#6 £8

we’re in a wide open space

 it’s clear

coverphoto: Thierry van Biesen · styling: Marianne Ghantous · hair: Christophe Martin
make-up: Philippe Miletto · models: Faye, Vanessa + Henry @ Take 2
 Mind Your Language by Malu Halasa p.8
facts America’s Cold Shoulder: Hillary Clinton by Fran Liscio p.198
Waiting, Waiting by Simon Leigh p.250
E-Commerce by Tom McCarthy p.258
Alex Hoedt p.286

The Dream by Howard Evans p.28

fable White Hands by Simona Vinci p.112

Justine p.20
fashion David Oldham p.42
Diego Zitelli p.90
Kai Wiechmann p.120
Serge Leblon p.130
On, Off + On Again: Haute Couture by Martinez + Ruhwald p.144
Mary Rozzi p.172
Jonathan Frantini p.190
Thierry van Biesen p.204
Crena Watson p.228
Masoud p.264
Marcymay p.278
tank is room
Bump p.34
fine art Vehicle p.50
Nancy Haselswon p.78
Spencer Cobby p.136
William Cotton p.168
Heiko Fischer p.178
Martine Houghton p.212
Amarillo Eusthenopteron by Max Andrews p.234

Kelvin Murray p.126

flux Ludovik Carême p.158
Margaret Salmon p.218
Lise Sarfati p. 244

Gottfried Helnwein p.60

phenomenon She’s Room by Hideyuki Karikkomi p.100
Heiko Fischer p.178

4
Issue #6 · September 1999

Editorial:
Editors in Chief: Masoud Golsorkhi, Andreas Laeufer
Features Editor: Malu Halasa
Art Director: Andreas Laeufer
Arts Editors: Claire Canning, Anthony Wilson
Fashion Co-ordinator: Emma Greenhill
Fashion Editors: Giannie Couji, Charty Durrant, Jo Phillips, Christophe Martinez
Editorial Assistant: Nadine Sanders
Design Assistant: Greg Stogdon
Fashion Assistant: Alex Bernhard
Special Projects: Vicky Stewart
Sub Editor: Jo Glanville

Mogul: Julien Vogel

For advertising and business inquiries contact ++44.207.916 52 64 or E-mail: bill@gotank.demon.co.uk

Advertising France: Hélène Giorza, ++33.1.43 44 89 39

Tank strongly urges and demands unsolicited contributions; they must be accompanied with a self-addressed
stamped envelope if they are to be returned. Tank will not be held responsible for loss or damage in the post.
Tank is published six times a year by Tank publications Ltd. Reproduction of any material without written
permission of the publisher is an absolute no no. It is also assumed that model releases are obtained by the
photographer or contributor. The opinions expressed in Tank are that of the authors. Tank is in no way roam
responsible or liable for the accuracy of the information herein or any consequences arising from it. And
that’s the way it is.

Distribution by Comag: ++44.1895 433800

Printed in the UK by Williamson's Ltd.

Tank ISSN 1464-3472

PO Box 25319
London NW5 4ZD © Tank publications Ltd. 1999
Phone + Fax ++44.207.916 52 64
E-mail: editors@gotank.demon.co.uk Issue #7 · out October 1999

made possible with the kind support of

Core London Ltd: ++44.207.833 33 90

processing and scanning

Nylon Gallery: ++44.207.602 60 61

(for subscription details see page 292)

6
 People who can no longer speak to each other resort to cruder, blunter forms of com-
munication. The past ten years, some of the bloodiest this century, have seen the
results. Nationalism and language have long provided the lexicon for violence, as
recently illustrated by the empty conversations taking place between India and
Pakistan. A wrong word can spark a war or, sometimes, a long and brutal civil war.
words by Malu Halasa

After Algeria’s independence in 1962, the government of Colonel Boumedienne

made Modern Standard Arabic the official language, and in one fell swoop, vilified
the country’s fourteen Berber dialects and a colourful, expressive street French. To
Algerian revolutionaries, Arabic was the tongue of political utopia, since their rev-
olution against French colonialism had been hard won with chadors as well as
bombs. The only trouble was no one in Algeria, or indeed in the rest of the Arab
world, spoke Modern Standard Arabic, except for a handful of radio newsreaders.

To meet demands, Algeria recruited Arabic teachers mainly from the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt, but they had been poorly educated. Consequently, the
Algerians who obtained the better jobs after the revolution were those fluent in the
language of oppression - French. As poorer Algerian families, some who had eight
children or more, were moved into overcrowded, government built, low income hous-
ing, a very special climate bred violent soldiers and Islamic extremists side by side.
Both speak a poor Arabic and have extreme difficulties communicating to each
other over vast political and religious divides.

Curiously Algerians sick of the war have been hitting back - through language.
During the civil war, exiled Raï singers have been regaling their compatriots with
songs about illicit love and the scourge of Islam, alcohol. Now at home rappers use
a popular street vernacular and criticise both the Islamacists and the government to
mind your language
8 9
 massive audiences in Algiers. Meanwhile, in the mountains, where it is a punishable
offense for politicians to address the mainly Berber population in a language they
can understand, cassettes of outlawed Berber folk-singers echo throughout remote

MIU MIU
villages.

Nani o itteruno desuka?

Governments all over the world have been using language as a tool of social control
and political divisiveness. French, a pariah language in Algeria, represents culture

single 4c
and civilisation in Quebec. In both places, the young have been in the frontline.
Quebec separatists, keen to leave English-speaking Canada, became known for their
huge rallies, where teenagers painted their faces blue and white - Quebec’s national
colours - and shouted nationalist slogans. Separatists targeted young voters at uni-
versities by asking them, “Are you proud to be French?” “Do you feel inferior to the
English?”

By law, all of Quebec’s street signs are in French. Fifteen years ago the phrase on
car license plates was La Belle Province - “The Beautiful Province”. Nowadays
license plates proclaim, Je Me Souviens. “I Will Remember” alludes to a nonspe-
cific oppression that could date as far back as the eighteenth century or for an inci-
dent as current as last month. No Québecois knows for sure.
1.
In an atmosphere of accusation, even an economics chart in a high school text book
can be inflammatory. One showed steady economic growth in the province after
French became the preferred, public language. The opposite has been true. In the
Seventies, Montreal had been a major corporate hub for many Canadian, English-
run multi-nationals. The businesses remained in the city during the separatists’ mail

10 11
 box bombing campaign, but fled the city en masse before the first referendum on
Quebec’s succession from Canada. Montreal has still not recovered. All over the city,
vacant premises sit in the shadow of the newly built skyscrapers, which house the
museums and institutions promoting the French language.

The passion of the converted always borders on the hysterical, and French Canadians
are no different. Quebec stores must display signs in French. English signs are
allowed, but they are illegal if visible through shop windows. Proper names for busi-
nesses are tolerated, but apostrophes, considered English, are outlawed. So
McDonald’s became “McDonalds”. Officials from the Office de la Langue Française
MIU MIU
single 4c
attempted to crack down on signs displaying large Chinese characters in Montreal’s
Chinatown, saying that these denigrated the province’s official language and culture.

Je Me Souviens alludes to a nonspecific oppression that could date as

far back as the I700s or for an incident as current as last month. No
Québecois knows for sure.

Interestingly it is the popular vernacular, which threatens the official language more
than Chinese. When people buy something as innocuous as gum, their government
would prefer them to ask for la gomme à mâcher - literally “gum for chewing”.
Understandably the abbreviated form la gomme is more widely used. Languages are
2.
subject to trends and talking fast happens to be one of them.

This was a lesson that the English figured out by the mid-1700s before Dr. Johnson
embarked upon his great dictionary. In The Surgeon of Crowthorne about murder

