032c #29

ISSUE #29 — WINTER 2015/2016
NEST

Federally approved in the United States in 1987, Prozac calmed the raw nerves of the 1980s and gave the 1990s a convivial peacefulness, an easy assuredness against panic. Something new, uncertain, and very magical was also afoot for publishing. The digital revolution that erupted in the middle of the decade gave everyone with an Internet connection the ability to broadcast and publish. Without exaggeration, the interiors quarterly NEST (founded in 1997) represents a final claim to the autonomous potential of the American print periodical. “Before Prozac, I was afraid and I did nothing. I watched soap operas all day,” says JOSEPH HOLTZMAN, the agoraphobic decorator and amateur genius who published Nest from the confines his Upper East Side apartment. Along with a rotating masthead that included aristocrats, musicians, novelists, and pornstars, Holtzman created a magazine that freely mixed fantasy and luxury with neuroses and death, all scrambling toward the question of how we define (and are defined by) the rooms we live in. 032c celebrates Joseph Holzman’s Nest, or how Prozac spawned the greatest interiors magazine ever.

As encoded in its unironically straightforward name, VETEMENTS was founded in a Paris living room with a simple mission: to bring the focus back to clothes. Suleman Anaya speaks with Vetements’s DEMNA GVASALIA on the eve of his appointment as artistic director of BALENCIAGA.

“Old people can keep making wars for money, but we’ll grow up and change the world” — For this cover story, designer and photographer GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY takes us inside his vertically integrated youth universe with an interview and a fashion excursion to a metal concert with LOTTA VOKOVA.

What is RADICAL? — As the booms and busts of our convergence culture accelerate to the point of incomprehension, we sometimes stop to wonder: Is radical here to save us or destroy us? In search of the radical, we contacted a group of friends, collaborators, and people we admire to ask them a simple question: “What is the most radical thing you’ve encountered in the last six months?”

Bitcoins, anyone? Hannes Grasseger travels to RICHARD BRANSON’s Blockchain Summit on Necker Island—where Silicon Valley collides with Springbreakers—and discovers how the global economy is being overturned by men in flip flops.
Love. Fear. And the Network.—The ever-prolific ZYGMUNT BAUMAN is neither pessimistic nor optimistic about the state of the contemporary world’s affairs, “There is a third category in which I count myself: the one of hope.” Peter Haffner speaks with the 89-year-old sociologist, who holds a mirror up to our generation.

“We are preparing to exist in a purely virtual world.” — Post-Human by way of Coca-Cola Light and café americanos, curator SUSANNE PFEFFER can often be found on the Deutsche Bahn ICE, the high-speed railway system she uses to download herself for openings and studio visits across Germany. Since taking over Kassel’s Fridericianum in 2013, she has turned Europe’s oldest museum (founded in 1779) into the epicenter for art’s post-human turn.

Part anarchist geography, part slacker social science, Guy Debord’s “Théorie de la Dérive” advocates the practice of aimless wandering through the city streets. For “Bench Theory,” THOMAS JEPPE and MANUEL BÜRGER have created a find-all-replace rendition of Debord’s text, as a way of generating social micro-climates where human interaction can occur without the assistance of 3G geolocation.
“Window-shopping is free!” — Jina Khayyer speaks with FAYE McLEOD, Louis Vuitton’s visual creative director and the mastermind behind the world’s most imaginative window displays.

PIERRE DESBUSSCHERE and MEL OTTENBERG bring us a photoshopped desire and ultra-modernism of biblical proportions in their fashion story ISAIAH 13:13.

SEAN + SENG and MIKE GUINNESS give us a seductive tour of THE ISLE OF SKYE, aided by a health dose of moon-gazing and dirty day dreams.

Kanye’s neo-nihilism, pillow-talk between architects, rabid dobermans, and more in SELECT, a review of our favorite products of the season.