WE'RE SUPPORTING

After I posted those awesome Turkish knitted accessories, my illustrator friend Sarajo Frieden sent me a link to a mind-blowing show of knitted coral reefs at Gallery Track 16 in Santa Monica. I wish I could be there to see this in person! Read more

WE'RE WEARING

As if this season’s dresses weren’t delightful enough, here’s another reason to liquidate some stock and ruin your credit rating. First Prada and James Jean, now the top end retailer, Nordstrom: the exploration of art by fashion is long overdue, but well worth the wait. The Nordstrom campaign brings together three great things: the Cuban illustrator Ruben Toledo, the fashion photographer Ruven Afanador and the elvin Jenny Sweeny. Just looking at it makes me want to wrap myself in Cavalli and paint my walls bone shell white.

WE'RE READING

Breakbeat duo, Evil Nine’s new album, They Live!, is one of the standout releases of the year. They Live! is powerful second album after 2005’s, You Can Be Special Too, its gruesome lyrics paying homage to all those misunderstood zombies out there. The duo — Automatom and Pardytron — compiled a Secret Playlist for us, writing about their eight favourite songs right now. Their first selection? Why, Toto’s Africa, of course [listen below]: ‘The epitome of smooth music, words can’t express how much this song rules! When the synths come in and the drums echo in the night, I’[m immediately transported back to my youth. Some people might say this is a guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel no guilt. I just stick it on and bask in their mellow might’. Read the rest of the Evil Nine Secret Playlist.

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WE'RE THINKING

Multimedia art group Raqs Media Collective create striking installations dealing with their complex relationship to the changes happening in their home country of India. Their categorization based on national identity, however, would make them chafe, as they reject traditional notions of nation state. The main concept scrutinized by the group is modernity itself, and the so-called progress it embodies. Read more

I spent the formative first six years of my life in Wellington, New Zealand, a beautiful windswept city framed by a magnificent harbour in one direction and a stunning collection of green, rolling hills in the other. It was here, on a return visit many years later and deep amongst the clipped accents and ruddy faces of the weather-beaten locals, that I stumbled upon the vast catalogue of the then Dunedin based record label Flying Nun. And what a roster of acts they housed — The Chills, The Bats, The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, The Verlaines, and my favourite guitar-pop band, Straitjacket Fits. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

Canadian designer Michael Surtees takes pictures of the same patch of sky every day as seen from his Manhattan apartment. Read more

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Japanese artist Toshiya Tsunoda’s field recordings will blow your mind without blowing your eardrums. By placing sensitive microphones inside empty objects, such as bottles and hollow logs, he captures vibrations inaudible to the human ear. Layers of these sounds are artfully cut and composed to produce brute, mesmerising work that challenges our perception of music. Read more