{"id":68938,"date":"2023-12-15T12:12:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T12:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordcelnews.com\/?p=68938"},"modified":"2023-12-15T12:12:10","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T12:12:10","slug":"hans-ulrich-obrist-and-isolariis-sebastian-clark-discuss-fashion-commerce-and-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordcelnews.com\/entertainment\/hans-ulrich-obrist-and-isolariis-sebastian-clark-discuss-fashion-commerce-and-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Hans Ulrich Obrist and ISOLARII's Sebastian Clark Discuss Fashion, Commerce, and Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"
ISOLARII is a media company with an avant-garde approach to publishing. Founded by Sebastian Clark in 2020, the independent publisher is known for its palm-sized books as well as its dedication to challenging the established image of literature from aesthetics, distribution to function.<\/p>\n
Described by its founders as more of an \u201cavant-garde writer’s room,\u201d ISOLARII’s books are accessible only via subscription. This in turn cultivates a tight-knit community of readers who are collectively committed and interested in the publishers\u2019 books that often center around its network of top figures from our generation\u2019s cultural, creative, and literary spheres. As for aesthetics, ISOLARII taps Alaska Alaska, the late Virgil Abloh\u2019s creative firm to handle the design aspects of its publications.<\/p>\n
Unveiled earlier in the year, ISOLARII season two is the second installment of the publishing company\u2018s experimental project that consists of a sporadic release of pocket-sized-edition books. Hans Ulrich Obrist\u2019s Ever Gaia<\/i> is one of ISOLARII’s series of mini-releases for the second season. The book details a conversation from around 2015 between Obrist, a respected curator, art critic and historian, and the late environmentalist and proposer of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock.<\/p>\n
Obrist is joined by Sebastian Clark for a discussion that centered on their experiences in publishing, art, and fashion, while also bringing light to the unconventionality and rebellious nature of ISOLARII. Read on for their exclusive conversation for Hypebeast.1 of 5<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>2 of 5<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>3 of 5<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>4 of 5<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>5 of 5<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span><\/p>\n Hans Ulrich Obrist:<\/b> Someone recently said to me that ISOLARII reminded them of when Margiela appeared \u2013 that ISOLARII are to books what Martin Margiela was to fashion in the early ’90s. There is a similar mystery.<\/p>\n Sebastian Clark:<\/b> Margiela is a forever icon \u2013 no one could ever reach his heights. But fashion houses or publishing houses, maybe there is no difference. Our only aim – whatever the product – is to deliver, beautifully, even if chaotically, what we think the times demand. At the moment, that is your book, Ever Gaia<\/i> on James Lovelock.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> Well, it launches a new season, which is something you would very much associate with fashion. What is this second season about?<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> I think we\u2019ll only know when it\u2019s over. A second season is a way to say: we went once, found a way to do a few new things in literature \u2013 and now we will go again, and take another step in building a \u201cmedia company\u201d. I say it like that because I only ever want us to be a \u201ccompany” insofar as we are the company we keep.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> Would you say ISOLARII is a brand? It is an interesting position to occupy, being a \u201ccompany,\u201d of which of course there is a history in visual art \u2013 the Bernadette Corporation, for instance.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> I guess so. All that it means to be a brand is to have a disposition and an attitude toward the world, which people trust you to deliver on. And to build a brand is to follow your intuition, and find your disposition.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> What is that disposition? Do you think it is your own?<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> To try to \u201ctell the news\u201d as it needs to be told: poetically. From project to project, to swing between extremes, the soberingly real and the wildly imaginative \u2013 something I think our generation does with great skill. It\u2019s also to respond quickly and thoughtfully in ways other publishers cannot \u2013 that\u2019s the disposition, and I think that\u2019s my own too. I want to entertain everything \u2013 and make the case, if only for myself, that the human adventure is not over.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> You\u2019ve brought a very unlikely group of people together. Of a new generation like Cooking Sections from London, Yevgenia Belorusets from Kyiv, alongside figures like Can Xue, Art Spiegelman.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> Whether they are well known or not, they are all people I think are legends. All people I would bank the future of the world on \u2013 who, I believe, have the capacity to alter it materially through writing; who collectively can equip us for the times.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> Or what Bill Cunningham says about clothes \u2013 armor to survive the reality of everyday life.