American photographer Roger Ballen has been living and photographing in South Africa since the late 1970s. His photographs have caused international controversy, excitement and debate ever since his book, Platteland: Images of a Rural South Africa, was published. I find the photographs to be both beautiful and profoundly disturbing.

This combination keeps me coming back to them, to look more carefully. The images are obviously staged, but they are troubling in their brutal raw reality. It would be easier to swallow if we could think of the characters as models or actors, following stage directions. But many of these images seem too real. The characters look like they are really strung out on the far edges of ordinary life.

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I’ve always liked street art because it has a lot of power over people and the city. Since I spend most of the day browsing, I discovered Doel, a ghost-town in Belgium. It’s a graffiti heaven where squatters have found paradise. If you take your time and look at all the houses, you would think it’s a cartoon town. The place is in a continuous transformation, where deserted houses become pieces of a major art project.

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Hot Chip recently teamed up with the Creator’s Project and director Danny Perez to create a new video. The song, Look Where We Are, is off Hot Chip’s most recent album, In Our Heads. In this trippy, funkadelic video, a fantasy is painted around a mad scientist who operates on a model, filling her head with fluff and strawberries. However, once back in the real world, it is apparent that the scientist’s tinkering has had some unintended consequences.

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Illustration has been part of my life for ever in one way or another: drawing at school at the end of the notebook, working or just painting every wall I could. When I draw, I feel like I leave a small part of me in that drawing, because an image is worth more that words. My most recent project is called Good Girls and it consists of five illustration of five different women I once met, including myself. Every one of them is viewed as a bad girl as a consequence of their actions, but if anyone would get to know them, they would realize that they are good girls inside. People tend to judge other people really quickly, without giving them a chance. My illustrations want to send a message, to make you think twice before giving someone a label.

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