woman got herself on stage and took her titties out.

Girl with her tits out — This is the future of cinema.

Tyler — The last time I partied at Elsewhere was 2018. Harmony Korine brought New York back.