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> Totally. There\u2019s no building knowledge in many ways without collecting things. Whether it\u2019s clothes or books, it is only through collecting, even if only memories, that we come to know ourselves. For Cunningham, this, I think, gives us the narratives of ourselves that, for him, is armor. So books and clothes serve similar functions in many ways. But part of me thinks it’s very important to kind of play and interfere with this, particularly when building something that is often called a collection.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> It is perhaps the size of isolarii<\/em> that makes them collectible. It is an invention in many ways. What was the thinking?<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> It is a way for us to say: what might be contained in the tiniest is not limited by the greatest–and that making things smaller can let you do things in a much bigger way \u2013 to f*ck with scale.<\/p>\n This ties to the practical reason why isolarii<\/em> are so small. This is so that we can distribute them, literally ship them all over the world with immediacy, in a way that maybe even Penguin Random House can\u2019t. So it\u2019s the format itself that gives way to the international community that we\u2019re building.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> I was wondering whether we could maybe talk about this. I’ve always been interested in the idea of how we can disseminate art differently. Every industry has its distribution channels. Christian Boltanski said let\u2019s come up with new channels: why don\u2019t we do an exhibition in which everyone can take the artwork away? Make hundreds of thousands of copies of the artwork, so you\u2019d take a bag, take the artwork off the walls, and take it home. But at the end of each day, the stocks will be replenished. This means that the exhibition can continue everywhere, around the world, on people’s walls \u2013 almost like a positive virus, as Felix Gonzalez Torres always said.<\/p>\n In the book world, there are ISBNs and ingrained distribution channels \u2013 you circumvent that and set up your own distribution system so you can send anything to anyone spontaneously. You never know what you will receive, it\u2019s like Christmas each time it comes.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> As others have said, influencing the world today is not about writing new manifestos, but instead, developing new protocols for how we operate and determining how things are produced, how they circulate, and in turn, how reality is materially composed.<\/p>\n As a brand, you\u2019ve got to think, \u201cWhat\u2019s the protocol I\u2019m putting out there?\u201d Sure, you can design some great graphics, put them on a hoodie and open a Shopify store – plug-and-play commodity capitalism – but you\u2019re not changing anything. That kind of fashion is just trend-baiting, producing, and differentiation without any meaningful difference. That kind of fashion is running on fumes. Inject the unexpected where it doesn\u2019t belong and rearrange things in doing so.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> It is like when we launched our Glissant book in your first season at the Alicia Keys concert for a thousand people in Miami. Everyone walked away with a copy and it unleashed a tidal wave of people from the bus, from the beach, from the street, posting on social media about \u00c9douard Glissant, who otherwise maybe wouldn\u2019t have encountered him. You could also imagine that this happens at a concert at Wembley, or in the 100th hour at Glastonbury, and 200,000 people suddenly have the book all at the same time.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> Yeah totally. I\u2019m a great believer in synchronicity, synchronous media, and the idea of people experiencing something at the same time. In the era of Netflix, it is undervalued. That\u2019s what you did with Glissant \u2013 you created this moment where you were able to bridge popular culture and philosophy, and put Glissant\u2019s totally essential worldview into so many new hands. Speaking of which, it is worth introducing Ever Gaia<\/i>, your book on Lovelock, to Hypebeast\u2019s audience.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> Sure. It is important because there are few people who anticipated our current reality – on the brink of AGI, amidst a climate crisis – as Lovelock did, who died last year. He arguably kickstarted the Green movement in the 1960s, and his Gaia theory, developed with the amazing scientist Lynn Margulis, showed how all life on Earth is mutually self-sustaining. He is integral to making sense of this moment. More than that, the book is about his inventions and micro-inventions and, in detailing his life, is a guide to how we might invent as he did.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> So, indeed, a \u201cbook that equips us.\u201d You\u2019re also currently working on a project about artists as brands right?<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> Yes, with Viscose. It\u2019s about the idea that artists are brands, versions of themselves. And amongst a younger generation of artists, they often have brands, fashion brands, and publishing brands. There is a contemporary history of artists, like Martine Syms with publishing, and Alex Israel, who have brands. For some, it\u2019s almost like merch is an artistic medium.