12 13
 and madness at the OED, Simon Winchester quotes one of the good doctor’s pre-
decessors who believed in linguistic flexibility. “No language as depending on arbi-
trary use and custom can ever be permanently the same, but will aways be in a
mutable and fluctuating state; what is deem’d polite and elegant in one age, may be
accounted uncouth and barbarous in another.” What is deemed uncouth and bar-
barous last year can become standard practice in a matter of a few months.
Shu ‘am tq’ul li?
After Bosnia and Kosovo, nationalism became a byword for mass graves. During the
nationalist movements of the nineteenth century, nationalism was considered a
great, moral cause. Any group of people who aspired to have their own country need-
ed their own language. Inspired by Bulgaria’s fight for independence from Turkey
and the Italian nationalist struggles, Ben Yehuda moved from Lithuania to Palestine
before the first Zionists. He created Hebrew from ancient stories and prayers, incor-
porating the roots of other semitic languages, Aramaic and Arabic. When he could-
n’t find the words he needed to describe modern life, he invented them.
“Hebrew’s like Frankenstein’s monster, made from bits of old body parts.” Jo
Glanville is a Mid East specialist. “When I was first learning it, I felt uneasy, like
I was learning esperanto, a phony language.”
Yehuda was so single-minded he wouldn’t allow his children to play with other chil-
dren, in case they were exposed to different language. Once the new Jewish immi-
grants to Palestine began teaching Hebrew in their schools, the language not only
expressed their nationalist ambitions, but was an embodiment of them as well.
14
Phi ong aiu ianga?
One hundred and sixty vocal elements make up all human language from around the
world. English uses 55 compared to Norwegian’s 75, but these seem almost mini-
mal compared to the languages of indigenous African tribes, which incorporate up
to 145 vocal elements, according to anthropologist and film maker Hugh Brody. In
the current issue of Index on Censorship, Elsie Vaalbol is one of the last speakers of
Bushman or =Khomani (the “=” is the phonetic equivalent of the clicking sound)
in the southern Kalahari. She told Brody: “I loved the Bushman language ... If I
think about it now, my brothers could all speak Bushman, they all spoke it. But when
the bread came, then it was ‘Yes, Ma’m, yes.’”
Coger, to catch in Spanish, is used in mundane phrases like “catching a
train”. In the seventeenth century, the Spanish Conquistadors started
to coger Indian women, and coger has meant “fuck” ever since.
The effect of Afrikaans on Bushman was to cause its near extinction. This was the
same experience of the indigenous languages of North American Indian tribes when
they encountered English and French, and of Central and South American tribes
overrun by Spanish. The people with guns and horses inevitably control the vocabu-
lary, as well as everything else.
“Some 5,000 languages or distinctive dialects have faded away this century.” Brody
notes in the Guardian, “In the Americas alone there are more than 1,000 languages
15
 that have disappeared or reach the brink of extinction in the past thirty years.”
Many indigenous tribes lost their mother tongues through enforced state education.
Even though the words may have similar meanings, people don’t have the same
sense of self when expressing themselves in a language thrusted on them. Eva
Hoffman considers the process in her memoir, Lost in Translation. Without the rich-
ness in associations people acquired in their first language, they must rebuild their
world in the second. Sometimes they don’t have the will to do it, and perhaps this
loss of place and expression is a contributing factor to the uneasiness of many trib-
al peoples in modern life.
If they’re very lucky, a sympathetic government will grant them a land reserve, like
the South African government did for the Bushman or San people, and they can
start to rebuild. At the very worst, the only witness to their last dying gasp is a
Western anthropologist. Currently 5,000 indigenous cultures exist worldwide.
Despite poverty and vilification within their own societies, there has been a growing
global movement among them to reassert their ancestral rights over land and cul-
ture, and one of these rights includes speaking how they wish.
Like taking a machete to kill a mosquito, the biggest threat to little
spoken languages is Hollywood and pop music. Blame MTV, English is
everywhere.
Language extinction is well documented, and some Europeans on the verge of los-
ing their languages take bold steps. The Welsh decided they wouldn’t pay their bills
16
unless these were translated into Welsh. If anyone in the rest of Great Britain had
been paying attention, this could have set a curious precedence for immigrants in
the kingdom who speak a plethora of dialects and languages, from those of the
Indian sub continent - which total up to 1600 in India alone - to distinct Caribbean
patois. But then not everyone in Wales can read Welsh. And some Welsh speakers
can’t even carry on a conversation with their neighbours because the dialect from
the north of the country is so vastly different from the west.
Like taking a machete to kill a mosquito, the biggest threat to little spoken lan-
guages is Hollywood and pop music. Blame MTV, English is everywhere. As a web-
master for a leading European, fashion multinational remarks, “Try finding the
German word for ‘T-shirt’.” Despite the odds, obscure languages survive. Romansch
is a form of modern Latin, spoken in the Graubünder canton, by 0.6 of the Swiss
population. At this very moment in Naples, someone is ordering an espresso in
Italiot Greek, a mixture of Italian and Greek as it was once spoken in ancient
Athens.
Unesco’s Red Book of Endangered Languages in Europe (http://www.helsinki.fi/~
tasalmin/europe_index.html) makes fascinating reading. Romani of the gypsies is a
Central Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian and Indo-European language, which marched
from India and the Near East straight into Europe, absorbing a vowel sound or turn
of phrase from the various stop overs its speakers made.
The liveliest linguistic intersections occur when language takes a wrong turn. Coger,
“to catch” in Spanish, is used in mundane phrases like catching a train or bus or
even to catch or carry luggage. In the seventeenth century, the Spanish
Conquistadors started to coger Indian women. Over three hundred years later,
17
 Spanish tourists in Mexico City must stop themselves from employing the useful verb
in polite Mexican company because coger means “fuck”. In their alphabets, accents
and swear-words, languages carry the traces of heartache and disaster.

Nani o itteruno desuka is polite Japanese, Shu ‘am tq’ul li, Arabic from the streets of Beirut, Phi
ong aiu ianga, Khasi, a tribal language from India’s northeast; additional research provided by
Manfred Kronen, Juanita Cheung, Kim Pryde and Louise Gray.

18
 photos: Justine

jacket + skirt by Deborah Milner · shoes by Freelance

20
skirt + cape both by Elspeth Gibson
black velvet robe coat by Deborah Milner
assisted by: James, Bernd + Elise
styling: Faye Sawyer · hair: Fernando Torrent @ Public using Aveda
make-up: Liz Daxauer using Shu Uemura · models: Sian @ Storm + Chantalle @ Models 1
set design: Daryl McGregor · many thanks to Jeff + Andrew @ James English Studios +
Martin Butcher @ Direct Lighting cape by Mulligan
 When the dream began he was lying with his head towards the south-west, towards
the wealth corner. He knew it was the wealth corner because Doctor Li had told him
so. For this piece of information, Doctor Li had charged him £250. Doctor Li
charged him a further £50 for the brass spike he drove into the wall and for the crys-
tal which he suspended from the window. Doctor Li advised him to sleep with his
short story by Howard Evans
head towards the wealth corner. This had been difficult. He had moved his bed from
one side of the room to the other but, because of the layout of his home, he was
obliged to sleep diagonally across the mattress. His girlfriend didn’t believe him
when he told her he needed to sleep diagonally because he was so tall. As far as she
could see nothing had changed. He hadn’t grown any taller and his mattress seemed
to be as long as it was the last time she slept on it. She was wise enough not to press
him on the subject. He already had enough problems on his mind without her accus-
ing him of lying. She accepted to take one of the remaining triangles and make the
best of it. There were times when he wanted to tell her the truth but he was too
embarrassed to tell her how he gave his last £300 to the old Chinese Feng Shui
Master.

As the dream progressed, his body moved by degrees around the bed until his feet
were pointing towards the wealth corner and his head towards the area of helpful
people. This journey took more than an hour to complete but, finally, his body set-
tled into its new position. This is hard to believe, but the dream did continue with-
out intermission throughout his body’s journey and for another half hour beyond. The
dream was in real-time and linear. It was not the usual multi-layered kaleidoscope
of images and symbols typical of dreams. It was more akin to waking life in the clar-
ity of its narrative. The dream was exact in its premonition. The location was as it
would be. The people were as they would be. Even the weather was the warm grey
drizzle which could not have been anticipated from the long dry
the dream
28 29
 spell which preceded it.
I watched him dream his dream night after night. I watched his body turn its half
circle. I watched intently from within my dream, hoping for some clue as to what
went wrong. When his dream was complete I would wake up just as the sunrise
started to light my tiny room. Each morning as I woke I held my eyes closed for a
moment, checking the dream, checking to see if something had changed, checking
for something which might allow me to wake up and not be in this room. Each morn-
ing I realised that the dream was the same. Nothing had changed and I would have
to open my eyes to the same cold brick walls.
As the dream progressed, his body moved by degrees around the bed
until his feet were pointing towards the wealth corner and his head
towards the area of helpful people.
You probably realise something strange. Perhaps you wonder how it is that in my
dream I can watch the dream of another. In truth I do not watch his dream. I only
watch his body as he dreams. I only know his dream because he told it to me.
A month passed from the time when I started having the dream to the day I met
him. It was a whole month before I knew what was happening in his inner world as
his body turned on the bed. I started dreaming my dream the night after Dr Li had
driven a brass spike into my wall. It was not in the wealth corner but in the area of
fame. I paid Dr Li £50 for the spike and for the advice he gave me. Dr Li told me
that I would gain the fame for which I craved but it would not be for my acting. Dr
Li told me that one day, quite soon, I would be walking in a part of the city I never
usually visit. I would have an urge to go into a bar, to drink a glass of beer. In the
30
bar I would meet a man. I would know it was the right man because he would tell
me that he recognised me from somewhere. I would tell him that perhaps he had
seen me on television but he would say no, that he had seen me in a dream. He would
invite me to go with him to another bar, a quieter bar, where we could talk in pri-
vate. I would go with him and he would tell me that he had been visited by an old
Feng Shui Master. He would tell me what I had to do.
As predicted by Dr Li, I did find myself in a part of the city I never normally visit.
I was called to a late casting and, after it was over, found myself in need of a glass
of beer. I walked into a bar on route to the bus stop. As I waited for my drink a man
came up to me and said that he recognised me from somewhere. I already knew the
rest of the conversation and, resisting the temptation to be contrary, I followed it
through to its proper conclusion. The man asked if I would join him at his table so
we could talk in private. I told him he was supposed to ask me to come with him to
another bar. He said he knew but it was raining harder than he expected. Despite
my misgivings I joined him at his table near the cigarette machine. The man told
me he had been troubled by a recurring dream. In the dream the world was at war.
The scene was of awful carnage. In the middle of it he saw himself shouting orders
and directing the killing. He had been scared by the dream and scared of the future
it seemed to predict for him. He avoided anything which might lead him to that des-
tiny. He immersed himself in a reclusive life, studying philosophical and religious
texts. When his father was killed by an opponent’s bullet in Lahore, he was intro-
duced to Dr Li by the executor of his father’s debts. Dr Li told him that he had only
two choices. He could follow his heart and travel to Pakistan to avenge his father’s
death. In so doing he would connect with the destiny which he had already discerned
from his dream. The alternative was this meeting and the events that would unfold
from it. This choice would not only free him from his father’s debts, it would also
31
 free his own son, already lodged in his girlfriend’s womb, from the sins which his
father had yet to commit.

Paul
The man told me that after Dr Li’s visit he started to have another dream. In this
dream he meets me in a bar and asks me to join him for a drink. When we finish
our drinks he invites me to walk with him. We leave the bar and turn into an alley.
A man appears from the shadows with a gun and shoots him dead. The killer turns
the gun on me but it misfires. I wrestle the killer to the ground just as the police
arrive.

