#4 £8

pale into significance

coverphoto: Alessandro Dal Buoni
styling: Riccardo Tisci · make up: Neusa Neves
model: Jodie Summefield @ Storm
 Memories of an Orgone Box by Debbie Geller p.18
on time Pink Blanket by Adam j. Maynard p.292

Clayton Burkhart p.38

on space Beirut Boogie by Mai Ghoussoub p.50
Chickenshit by Malu Halasa p.96
Interiors by Charty Durrant + Simon Leigh p.104
Tokyo Story by W. p.248

Gene Genie by Hari Kunzru p.200

on science

Eric Maillet p.80

on photography Laura Sciacovelli p.124
Photojournalism Is Dead p.154
Stephen Gill p.168
Bill Georgoussis p.174
Specimens by Elaine Duigenan p.242

Olivier Bouché p.10

on fashion Vera Palsdottir p.26
Cornelie Tollens p.30
Michael Danner p.56
Jens Boldt p.62
Jonathan West p.86
Donna Francesca p.116
Dmon Prunner p.184
David Bellemere p.194
Marcus Tomlinson p.222
Hussein Chalayan by Damian Foxe p.230
Barnaby + Scott p.274

J. Hutchinson p.72
on art Lisa Yuskavage p.102
Staying in, Going out with Antoni + Alison p.130
Nigel Cooke p.148
Carter Kustera p.188
The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard + Jonathan Weiss p.252
Dan Hays p.290
Bump p.296
Michael Wilson p.302

4
Issue #4 · April 1999

Editorial:
Editors in Chief: Masoud Golsorkhi, Andreas Laeufer
Features Editor: Malu Halasa
Art Director: Andreas Laeufer
Arts Editors: Claire Canning, Anthony Wilson
Fashion Editors: Gianni Couji, Geriada Kefford, Charty Durrant,
Christophe Martinez, Yasmine Eslami
Editorial Assistants: Alex Bernhard, Richard Christiansen

Advertising: Sarah Gilbert · Phone: 0181.889 74 95

Pretty fly for a white guy: Julien Vogel

Public Relations: Carolyn Mac · Phone: 0171.837 03 00 · E-mail: pr@gotank.demon.co.uk

For advertising and business inquiries contact 0171.916 52 64 or E-mail: bill@gotank.demon.co.uk

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Tank is published six times a year by Tank publications Ltd. Reproduction of any material without written
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6
 Energy Project

For information: 0161/9299259 http://www.sisley.com

 photos: Olivier Bouché

10 11
13
 styling: Delphine Pavy · hair: Ed Mollands @ ADA
make-up: Alex @ ADA · hair/hats conception: Delphine and Ed
models: Saimic@Next, Amy Nemee@ City, Marie @ City
14 15
 It wasn't until the early Seventies that I was able to remember the mid- Fifties. In
1972 I was at UC Berkeley - probably the best place to be 20-years old in the whole
world at that particular time. One night my sister and I went to see WR Mysteries
of the Organism at a campus foreign film festival. I'm not sure why we did. I didn't
have a particular interest in Yugoslav cinema and I wasn't even sure what WR
meant. In any case, the film begins with someone walking out of an Orgone Box. I
hadn't seen one in at least twelve years and both my sister and I screamed.

The Orgone Box, or accumulator, was where orgone energy - the energy of orgasms
that should run free through free, healthy people - accumulated. Looking like a com-
bination of an outhouse and telephone booth, the Orgone Box is benign enough on
its own. But when you're a child and you live in a household committed to the con-
troversial teachings of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, here's what you have to do:
sit in the box, in the dark, every day, and if you're not feeling well, you have to sit
in it some more. And there's nothing to do. It's dark and you feel as if you're in juve-
nile detention for a crime you never even thought to commit.

memories of an orgone box I'd forgot all about it until that night in Berkeley because there had been no men-
tion of the Reichian regime of my childhood. One day I was sitting in a daze in an
words by Debbie Geller
Orgone Box, the next it was out of the house and never spoken of again.

•••

The confusing thing about the life span we all traverse is that we have no idea of
what forces are at work on us when we are the most impressionable. Then, when
we're no longer young, we have to spend an inordinate amount of thought and time
analysing the conditions, nuances and alleged facts of our growing up. We have to

18 19
 try to piece together what it was that made us the way we are.
This is usually a futile exercise. All we usually have are interpretations of vague rec-
ollections or overly strong memories of a few outstanding moments that aren't real-
ly representative of the day-to-day events of young life. Who really knows what their
parents were like other than the way they behaved towards their children? Can we
really appreciate the cultural or economic world our parents inhabited as young peo-
ple? Did they hide things or tell us their own warped interpretations? How much
eye contact did we get as infants? When you come to think it, what do we really
know about anything having to do with our young selves?
I don't want to get too presumptuous, but I think I can understand a lot more than
most people can about what their world was like in those early formative years.
That's because I'm lucky enough to be able to point to one very specific figure in my
childhood. Wilhelm Reich loomed over almost everything that happened for the first
eight years of my life. I never met him, yet, he is responsible for thousands of major
and minor events, his thoughts and ideas apparently determined most of my par-
ents' behaviour, world view and daily activities.
Reich's influence and reputation go through periodic ups and downs. Although his
ideas about character, neurosis, sexual energy and political constructs always have
a core group of adherents, he is sometimes very much in vogue and other times, no
one knows who he is. I'm not quite sure what his standing is in the world of self-
obsessed humanity these days, but I'm acutely aware of at least two of his periods
in the sun - the early Fifties and Seventies.
When I had seen the film in 1972, Reich was popular in certain circles. As I began
20
to remember more and more, and a memoir written by James Baldwin called No
Name in the Street specifically mentioned my parents in a more in sorrow than
anger condemnation of fanaticism, I too became a hot item. I was told by one man
I knew, in a last ditch attempt to get me to sleep with him, that he needed to have
sex with someone who had such a superior pedigree. So, this mind boggling argu-
ment went, not just for his good, but for the good of others. It was my responsibil-
ity to have sex with him so that I could lead the vanguard of advanced, unrepressed,
free flowing, orgonenergetic sexuality. I was able to resist that appeal for the greater
good, but it served as a reminder of the freakish nature of my life from birth
onwards.
•••
Although I couldn't possibly remember my birth, it was written about by Baldwin.
The details are still a little too disgusting to me to repeat. But my delivery was over-
seen by a doctor who was a close associate of Reich's and an obstetrician/psy-
chotherapist/guru to an extensive network of New York acolytes who took his every
dictate to heart. His name, and I'm pretty sure of this, was Dr. Silvert. From what
I've gleaned mostly from my father, he was incredibly charismatic, domineering,
eccentric, and "brilliant" with a lot of ideas that even Reich didn't have. His partic-
ular interest was having the women in his group have lots of children. My mother
had four. She was the winner.
But there were children born all the time. We were born at home, with Dr. Silvert
and his assistant in attendance. Then as soon as possible after making our way into
the world, I believe we all got a quick visit to the Orgone Box to get that energy
flowing. Part organic (wood) on the outside, part inorganic (steel of some sort) on
21
 the inside I guess it worked as antenna to catch the orgone energy that flows
through the atmosphere like radio waves. As a result it apparently had wonderful
healing powers, as well as instilling that energy in young and old bodies.
Until I went to school, I assumed everyone had one. I only knew the other kids in
the Reichian circle and of course they all had to do their time. We were in play
groups together, spent summer holidays in a large home in upstate New York and
saw each other almost every day. We also had things called shooters, miniature ver-
sions of the Orgone Box that could be carried around by our harassed mothers. If
you fell down, scraped your knee, hit yourself - anything that kids can get up to -
there were no plasters or comforting words. Instead, you just stuck one of those
shooters over the injury.
More comical was the makeshift version of the shooter. If one of us had a typical
childhood mishap while out in the hostile outside world and some authority figure
had forgotten the shooters, a solution was always at hand. A quick run into a candy
store for a packet of gum supplied the needed organic/inorganic healing contraption.
Take the silver part of the gum wrapper, fold inside the paper part, put it over the
wound or bruise, and voila, the emergency was over.
•••
As a child, adults seem to know everything and be infinitely wise. Children have no
way of knowing that their parents or other adults are behaving foolishly at best, or
maybe even irresponsibly. They also assume that adults pretty much agree with each
other on every thing. I found out the hard way, they don't.
22
Part of the Reichian, or at least Silvertian child rearing philosophy was a firm belief
that parents and children were hostile entities. I've been told that the mothers often
sat around discussing how their children were trying to "screw them over" by getting
ill, being demanding, in short, being children. So the battle was always on. But, in
a bit of egalitarianism, children were supposed to let their parents know when they
were angry at them, not be "'sneaky". If you were angry, you were supposed to say
so and hit the offending parent.
There was one afternoon when my mother and I were waiting for a bus. I must have
been four or five, and I got angry at her for something and, dutiful child that I was,
I hit her. An old woman standing near by interfered, telling me I shouldn't be doing
something like that. I was flabbergasted. Of course I was supposed to. I was always
told it was my responsibility to hit my mother to show my anger. My mother, defi-
ant upholder of the new world order, went berserk at the poor old woman and a huge
fight went on for what seemed like a long time. I can't remember how it was
resolved, all I knew was that I felt terrible about it and couldn't reconcile the
parental encouragement for violence on the one hand with the public distaste for it.
The incidents of funny and odd behaviour are endless. By the time I had been at
school long enough to realise that my parents' group ideas about religion, health,
marriage, medicine, politics and everything else were not the norm, I was already
branded as hopelessly different and freakish.
When we left the relatively safe confines of Greenwich Village for the Long Island
suburbs, the taunting and alienation got even worse. It's still painful to recall the
unpleasant episodes my sister and I suffered through. And what made it torture was
that there was virtually no sympathy for our plight.
23
 My mother told us "what to tell them," which only made things worse. Expressing a
principled disgust for organised religion to girls with crucifixes in their pierced ears,
without even knowing what religion was, didn't make for any moral victories. It just
increased the mocking. I don't have enough self- pity to chronicle the endless insults,
jokes and general nastiness, but they were relentless.
It didn't last forever though. A year or two after the move to Long Island, I saw my
mother in tears. I had no idea what was wrong, but suddenly life took a subtle shift.
There was no more compulsory time in the box, in fact it started to be used for stor-
age. If you didn't feel well, you were no longer told it was in your head because you
were unhappy. You could stay home from school and even got slightly pampered.
But the final evidence that things weren't what they used to be was stunning.
I was angry at my mother for something. I hit her. She furiously asked, "What did
you do that for?" I couldn't understand the question. She knew the answer. I told her
the obvious reason. I was mad at her, so I hit her. Every fool knows that. "Where
did you ever hear that?" was her response. And she walloped me back.
•••
It was all over. I was probably about nine-years old. None of that stuff was ever
mentioned again. I didn't miss it and after a while I never thought about it. As it
turned out the reason was a mass disillusionment, which set in after Dr. Silvert's
suicide.
From what I know, he was stripped of his MD license when he was convicted, along
with Wilhelm Reich, for the illegal transporting of Orgone Boxes. A year later Dr.
24
Silvert killed himself because he said he had a terminal disease. An autopsy revealed
there was nothing wrong with him and the deception broke the spell of his moral
authority.
This all might be completely untrue. I don't even know how I came up with this ver-
sion of events. My mother won't discuss the past, while my father loves to. But he
always tells the same stories and I know them all by now.
It really doesn't matter what happened. All I do know is the effect these events had.
I don't mind the fact that I grew up in a somewhat unorthodox way. It's actually
kind of interesting now and I admire the whole gang for their gumption and abili-
ty to carve out a world for themselves that gave a spirited finger to Fifties' America.
It's really pretty impressive when I think of it.
What wasn't impressive, though, was the use of us kids as foot soldiers in this little
culture war. As the mother/father/doctor/generals planned strategy in their bunkers,
we had to go out and handle the daily combat. Like anyone else drafted into a war
they never made, we suffered the intolerance and ignorance of the enemy bourgeois
world without ever knowing what was going on. And it took a very long time for the
battle wounds to heal, even if everyone now loves to hear the story.
25
 photos: Vera Palsdottir