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> In fashion, unlike a lot of visual art, there isn\u2019t any pretense that clothes are not commodities \u2013 so it\u2019s a more honest medium in a way. Clothes are for you, the consumer; they mix into your life in a way that is unique to you, but I think you feel a strength in knowing that other people have those same, identical things, in a way that is unique to them too.<\/p>\n So it makes sense to me that artists would play with that, particularly in an era that is so concerned with the construction of identity. Fashion, as Emmanuele Coccia has said, can be a Trojan horse.<\/p>\n We are currently designing an ISOLARII uniform with the incredible GR10K. I want to think of a \u201cuniform\u201d as a format in the way the books are. We\u2019ll only ever have one shirt or pair of trousers at a time, and each will be made from the deadstock of a highly technical professional uniform from the likes of mountain rescue teams in the Dolomites to electrical engineers in Spain. I\u2019m interested in uniformity during a time when it seems like everyone needs to be hyperindividual.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> ISOLARII works with many designers who reach into fashion \u2013 you\u2019re currently working with Alaska Alaska, the studio of my late, dear friend Virgil Abloh, and with the young Swiss designer, Ben Ganz at a critical time in his career. While many might not know Can Xue, they\u2019ll know Virgil. And by virtue, Alaska Alaska, his legacy in London, along with Samuel Ross. I think it\u2019s very interesting that you\u2019ve decided to work actively with the fashion world.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> Yeah, Tawanda and Francisco (from Alaska Alaska) and I have been in dialogue for a few years now. The way they think is brilliant, and, despite obviously being influenced by Virgil, who I did not know, it feels like they are committing to a beautiful chaos that is very much their own. I think they\u2019ll be two of the designers who radically shape our generation.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> I met Virgil very early in his career, as you and Alaska Alaska have. We met, and the next day he texted me asking if I would come to Amsterdam to introduce him to Rem Koolhaas and so I went. That was the start of many brilliant dialogues.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> The way I think of you both is that your imprints are so perfectly light. You move, as did he, between things with such ease. Italo Calvino wrote that having lightness is the most important quality of this century. That\u2019s something you and he shared \u2013 a kind of lightness that resists the world turning to stone.1 of 6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>2 of 6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>3 of 6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>4 of 6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>5 of 6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span>6 of 6<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Isolarii<\/span><\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> Well, the other thing that Virgil did was that he spoke to millions of people of a younger generation about artists like Piero Manzoni or Lucio Fontana, and I think that\u2019s the value of ISOLARII also being in the fashion world; you bring knowledge to it that it wouldn\u2019t have otherwise.<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> Exactly, it shouldn\u2019t matter whether you know the author. It\u2019s better that you don\u2019t even. The best ideas often remain unknown to you, and if we only encounter what we know, the world is boring.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> You\u2019re working with Philippe Parreno, right? What’s that like?<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> Incredible. He has totally influenced what I think literature can be. What people don\u2019t know about him is that more than anything, he is a writer. Everything he does begins with him sitting down and writing \u2013 which he then brings into reality in such technologically and temporally complex, and still sensitive, ways.<\/p>\n HUO:<\/b> And, finally, is there an end goal for ISOLARII?<\/p>\n SC:<\/b> No, at least not yet. I just want to resist a world in which we\u2019re constantly updating to remain the same \u2013 whether that\u2019s a software update or a new bag. That\u2019s a boring world; I\u2019m here for irrationality, the chaos of a world in transformation. No more updating to remain the same. ISOLARII is a media company with an avant-garde approach to publishing. Founded by Sebastian Clark in 2020, the independent publisher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cISOLARII are to books what Martin Margiela was to fashion in the early \u201890s.\u201d – Hans Ulrich Obrist<\/q><\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no building knowledge in many ways without collecting things. Whether it\u2019s clothes or books, it is only through collecting, even if only memories, that we come to know ourselves.\u201d – Sebastian Clark<\/q><\/p>\n
\u201cSure, you can design some great graphics, put them on a hoodie and open a Shopify store \u2013 plug-and-play commodity capitalism \u2013 but you\u2019re not changing anything.\u201d – Sebastian Clark<\/q><\/p>\n
\u201cVirgil [Abloh] … spoke to millions of people of a younger generation about artists like Piero Manzoni \u2026 I think that\u2019s the value of ISOLARII also being in the fashion world; you bring knowledge to it that it wouldn\u2019t have otherwise.\u201d – Hans Ulrich Obrist<\/q><\/p>\n
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