Forensic evidence implicates the killer in a series of motiveless murders. A life sen-
tence brings an early conclusion to what would otherwise become a reign of
unchecked terror. I am hailed a hero and through a karmic connection beyond my
understanding I guarantee the well-being of my progeny.
Smith
The man invited me to walk with him. I was still uncertain because of the change of
plan due to unexpectedly heavy rain. My companion assured me that it was the alley
that counted, not the bar. I was further reassured when we stepped outside and the
rain had become a warm grey drizzle. We turned into the alley and my awareness
of events was curtailed by a sharp blow to the back of my head. I regained con-
sciousness on the concrete floor of a police cell where I was later charged with three
counts of murder evidenced by the gun found in my hand. My companion was dead
single 4c
and my assailant was commended for bravery by the court that sentenced me to life
without parole. On my third day in prison I noticed a small brass button on the wall.
After some hours of picking and scraping with my nails I withdrew a brass spike
from the brickwork.
(c) Howard Evans, 1999

32 33
 art: Bump

34 35
page 37
Oliver Michaels
Employee of the Month \ Aug 1999

tie: Richard James - £60.00

shirt: Airey + Wheeler - £5.00
glasses: model’s own

page 38
Mike Watson
After Sales Co-ordinator

tie: Richard James - £60.00

shirt: Delsiena free time - £10.00
earring: Argos - £4.99
hair: Mike uses Wild Touch - £1.49

page 39
Jon Morgan
Divisional Manager \ Borough

tie: Richard James - £60.00

tie pin: Argos - £5.99
shirt: MARCUS - £10.00
glasses: model’s own
hair: Cliffords for men - £9.00
office plant: Sainsburys - £2.99
36 37
38 39
 photos: David Oldham

hat by Stephen Jones, turtle neck by Jean Paul Gaultier, child’s kimono by snatch, skirt by
John Rocha, tights by Fogal, shoes by Balenciaga, bag by Comme des Garçons
42
 (standing)
jump-suit by Alexander McQueen, velvet cape by Patty Shelebargar, shirt: stylist’s own, hair piece by
Basha Zarziega, bag + broaches by Butler + Wilson
(sitting)
hat by Yves Saint Laurent, jumper by Balenciaga, cape by Jean Paul Gaultier, boots by shoes by Jeremy Scott, tights by Fogal, skirt by Alexandre Herchovititch, turtle neck by Alexander McQueen,
Christian Lacroix bustier by Yves Saint Laurent, gloves from Blackout, earrings by Butler + Wilson, hair piece by Basha Zarziega
44 45
 styling: snatch
hair: Callum @ Vidal Sassoon
make-up: Adam de Cruz
special thanks to The Ashforth family

polo neck by Jean Paul Gaultier, jumper by Julien Macdonald, skirt by Balenciaga, tights by hat by Stephen Jones, dress by Noki, top by Valentino, bangles by Yves Saint Laurent, gloves
Fogal, shoes by Christian Lacroix, earrings by Butler + Wilson. from Blackout, tights by Fogal, shoes by Louis Vuitton
46 47
energy project
http://www.sisley.com

beat stories from big sur

FOR INFORMATION: 0161/2041064
 art: Vehicle

50
55
 the apokalypse exhibition
art: Gottfried Helnwein + words: Claire Canning

60 61
 In 1965, when the seventeen-year old Gottfried Helnwein began his artistic training
in Vienna, the Austrian Freedom Party put up posters, demanding,"Forget about the
past! Look ahead to the future!" Just a few days earlier the anti-fascist Ernst
Kirchweger had died of severe injuries inflicted by violent right-wing extremists dur-
ing a demonstration against National Socialism.

In 1969 Helnwein painted a portrait of Adolf Hitler and was expelled from the art
school on the grounds that any reminder of the National Socialist era was not only
damaging to the school but to society at large. Repression of National Socialism had
been official government policy, in which the Austrian people were complicit. Based
on this situation, Helnwein developed a visual language of apocalyptic visions that
can be understood all over the world.

The Apokalypse exhibition - a title interpreted by the artist to mean "a revelation of
the last of things" - in the Dominikanerkirche in Krems was in preparation during
NATO's war against Serbia, when news about the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from
Kosovo were broadcast hourly. As the people living in the Balkan peninsula are trau-
matised for the third time this century, there is no reason for an artist like Gottfried
Helnwein to make any other kind of work.

62 63
64 65
66 67
68 69
70 71
72 73
74 75
76 77
 the life and lineage of nancy haselswon
art: Charles Avery @ Nylon

78 79
80 81
82 83
84 85
86 87
 C.P.
COMPANY A PRODUCT DISTRIBUTED BY ph. SANDRO SODANO © LIFESAVER
C.P.
COMPANY
photos: Diego Zitelli

91
 jacket + hat by Paul Smith, shirt by Yohji
Yamamoto, scarf by Dries Van Noten
92 93
 jacket, trousers, t-shirt, arm band + belt all
by Dries Van Noten, hat by Paul Smith
94 95

coat, fake collar, shirt + wrapped band all by
Raf Simmons, jumper by PS Paul Smith, hat by
Yohji Yamamoto
96
styling: Christophe Martinez
grooming: Rista Dimovic
model: Mikolai @ Next, Richard Ruiz + Tanguy @ PH1
coat by Dries van Noten, hat by Stephen Jones for Dries van
Noten, jumper by Zonen van Thor
97
D i e s e l S t y l e L a b s t o re : 1 2 F l o r a l S t re e t , C o v e n t G a rd e n - w w w. d i e s e l s t y l e l a b . c o m - i n f o : D i e s e l U K 0 1 7 1 8 3 3 2 2 5 5
art: Hideyuki Karikomi

101
103
105
107
109
110 111
 A green light comes into the room through the window. Green like the tart pulp of
unripe tomatoes. Green like artificial grass. A green light that falls on my breasts,
stomach, thighs. Martian reflections that make my skin shine with unexpected and
subtle colours.

My legs are folded under me. I'm kneeling on the cold floor, my bottom on my
calves, my back straight. My arms hang at my sides, my hands brush the floor. I am
short story by Simona Vinci · translated by Minna Proctor
waiting.

I've been waiting for many hours, sitting so still that my body has turned to stone.
My muscles have seized and my skin is icy, coated with a thin veil of cold sweat.
Pins and needles run from the bottom of my feet to the back of my neck, chasing
away thoughts, weakening them. Turning them into fragile bubbles that burst one
by one.

He rushes in, slamming the door and tossing his car keys onto the glass surface of
the table in the foyer.
He turns on all the lights to see where I am, then he turns them all off again. His
breathing changes rhythm; it relaxes.
He doesn't say anything to me, he never does. But I know that he's happy: I'm here,
in my usual spot, naked and immobile, the way he likes. A divinity etched in live
flesh, but silent, mute.
He kneels before me and takes my head in his hands.
This is all he wants: to watch his hands caress my skin.
I like how they move over my body, how they caress and how they hold. I let go of
everything and allow him to adjust my arms and legs, as if I am a mannequin he is
white hands trying to put into the best position. I like the contrast between his hands and my skin.

112 113
 I like the fact that he is silent, his eyes wide open. That he doesn't pretend to love
me, or to want anything from me. All the others pretend. He doesn't.
But then, he's paying, he doesn't need to pretend.
Still, every time that I come to this room and undress in front of this
image, my body begins to tremble. Those white hands, made of thick
oil paint - I feel them on me: big, tender, hot.
I had stopped to look at a painting on display in the window of an art gallery: the
belly of a woman, round and black. At the top of the painting, the shadow of her
breasts. And on her stomach, two big white hands. Plaster of Paris gloves, stiff like
dead doves. There was a strange, almost sweet sadness to the image. It was a dis-
tant sadness that made you think of your first moments of life, when things are too
big and colours strange; when the hands reaching to lift you from the crib are
immense and frightening, but warm and protective too.
Sadness, and along with that, the tremors of a mystery. A black violent force that
hit me hard and made me shake.
I was going that way by accident. I don't remember what I was doing that after-
noon, where I was headed. I passed under the archway, saw the gallery window, saw
the painting. I stopped to look at it. He was on the other side of the window, a shad-
ow in the corner of my eye. Then he came out of the gallery and walked over to me.
May I? he asked, taking my hand and bringing it to his lips. I couldn't say no. His
palm was warm and dry. Big enough to contain my hand. Not even a finger slipped
out of his grasp.
It was hot that day, ninety-five degrees, and so humid that the air under the arcades
114
seemed to have set into a thick, elongated bubble. I took my hand from his and
pressed it to my forehead, my chin, my cheek. He didn't stop smiling. It wasn't a
pretty smile, it wasn't kind. But something held me there. We looked at the paint-
ing together for a long time without saying anything.
I once came into this room, the first time. And I took the money he offered. Then I
came back again and again. I keep on coming back every week, and I keep on tak-
ing his money.
At the beginning I counted the number of times I came here, and I counted the
money.
I don't do that anymore. Now I wait for the next time.
I never turn on the lights when I come in.
The painting is there, on the far wall. I get undressed in the dark, looking at those
two white marks, pasty and soft, emerging from the dark background. The woman's
stomach is taut, round, luminous like boiling chocolate, wrinkled like mud drying in
the sun. And, on this stomach, two enormous white hands. Big male hands, placed
there as if by accident. A man who, with his hands, encircles a woman - a continent
- who belongs to him. It makes me think of strength. The man is a dam, holding
back the fears. I know that it's a trap. Still.
Still, every time that I come to this room and undress in front of this image, my
body begins to tremble. Those white hands, made of thick oil paint - I feel them on
me: big, tender, hot. My legs fold, I lie down on the ground, on the cool floor, and
I wait. All my thoughts go away. They fall, are buried deep in a place I've never been
to, deep inside of me. My skin's all that's left behind, black like the skin in the paint-
ing, half European, half African. I am me. Suspended between two continents,
between two spirits; it's my destiny.
I wait, my thighs clenched, my arms loose at my sides. I close my eyes and I can
115
 hear his footsteps on the stairs. Here he is. He's opening the door. I hear his key
turning, the dry scrape of the lock, the sweep of the door swinging open. And then
I feel the cold air that wraps him like a coat, coming into the room with him, ruf-
fling the skin on my legs, already intolerably tense. How many minutes must pass
before his hands descend on me?
I lift my eyes a last time toward the painting. My pupils dilate to draw it all in, the
black, more black than the black of a dark room, and those two white hands reach-
ing out, by now the precise image of my desire, of my every desire. I am here, mute.
I don't want anything but this: his hands on my skin. Hot and tender, powerful like
a dam that keeps out everything: emotion, fear. Hands that placate, that anaes-
thetise.
I believe this is desire: to want something and only that. To forget everything else,
even your own name.
The most absurd thing, that no one would believe, is that we have never made love.
But I've never liked that expression. Of course we've made love. That's what we do
every time. Yet his sex has never entered mine. I have never caressed him with my
hands or my mouth. Maybe neither one of us will resign ourselves to normality, to
the inevitable conclusion of every sexual encounter. Every time I leave that room,
the bank notes tucked into my pocket and my legs shaking, I know that there are
other men out there who would do to me what he doesn't want to do, and then I
think, but he is the one I desire. And it is to him that I return every time.
At night I go to sleep with the sensation of his hands on my stomach and behind
my eyelids I can see the softness of the brush strokes on the canvas hanging in the
middle of the room. Every night I think, maybe next time. Next time.
When I put my hand on the doorknob, I suddenly had a strange sensation, as if the
lock had changed. The scraping sound was too slow in coming. I thought I might
116
have got the wrong door and turned to look back around the landing. I checked the
other doors, read the names on the buzzers, the numbers printed on dark red wood.
No, I wasn't wrong. It was the right door. But.
But, I wasn't wrong. Because, when the door swung open, the room in front of me
was not the same. There wasn't a mess. There were no signs of violence, of the dis-
order that thieves or vandals might have left behind. Everything was perfectly still
and quiet, every object in its proper place. But the wall at the end of the room was
naked, shining white, blinding like a projection screen.
I closed the door behind me and crossed to the middle of the room. I turned the
lamp on.
I couldn't get undressed. My eyes were glued to the white, terrifying desert. To the
nothingness that the room had suddenly become. I was cold. I pulled the collar of
my coat more tightly around me.
Then I heard his footsteps on the stairs.
I didn't know what to do. I stood immobile, but when he came into the room, some-
thing invisible and violent drew me to him. I threw my arms around his neck, seek-
ing the broadness of his chest, the grip of his arms. He didn't say anything.
Did they steal it? I whispered into his neck.
No, I took it back to the gallery. They found a buyer.
His arms tightened around me, his hands rose, they groped, slid, caressed, hugged.
He undressed me without turning off the light.
We fell to the ground. And it happened. It was like a hundred other times. Like a
hundred other men: eye to eye, mouth to mouth, sex to sex. But there were no
tremors, no dams, no hands, no fear, no surrender. I got dressed immediately after-
wards and ran down the stairs. I forgot the money.
Now I am home. Kneeling in the centre of a room in the dark. A cold green light
117
 The sports shop on the net
comes in through the window. A light that has the acid tones of a laser gun in a
video game. Green like the tart pulp of unripe tomatoes. Green like artificial grass.
A green that, with strange, Martian reflections, tinges my naked skin.
I sit still in this light and I wait.
I wait for the big white hands that can't come back.