Acetate jersey top: Dice Kayek · Strass bracelet: Erik Halley Knitted sequins bordered tubetop: Samy Chalon · Sequin flower: Djam
26
 hair: Stéphane Zoll · make-up: Tiina Roivainen · retouching: David Martin

Cotton dress with mousseline shoulder-straps: Dice Kayek Sleeveless asymmetric dress in patchwork printed viscose: Jerome L’Huiller
Silver necklace with flower: Kathy Korvin Leather flower: Djam 29
ertising DPS for CP com

30 31
 photos: Cornelie Tollens @ Peter Sterling
styling: Ruud van der Peijl @ House of Orange
hair&make-up: Eva Cooper @ De Boekers
models: Piet, Erik & Paul Koblens, Carine (Name Models)
Roosmarijn (De Boekers) · Retouching: Pipi Strello

Jacket: Zipper, Amsterdam

33
 Rubber combed dress: Martine Sitbon · Shoes: Michael Tondowski T-shirt: Dirk Bikkembergs · Pants: Bill Tornade · Arm pieces: Zipper, Amsterdam
34 35
 Short Vintage Kimono: Zipper, Amsterdam Cardigan: Missoni · Top: Allessandro Dell'Acqua · Bikini & Belt: Emporio Armani
36 [All Zipper clothes are vintage] Bracelet: Eric Halley
 Pants & t-shirt: Raf Simons · Jacket: Zipper, Amsterdam Dress: Future Ozbek · Bracelets: Eric Halley
38 39
 photos: Clayton Burkhart

40 41
43
45
47
48 49
 My city had always been inclined to excess. Respectable people liked to refer to it
as ‘BBB’ - brothels, banks and brawls. For myself, I felt secure amid these busy
bees, always preferred to walk on busy ‘indecent’ pavements rather than through
streets that were ‘respectable’ and deserted. In those days Beirut, rich or poor,
muddy or lavishly paved, knew how to celebrate its nights. I loved walking through
its late-night streets, I enjoyed both its flamboyant kitsch and its ritzy elegance.
When its advertising hoardings still flashed, profligate in their use of electricity, and
its drivers communicated with eager car-horns, you might have forgotten that the
poor were still wretched after all. In those days Beirut exuded optimism and the
most disadvantaged believed in its promises. In this bright, sparkling city, the poor
had their little Edens. I once followed them in there. Masrah Farouk was the name
of the place. A downtown, down-market little heaven.

beirut boogie How I happened to go there is a long story which I shall try to make short. I was
flying back from a summer holiday in Paris. I was not yet nineteen. On the plane
words by Mai Ghoussoub
were the glamorous members of the French Théâtre de la Comédie Française, com-
ing to perform in what was then the famous Baalbeck international festival. One of
the actors wanted to visit authentic local cabarets. He had heard tell of Masrah
Farouk, of its lost glamour and its decline. His girlfriend, a tall beauty with green,
catlike eyes, wanted also to see the ‘exotic sights’ of Lebanon.

It took me a few days to convince some of my friends - who had grown up in the
slums around Beirut, and who had built their way out of them through trade-union
activities - to accompany us, the French couple and me, to this disreputable cabaret.
My friends disliked the idea intensely. The cabaret was located in a narrow street
off the Place des Martyrs, in a neighbourhood that ‘any respectable woman should
avoid after sunset’.

50 51
 When they finally saw the looks of my French actress, they went mad. They gave me
a dressing-down in Arabic. ‘You want us to take this Marilyn Monroe into a place
like that? We’ll need weapons. You haven’t seen the faces of the men who frequent
your Masrah Farouk?’
My friends, it appeared, knew influential people in their milieu of downtown
cabarets, and thanks to their acquaintances we had some ‘protection’ assigned to us.
We were the only two women not on the stage at Masrah Farouk; the rest of the
audience was all male and very much so. As we appeared through the door, some
eighty to a hundred male faces, most with moustaches turned and looked in our
direction. They were evidently puzzled by our presence, and stared in bewilderment
at the blonde French-woman and her green eyes. They did not dare express their
amazement in any other form, on account of the over-sized and nasty-looking men
who had been allocated to protect us. ‘Us’, who were introduced to the management
of the cabaret as ‘representatives of the international art scene’. That was our alibi,
our passport to seats that were used only to male posteriors. ‘The world of high
French art is visiting the arts scene of Beirut,’ my Lebanese friend said loudly, look-
ing at the rest of the audiences with an over-wide smile. Our two protectors were not
very discreet about being heavily armed, and stood behind us all through the show,
the only two women in the place. I will never know whether the fact that we were
accepted was due to toleration or to the Colt revolvers that our protectors revealed
every time they stretched and adjusted their jackets.
The men in the seats around us were set for a great night, and their ebullient mood
matched their expectations. Like us, they had paid two pounds apiece for a night of
music, comedy and women entertainers. It was summer and it was hot. The barman,
who carried his drinks in a box hanging from his shoulders by a broad black strap,
52
walked up and down the theatre peering suspiciously at the clientele and assessing
the level of their thirst. His ferocious expression was the secret of his prosperity. He
would arrive at your seat and automatically, even before consulting you, would open
the bottle and announce the brand as if it was something you had just ordered. He
chose the drinks he offered according to the faces of the customers. As he passed
our seats he opened two bottles of ‘imported’ Fanta, his most expensive soft drink,
handed them silently to us, and then waited quietly to be paid. None of the customers
dared argue with him, for he had a thick, imposing moustache, and a sharp and vis-
ible knife attached to his belt. People were there to be titillated, to forget about the
misery of the day, or because it was nicer than sleeping in the shops where they
worked all day. They weren’t after fights or arguments. Not yet, anyway. Who needs
to argue about the price of a cheap drink when the night is so full of promise?
Suddenly a thunderous sound erupted from behind the faded but none the less rich
velvet curtain. The show was about to start, and a deep male voice introduced the
first star of the evening: ‘The Little Flower of Palestine’. We applauded energeti-
cally when a little ten-year old girl in white, began singing ‘Ana Wardat Falastin’ -
‘I am the flower of Palestine’. Her crystalline voice and childlike innocence were
there to remind us that before the fun and spice we should remember the national-
ist struggle. ‘The little girl is going to bed now,’ we were assured after she had left
the stage. This fact was presumably revealed for the benefit of the ‘Mortality Police’,
who would anyway have been bribed to turn a blind eye.
Now the audience was ready for the whirling and shimmering of the belly dancer
Farida - ‘The Star of the East’. Farida advanced very slowly towards the stage.
There were days when she could swirl like a serpent and shake like a glittering bub-
ble. But today she was tired, and maybe a bit too fat, and her steps were those of
53
 swollen feet. Her shimmers consisted of bored vibrations of her tits and her bottom.
The laziness of her steps did not seem to bother anybody. The audience treated her
as if she was the star of stars. Farida directed a suggestive glance towards the bal-
cony, from which somebody threw down a red flower. She winked playfully back.
This was when I noticed that the balconies were occupied by a few privileged men.
They would have paid five pounds instead of two, and for this they had the luxury of
having their drinks poured into glasses that they would then raise in celebration of
tired Farida, and the privilege of having their hubble-bubbles fed with burning coal
by a younger version of our barman. Looking up at the privilege customers on their
balcony, one could see that this theatre had enjoyed more prestigious times. The
frontage of the balcony still bore traces of Gaudiesque decorations, and the ceiling
must have impressed many a visitor in years gone by. The decline of this little show-
biz heaven seemed to be obvious only to us, the two gender-different members of the
audience. Everyone else had their eyes fixed on the performers and the charms they
were so generously displaying for their benefit. By now Farida was busy shaking her
tits and quivering her round parts for the sake of the man with the tiny body and the
big, colourful hubble-bubble, who was smiling behind his thick moustache. Farida
was not young but her admirers did not care, or maybe they did not notice. When
people want to dream, nothing can stop them. When Farida left, dragging her feet
and her heavy body slowly off the stage, a small, trim man dressed in vaudeville
style, his face undecided between a Groucho Marx expression and a Clarke Gable
finish, stepped to the middle of the stage to inform us that ‘The Flower of Palestine
is safely asleep at home, having sweet dreams.’ This was presumably in case we were
worried for the moral health of our young generation. ‘The Flower of Palestine’ was
not to be allowed to watch Farida working at the titillation of her admirers.
Now the small man announced ‘the purest voice of all, the sweetest of all singers,
54
the Star of all Stars, the Nightingale of East and West alike: Lubna who will
enchant you with a selection of songs.’ Lubna arrived to the accompaniment of drum
beats and loud whistles from the public. We two women were also applauding, and
trying hopelessly to whistle, to the great surprise of our minders, who no longer knew
what to make of us. Lubna’s skin was fair and the dress she wore was so tight that
her ample body seemed to come pouring out of it. Lubna was blond, too blond even
for a Swedish woman. As she undulated her way generously to the centre of the
stage, she announced the title of her first song: ‘This is where I draw a red line’. The
title of the song was clear, as was the meaning of her lines. Giving us a wonderful-
ly suggestive smile, Lubna pointed at her lips and sang ‘Here your kisses are wel-
come.’ Then she repeated the words, still smiling, and pointed at her neck. Then at
her enormous breasts. And finally, changing the expression on her face to a look of
horror, she screamed rather than sang and crossed her hands on her tight dress at
the level of her vagina. ‘Here, never, your kisses will never be allowed. This is where
I draw a red line.’ The audience was completely mesmerised by her and when she
indicated the forbidden zone, all the audience - all, that is, except us two women -
cried in unison, ‘Why not...?Why not...? Please Lubna.’ Some said it pleadingly in
all seriousness, others for the sake of the show, but most of them were half playing
and half serious. Lubna had these males at her feet now, so she announced the title
of her next song: ‘I have no man, I need a man’.
I don’t remember any of the tunes sung by ‘The Star of Stars’. I guess they didn’t
vary much from one song to the next. What changed was the audience’s growing
expectation for more obvious suggestiveness on the part of Lubna. Having expound-
ed her longings for a man in two or three songs, she felt moved to continue her act
flat on her back with her legs apart, singing as if in despair: ‘I need a man. I need
a man.’ Her song became a summons. A call issuing from the desperation and
55
 fullness of her body. All the spectators stood up so as to see more of her: the privi-
leged customers in the balcony leaned perilously over the rail. We women did not
want to miss anything, so we stood up to, stretching upwards in order to have a bet-
ter view of Lubna’s act. Our minders had apparently forgotten us entirely, and they
rushed to the front to stop some zealots who were trying to jump over onto the stage,
screaming ‘Ana, Ana, Me! Me!’ I am here for you.’ They did not have much trou-
ble sending people back to their seats, for the fans were also, somehow, playing
Lubna’s game.

