Sam Weber

WE'RE SUPPORTING

Working out of Latvia, Riga, artist Ilgvars Zalans creates lush, vibrant pieces that are at once unsettling for their mashed up textures as they are eerily and awkwardly beautiful. Of his art, he says: ‘I focus on images and motifs that are fundamental, archetypal, and universal in human experience, as opposed to those that are socially determined’. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

Installed in downtown Helsinki, CityWall is a multi-touch display featuring digital media arranged into themes and events. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Created in 2003 as a skateboard footwear brand in Los Angeles, Cipher is now an international urban lifestyle brand offering designer products for an emerging group of global hipsters. Now based in Hong Kong, where metropolitan living manifests the dynamic fusion of East and West culture, Cipher is an expression of life in the brave new world. Cipher shoes launched with three different styles, in a range of colours, each with its own story and attitude: Seditionary, Subterranean and Libertine.

WE'RE THINKING

So I interviewed Bianca, one half of Coco Rosie, the other morning. Love their music: very dramatic, almost operatic in its scale yet imbued with a sense of sonic unease that carries the divine melodies well beyond their maudlin minor key progressions. Read more

WE'RE READING

I am really into Hong Kong action flicks from the 1980s and 90s. When I first moved to New York, there were a handful of curious friends who were also interested in watching movies such as City on Fire by Ringo Lam, which Reservoir Dogs was based on. How did they find videos like thus? At the legendary Kim’s Video in New York City. These days, City on Fire can be find online, and Kim’s is history. But all the videos that entertained the film geeks of this city for more than twenty years have found a new home in, wait for it, Salemi, Sicily. Yes, the southern island of Italy. Kim has recently relocated there, as this sad but heartwarming story about him in yesterday’s New York Times reveals.

Set in a remote Chinese village in the 1920s during a cholera outbreak and with a revolution bubbling in the background, The Painted Veil is a wonderfully tortured love story which excels on all levels. Based on the W Somerset Maugham novel, it was a labour of love for stars Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, who also produced the film. Read more

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Macedônian brutal doom outfit Potop, whose name means ‘flood’ in Polish, is one of the most anguished, despairing, dirty, hateful bands of the genre since Burning Witch. Their down-tuned, down-tempo sludge is virulently anti-life, oozing out of the speakers like poison gas. Read more