Morgan Stone 28
works: Senior Systems Analyst
lives: New Jersey
likes: Vans, New Balance,
Simona Vinci's novel A Game We Play is published by Chatto & Windus. A book of her short sto-
Fred Perry
ries, In tutti i sensi come l'amore, was published in Italy earlier this year and has been shortlisted for
the Campiello Prize.

118 119
 photos: Kai Wiechmann

t-shirt by DKNY, fleece + necklace: model’s own

t-shirt by DKNY, fleece + necklace: model’s own
120 121
t-shirt by Moschino, necklace: model’s own
123
 styling: Atlanta Rascher @ The Industry
hair: Andrea Pante @ Aldo Coppola Agency, products by L’Oreal
make-up: Dina @ The Industry · models: Dan + Sarah @ Models 1, Lucy, Karri + Khalid
top by Calvin Klein, tracksuit bottoms by Adidas,
trainers by Reebok, necklaces: stylist’s own t-shirt, belt + jacket by Moschino, jeans by Armani, necklace + earrings: model’s own
 photos: Kelvin Murray

126 127
128 129
 photos: Serge Leblon styling: Marianne Ghantous

white cotton shirt by de Campos Resend’s fushia knitted top by Anna Heylen
130 131
mohair dress by Jurgi Persoons
133
blue knitted cardigan + denim trousers by Dirk Schönberger
135
 photos: Spencer Cobby

136
138 139
140 141
BERLIN CAPRI DÜSSELDORF HAMBURG LONDON MILANO MOSCOW OSAKA ROMA TOKYO TORINO · Inquiries: FOUR MARKETING 0044 171 287 67 67
 on, off and on again:
couture fashion week in paris

Pierre Bergé, chairman and spokesman of YSL, was on French television, repeat-
ing the old adage that haute couture was an elderly lady on her death-bed.
Couturiers like Yves Saint Laurent and three others - Monsieur Bergé didn’t men-
tion names - are the last of their kind. Is Mr. Bergé the Nostradamus of fashion?

It is true, Christian Lacroix was the last to launched a fully fledged maison de cou-
ture in 1987, followed by a ready-to-wear and perfume collection. There is nothing
to suggest that even the humongous LVMH has the nerve to pick up a fresh, new
designer and elevate him or her to the heights of couture that existed in the time of
giants.

But there have been signs that the old adage is just that - old. Didier Grumbach now
in charge of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute-Couture has opened Couture Week
to designers whose skill and craft are close to that of the couturier and who didn’t
want to get crushed in the stampede that has become the Paris fashion week in
October and March. This hints at a range of possible new destinies for the elderly
lady, other than the grave.
words by Christophe Martinez
144 drawings by Rikke Ruhwald 145
 The Off Couture Fashion Week this season pointed to some of these possibilities. The
first is Fashion as art. Nowhere is this version of the future in evidence than in the
collection presented by VIKTOR & ROLF, as underlined by the fact the label is as
much about the two Dutchmen as well as any of their creations. The show featured
them on stage, dressing a single model in ten outfits one on top of the other, the
most notable being a crystallised little girl dress, a Fifties tablecloth, flower print
ball gown and an ultra padded coat with unfinished, but highly colourful appliqué
lace. The show was then finished by a mountain-like cocoon cape adorned with a
giant rose. This was one performance, where the subjects is the idea of clothes,
rather than the clothes themselves. The blurring of the line between fashion and art
is underlined by the fact that more of Viktor & Rolf’s collections up to now have
found their way into museums and art galleries, rather than in the wardrobes of any
woman.

Far away from the tackiness of Milan’s collection last winter, ANGELO FIGUS
delivered highly distinctive clothes where Italian neo-realism meets Spanish surre-
alism. The men wore huge felt capes, black and white harlequin, peanut shape coats,
heavily draped cassock and paper-like, priest vestments. Some had white puppet
hands peeking through ample sleeves or enormous monk cowls stolen from Santa
Semana around their necks. God save Italy.

Elsewhere an alternative meaning is being tried out: haute couture you actually
wear. Some newcomers to the scene, strongly preoccupied with making clothes for
women, are gambling on a new breed of successful super rich, sophisticated, work-
ing female executives who sign their own cheques and are able to afford something
more unique and more expensive than designer clothes, which are no longer special
because they’re copied so quickly.
VIKTOR & ROLF
146
 ADELINE ANDRE has been testing the limits of poetic garment construction since
1981, and for this season’s show, explored rebirth with shapes in a pregnant trapeze
line with a plethora of apron effects. Her range of colours was as usual, delicate and
strong, but her surprising fabric innovation was silk fur. Her sense of humour shone
through the collection, with elongated fake satin fingers and glove handbags that she
promised me: once on, were thief-proof.

PASCAL HUMBERT is about chic craft. His clothes are worn by women who pre-
fer trousers to skirts, either with a matching, granny jumper de luxe enhanced by
knitted flowers, or they opted for an opened, softly tailored suit, with a flesh coloured
see-through sweater, perfectly accessorised with a leaves and branches roll-neck.
Humbert always remembers he’s not a snooty Parisian, and pays tribute to his
home-town in Alsace, with a new look dress, tailored in a way reminiscent of the
discrete charm of bourgeoisie and a made-to-measure, provincial atelier.

It’s unusual in couture when less is more. For the big fashion names, it was not a
sparkling season, but for some, the dream is not yet over. The most consistent show
this season was CHRISTIAN LACROIX who kept his trademarks: vibrant colour
combinations - such as fuchsia and sulphur yellow or chartreuse with real vermilion
and grass green - patchworks of fabrics, both minimal and naive, and neo-cubist
prints. The overall effect was remarkably sleek and clean. Styling without the usual
clutter of jewellery, handbags or hats.

ANGELO FIGUS

148 149
 ADELINE ANDRE PASCAL HUMBERT 151
150
 With a younger approach slightly inspired by the movie Quadrophenia, CHANEL
was strict simplicity for Karl Largerfeld. For day wear, the new Chanel suit based
on a grey woven, two-pockets jumper and knee length A-line skirt, with pom-poms
replacing the traditional white camellia, has the “I’m waiting for my scooter” look.
For the evening, most of the dresses were parachute shaped with a balloon effect in
the back. One, crisp, lilac silk with a few sequins spread on the hem was ideal for
landing on a New Age garden party.

Alexander McQueen went to battle at GIVENCHY, with a battalion of perspex dum-

mies rising out of the ground. His fashion onslaught was part Elizabethan, part
medieval, part Paul Poiret and part Scotland. Strong tailoring has always been
McQueen’s best weapon, from a fitted flannel dress with open split sleeves and an
unchained neckline styled with white cornet to a burgundy jersey bloomer dress
slashed in the front and a long Merovingian, beaded pearl, jacquard evening dress.
When will General McQueen be crowned King Alexander?

YVES SAINT-LAURENT was a lesson in classicism for the sensible wardrobe.

Shiny khaki masculine trench coat over a man’s trouser suit, raspberry or purple jer-
sey tunic dresses, black lesbian suits matched with a white shirt and black tie, in the
daytime. At night, a hint of Hollywood glamour for those black chiffon dressing
gowns and long black draped dresses with diamante buttons, which match a bubble
shaped mink coat with white lapels. The opposite of ostentation is sculptured ele-
gance.

CHRISTIAN LACROIX
152 153
 Haute couture as a means of marketing lipsticks: after a week among the satins and
silks, brocades and furs, one question was not answered, are clothes this expensive
still relevant?

The prestigious name of couture used to appeal to two types of women: Mrs. Smith
who looks at those evening dresses the same way her husband lusts after the latest
sports car, but neither of them obtain their wishes. Then there is Mrs. Loaded fre-
quently photographed in the society pages with her banker/mogul/arms dealer hus-
band in tow. She is eccentric enough to dress in couture all hours of the day or night
because she knows a rare species is about to disappear.