The French actress looked at her colleague, and then at me and said, ‘C’est du
Molière, c’est du pur Molière.’ Her colleague, finally calming down along with the
rest of the audience, sat back in his seat and declared: ‘C’est ce qu’on appelle du
happening. C’est ça le théâtre.’

Lubna and Farida were the two high points of the evening. The show continued late
into the night. We drank many Fantas that evening, and when the theatre closed its
doors the city was still awake outside and warmly welcoming.

A few months later I read a small item in the corner of the last page of an Arabic
daily that a fire had broken out at Masrah Farouk and had destroyed the whole
building. Nobody was hurt but the theatre had been closed until further notice. That
was the end of Masrah Farouk and soon after it died the war started.

Beirut Boogie is from Mai Ghousoub’s Leaving Beirut: Women and the Wars Within,
published by Saqi Books

56 57
 photos: Michael Danner
styling: Atlanta Rascher @ The Industry
hair: Andrea Panté for Aldo Coppola

pink shirt and shorts by Caroline Vogel

58 59
pink leather top Doran Deacon @ Pineal Eye Jacket by Caroline Vogel · tie by Xavier Delcour @ Pineal Eye
photos: Jens Boldt @ Girault-Totem, Berlin

outfit: Eva Schmitz

63
outfit: Bitten Stetter
 Photographer assisted by LLars
Styling: Simone Gampe @ Girault-Totem, Berlin
Hair/Make-up: Jerome Guioton @ Bigoudi, Hamburg
Digitals: Tohbi @ www.junktion.com
Models: Pascale Havaux @ Sucess, Paris; Tiffany @ Modelwerk, Hamburg
Thanks to Mr. Pink Productions
outfit: Bitten Stetter
67
Leather jacket: Ruffo Resarch/Girault-Totem Leather top: Grit Wollenberg · skirt: S. Wauchob/Girault-Totem
69
Overall by Grit Wollenberg · T-shirt by Veronique Branquinho Shirt by Estomo
71
 art: J. Hutchinson @ Nylon

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 photos: Eric Maillet @ Andre Werther & Associes · styling: Rolland Mouret
models: Marieke de Lange @ Fam · Samuel @ Click · Cedric @ Karin
retouching @ janvier, Paris
80
 photos: Jonathan West @ Bartlett & Pankhurst
styling: Maria Serra @ Photonova · hair: Taku @ Premier
make-up: Angela Chung using Shiseido
models: Amy & Emma @ Models 1 & Barbara @ Select
photographic assistance: Russell Underwood

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 commes des garcon blue ruffle shirt
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 junya watanabe dress & neck piece, leotard by wolford
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turkey wears junya watanabe white shirt & black skirt
owl wears junya watanabe black metal detail top and martin margiela dress
95
 If you don't like chickensshit you shouldn't go to Mexico. I was swinging on a fifty
pence-a-day-hammock with the pounding Pacific surf one hundred metres away. On
the beach of Zipolite, which shares the same coast with Acapulco, chickens were
accorded the same sacred status as India's cow. They were allowed complete liber-
ty. No table setting untouched, no crumb unpecked. I had travelled from the other
side of Sierra Madre del Sur, beginning in the lowlands before the road weaved and
buckled into what the traffic signs called the zone of clouds, miniature rainforests
in the sky. Sick of mountains and swerving, I was relieved when the terrain finally
gave way to the lush jungle hotlands of the coast, a well-trodden tourist trail. It took
another day's journey to really get away and arrive on the Ismuth of Tehuantepec,
the thinnest land mass between the Pacific and the Atlantic, once considered a like-
ly spot for what became the Panama Canal.
Chickenshit travel by Malu Halasa
In the small town of Tehuantepec, where the police sleep in the local hotel and leave
their boots to air on windowsills, foreign visitors are rare. Guidebooks say there is
little to do except change buses for more interesting locations. Despite its reputa-
tion, the Ismuth is home to women legendary throughout Mexico. Tough, strong,
with a special smirk reserved for visiting men, they sell their baskets of shrimp, pre-
prepared foods and all manner of fruit and vegetable in the town's two-storey mar-
ket.

Big breasted and wide-hipped in their floor-length, frilled skirts and embroidered
blouses, they conform to a particular shape; their role models more Dawn French
and the Incredible Hulk than Naomi and Kate Moss. Ismuth women who are truly
well-fed and bounteous are praised by the compliment, "Que frondosa!" meaning how
abundant, full and leafy they look like the fronds of the enormous palm trees that
dot the hot low flat landscape.

96

The Frondosas are especially striking when catching a lift in the town’s motorcar-
ros. Many third world countries have a variation of cheap transportation, from tuk-
tuks in Bangkok to jeepneys in Manila, all spewing out raw diesel. The Ismuth ver-
sion, which runs at a reasonable speed, has a single front seat for the driver over
what appears to be a tractor motor. In the rear, is an enclosure for standing only.
The Frondosas, held aloft, are transported around the town’s main square, with the
wind in their hair, Rubenesque winged victories.
Tehuantepec is like any other small town. At its Casa de la Cultura, the meeting
place for local arts and civics events, the hypnotist of Latin America, El Gran
Monden was performing with much flair. It was obvious that the audience had come
to marvel several times that week at the spectacle of friends and relations under
auto-hypnotic spells. After falling asleep to ear-splitting elevator musak and
Hypnotist Monden's commanding baritone, twelve or so townspeople were escorted
onto the stage, where they played imaginary instruments or took an elaborate trip
to the moon.
True to his name the Great Monden, a bearded, South American patriarch with a
touch of Elvis impersonators, proved the very real power of post hypnotic trance.
With a snap of his finger people fell in and out of sleep, and not just those on stage.
The local woman selling tickets fainted straight away in the ticket booth. The power
of suggestion was enough. Interestingly the hypnotist’s act highlighted the relation-
ship between the sexes. With a meticulous eye to fashion, Latin American women
have been thoroughly socialised. So have the men. Ranging in age and occupation,
they reacted with the exact same exaggerated hand motions and suggestive wiggling
of the hips when they imagined, with Gran Monden’s help, a voluptuous woman.
The strange, things-are-not-what-they-seem spectacle of the evening lingered long
after the Hypnotist’s performance. The ruins I looked for I could not find, the fies-
ta I planned to attend I was turned away from. The frustration and the lethargy of
missed opportunities seemed at first inexplicably Mexican but then I realised it was,
more accurately, Ismuth, where the graffiti warned against taking photographs and
there were absolutely no available postcards. Visual documentation in any form was
forbidden and in this way the inhabitants were Islamic; human representation was
too close to godliness to be tolerated.
 To break the Gran Monden's enchantment, I returned to the false trail of the
Guengola ruins and spent the greater part of a sweltering morning on an empty
mountaintop. With an collapsible umbrella to shield me against the sun, I startled
the ruin's caretaker, a teenager who wielded a long machete and used it like a cane
to climb the paths I had mistaken for dried up streams. Another kilometre or more,
he motioned ahead and we started a steep ascent through rock and jungle. It was
noon by the time we spotted the first stone structures of the Indian tribe, the
Zapotecs. Suddenly the terrible heat abated as the ground cleared and all around
us rose the pyramids, one for the sun and moon out of jungle rock and fallen cac-
tus.
Guengola had been the stronghold of the Zapotecs and the neighbouring Mixtecs,
who joined together to repulse the Aztecs. Mean, vicious, moody, the Aztecs were
a plague on Mexico whose demands for tribute and sacrificial victims stretched to
this faraway corner. Sometimes a retreat can be as good as a victory and there is
no such thing as too much organising when preparing for war. Zapotecs and
Mixtecs stored enough food and water for years in Guengola, which enabled them
to fight an adept guerrilla war. There were also tombs and caves in this once teem-
ing city of 100-million.
The young caretaker said periodically he slept in his casita, or small house, off the
site. In the night, he was sometimes awaken by the pounding of drums and the
sound of many footsteps. In his fear, he always called out the name of his Zapotec
father, which usually calmed him and the ghosts of their ancestors. Many who lived
in the surrounding mountains had heard strange Indian music late at night.
Recently the Indians’ name and lore reentered the modern Mexican lexicon when
Mayan farmers and peasants formed the Zapatistas, under the leadership of
100
Sub-commandante Marcos, in Chiapas.
Like the Aztecs, the other occupying force, the conquistadors of Spain made little
headway on the Ismuth. Although churches, the unmistakable sign of Spanish and
Catholic domination, dot the landscape, the Indians have adopted the ritualistic
trapping of the religion as an elaborate overlay for their own natural earth, pagan
beliefs. The Indian fiesta of Las Velas, the candles, mark the progression of the
planting season. In the cathedral in the nearby town of Juchitan, a large crescent
moon is outlined in lights over the altar, alongside a Christ child. The Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo painted a self-portrait in the traditional dress of the Velas fiesta, her
face framed by a delicate mane of lace. According to legend a trunk of baby lace
had washed up onshore, probably from a shipwreck or from one of the decadent
Spanish-run sugar plantations in Cuba. At first the common women of the Ismuth
were baffled by it, but a solution was quickly found. When in doubt put it on your
head.
In Juchitan, there were postcards, but not of the tourist variety. The town’s cultur-
al centre provided a box filled with black and white, historical images. One in par-
ticular I keep on my desk to remind me of dusty roads and women in billowing dress,
the remnants of a matriarchy and an ideal of beauty that makes anorexic models a
stain on womanhood. During the glorious Mexican Revolution, the women of the
Ismuth wore their traditional skirts -- the baby lace had been packed away -- and
carried rifles. They put up a spirited fight, and it is not only their dresses that remain
in the Mexico of today.
101
 art: Lisa Yuskavage @ greengrassi

102
105
 The Negligencia pity the poor minimalist because their homes are full of NOTHING.
Whereas the maximalist has EVERYTHING, including kitchen possessions like chil-
dren, pets and large collections of records. The Negligencia do not feel diminished
by not having the latest Mies van der Rohe chair or a smooth leather Bill Amberg
interiors
words by Charty Durrant floor because life, for them, takes a different slant. Chairs are for sprawling on - not

images by Simon Leigh

looking at - and they haven’t seen the floor in years. The life of a slob is a work-in-
progress. These people approach life in a totally organic, eclectic, sybaritic way.
Why decorate when you could be out playing? Why spend your hard earned money
on a white leather sofa when you could go on holiday instead? Why tidy up when
you know it’ll all be messy again in 24 hours?

In the homes of the truly Negligencia, you will always find beautiful, intriguing and
delightful aspects to their homes, even if they are stuffed down the back of a sofa.
These people have an interior aesthetic all their own. They are not trying to prove
themselves to others, not trying to fill an aching void. They are loose but are they
free?

The home is a form of self-expression. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, good taste
has seeped perniciously into our lives, and when a lampshade in BHS or the kitchen Now there is even science to prove it. Recent research by Anne Moir and David

in a Jiff commercial start to look desirable you know there is trouble. Jessel in their fascinating book Brain Sex concludes that messy people tend to be
predominately right brained, the side that processes colour and music, the creative,

Happily not everyone is obsessed with appearances. There is an exotic minority with intuitive, emotional and imaginative side. It is a genetic thing. According to Moir

quite different priorities, and these people are the Negligencia. The enlightened few and Jessel you are a born a slob. It’s not something you can learn. Usually humans

who have transcended trends, laughed in the face of housework and turned their have fairly equal distributions of left and right brain activity, which keep them on

backs on polished floors forever. But remember, it takes true self-confidence to be an even keel, but slobs seem to have no neurological link between left and right, leav-

a slob. To live as you feel not as you ought. This small band of men and women are ing the individual creatively overactive and organisationally impaired. Indeed all the

interior anarchists, and they don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. homes featured here belong to highly creative people.

106 107
photos: Donna Francesca
Flesh lycra body suit and pink leather pumps both by Strenesse
Flesh coloured bra and pants trimmed in black lace by Warners Body Shapers Pink hipster pants by Agent Provocateur, pink peralized slip on shoes by Freelance
 Stylist: Charty Durrant
Hair: Jason Stanton for John Frieda using John Frieda products
Make-up: Siobahan Lucky using Benefits
Black leather boots by Costume National Models: Ruth and Christine @ Assassin · Shot at Spring Studios
shoes by Georgina Goodman
photos: Laura Sciacovelli
concept: Joan Rha · clothes: The Pineal Eye
Staying in, Going out with Antoni + Alison

131
When make-up is in the home, it does not always live up to the advertising images.
It is quite correct to say that cowboy films bear no resemblance to the average person's everyday life, whatsoever.
The piece of graffiti on the left tells us that somebody's mum is a sheep. Whereas the piece on the right is much more hard-hitting.
This picture has a romantic appeal. Titled 'My Lovely Horse', it suggests the sparkle of sunlight, through the
blades of grass, in a forest glade.
The following could be considered some kind of abstracted pieces of
modern art...
...Even though, of course, they are not.
A cooker that has been thrown away always looks out of place, outdoors
This bedside chair has been pictured with, and without, a bacon box.

Antoni + Alison © 1999

 art: Nigel Cooke @ Nylon

148 149
 photojournalism is dead
words by Masoud Golsorkhi

photo: Stephan Vanfleteren

154 155
 Now that you can watch the Cruise missiles take off from gunboats as you sit there with your dinner

on your lap and can be sure that you will be watching them as they land in good time for pudding.

Now that you can email the Dalai Lama and tell him the latest gossip about Richard Gere person to

person. Now that murderous rebels in Sierra Leone have the opportunity to call the phone-in talk

show of Radio Four on their satellite phones, without having to take too much time off from a busy

day's arm chopping. When stuff everywhere is being reported, analysed and commented upon virtu-

ally before it happens, there is nothing as outmoded as a guy with a flak jacket and a Leica dodging

bullets to take a picture, send the film out to his magazine or papers to process, edit and print is

there? Right?

photos: Stephan Vanfleteren

157
Well, wrong. Just because we no longer rely on photojournalism to get our news, and that televised

images, which allegedly speak volumes, are abundant and free, instant AND moving. Just because

outlets for good photojournalism are shrinking by the day, it doesn't mean the photographs aren't

being taken.

photos: Chen Yuangzhong

photos: Oliver Cullmann
As it happens getting information instantly does not inform. Wars nowadays are reported from press

conference rooms with the live video link-up to the cockpit of John Boy's multibillion dollar killer

Nintendo, with spin doctors and script editors at hand. As it happened during Desert Storm, the

alleged war without casualties, it wasn't until the men with Leicas turned up that the true meaning

of "surgical strikes" became clear and the road to Basra became hot, dusty, bloody - real - not vir-

tual.

photos: Jordis Schlösser

163
photo: Amelia Troubridge photo: Stuart Freedman
165
 Information rarely transmits sensation, whether tragedy or gut reaction. The human medium - in the

person of the photographer - can transmit more than facts or perhaps a different kind of fact that has

more to do with touch, taste, smell. See for yourself. Photojournalism Is Dead is an international

exhibition by young documentary photographers at the London's Brickhouse Studio, 152c Brick Lane,

E1 6RU, from June 17 to 24.

photos: Andreas Teichmann

 photos: Stephen Gill
Poland, May 1996

168
 photos: Bill Georgoussis

Green floral dress from Cornucopia

176
 styling: Sarah Richardson @ Hughes Behrendt
make-up: Julie Jacobs using Shiseido @ Streeters
hair: Sam Leonardi @ GSM for Soho Base using L'Occitane hair care products
models: Madeleine and Alexa @ Select

Red dress, pink dress and orange cardigan by Agnes B, Necklace from Cornucopia
photos: Oscar Stevenson @ Hughes-Behrendt Rock
Pop Jazz
 photos: Dmon Prunner @ Blunt

Dresses: Livee Van Gorp · Belt: Chanel Knitted top: Trussardi · Skirt: Chanel
184
 styling: Gianni Couji @ Blunt · assisted by: Sanaa Djellal
make-up: Alice Ghendry @ Lighthouse · hair: Valentin @ Lighthouse, Paris
models: Marleen @ Natalie · Dessis & Alexandra @ Idole
special thanks to Janvier, Paris & Studio Zappa

Top: Massimo Matetti · Pocket Bag: Prada Denim Skirt: Junko Shimada · White Skirt: Claudie Pierlot
art: Carter Kustera @ Nylon
189
192
 photos: David Bellemere
styling: Christophe Martinez
hair: David Angelo Christy
make-up: Angelique Iffennecker for Lancome
model: Sarah Powell @ IDOLE
special thanks to Michel @ IDOLE
194
197
page 195: shirt and dress both by Yohji Yamamoto
page 196: shirt and trousers both by Masaki Matsushima
page 198: dress by Dirk Van Saene, shoes by Freelance
page 197: dress by Fred Sathal, trousers by Af Vandevorst
page 201: dress by Masaki Matsushima, scarf by Dries Van Noten
page 199: dress by Chloe
 gene genie
words by Hari Kunzru · photos: Peter Frazer