For the last fifteen years, haute couture has been less and less about clothes and
more and more about performance. Go to the glitzy shows, admire the workman-
ship, shake your head at the terrible prices no one can afford and then go and buy
yourself a nail varnish as a consolation prize. Haute couture has not been about sell-
ing clothes for a long time, it’s about maintaining a high profile, which can then be
turned into a quick buck by the sales and marketing of cheap products manufactured
in China.

CHANEL 155
154
 While the traditional market of haute couture has been shrinking mainly because
there just isn’t enough multi-millionaires with twenty-year old girlfriends to go
around, the skills to make couture clothing have not. The idea of more approach-
able, off couture should tempt women who know the value of money since they them-
selves have earned it. For the same budget they’ve been spending on the designer
labels, they could obtain unique pieces from dressmakers like Adeline Andre and
Pascal Humbert offering a service close to haute couture.

For the rest of us, haute couture can remain a distant inspiration or the most expen-
sive joke. In case you feel the need for a close encounter with art couture, the
Groningue Museum in Holland is organising a retrospective of Victor & Rolf’s last
five years in design, and their work could soon enter the art market. Investors
beware, expensive frocks are back, and not necessarily for wearing.

YVES SAINT-LAURENT 157

156
 photos: Ludovik Carême

158 159
 art: William Cotton @ Nylon

168
171
 photos: Mary Rozzi

coat and leather belt by Yves Saint Laurent, lavender satin panties by Fifi Chachnil, lavender
satin chair: private collection of Alexandre Matthieu
172
silk chiffon top by Gucci, double layered skirt by Jean Paul Gaultier lace dress by Chloé, sleeves by Balenciaga
 stylist: Lisa von Weise @ Filomeno
assisted by: Delphine Brossard
hair: Paolo Ferreira @ Callist
make-up: Phophie Mathias @ Marie France Thavonekham
model: Zdenka @ Next
creamy velvet short pants by Veronique Leroy, Willhelm striped organza collar @ Gerault Totem
showroom, gentleman’s collar + antique fedora: private collection of Alexandre Matthieu celedon + silver silk/ latex dress by Givenchy haute couture
 art: Heiko Fischer

178 179
185
186 187
creative
review
single 4c
189
 photos: Jonathan Frantini

red t-shirt by Gerrisol, denim boiler suit by Leive van Gorp, shoes by Charles Jourdantop by
Levi’s, trousers by Gerrisol, tie by A.NN
190 191
black dress by Gaspard Yarkievich, head band by Gaspard Yarkievich, jeans by Bless, shoes: shirt + jeans by 2047, pink bustier by Bless, denim bustier by Kiliwatch, denim hat by
stylist’s own Kristophe le Hublot, gloves + belt from Montrevil Market, shoes by Charles Jourdan
 denim top by Melanie Ramas, shorts by Sissi Holleis, Japanese shoes from Motrevil Market all by Steven Kalaïa
194 195
 stylist: June
hair: Peter @ Calliste · make-up: Valerie Jou de Lat
models: Marie + Saimi @ City, Mika, Katarina + Ray @ Next, Wan-Yi, Greg

pink top by Lucien, denim skirt by Levi’s, pop socks by Dim, boots by Rodolphe Menudier boots by Michael Perry
196 197
 If the Russian artists Komar and Melamid were to compile their portrait of
America’s favourite First Lady, it might look something like this: she might have
light brown hair tinged ever so slightly with grey. She might be in her late thirties
and slim, and dress in warm, feminine suits. She might be kind and have a Rosalyn
words by Fran Liscio Carter sort of crinkle to her eyes. She would spend her days in orphanages, à la
Diana Spencer, and might be photographed handing a rescued animal shelter puppy
to a family of Kosovar refugees, after throwing out the opening javelin at the Special
Olympics. She would wear tones of cocoa and amber and cream, not the cadet blue
power suits of an ambitious woman. She would signal nurture and grace and mod-
esty, she would be embraced and loved and still, someone, somewhere, would pro-
claim loudly at a bar that he would refuse a blow job from her.

You see, there is no perfect First Lady because there is no perfect woman, and even
as First Lady, no woman has or will ever enjoy what Fear of Flying author Erica
Jong has correctly called the "unambiguous success of a man."

Still, within those parameters, Hillary’s lack of success with the American public is
curious. She tries hard, but damn, Americans hate a woman intellectual in a posi-
tion of perceived power, and even though Hillary has been following a colour-by-
numbers blueprint for acceptance she still hasn’t achieved it. Barbara Bush always
seemed like someone I could fold laundry with. Rosalyn Carter never seemed dressed
up even when she was, and she always looked relaxed and happy. Nancy Reagan's
big Mrs. Potato Head face on her stick figure body emanated assurance, and her
loyalty to Ronald Reagan didn't puzzle me. I didn't like him, but I could see that he
hadn't given Nancy any reason to simmer and throw a frying pan at his head. Even
america’s cold shoulder: Betty Ford seemed approachable and "safe": after admitting her own addiction prob-
lems she opened up a great big eponymous detox centre for everybody else with
god and hillary clinton on the campaign trail
198 199
 addiction problems. But Hillary - everyone feels like she's going to get pissed off
and yell at us. When she appears on TV smiling and acting dignified, she's doing
everything right but we can't really let our guard down.
She would signal nurture and grace and modesty, she would be
embraced and loved and still, someone, somewhere, would proclaim
loudly at a bar that he would refuse a blow job from her.
You might think that her husband’s raging infidelities would create a sense of pub-
lic sympathy for her, but it hasn’t. A scale of 100 people for whom the American
public has greater sympathy might start with Jonbenet Ramsey at Number One. She
was the five-year old, peroxide blonde whose forced participation in ludicrous kid-
die pageants would have won her sympathy even before her strangled, molested body
was found in her basement two Christmas Eves ago. Dick Morris’ wife might appear
somewhere around Number 30, he of the toe-sucking prostitute scandal of recent
years. Mother Theresa might be Number Five or Six, even arriviste Ivana Trump,
with her bleached blond hair and frosted pink lipstick, might garner more sympathy
and affection than Hillary.
The women whom Hillary would definitely rate higher than might include Jocelyne
Wildenstein, the oversurgeried ex-wife of the Wildenstein Gallery heir - her bizarre
new catface and Medusa hair actually frighten gallery employees; and Leona
Helmsley, the ex-con wife of billionaire realtor Harry Helmsley. She lost sympathy
when she arrogantly barked at a maid, "We don’t pay taxes. The little people pay
taxes."
200
But Leona’s lack of popularity helps to understand Hillary. Both are perceived as
bossy women who only have any real power because they married someone power-
ful. In the movies, bossy powerful women are rarely filmed for the audience as also
loving, generous and resilient. Rather, they are the ones who end up dumped in the
moat, running down the street in their underwear, pushed into the vat of goo; in
other words, they are humiliated, defrocked, castrated of their power.
Now Hillary is trying a bid for New York State Senator. Is she qualified? She is so
way overqualified, that her qualifications, her education, her law degree, her exper-
tise within the American healthcare system, rocket her way past almost anybody
running in the country this year. But voters won’t vote qualifications. She’s still too
linked to Bill and his travails, and to the Whitewater scandal - the failed land deal
that started all of Ken Starr’s horny investigations in the first place.
I wonder what the attraction was between Hillary and Bill. They’re both very, very
smart, and they’re both very, very ambitious. That they love each other seems prob-
able since their daughter Chelsea appears kind and normal, a feat for any child in
America today, but a miracle for the First Daughter of an impeached sex addict.
Hillary points out in the premiere issue of Tina Brown’s Talk Magazine that Bill
was an abused child, which I don’t doubt. Anyone whose mother spent all her time
betting on racehorses (and had that black and white Cruella DeVil hair, which
looked like a skunk) is fodder for one of those popular American daytime talk shows
where bouncers keep panellists from ripping each other’s brassieres off. And yet,
Hillary’s constant and pathetic apologia for Bill is a mystery. In its current form she
quotes biblical scripture (“In Christian theology, there are sins of malice and sins of
weakness. This is a sin of weakness.”) which makes me think she’s been covering for
him from the start.
201

Anyone whose mother spent all her time betting on racehorses (and
had that black and white Cruella DeVil hair, which looked like a skunk) is
fodder for one of those popular American daytime talk shows where
bouncers keep panellists from ripping each other’s brassieres off.
"She’s a lady with some big problems. Some Very Big Problems," Hillary intoned
seriously on a night-time talk show during Bill’s first successful presidential cam-
paign. The lady referred to was Gennifer Flowers, whom we all know was not lying.
She and Bill had been having a long affair, and Hillary must have known it too. So
Hillary’s character is weaker than her outstanding credentials. She has lied to us
again and again about not believing that Bill’s various liaisons had actually taken
place. Is she then lying when she says she still loves him and that staying with him
is a sign of strength and not weakness? Was she horrified that he smoked a cigar
that had been housed by the walls of Monica Lewinsky’s vagina? Was she enraged
at the humiliation of her family?
I imagine she was, but she didn’t let on. In fact, I was stunned to learn on the news
last fall that Bill had spent Thanksgiving Day at his mother-in-law’s house, watch-
ing a football game on TV. His Mother-In-Law’s House. What kind of a crazy fam-
ily is this? What kind of conversation would you make with your mother-in-law,
after badly cuckolding her daughter over such a long period of time that your entire
marriage was a huge international joke and your genitals and semen were the sub-
ject of congressional scrutiny? And what kind of mother-in-law would have him in
the house in the first place? Did Hillary beg her mother on Bill’s behalf, in order to
202
establish a façade of normalcy for the American voting public? Did she do it for
Chelsea? Or did Mrs. Rodham - herself a divorced woman - call up and invite Bill,
telling Hillary to forgive her husband and come on over for some roasted bird and
a game. Either way, it sounds a lot like the long, tormented phone calls Dr. Laura
Schlessinger, the moralising call-in radio hostess, receives every morning from con-
fused spouses.
"Hello, Dr. Laura? My husband’s been cheating on me, and my mother knows about
it but she still wants me to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner. Should I?" These
calls usually end with Dr. Laura, as she’s known, sending the caller a copy of her
huge best-selling book, The 10 Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives.
While it is easy to guess at the elements of humour and intellectual brilliance that
mark the initial genuine closeness (now perhaps eroded) between Bill and Hillary,
there might also be another, unspoken bond. Perhaps Hillary knows she was lying
to protect Bill all these years, but now she believes she has to keep doing it so that
she doesn’t look like a liar, a weak person and a confused woman.
How sad about the lying. While it might not exactly "get her into trouble”, it is still
the part of Hillary we can’t escape. And it may be that part which, sadly, eclipses
the rest of her - the profound, energetic, committed part: the woman who would
actually make a powerhouse senator, but probably won’t. Because she, like her infa-
mous husband, has created mistrust and suspicion that won’t ever go away.
Fran Liscio is the editor and publisher of the satirical newsletter on domestic America life, Hip Hop
Housewife ... for Homemakers with Attitude; she can be reached at <franland@home.com>
203
 photos: Thierry van Biesen