202
starts//
The receptionist is chatting to a friend on the phone. Should they
meet for lunch? The canteen has savoury pancakes, and they're
always nice. Oh yes, she's glad it's Friday too. On the counter in
front of her is a book for signing visitors in and out, a little stand-
up calendar, and a collecting box for a cancer charity. A couple
walk past and one of them drops in a coin. The pair are both young,
early twenties, dressed in casual slouching-around clothes. He has
a pony tail and a T-shirt that says 'dazed and confused' in a fuzzy
blurred-vision font. She has one of those tassled hippy skirts that
comes from India by way of an outdoor craft market.
It must be coffee-break time. More kids file past, clutching styrofoam
cups, apples, packets of crisps. One even has a skateboard tucked under
his arm. 'Kids' feels like the right word. Some of them can't be older
than seventeen. They are laughing, chatting each other up. Looks like
this is a pretty relaxed place to work, a fun place.
I sit on a leatherette reception chair, and as the employees trail past I
stare, mesmerised, at the box on the wall. I can't take my eyes off it. In
itself the box is not particularly impressive, just one of those scrolling
LED displays you see in shop windows, the kind that advertises cheap
flights or deals on contact lenses. But it is the only hint in this identikit
lobby of what this organisation is doing. A stream of green letters flows
from right to left, nonsense letters with no spaces or punctuation.
GTTATACGTTAAGATGGATGAATGATCCTCGAATTAGATCCA...
Every so often the flow halts, to be replaced by an announcement.
155912762 bases sequenced
In the ten minutes I wait in the lobby this number rises rapidly. 155912973 ...
155913468 ... 15595662. The receptionist sees me watching and smiles. Amazing,
isn't it, she says. I agree. I am watching, in real time, the latest results of the Human
Genome Project. The little LED shop sign is reading out the book of life.
•••
You know all about this. You saw it on TV. The evil scientist throws a switch and
gradually the neatly laid-out Nazi uniform is filled with a body. The eyes flicker to
life over the toothbrush moustache and - ta da! - Adolf Hitler, cloned from a fin-
gernail clipping, comes goose-stepping back into the nineteen-seventies. Flick the
remote and there are some more scientists screwing around with microscopes and
babies. Flick. Doctor Moreau making hideous human-animal crosses. Flick. Cold
War mutant superheroes (radiation accident, dummy) trading shapeshifting moves
while battling the drug lords.
Even the news programmes use spooky music and uplighting when they run a genet-
ics story. These are the items in which the presenter, always so gung-ho when
205
 taking apart a politician, listens to the talking head with unusual humility.
Somewhere near the beginning Paxman-or-whoever will say something elaborate
which means "we're scared" and the scientific expert will give an elaborate reply
which translates as "don't worry, we know what we're doing." Then, as soon as the
explanation starts getting technical, the producer sends kill messages through the
earpiece, and the conversation is cut short. Science lessons make bad TV. On to
developments in the Middle East.
Yeah, you know all about this.
•••
The Human Genome project is the largest scientific data-gathering exercise ever
conducted. It is also probably the most sophisticated, only rivalled by some esoteric
things being done with billion-dollar particle accelerators and radio telescope arrays.
It involves major teams in at least eighteen countries and associates in many more,
all of whom upload their results to networked databases that are eagerly searched
by thousands of researchers every day. The sense of global excitement is palpable
and constant. The data I watch on the reception sign is a live stream from the main
server, and it speeds past day and night. Any second the sequencing machines might
hit an interesting gene, one that fits a profile, one that gives someone in a lab some-
where an idea. One that might make that someone, or their boss, a million dollars.
The building in whose lobby I am waiting is a low-profile glass and steel construc-
tion, screened from the main road by a line of trees. The Sanger Centre, named for
a pioneer of gene sequencing techniques, is set in 55 acres of park land attached to
an eighteenth-century country house a few miles outside Cambridge. The whole com-
206
plex is owned by the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest charity, and they have just
bumped up their funding to £205 million. This is a fraction of the money being spent
on the Human Genome Project internationally, $3 billion so far from the US feder-
al government alone. The Trust probably didn't want to sink in more cash - the cen-
tre is already cripplingly expensive, even for an organisation capitalised by shares in
a vast multinational drug company. But its hand was forced.
"The Trust is concerned that commercial entities might file opportunistic patents on
DNA sequence. The Trust is conducting an urgent review of the credibility and scope
of patents based solely on DNA sequence. It is prepared to challenge such patents."
[Wellcome Trust press release, 13th May 1998]
For 'commercial entities', read 'Celera Genomics'. Last May a private American com-
pany by that name announced that it possessed new technologies which would allow
it to sequence the human genome by 2001, years earlier than the projected 2003
finish date for the international effort. By September it was offering stock for sale,
its CEO commenting on his excitement at "entering the information side of the life
science business" and reminding his backers that "this plan reaffirms [Celera's] com-
mitment to creating maximum value for our shareholders." Celera promises it will
share its information, eventually. But not before paying customers (which in prac-
tise means big drug companies) have checked out its database, and applied for
patents on anything that looks useful.
To most people, the idea of patenting a gene is rather like patenting the speed of
light, or the colour blue. It is information, a fact, just something that exists out there
in the world to be discovered. But in the bright shiny future of corporate science the
207
 boundary between 'fact' and 'intellectual property' looks blurred. A decision has yet
to be made on whether gene patenting is legal, but few scientists want to take the
chance. So since last May the Human Genome Project, which is committed to pub-
lic access to its data, has been in a race.

•••

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

[T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’]

The object of all the fuss was first seen by a Swiss biochemist called Friedrich
Miescher in 1869. Every morning Miescher would call at his local clinic to pick up
a bag of used bandages, choosing for preference the ones soaked in pus. This being
the days before chemical antiseptics, supply was plentiful. Miescher was studying
human cellular structure and in 1869 microscopes had quite low magnification. Pus
contains a lot of white blood cells, and white blood cells have large nuclei, so unfor-
tunately used bandages were where it was at, visibility-wise.

One day Miescher added an alkali to a sample, and noticed that the nuclei burst open
to release an unknown substance, about which he could only discover that it was
acidic and contained phosphorus. So he called it (with a certain logic) 'nuclein' and
passed the baton. Ten years and a bigger microscope later someone else spotted that
'nuclein' was made up of little thread-like structures. These were christened chro-
mosomes, which in scientist-Greek means 'coloured things', because they easily

208 209
 absorbed the dyes biologists used to stain samples. By the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury it was becoming clear that the coloured things had something to do with inher-
itance, and since inheritance was a hot topic on account of one Charles Darwin,
chromosomes became the object of obsessive global scrutiny.
It took fifty more years before someone could work out what they were all watch-
ing. In 1953 Francis Crick (maths, physics) and James Watson (molecular biology)
skidded out of a prefab hut behind the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge and into
the pages of Nature with a structural model for the stuff that was now called DNA.
They were just ahead of two rival groups, and their paper showed an extraordinar-
ily long and thin molecule with twin coiled backbones of phosphates and sugars, like
a ladder twisted round on itself. The rungs of the ladder were seen to be made from
pairs of 'bases', substances that react with acids to neutralise them. DNA contains
only four kinds of these bases - adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine
(T). These are the letters scrolling past on the lobby LED screen, and the aim of the
Human Genome Project is to read them all in the right order. All three billion pairs.
Another fifty years further on, we know something about what that string of letters
means. DNA is data storage. Each triplet of bases, each string of three letters in the
sequence, is an instruction. DNA instructions are read off by a molecule called RNA,
which acts on them to build or link together one of twenty amino acids. Amino acids
are the basis of proteins, and proteins are more or less what the human body is made
of. An incredible variety of these complex molecules can be formed from folding
together the twenty amino acid building blocks, and they do every kind of biological
job from creating muscle tissue to regulating production of the white blood cells
Herr Professor Miescher found in his bandages. Knowledge of proteins means con-
trol over the human body, and in 1999 control over the human body means happy
210
stockholders. The Human Genome Project is, among other things, the twenty-first
century version of an oil well.
•••
I walk along the corridors of the Sanger Centre, past cabinets of gleaming glass-
ware and rows of hooks hung with starched white labcoats. People stroll by. A
woman wearing plastic goggles trundles a hostess trolley of used test tubes. A beard-
ed guy half-jogs his way to an appointment, his security pass whipping back and
forth against his chest. Around four hundred people work here, but few of them are
the high-powered research scientists you would expect. Some of the employees are
sixteen-year old school leavers, and many more are on day release from undergrad-
uate university courses. Team leaders tend to be young graduates, and only those at
the very top are veteran research biologists.
The hierarchy is telling. The Human Genome Project occupies a weird twilight zone
between research and mass production. As I pass row on row of identical labs, each
with the same layout, each performing the same repetitive tasks, the eureka clichés
of heroic science fall away to be replaced by other images - car workers making
model T Fords, nineteenth-century mill hands. This is knowledge gathering on an
industrial scale. Only the upper levels of the organisation are engaged in what would
popularly be recognised as scientific research. The lower levels are technicians, bio-
hands servicing the sequencing machines.
Most of the Wellcome Trust's funding goes on raw materials. Sequencing uses huge
quantities of chemicals, and the Sanger Centre frequently puts in orders that exhaust
the world supply of a particular biological agent. After materials, labour is the main
cost, although month by month sequencing automation becomes more efficient. The
211
 Sanger Centre has an in-house robotics team, dedicated to shaving time off the
process with new computer controlled machines. There is a quiet determination
about the people moving around in the building. Every increase in productivity will
give them a better chance of beating their rivals to the prize. Behind the casual exte-
rior, there is an obsession with speed.
•••
Darren is a sequencing star. In his mid-twenties, he has spiky toothbrush hair, a shy
smile and a higher degree in one of the biological sciences. He looks like one of the
lads who were always propping up the college bar, the ones I would meet in the very
early morning when I was stumbling home from a bender and they were dragging
their hangovers off to an 8am lab practical. Now I've given up wearing flourescents
and Darren is in charge of a sequencing team at the Sanger Centre. He is, I am told,
a man to watch. I like working here, he tells me, smiling and looking longingly at
his computer. You go home and it's over. At the end of the day you can see what
you've achieved. You feel pleased with yourself. I ask if he thinks of his work as code-
breaking. No, he says. It's more like crossword puzzles. Then, as I process that infor-
mation, he dives through his office door and is gone.
Darren, like most of the staff at the Sanger Centre, is working on sequencing the
Human Genome. There are also teams working on pathogens, another area in which
there is competition from private companies. Around the Sanger Centre are -70%
freezers filled with bacterial cultures of malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy.... I peep into
one of the TB labs, which looks just like all the other sequencing production lines.
Perhaps it is the notice reminding staff not to touch the doorhandle with work gloves
on, but I find myself trying not to breathe in until I leave the room.
212
Whether it's TB, malaria, the C. Elegans nematode worm or human beings whose
DNA is being sequenced, the process is the same. Tiny samples of DNA are induced
to replicate themselves through the so-called Polymerase Chain Reaction, which
causes the molecule to unravel and duplicate itself from a bath of raw materials.
Each lab has a bank of PCR ovens, cycling samples through a precise sequence of
temperatures, building microscopic fragments into gobbets of white gloop, visible
chunks of pure DNA. The samples are then fixed into sheets of gel, a row of DNA
dabs at one end, like contestants at the starting line of a race. And this is pretty
much what they are.
Knowledge of proteins means control over the human body,
and in I999 control over the human body means happy stock-
holders. The Human Genome Project is, among other things,
the twenty-first century version of an oil well.
When the gels are ready they are taken down to the main sequencing lab, a large
white room containing regimental rows of identical computers. The loud hum of
hard drive cooling fans forces you raise your voice to talk. The light is so bright and
white that for a moment you think you might have wandered into some kind of Intel-
sponsored afterworld. Here the gels are placed into racks, each one connected to a
power source and a computer. A low voltage current is fed through them, and the
DNA starts to split up and move. Effectively the gels are a filter. Bigger molecules
travel further through it, and since each of the four bases is a different size, each
one will end up in one of four positions. These positions can be read off by the com-
puter, which brings the results up on screen as a coloured dot. The big white room
213
is filled with monitors showing a patchwork of tiny red, green, blue and yellow
smudges.

This process is 95% accurate. The raw sequence data is then 'hand-finished' by
human beings like Darren, who look for ambiguities and resequence doubtful areas
to double-check. The Sanger Centre is proud of its quality standard. They reckon on
making only one mistake in 10,000 base pairs. The finishers spend long caffeinated
hours in front of their screens, trying to make things fit. All this technology can only
deal with relatively small bits of the molecule at a time. The sequencers have to use
enzymes to chop it up into manageable segments. Most of the work lies in fitting the
sequenced bits back together in the right order, finding the order of the letters in the
newly-read code.

The job is enormously complex. Not all DNA codes for proteins. There are spaces,
stop and start signals, stretches which instruct protein production to be switched on
and off in particular circumstances. This being life, the result of millions of years of
suck-it-and-see evolutionary strategies, DNA is also far from efficient. Protein-build-
ing instructions are duplicated, sometimes hundreds of times on a chromosome, and
there are huge stretches of DNA which seem to do nothing useful at all, evolution-
ary remnants, nonsense repetitions and garbled messages. Junk DNA.

Even when the job of sequencing is done, whether by Celera or the international pro-
ject, it will only be a beginning. At the moment around 7000 of the possible
100,000 genes have been identified, along with fragments of perhaps another
10,000 more. The map of the Human Genome is still mostly blank areas and signs
saying "here be dragons". Geneticists have a lot of tantalising hints, clues, strange
phenomena. On chromosome four there is a gene which has led to babies being born

215
 with extra fingers and toes in inbred Amish communities. On chromosome seven
there is a mutation which makes modified lab mice grow enormously fat. On chro-
mosome eight another mutation causes accelerated premature ageing. This is the
sort of thing geneticists know in 1999. It is going to take years, but the results of
sequencing the human genome will turn this fragmentary information into some-
thing systematic, into knowledge which will allow prediction and, eventually, con-
trol.
•••
"When a low race is preserved under conditions of life that exact a high level of effi-
ciency, it must be subjected to rigorous selection. The few best specimens of that
race can alone be allowed to become parents, and not many of their descendants can
be allowed to live. On the other hand, if a higher race be substituted for the low one,
all this terrible misery disappears. The most merciful form of what I call 'eugenics',
would consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races and in so
favouring them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that of the
old one."
[Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 1883]
The word 'gene' just means a stretch of DNA which codes for a particular protein.
No more, no less. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone talking about
how homosexuality is 'genetic', or women are 'genetically' less intelligent than men.
Single genes do not specify complicated human qualities like who you fancy or how
good you are at playing the violin. They make molecules.
216
The dream of eugenics, Francis Galton's science of selective breeding for human bet-
terment, came to a terrible end in Auschwitz, or at least with the Unesco (United
Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation) "Statement on Race" in
1950. This declared that the Second World War had been made possible by "the
doctrine of the inequality of men and races", and enshrined global scientific opposi-
tion to it. At least that's the official story.
In practice, eugenics has not so much died as retreated into a dark corner. Eugenic
ideas still circulate widely in Eastern Europe, their targets usually socially-disad-
vantaged Romany communities. In America the publication of The Bell Curve, a
book which claimed that white Americans have higher average IQs than black ones
(and implied a set of right-wing social policies based on this finding), became a
major media event. The advent of the Human Genome Project has led more than
one newspaper commentator to look forward to a future where prenatal screening
for 'genetic defects', and perhaps active manipulation of foetal genomes, can be per-
formed for the good of society. Knowledge of genetics has immense potential for
misuse.
Eugenics 2000 will not be conducted through a coercive Nazi-style programme. It
will probably not be associated with any kind of government-run project of social
engineering. Like everything else in our hypermarket culture, it will come about
through the magic of consumer choice. We 'freely' undergo cosmetic surgery proce-
dures to conform to a current norm of beauty. Why should we not be free to screen
our unborn children, simply to ensure they are what we want them to be? When a
competitive market for prenatal screening procedures comes about - as it certainly
will - the commercial pressure will always be in the direction of more testing, not
less. A market for products and procedures which allow rich parents to design
217
 babies, or at least to believe that they are doing so, looks likely to boom. Will such
consumer decisions be taken from a position of full knowledge, dispassionately
applied? Or will mummy want a perfect little Mozart, and no chances taken? The
market looks likely to dictate free will, despite the best efforts of scrupulous geneti-
cists to point out the flaws in the ad copy. Doctor Michael Morgan, CEO of the
Wellcome Trust's Genome Campus, shrugs. "At every stage of medical advance,
there has always been quackery. What can we do?"
Without the spectacle of uniforms, flags and white supremacist rhetoric, the idea of
being free to choose to terminate a foetus carrying, say, the Cystic Fibrosis gene (as
do one in 25 Northern Europeans) seems only a good thing. Genetic screening for
disease will prevent much human misery. Gene therapies promise improved lives for
sufferers of many common diseases. However, who lives and who dies has always
been the fundamental political question facing any society. Who is born must now
be added to that equation. Prenatal screening, a patriarchal culture and the gov-
ernment one-child policy have led to mass terminations of female foetuses in China.
For every 100 girls born, there are now 118 boys. The Chinese government has
jumped at the opportunity to institute mandatory genetic testing, and is reportedly
pressing ahead despite a howl of protest from the international scientific communi-
ty. What kind of effect will advances in genetics have in that society?
As soon as opportunities are given or denied to someone because they carry a par-
ticular gene, a eugenic society will be in place. Insurance companies are already
clamouring for the right to screen clients. Perhaps in ten years time you find your-
self paying a higher health premium than your neighbour. At your insurance screen-
ing they discovered an AD4 mutation and hence you are considered at greater risk
of contracting Alzheimer's disease. Perhaps ten years later still this finding prevents
218
you from working as, say, an air traffic controller. Then another ten years further
down the line it becomes mandatory to declare your screening results on an employ-
ment form, just like a criminal record today. Perhaps your prospective boss at the
widget company reckons that this Alzheimers thing means your brain must be like
Swiss cheese and you won't be able to answer the phone properly. So he doesn't hire
you. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps...
It's a slippery issue. The boundary lines between disease prevention and paranoia are
fuzzy, and it is not in the interest of the emerging gene-market to clarify such issues.
Michael Morgan advocates legislation to allow individuals to keep genetic informa-
tion private, and points the finger at the motivations of employers and insurance
companies. "It is when genetic testing becomes an instrument of public policy that
we really have to worry," he tells me. As we sit in his fifth floor office at the
Wellcome HQ in London, I feel worried enough anyway. It is important to point out
that the villains of the piece are not, for the most part, the scientists. Geneticists
know the public perceives them as power-crazed Frankensteins, hell-bent on turning
middle-England into a B-movie horror set. A few are undoubtedly complacent about
the effects of their research. Most are just frustrated at the level of popular igno-
rance. It is when science gets mixed up with the market that things get really sticky.
•••
GenBase is a trademark of The Perkin-Elmer Corporation. GeneAmp is a registered
trademark of Roche Molecular Systems,Inc., licensed to The Perkin-Elmer
Corporation. GeneAmplimer is a registered trademark of Roche Molecular Systems,
Inc. GeneAssist is a registered trademark of The Perkin-Elmer Corporation.
GenePure is a trademark of The Perkin-Elmer Corporation. GeneScan is a regis-
219
 tered trademark of The Perkin-Elmer Corporation. GenoPedigree is a trademark of
The Perkin-Elmer Corporation. GenoTyper is a registered trademark of The Perkin-
Elmer Corporation....
Perkin Elmer is the parent company of Celera Genomics. In February, 1999, Celera
got its first customer, the US biotech giant Amgen. Founded in 1980, Amgen has
just three products, including a red blood cell regulator which in 1997 netted it a
cool 1.2 billion dollars. If Celera manages to sequence the human genome, Amgen
will get first look at the data. In their press information the two companies look for-
ward to a "whole new world of individualised medicine." This is how advances in
genetics translate into marketing speak. You've got couture clothes, a custom-
designed home interior, personalised number plates on your car. Of course you want
drugs tailored for your individual personality and requirements. Rich people should-
n't have to suffer off the peg healthcare.
If the biotech companies have their way, they will be allowed to patent bits of the
human genome, allowing them to exploit their own little tracts of DNA much in the
way that 49'ers staked claims during the Californian goldrush. A company called
Incyte has already had a US patent accepted for an Expressed Sequence Tag, a kind
of marker showing a gene of potential interest. Encouraged by this Incyte has patent
applications outstanding for another 1.2 million EST's. Meanwhile in Europe a
precedent has been set by the acceptance of patents on three simple organisms with
industrial and medical applications. Since these living things can be patented, how
the principle might extend to human-derived material is unclear. In Iceland a com-
pany called DeCode has made a deal with the government for the right to take sam-
ples from its citizens. Iceland has a relatively isolated (and hence genetically inter-
220
esting) population. It also has a long history of keeping excellent health records.
Cross-referencing the two will yield much marketable information. DeCode has just
sold database access rights to multinational pharmaceutical company Hoffman-
LaRoche. Many Icelanders feel this is happening without their consent.
The gene market is moving fast, too fast to be monitored by a public still watching
late night TV movies about cloning Hitler. If patents are accepted on areas of the
human genome, the vaunted idea of science as the disinterested collective pursuit of
knowledge looks likely to collapse. Sharing data will be a thing of the past, and what
is perhaps the final religious belief of the cynical Western World (the belief in knowl-
edge as an absolute good) will be washed away. Patent law works on a single basic
principle - you can patent something that is an invention, but not a thing that is
merely a discovery. In the brave biotech future, the very act of understanding DNA
may well come to be seen as one of invention. Looking and making collapsing into
one. What happens to science then?
The young technicians working at the Sanger Centre seem largely untouched by such
big questions. The parkland they work in is beautiful. Their prospects, as junior
employees in a booming industry, look bright. As I walk round the building, pho-
tographing the brushed steel and plate glass exterior, I find a barbecue. It has obvi-
ously seen a lot of action. It is such a domestic object, such evidence of carefree
times, that I have to laugh. Over by the lake there is a football match going on. One
lab is taking on another. I stand by a little pile of ash and watch.
Hari Kunzru’s e-mail is <hari@metamute.com>
221
 hussein chalayan
photos by Marcus Tomlinson

222
224 225
226 227
 photographic assistant: Simon Atlee
hair: Peter Grey for Vidal Sassoon @ Unlimited · make-up: Hina Dohi @ Streeters
computer retouching: Ludovic @ Janvier Paris
thanks to: Beth Evans for her creative inputs + Rachel @ Streeters

Showing at Hyeres (South of France)

from 17th April - 24th May & at Propeller (Austria) from 14th April - 6th June
228 229
 Hussein Chalayan is a man with a point to make. The difficulty is that no one can
seem to figure out exactly what it is. He masterminds elaborate performances,
rather than hosting catwalk shows. He choreographs his models to act like con-
temporary dancers, although they are more accustomed to walking up and down in
a straight, but meaningless line. And to top it all off, he doesn't even bother to make
the customary designer appearance at the end of his own shows.