short trousers by Joe Casely-Hayford, fins from Ocean Leisure,

trousers and jacket by Keupr/Van Bentm, shoes by Camper, ring by Double O
204
dress by Hut Up at Harvey Nichols, swim cap by Speedo at Harrods; top, skirt + shoes by
Issey Miyake, goggles by Speedo at Harrods; coat + shoes by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, top by Byblos, trousers by Joe Casely-Hayford, mask from Ocean Leisure; dress by Andre
frisbee by Galaxy at Harrods Walker, rubber ring from Harrods; top, skirt, cape + shoes by Kosuke Tsumura
dress by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, shoes by Ann-Louise Roswald; top + skirt by Red or top + skirt by Martine Sitbon, shoes by Camper; top by Uniform, skirt by Just MariOt, shoes
Dead, shoes by Camper by Camper; overall by Marc Le Bihan, shoes by Camper, paddles from Ocean Leisure
209
 styling: Marianne Ghantous
hair: Christophe Martin
make-up: Philippe Miletto
models: Faye, Vanessa + Henry @ Take 2
dress by Shinichiro Arakawa, shoes by Camper; shirt by Comme des Garçons Shirt, trousers top by Lorenzo Matassini, skirt by Deborah Milner, shoes by Ann-Louise Roswald, armband from
by Joe Casely-Hayford, Balloons from Ocean Leisure Harrods; top and skirt by Mélanie Rozema + Jereoun Theunissen, shoes by Camper
 photos: Martine Houghton

212
215
thanks to Quatuor 103:
Elza Szabo, Youri Bessières, Vincent Catulescu, Eric Karcher, Lola Daurès
217
 photos: Margaret Salmon

218 219
220 221
222 223
224 225
226 227
 photos: Crena Watson opposite: trouser suit by Keita Maruyama, ruffled shirt by Yao Souka, shoes by Robert Clergerie
left: back of shirt dress by A.F. Vandevorst · right: front of shirt dress by A.F. Vandevorst
228
 left: pleated skirt + sheer top by John Paul Gaultier, stockings by Gerbe, shoes by Robert Clergerie
dress by Paul Smith, shirt with tie by John Paul Gaultier, jacket by Isabel Marant right: skirt by Isabel Marant, top by Jerome L’Huillier, shoes by Robert Clergerie
230 231
 assisted by Carl Fox
stylist: Carole Legrande
hair: Rafael Salley @ MichaelJohn Management
make-up: Charlotte Reid for Decleor
models: Valeria + Alexandra @ Premier

left: shirt by Paul Smith, dress by Koji Nihommatsu

right: shirt by Yao Souka, cardigan by Isabel Marant, skirt by Eroto Kristos
232 233
 Starting off with a sequence that uses all the tricks of the IMAX rollercoaster-
meets-anthropology genre. We are travelling at high speed over the tops of trees,
their brain like complexity rolling by – a device designed to specifically induce an
earnest epic quality to the events which will unfold ... as the credits kick in. Their
arrangement on the screen appears in two lines, one of which unrolls in a countdown
art by Max Andrews
typeface. The other line oscillates above and below the first. We are in an unspeci-
fied country, whose Hergé-world atmosphere is manifested in a plethora of shoddi-
ly observed folk dances involving reconstituted traditional costumes. These are per-
formed at apparently random points during the sequence – Mexican lorry drivers
and Cuban twenty-somethings swigging home brewed Pisco brandy from tin cans
have been hung in a mixture and crossing over of crochet Inca hats with woven grass
headpieces. These have been executed in a design of one culture, but using the
materials of another. Quasi-Bangkok floating market hats have been woven in a jun-
cus style grass used by the indigenous people of the pampas of Tierra del Fuego for
hammocks and bridges. As they dance and whoop they down the local brew, reach-
ing a frenzy of chanting and stomping in a way an ethnico-terpsicorian academic
has instructed them, portraying a scene of his own devising. This has been over four
years in the writing, an alchemy of knowing nods to Stravinsky’s ballets that turned
the base metal of a pervasive teenage beat into exquisite gold by introducing sam-
pled panpipe loops.

We are in the cockpit of a craft, stealthy in nature, outside the starboard diamond
shaped window show the same territory of cloudy tree tops as before. Wispy water
vapour leaks from chinks in the canopy which reminds our dreadlocked pilot and
hero of the crisply cold street of his New York home that he had walked out onto
that morning, where the gutter steam had breathed past a blind man’s bagel stall.
amarillo eusthenopteron Jean-Michel Basquiet now clears the console top of empty spray cans, Madonna’s