He eschews interviews, and holds fashion journalists in very low esteem. His is often
misquoted, which really pisses him off, and sees those who use shock tactics as nar-
row-minded and talentless. So what is the point then? And why has he chosen the
fickle world of superficial fashion in which to make it? The following is, more or
less exactly, what he said to me when I asked him about it, just the other day.

Fashion, Superficiality and the Body

hussein chalayan
It depends on how limited you see clothes being. For me, it's more about creating
interview by Damian Foxe
new contents with the body. The clothes clothe the body. You've probably read a
million times before - well not a million times before - that I wanted to be an archi-
tect and I really did this at the last minute, blah blah blah... I feel like a parrot, but
I think the main thing is I get really excited about ideas that evolve around the body.
For me more and more, it extends into other things. It extends into performance.
I'm very interested in performance, and the shows are like an event, more than just
a show.

The girls really use the space, they really animate the space somehow. And yes there
is always an element of up and down showing garments. I don't think I've really
done a show, apart from the Yashmak one, which really does 100 per cent justice

231
 to the thoughts behind them. They have been kind of close to it though. I don't think
as a collection that it's my favourite, but as an event it really worked for me. It's
about creating a spirit in a space and I don't think it's about, at least, not always
about, there being an answer to everything. I don't see them like plays either. There
is a big difference between theatre and performance. In performance, it could be
the simplest action, the simplest thing.
I feel that, because I am interested in so many different things, that I don't think I
can equate [my shows] to anything that you have already seen. I'm very much a
cross disciplinary person. I have many many interests and I unite them in one pro-
ject. It's more like a performance piece you would go and see by somebody like Pina
Bausch. I'm not saying my work is anything like theirs, but I think it's a similar con-
cept where you see different elements work together.
Semiotics, Blind Spots and Learning
The gap between understanding and making new propositions is how I would
describe what I do. The shows are all different, but they all have connections. One
season I might talk about defining your territory in space, culturally and graphical-
ly, another season it might be something which evolves from that, like losing your-
self within the same defined space or losing yourself within the parameters that we
create. Essentially what I'm interested in is capturing semiotics, I think, and blind
spots. I like to capture things that are around you all the time and make new propo-
sitions for them. Semiotics, for me, are things around you that you're aware of, but
that become subconscious after a while. Blind spots are the same, things you see in
every day life that become invisible because you see them every day.
232
My main thing is I like to repropose very obvious entities around people, review them
or look at them in a different way. That's what I do really. But I like to also pro-
voke some kind of feeling, a reaction, well not a reaction really, a feeling, whether
it's bad or good, to create something. There is a great chance of me learning from
what I do, and then at the same time proposing new things through what I'm learn-
ing, seeing something from a different perspective and understanding, but then say-
ing you can look at in another way.
Religion, Guilt and Sex
Religion has had an influence on my life, totally. I'm completely interested and fas-
cinated and scared by it. I'm interested in religion generally, not just Islam, in this
thing that has affected so many people. I'm most interested in its impact, how much
comfort or grief it can bring to people. I find it fascinating how it has affected geog-
raphy, borders, prejudice, there are so many things. What really interests me is the
way in which individuals react to religion, or people from opposite or other religions
react to each other.
My family are not really religious. I was born a Muslim, but I'm not particularly
religious. I'm Turkish Cypriot, which means that we're more culturally Muslim than
religiously Muslim. Religious values have become the tradition of the country rather
than the doctrine. I suppose it's similar to Ireland and Irish values, where you can
see the Catholic values echoed in the Irish culture, but they're not necessarily com-
ing from the word of God.
233

Guilt, Success and Achievement
The way you treat others, or even the way you share, can also be culturally affected
by religion. In Cyprus, there's a sense of guilt that comes if you're fortunate in one
thing and the other person isn't. The sense of sharing is sometimes almost compul-
sive. I don't feel guilty about being successful, because I don't think I'm successful
yet. In fact, I don't think success is really the right way of putting it. I don't feel
that I've achieved the things that I really want to achieve yet. I've achieved part of
it, but I have lots more ideas, and things I want to do.
Going back to the religion/culture relationship, there are certain things in Islam,
particularly in the Mediterranean, that have become a way of everyday life. I come
from quite a community based background and the way that manifests itself [in
London] is that I don't have many friends, but I do get very familiar with [the few
I do have], maybe more so than normal. I'm also very, very close to my family, which
is something I don't see happening very often here. The main thing that comes from
Islam, at least where I come from, is that we are in touch with our emotions, and
the way I act, I am definitely a very emotional person.
Parameters and Lost Identity
My shows are never always just about religion, I just make reference to it. Religion
only really played a main part in the Yashmak show, and also the show with all the
mirrors. They were based around this idea of losing your identity within the reli-
gion, the Yashmak made references to religion, to Islam, also made references to
some kind of an ethnic costume. There was no one particular identity. But the idea
of losing yourself in the mirrors was the idea of camouflage and infinity. The con-
234
cept of creating parameters, like disciplines, like religion and technology, and actu-
ally being lost within that. Although you are actually creating [religion] to give an
order, you get the reverse effect. You lose yourself within it.
Emotion and Obsession
I can be light about certain things, but I'm intense, and I don't really like that,
because my own intensity exhausts me. I'm happy with being emotional though. If
something arouses me emotionally, I pursue that, and turn it into a project and start
to analyse it in a more logical way. I tend to get more particular when something
has moved me emotionally, I read about it and get into it more. Essentially, some-
thing has to arouse me emotionally for it to interest me.
Sometimes, I get too passionate about things. I get too involved, and I can't be light
about certain things, as much as I would like to be at times. I'm totally obsessed
with my work, with getting things done in the right way, and translating an idea into
reality. I'm obsessed with the way it is done, and that it is done loyally to the orig-
inal idea. I do try and push something to its limit as much as I can, and it can be
quite a cumbersome journey. The people around me, they either develop the
patience to deal with it, or if they don't, they leave.
Yashmaks, Nudity, the Body and Islam
Did they need to be naked? Yes, of course. The shock value for me is so boring. I
had to do that as part of the process. Because it was the whole relationship between
life and death and between nature and nurture. The idea of being born to the world
as this body, and through culture, how that body almost acquires a deathly state like
235
 a mummy at the end. That's why I did it. Not because I thought, "Oh isn't it bril-
liant to shock people by showing naked girls." It was to illustrate my point in the
best way possible. For me, when you think about an idea like that, you don't think
about the shock value, you think about what will do justice to your idea. It's so bor-
ing that people can still be shocked by stuff like that. You've seen naked bodies so
many times in your life before, what is so exciting about that?
Revelation, Proportion and the Body
For me, the nudity and the idea of covering or uncovering the body is not anything
to do with my religious background. It is more to do with how I like to see the body,
with the proportions of the body. How you reveal, how you play around with reveal-
ing and not revealing, and how that changes the proportion of the body. For me it's
more of a visual, more a geometry related thing. How you look at a form, and the
way you cover it changes that form, or the way you reveal it changes that form. It's
more about that, and I guess there is no other meaning attached to it.
Minimalism and Personal Space
There isn't that much in my flat, it's really, really plain. Is it an extension of my aes-
thetic? Yes and no. I want it to be a used place. I don't believe in Zen interiors,
Zen anything really. I like a place to be homely, but I don't want a lot around. I
used to mock minimal spaces before, but one thing I do see in minimal spaces, which
I like, is that it really does enable you to think about something without being dis-
tracted by things around you. That's the only reason I'm drawn to it. What I like
is the ability to think in a minimal space.
236
Social Codes, Relationships and Belonging
I watch TV, but not that often. I don't know the characters in any programme and
I sometimes feel socially inept because people talk about characters in a programme
and I don't know them. Do I feel like I fit in? Not really. I'm not a wild person,
I'm not really unfriendly, or aloof, but I am quite an irritable type person, and there
are a lot of social codes that I can't really relate to because I like to be able to relate
to someone in my own way. In social gatherings, people have acquired a code in
which they act and conform. I wouldn't say I'm a loner, but I do have a selected
amount of friends.
Relationships are difficult because of my work, and I have to really go out of my
way for them. Does work or relationships come first? I don't really believe in things
coming first. I believe in things in how you can pursue things together so that you
have a life, and you have a life through work. It's how you balance it. I think work
is really important, but at the same time I don't want to be someone who doesn't
have a life. This applies to family and friendships as well. I have to go out of my
way to make time to see people, because I'm always engulfed in the next thing. It's
the nature of the business, I'm sure it's the same for you. Sometimes, I don't see
friends for months on end.
Heroes and the Japanese
I've never been someone who has an idol. I like bits of what people do. I don't fol-
low fashion wholeheartedly because I don't have time, and I'm not interested in get-
ting magazines and seeing what people have done lately. Historically, anyone I
admire? I partly agree that things are always influenced by history, but partly they
237
 can also be completely new. Martin Margiela, for example, does things which are had a life, which actually contained something, contained a life. We used the bod-
quite new at times. ies natural speed and through technology we enhance it. We looked at cars, and
their interiors and the speed of cars when we were creating all the leather things.
I think the Japanese are a whole other world in themselves. I think their work very
much represents their culture. I see Yohji Yamamoto as really, really Japanese.
Memory
The fact that he says he does not relate to his "Japaneseness" is very Japanese in
itself. There is an influence from their culture, whether it's reacting to it, altering it
In the last show, we [also] did a whole section which focused on externalising mem-
or recultivating it or whatever. There is something there, and they are probably
ory, where all of the garments came from memorising something, for example the
superior to most European designers, in the fabrics they use, in their techniques. In
normal features of a garment. We had this thing called "the memory of denim",
many ways they are superior, and I can just about say that.
where parts of the garments were missing. We wanted to somehow to externalise
memory, which is an intangible thing. What we thought was, if you were to sit down
There is a work ethic amongst the Japanese which is different. I think their dedi-
and draw something, but you drew it incomplete, or you drew bits that you wanted
cation, the way they take things far more seriously than Europeans in some respects,
to draw, without it complying to a standard. We took really obvious items, like a
and I do think that their attentiveness and their dedication makes a difference. Is
classic jacket or a denim jacket, and interpreted them in such a way, using selective
this something which I admire? I do, totally. I'm not saying that they are always
retention or attention, to symbolise how you choose to remember something. There
better than European designers, but they are more consistent, and they seem to be
were a series of semi-complete jackets, with a sense of movement from one garment
ahead of everyone else.
to another, where arms or a collar would be there and then not be there.
Sound, Speed and the Latest Collection

I think the reason that sound moves us so much is that sound is something that is
Simplicity
already within the body. Sound for me comes from externalising attributes of the
body, it's something that already exists within you. The reason why it's such an
For me the idea of making clothes wearable is more modern. To make clothes that
immediate sensory reaction is that it is something we already possess, and we sub-
you can wear. I find that more of a modern approach than making clothes that you
consciously externalise that. Your metabolism, your heartbeat, sounds from when
can't wear. Does it frustrate me when a store buys the collection really simple? No,
you were a baby in the womb. We also looked at the concept of externalising speed
I don't get upset, because even on the simplest thing we have spent time to get it
[in the latest show]. We wanted to do something which was aerodynamic, but which
right. Even the simplest thing takes hours. In fact, I really like people wearing the
238 239
 simple things. I like the simple things almost more in some cases. But they're never
simple, they may look simple, but they are never simple to make. It's a challenge
for me, to make something complex seem simple. It's something you only notice
when you buy the garment, which is not to be seen at the show, something which is
close up, once you're there, near it.