234 235
 recipes for a proposed conceptual banquet on which they had been working, and
opens the ashtray with a wave of his soft hands in front of its door. Reaching for a
converted cigarette holder, recast in bronze and long enough to double up as a book-
mark for his copy of Howard Carter’s diary of the Giza plateau excavations, he
stokes it with a glob of Benedictine picture varnish and lights up.
Every time he made a mark on the horizontal canvas (a flick of the stick
or a dashing dribble) he was incorporating a contrived twitch. It began
as a nothing more than the flourish of a conductor and yet developed
into the sort of contortions that would embarrass all but the most
floral of baton wielders.
Basquiet communicates in short sentences, and with embittered spitting dental frica-
tives whenever recounting his torture, doing over by the publication of conspirator-
ial texts etc. From his scant research, Basquiet had a fuzzy idea of where he was
headed. From the cerebral eviction put into place by the action of the smouldering
varnish to the rage of the dispossessed, the hopping misfiring of neurological sparks
had clustered and clotted in his cranium. From these storms came voices that lit up
both hemispheres - snatches of conversation in echo chambers, spinning newspaper
headlines, and spot-lit heads that cackled madly. Above all the holy grail of his a-
parallel pseudoworld - a revolving image of a plaster cast taken from the walls of
an elaborate underground cave system scarified with cryptogrammatic expressions.
Spirals, copies of ancient heritage plaques, glyphs, nomadic patterns of travel from
locations in Paris to New York with slippages to Micro Polynesia, Aix-en-Provençe,
Haiti, Bruce Nauman’s ranch and a curve of Fireplace Road north of East Hampton,
236
Long Island, towards Springs and Gardiner’s Bay facing north where the concrete
ends and the asphalt begins.
Cut to: a residence with all the appearances of a being some miles south of this last
location where Pollock finished playing the leaves of the hedge with his piss, and
after rearranging his crotch area walked with a swagger back to the painting which
lay hopelessly prone in the grass. Strictly speaking working outside didn't exactly
count as working in silence. The meandering singing of Catbirds and the wind man-
aged to convince Jackson now and again that he was listening to something other
than the hiss of his own head, or the incessant chattering of the left half of his brain
to the right. The hedge steamed. Jackson’s gait was one of those that managed to
convey sincerity and panache all at once. Apparently balanced locomotion was
achieved with his spine at a subtle angle away from the direction of travel. Under
normal circumstances this would render the illusion of his staggering incompatible
with the overall glide. He wore a black T-shirt and blue grey work pants with deep
pockets, both items satisfyingly trailed with paint. His shirt had been troubling him
all day. He had been trying to kid himself that he’d not really been looking at it, but
in flicking his eyes down so much his eyeballs had started to ache. Every time he
made a mark on the horizontal canvas (a flick of the stick or a dashing dribble) he
was incorporating a contrived twitch. It began as a nothing more than the flourish
of a conductor and yet developed into the sort of contortions that would embarrass
all but the most floral of baton wielders. Being alone at the back of the studio he
felt he may as well try and embarrass even himself. He launched into the full bloom
of balletic stag leaps, trying to achieve sideways drift across the canvas by taking
small run ups and holding a prancing form whilst flicking back with a pantomime-
like dart with a well loaded paintbrush. The loose nest of marks on the canvas looked
far too pretty as he seemed to have completely overindulged in violet. Every time he
237
 traversed the canvas with a leap he stared forward whilst concentrating at the bot-
tom periphery of vision at any additions to the black shirt.
Jackson decided he had had enough of painting for one day, and gathering up the
sticks and brushes from the long grass dumped them in a large dented tin of solvent.
It was late afternoon, and he was ready for a cocktail. He made his way to the stu-
dio dragging the painting behind him. The studio was dim and although it had been
cleaned every morning before he got up, retained a faint waft of decaying fruit. He
lowered down two sets of clamps by unwinding several lashing of sisal from the brass
yachting fixtures bolted to the wooden posts of the studio’s framework. These clamps
fitted onto the timber of the painting’s support with a twist, and with a cam-
panological hoist the spattered canvas lurched high into the eaves. From there its
exact height could be tweaked until the bottom edge was level with the rank of other
efforts some fifteen or twenty in number that hung like panels in a giant beehive.
With the ropes secure Jackson admired the afternoon’s work from twenty feet
below. A tributary of violet primer made slow progress on its downward dribble, but
he could track its progress by moving his head side to side to catch its gloss in the
darkness above. With arms outstretched he kept the flow in sight whilst slowly kneel-
ing. He held this devotional pose until the violet finally moulted onto the sleeve of
his T-shirt: an achievement which required only the smallest of manoeuvres whilst
the droplet was in flight.
Cut to:- a drawing room of a large country house on a large deer-park estate in
Southern England, some time in the future. The far-carrying plaintive notes of
Peacocks juxtaposed with panning shots in the mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness style.
A few extended interior shots of light coming in through the windows and striking a
large sideboard. This piece of furniture, a relic to the history of the house. In the
238
Recalling tales of legions of soldiers seen regularly over parts of the
Sussex coastal hinterland, his terror is doused by this knowledge and
what he had managed to pick up about meteorological oddities from
cheap weather-porn television.
same way that cast iron Singer sewing machine tables make great stands for
aspidistras, a vast mechanical code breaking machine has been adapted to dinner
party purposes. Its thick frosted acrylic top in British Telecom yellow just keeps on
glistening as the soundtrack swells with a passionate flurry of violins and flugel
horns. A Ford Model T makes its way up the unfeasibly long drive, lined with blos-
soming cherry trees, then a stand of cypresses. For this is the retreat of a living-fos-
sil, a remnant from the heyday of Impressionism who by strange events unbeknownst
to us (as the screen flashes in almost subliminal flashes of blinding lights and
syringes being stuck into our estate-owner’s lower abdomen) has found himself in
the current scenario. Pulling into the gravel driveway, the tyres make arcing inci-
sions across its geometrically combed swirls. Our host is expecting guests and he
wastes no time in entering the room, and polishing the sideboard. All this time we
haven’t yet seen his head, just neck down or made invisible by reflection in the win-
dow of the Model T ... this carries on until the guests arrive in ten minutes time. In
the meantime he vacuums rugs made from the hides of various endangered species
– a pseudoryx pelt from Vietnam sticks to the brush-hose, refusing to yield to the
dual-cyclone suction.
Horizontal wipe to: Basquiet’s advanced technology fighter. Library footage of the
aircraft refuelling, linked up to an unmarked tanker via an umbrella-hopper con-
traption that flails around in the turbulence briefly before docking. The soundtrack
239
 documents the supposed radio exchange between Basquiet and the tanker pilot, who
speaks French with an incomprehensible Texan accent. Jean-Michel explains he is
not French, although of Haitian extraction (subtitles appear that read) : “The inven-
tion takes flight! Our proto-adequate symbol will overcome multiple mucoid exteri-
ors – materialist exhibitions are changing, pursue a resistant canvas, then practice.”
The tanker then detaches itself and is not seen again.
It is unquestionably Claude Monet, although his face has been
stretched and pinned from recent cosmetic surgery.
Cut to: Pollock’s studio exterior at night. Jackson is sitting in a deck chair illumi-
nated only by a square candle that flickers disobediently on a side table, and the dim
light from the waning moon. He has had a skinful of martinis constructed, as is his
custom, by atomising vermouth over a glass of frozen gin. Having recently per-
suaded himself to drink liquor in a fashion other than on the rocks, he has coped
with the constraints of cocktail etiquette in a variety of ways. Obsessed with highly
elaborate creations (unpalatable but highly resonant drinks that are volatile and sub-
ject to the forces of entropy) Jackson argues to himself that they are highly sugges-
tive to the suggestible, and hence situate themselves within a discourse of hysteria.
He dribbles. The screen fades to black, and the leitmotif of the opening sequence is
reprised on a prepared piano. Blinding white light coordinates with the trilling coun-
terpoint of bleating Theremin sounds. Jackson’s face emerges from the burn-out, it
is frozen (this is the time-slicing sequence they have all been talking about). Droplets
of vermouth hang in the air as the camera orbits around his scalp, then pulls up in
a vertiginous swoop. The sky splits with a gurgle of thunder, red dust-clouds and
240
swarms of primary coloured locusts. Jackson looks at the bottle of gin then back at
this catastrophic orifice, which he takes as mirage of some sort. Recalling tales of
legions of soldiers seen regularly over parts of the Sussex coastal hinterland, his ter-
ror is doused by this knowledge and what he had managed to pick up about meteo-
rological oddities from cheap weather-porn television.
Avoiding all the clichés of abduction sequences, and neatly incorporating budgetary
restrictions, the next scene uses a miniature model of what until now Jackson has
taken to be his studio and house, but which is in fact a celestial body with its own
atmosphere where he has been kept in a “paddock” terraformed with a Disney-type
understanding of the required elements for a climate of artistic production. This
globe is seen through the window of Basquiet’s stealth fighter, which is hiding in the
locust plague in the apocalyptic sky. Basquiet’s mind empties of all clutter as he
depresses a switch in the cockpit. A hatch opens between the tail fins and a retinal
projector (conceptual designers suggest looking at fungal fruiting bodies) flies down
to lock inside Pollock’s orbits. Whilst casting a holographic multi-media presenta-
tion directly into his gaze the device simultaneously transports him towards, and
eventually into Basquiet’s clutches. Pollock sees visions of multiple paddock-globes
interlinked with raised walkways, and a central bar. There are white boards and pens
everywhere so ideas, drawings and diagrams can be noted down whenever inspira-
tion strikes. Everything is set up in order to supposedly produce the ideal climate for
collaboration, and art making. The project is the brain child of a shadowy figure,
represented in cartoon version in the presentation. He is the benevolent despot who
keeps the cocktail bar, organises activities and ganzfelt sessions for his paddock
dwellers. Jackson sees other “guests” being encouraged to exhibit in a number of
spaces from a library including “Armoury”, “Degenerate” and “Converted paint-
factory” etc. and to collaborate. Some of the artists are seen in outtakes grappling
241
 with unfamiliar cutting-edge equipment (Alexander Rodchenko and Gerhardt
Richter frolic over a tiny canvas with double-ended brushes of similarly diminutive
proportions) with hilarious consequences. Pollock’s paddock-globe is getting small-
er and smaller. Basquiet fixes back his hair with a rubber coit and turns to Pollock
with squinty eyes as he rises from the adapted zig-zag shaped bomb doors on a
hydraulic ramp. The soundtrack now features a spineless jazz-funk number, punctu-
ated with references to creationism, the illegal fossil trade and Gaia or the “earth
mother”. There is a “meltdown” section before the chorus in which the singer mim-
ics various forest bird species. Repeat to fade.
Cut to: the drawing room of the country house. The shadowy figure seen in the mul-
timedia presentation is decanting some sherry. As he dialogues with his henchwomen
we realise that he is the estate owner seen in preparation previously. Now we can
see it is unquestionably Claude Monet, although his face has been stretched and
pinned from recent cosmetic surgery. Placing the sherry in the middle of a huge egg-
shaped table, we catch a glimpse through the crystal bottle of a group of suited char-
acters who are practising archery on the front lawn of the house. A gleaming lake
and severe concrete folly can be seen in the distance. At this point in the film we
begin to realise the full extent of Monet’s covert program for a soon to be unleashed
new movement in art. This has been created through a hitherto immiscible blend of
selective breeding, isolation, and close telemetric monitoring. Restyling himself as a
mentor figure, and investing his significant royalties from the sales of Waterlilies
umbrellas and shopping bags, the details of the technological advances are glossed
with references to genetically modified crops and shamanic practices involving the
ingestion of Fly Agaric fungus. The sound of a solid gong has summoned everyone
to the drawing room. Pollock and Basquiet join them. Pollock has been allowed to
freshen up, and has changed into a antique golf outfit with a cap like a Dickensian
242
urchin. Monet introduces Pollock to the guests, explaining that he was one of the
core “reservoirs” kept in the dark about the project until now as a point of com-
parison and distillation of what he calls “cosmic angst”. He recounts a few tales of
Jackson climbing on the roof and howling at the moon and cites the example of his
unfettered synergy with his pet crow. Pollock stands up and delivers an impromptu
speech. He slurs through an account of his upbringing and formative moments. One
of the attendant henchwomen represses a titter at these biographical irrelevances.
Clearly wanting to bring a swift resolution to the film (which might begin to sag hor-
ribly during this long speech) she immediately falls in love with Jackson’s vulnera-
ble and undistilled energy. Suddenly realising she is the necessary romantic element
that will take the plot to a comfortable yet unresolved ending, and understanding the
chick-flick appeal of such a twist, the focus goes soft and the soundtrack reprises the
theme once more. Pollock’s eyes, still bloodshot from the clamping retinal projector
return her doe-eyed gaze with a sideways smile. Beside himself with the remarkable
happenstance that has spontaneously occurred, he winks like a cowboy, sits, spits
and then leans back on the back legs of the chair.
Introduced by a jingling surf-guitar melody, as the screen blacks and the credits roll
at last, we see Jackson and Belinda (for it is she) having a pillow fight in pristine
white underwear, cycling past a field of sunflowers on a tandem and browsing
amongst an ethnic market. As the theme returns we see a series of sepia-toned snap-
shots of Basquiet, Monet, Pollock, Richter, Rodchenko, Mondrian and all the other
reconstituted artists as babies.
(c) Max Andrews, 1999
243
 photos: Lise Sarfati courtesy Magnum Photos London

244 245
246
248 249
 Inland Revenue Waiting Room, Woolwich
waiting, waiting
photos: Simon Leigh+words: Masoud

Magazines are about going on fanciful voyages from the comfort of your armchair.
Well ... Not this one. These are places you’d perspire than aspire to be in. They are
places, where you wait to have your liberty, money, health or hope taken away from
you. Places we hope you never end up. Is there stuff to be gleaned from the decor?
Do plastic flowers ever fade in a rape crisis centre? Have the cells down at the local
nick been feng shuied. Which renegade presenter of Home Front decorated the inter-
view room at the local tax office? Is there more to be grateful about than it first
appears? Is Tank always asking more questions than it hopes to answer? We sure
hope so.
250 251
 Camden Vehicle Pound Payment Office Sexual Trauma Suite @ Charing Cross Police Station

252 253
 Marcus A. Ling H.T.H Dental Surgery, Wood Green Holding Cells @ Charing Cross Police Station

254 255
 136 (Code for Mental Illness) Assessment Suite @ Gordon Hospital, Victoria Interview Room @ Charing Cross Police Station