Restraint, Control and Frivolity

Control and restraint are not central issues for me. I like things that are close to
the body, and I like things to look quite graphic, but when they are graphic they tend
to look restrained. I like fluid things too, but [only] if it's right for the idea.

[Do I act] completely frivolous in my life? Of course, I'm like any other person.
When I'm with my friends I do really silly things, muck around. I'm not that seri-
ous. I think people perceive me as being over serious. At times I can be very seri-
ous, but I can of course be totally frivolous. There is a kind of laughability about
being too serious. It can be quite laughable, I think that you sometimes just have
to stare into the sky and you realise how small you are. It's something I think about
a lot actually, I think about how small I am, how small we all are, like a dot real-
ly, it puts everything into a better perspective. There's a difference between being
serious and being serious in achieving something.

240 241
 images: Elaine Duigenan

242
 a tokyo story images + words by W.

248 249
 In 1980, I left Brussels to live in Japan. In the dressing rooms of the ballet where
I was dancing, a dancer told me a story, a dancer that had toured Japan had told
him. In the cabaret of a disreputable neighbourhood of Tokyo, he had seen the fol-
lowing: a round theatre, with low ceilings, and in the back, a stage. The public, a
hundred men press towards the stage which was at chest level. A girl performs a
strip-tease. When she is naked, a man appears on stage.
They mix their bodies.
He kneels before her.
She advances, presenting him her pubis at his mouth.
He pushes his face into her and with his teeth pulls out the snake by the head. He
rises to face the public, bites the head of the snake and spits it out to the crowd.
The men push and shove each other to recover it.
Using the body of the snake, the man whips the woman.
The crowd pushes forward to receive the drops of blood. At the end, the woman sets
herself at the front of the stage. She tears out her pubic hairs, real or fake, which
she then throws to the public. Climax. For me, this show represented the quintes-
sence of representation. I would dream of these great masses, these rituals of life,
death, sex and religion.

In Tokyo, I lived entire days without meeting anyone. I missed human contact, I was
going in circles on my five tatamis mats. There was a large mirror, a Polaroid cam-
era, a few films and these ridiculous costumes that I had bought at the flea market
in Brussels for almost nothing.

I would disguise myself, playing, and behind each personage created, would appear
another, always different, again and again. I wanted to meet them all while being
them and myself as well.

250 251
 the atrocity exhibition
words by J.G. Ballard + images by Jonathan Weiss

252
 The Crash As a Fertilising Event 'It's the crucifixion obviously but in 20th century terms, recreated here as a concep-
1
tual auto-disaster.'

‘Choice of Death Postures

1. Normal driving position
2. Sleep, rear seat,
3. Acts of intercourse between driver and passenger'

'The vectors of speed, aggression, violence and desire'

254 255
257
World War lll As a Conceptual Act These images are like the codes of insoluble dreams, the keys to a nightmare in
which we all play a willing and calculated role.

The precise role of these objects in the unconscious merits closer scrutiny, they may
play very different roles than the ones we assign to them.

‘We can see evidence here of the undeniable link between science and pornography.'

Codes to some mysterious mental process. A unique event will take place here.
They're really just sections of an abstract landscape and our confrontation with them
has been long delayed.

The true resolution of these objects will take place in another dimension.
Virtual Death ‘The problem is one of geometry, what these slopes and planes mean.’

'1. Spectroheliogram of the sun;

2. Tarmac and take-off checks for the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay;
3. Electroencephalogram of Albert Einstein;
4. Traverse segment through a pre-Cambrian trilobite;
5. Photograph taken at noon, August 7, 1945, of the sand-sea, Qattara Depression;
6. Max Ernst's 'Garden Airplane Traps'.'

'The human organism is an atrocity exhibition'

264 265
The Geometry of Her Face As a Diagram for Murder “Fusing Devices - ?”
1. Tolerances of the Human Face in Crash Impacts;
2. Front elevation of a multi-storey carpark;
3. Cross-section of the human spinal column;
4. Perineum of a six-year-old girl

The Sex Kit

1. A pad of pubic hair
2. A latex face-mask
3. A detachable mouth
4. A pair of breasts, nipple marked with a small ulcer
5. Slides of vaginal smears, chiefly Ortho-Gynol jelly
6. Photo cut-outs of a number of narrative situations - a girl doing this and that
'Sex is now a conceptual act. It's probably only in terms of the perversions that we '1. An entry from Oswald's Historic Diary
can make contact with each other at all. We need to invent a series of imaginary 2. A much thumbed reproduction of Magritte's annunciation
perversions just to keep the activity alive ...’ 3. Mass numbers on the first twelve radioactive nuclides'

Formula for an Action

1. Magnified portion of the left orbit of Kennedy's skull
2. X-ray plates of the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald
3. A sequence of corridor angles, Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane
4. Miss Karen Novotny, an intimate of Talbot's, in a series of unusual amatory
positions
270 271
'For us, perhaps, World War lll is now little more than a sinister pop art display.' What we call reality is an artificial construction of our limited nervous system. We
have created reality according to our needs not according to truth. Insanity is actu-
ally an opening onto another reality, one that is equally real - maybe even more
real. 2

Notes
1
Jonathan Weiss and Michal Kirby adapted J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, originally

written in 1967-69, for Weiss' 1998 film of the same name. Their adaptation comes from

The Atrocity Exhibition, with author's annotations, RE/search Classics, 1990. Ballard's orig-

inal text, in quotes, is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

2
J.G. Ballard mistook this Jonathan Weiss sentence as his original text.

273
Lost and Found; Critical Voices in New British Design
is an exhibition by the British Council.
Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt : 9th June to 22nd August 1999
Grand Hornu, Boussu: 16th September to 28th of November 1999
Arc-en-Rêve, Bordeax : January to March 2000

photos: Barnaby + Scott

styling: Charty Durrant · hair: Mandy Lyons · make-up: Debbie Stone
photographic assistant: Ian Dickens · dancers: Ruth Lloyd and Litza Bixlier
art printing by Richard & Ollie @ Plus 1 · with special thanks to: Audrey Hayley

flesh coloured multi zip leather boiler suit by Robert Carey Williams 275
black leather ‘cut me out’ top and black ‘coffin’ skirt with tail by Boudicca
black cashmere polo neck and wool bondage trousers by Fake fibre glass moulded chair piece by Hussein Chalayan
prince of wales check 2 piece suit sprayed multi colour by Owen Gaster black rigiline floor length dress by Deborah Milner
white scorched full circle skirt, cardigan and tank top by Shelley Fox
black ballistic parker ‘99 by Vexed Generation
beige leather halter top and wooden lattice fan skirt by Alexander McQueen
Grey stripe crepe ‘pulling’ dress by Vivienne Westwood
Cream calico dress (part of dozen dresses collection) by Jessica Ogden
art: Dan Hays
 I can smell rubber, piles of shirts, there’s a gun near the wall. We shout, "Selina,
fuck you!" I fix dinner for us at our place out on the headland. It’s miles from any-
where, surrounded by fir trees, porcupines and aardvarks.

The phone rings, it’s her. We just sit here waiting to feel different about our lives,
waiting for the spark. You’re on the phone for what seems like hours, so I take my
stressed shoulder muscles off to the kitchen and open a can of lychees and pop one
into my mouth, and then another.

Back in the lounge I slump back into my chair. Outside the window the scenery is
wide open; mountains, lakes, a plane droning faintly overhead. It looks like a post-
card out there. I pop another lychee in my mouth and look up your skirt, which is
easy because of the way you’re sitting on the stairs, and you smile, "Fuck you Bobby!"

I give you a coffee, sigh heavily and then go back to my chair again. I smell air fresh-
ner, pine fragrance? I sip at the coffee, stare at my feet. ‘How can I rise above this
pink blanket. level that I’m currently on?’ Maybe it’ll all make sense one day like in the movies.

story by Adam j. Maynard

Blue sky. I’m fat. There’s take away packaging on the floor, empty milk cartons and
water bottles, an empty grapefruit juice carton, chicken bones, a metallic blue
Christmas decoration, a plastic toy (an ugly little boy with a set of golf clubs in a
plastic yellow hat), a jar of tears. "Fuck you Pippa!"

There’s a continual tinnitus buzz in my ear from playing too loud in the slacker band
(it drives me nuts). I finish the last lychee and still feel hungry. I go to the kitchen
and open a tin of Chinese mushrooms. I love tinned food, anything in tins. This tin
292 293
 has weird packaging. The picture on the label looks like the atom bomb exploding,
the little mushrooms remind me for some reason of the mushroom cloud over
Hiroshima. Pearl bridge river mushrooms. You’re still on the phone. I look up your
skirt again. "Fuck you Alf!"

Carbonated water, cherries, pink blanket, paracetamol, lustral, sorrow, the noises
from outside, Martha’s droning phone voice. All these things seem to form one com-
plete experience at the end of the day. These are the sounds of my house, the sounds
of the objects that are home to the thick layers of dust.

Standing at the window, I’m watching the garden sprinkler now, a weird yellow
plastic thing that sways from side to side. It looks kind of sad as it repeats its pat-
terns, and it flavours everything around it with a gentle melancholy, but only for a
few moments (perhaps five seconds?), and everything slowly becomes normal again.

Now you’re sitting on the couch watching Home and Away, wrapped in that pink
blanket, and at exactly the same time we say, "Fuck you Irene!"

294 295
 art: bump

296
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