256 257

words by Tom McCarthy
e-commerce
The net has generated its own kind of peculiar economy
where the normal rules of capitalism are turned on their
head and a company’s success is measured by how much
money it loses and how fast it’s lost.
258
Capitalism, like philosophy, was always speculative. Eschewing closed arenas in
which all terms could be fixed, it created value by projecting itself phantasmally
across imagined futures. Using varied-risk investment to produce returns, it played
a kind of fort-da game where profit was generated only by continual loss.
Speculation was its trump card, the password guaranteeing it entry to that miracu-
lous zone of transmutation that makes valuation surplus to actual value, what might
be more real than what is: it was its alchemist’s stone.
Now, with the rise of e-commerce, speculative capitalism has become more spectral
still. All types of exchanges that up to two or three years ago were inconceivable
without traders’ premises and cars to take us there have moved to the internet, that
almost unquantifiable set of nodes and points that, collectively, model themselves on
Real-Space but obviate it simultaneously (a chat room or an online auction’s par-
ticipants could be in Latvia, Peckham or Alaska – it makes no difference). Perhaps
this abstraction accelerates – even realises, sublimates – the abstracting process that
lies at the heart of commerce, that can be traced back to the first Dutch trading
houses. Or perhaps we’re heading for some kind of implosion, a collapse stemming
from a basic and irreconcilable lack of compatibility between the material and vir-
tual worlds. And if we’re pondering these two scenarios, perhaps we should also ask
ourselves: which one is sexier?
First, let’s look at what’s actually being traded online. There are your standard
goods, of course: books, CDs, computers, TVs, fridges. Then there are services: hotel
and flight booking, banking, insurance, general financial advice, entertainment.
Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts, predicts that by 2002 internet
consumer trade will top twenty-two billion dollars per year in America alone. Twenty
per cent of all e-commerce follows the straight vendor-to-customer pattern by which
the consumer buys a product at a fixed price – only on the internet the lack of over-
heads on the part of the trader, plus the customer’s ability to compare prices and
259
 access the cheapest one at lightning speed, puts the latter at a distinct advantage.
Even more of an edge is gained in the increasingly popular practice of online car-
boot sales, at which surfers hawk and purchase goods directly to and from one
another, cutting out the trader altogether. These go hand in hand with online auc-
tions, organised by the likes of QXL, uBid, Freemarkets (who held auctions worth
more than a billion dollars last year) and Priceline, which allow punters to bid for
anything from cars to mortgages.
The other eighty per cent of e-commerce is business-to-business. Payrolls, invoicing,
accounting and so on – all these are already being contracted and executed online.
Cisco, a software manufacturer, expects to be able very soon to close quarterly books
of large companies within two hours of each period’s end. With offices networked
and transactions and data being logged and forwarded instantaneously, business
efficiency is being massively increased. Only – irony of ironies – the access to the
web enjoyed by present-day white collar workers sees them spending large portions
of their office hours either goofing off, exchanging emails with friends and access-
ing pornography (something the Surrealists would have loved: that the very circuits
and milieu of the quotidian, of business, should become invaded by explosions of
erotica), or looking for new, better-paid, more rewarding jobs. Bill Gates’ latest
book’s called Business@the Speed of Thought; how unfortunate for him that he
can’t control what people think about.
The real action in e-commerce, though, is taking place in the field not of content but
of stocks – stocks in the very companies that offer online services. Freeserve, an out-
fit that employs just thirty people, has a turnover of ten million pounds a year and
has yet to show any notable profit, received a market capitalisation of one and a half
billion pounds when it floated in June. Yahoo!’s valuation in 1998 was more than
three hundred times its projected earnings for that year. Even companies that
have never earnt a penny – or made quite considerable losses – see their share price
260
rising exponentially as soon as they go public. Here, the speculative gap is truly ver-
tiginous – and yet the wider the distance between a company’s spend and its earn-
ings in its start-up phase grows, the more investors clamber over each other to grab
a piece of it. As American Nasdaq traders wryly quip: “The bigger the burn, the bet-
ter the earn.”
The access to the web enjoyed by present-day white collar workers
sees them spending large portions of their office hours accessing
pornography (something the Surrealists would have loved) ...
The scramble for e-stocks, and their astonishing appreciation, has been likened in
passing by economic historians to two previous market events: the Dutch tulip craze
of the seventeenth century, and the English South Sea Bubble scam of the eigh-
teenth. Both episodes are discussed at length by Charles Mackay in his 1821 study
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In the first tulips,
then native only to Turkey, were deemed so valuable that a single bulb of the Semper
Augustus variety was worth five and a half thousand florins – the same price as fifty
oxen or forty thousand pounds of cheese. In the second, a company spuriously claim-
ing to be on the verge of tapping the gold reserves of South America’s eastern
seaboard saw its shares elevated to astronomical levels. Both commodities – bulbs
and shares – eventually crashed back to earth, becoming virtually valueless and half
bankrupting their respective countries in the process.
Analogies between these episodes and the current one warrant detailed
consideration. Under scrutiny, the tulip comparison wilts after a while. Their inflat-
ed value was due mainly to their rarity; e-stocks, by contrast, are ubiquitous. More
than ninety internet companies have made their stock market debuts in the US alone
261
 so far this year. Tulips have no practical use; software that finds you the cheapest
flight or fills in and submits your tax form without you lifting a finger does – and,
investors not unreasonably presume, will see a sharp increase in both use and
demand as more of the world moves online. The South Sea Bubble story, on the
other hand, rings eerily familiar. The crucial, founding myth of the South Sea
Company was that it had unfettered access to the gold and silver mines of Mexico
and Peru, which were (it claimed) in their turn inexhaustible. Space and access: the
two defining qualities claimed for the virtual world by its proselytisers – claims
whose accuracy, in a system whose spatial determination is entirely arbitrary and in
a global climate in which vital and potentially constrictive legislation is being debat-
ed and drafted, in which filtering and even censorship are firmly on the agenda and
in which connection tariffs vary wildly between continents and countries, is still far
from self-evident.
One aspect that all three phenomena share is, as much as their popularity, the pop-
ularising effects that they brought about. In both previous episodes, after the eco-
nomic elite who’d gone in with the first wave realised that the value of their com-
modities was slipping and needed some bolstering, they flung the doors of the
exchange open to the hoi polloi – that is, to the middle classes and even the better-
off artisans and shopkeepers. Want status? Want to mix with people who don’t
smell? Buy a tulip. Want to secure a better future for your entire family? Then think
The experts hoover these shares up like so much cocaine: they must be
good.
South Sea. You know it makes sense. With more than six million Britons already
online and the launch of web-TV looming, the purchasing of shares ceases to be the
preserve of the monied aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie: if you can find your way
around a site, click a button or press your finger to a screen, you can speculate as
262
well. The experts hoover these shares up like so much cocaine: they must be good.
“It seemed,” Mackay writes of April 1720, “as if the whole nation had turn
stock-jobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up by crowds, and Cornhill
was unpassable for the number of carriages. Everybody came to purchase stock.
‘Every fool aspired to be a knave’.” For Exchange Alley read the Nasdaq Index.
Spurred by the South Sea Company’s success, countless other ventures sprang up.
Mackay lists eighty-six of them. There was the scheme “For effectively settling the
island of Blanco and Sal Tartagus”; another “For trading in hair”; a third “For
improving the art of making soap”; a fourth, precursor to the data-encryption
schemes you can buy into via Entrust or Baltimore Technologies, “For buying and
fitting out ships to suppress pirates”; and, best of all, one “For carrying on an under-
taking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is”. Shares in this last ven-
ture, so perfectly echoed today in the vague “e-solutions” premise marketed by the
likes of Ecsoft and I-cube, sold one thousand shares on its first (and only) day of
trading. At three o’clock its chairman closed his office, left the country and was
never heard of again.
If the ending implied by this speculative comparison seems stretched, over-invested,
then so be it. If you want a measured, informed prognosis of how the current boom
will prosper, read the FT. What you can read first in Tank, though, is this: even if
the e-stock bubble vaporises, ferrying away with it into the no-space of fiscal death
the hundreds of billions invested by fools who would be knaves who would be stake-
holders, this can only, ultimately, shore capitalism up, representing as it does an
offering to the void that always, eventually and as ineluctably as the repressed, as
ghosts, returns something. There is no Third Way. There’s no Second Way either.
Only relentless speculation, online and off.
Tom McCarthy can be reached at <tom@metamute.com>
263
 photos: Masoud

264 265
ROTOR concept + styling: Frankie Goldstone
stylist’s assistants: Nadine Sanders + thanks to Doug Haywood
photographers assistant Kay Wahlig
hair: Kevin Ford @ Public, for the Lounge using Kiehl’s
make-up: Charlotte Day @ Transit
models: Charlotte B + Laura K @ Models 1, Victoria Palmer @ Premier,
Doug Haywood @ Bookings Men, Leila
special thanks to Tommy Mathews for the Rotor

sponsored by boo.com
270 271
274 275
 p.264
pink skirt + top by Balenciaga, scarf by Martin Kidman, necklace from Jezebel,
shoes by Indoor Sole to order, tights by Wolford

jacket by Antonio Berardi, top by Kenzo, necklace by Erickson Beamon

rubber dress by Alexandre Herchcovitch, black net wrap (worn underneath) by

Kostas Murkudis, black ruffle from Liberty’s, earrings from Jezebel, tights by
Wolford, shoes by Christian Lacroix

p.266
red + green printed dress by Antonio Berardi, red stole by Markus Lupfer, beaded
earrings from Erickson Beamon, shoes by Reinaldo Laurenco, tights by Wolford

p.269
dress by Givenchy, tights by Wolford, shoes to order from Indoor Souls, bag by
Samantha Heskia

p.270
suit by Gaultier, white mesh t-shirt by Fubu @ www.boo.com, tie worn as belt by
Gaultier, white pumps by Austin Dursley to order

green dress by Antonio Berardi, white coat by Maria Grachvogel, green bracelet
from Jezebel, tights by Agent Provocateur, shoes by Alexander Herchcovitch

p.272
top + shirt by Christian Lacroix, neckpiece by Van Der Straeten @ Erickson
Beamon, crystal wrist cuff by Erik Halley to order from Erickson Beamon, tights
by Wolford, shoes by Miu Miu, bag by Samantha Heskia

green Queen of the Jungle t-shirt by Cosmic Girl @ www.boo.com, gold sash by
Dries Van Noten, gold kilt by Comme des Garçons, shoes by Miu Miu

p.274
red dress + embroidered wrap gillet by Kenzo, paper skirt (worn as underskirt) by
Markus Lupfer, tights by Wolford, shoes by Miu Miu

black shirt + jacket by Prada, grey tracksuit bottoms by Fubu @ www.boo.com,

denim tie by Austin Dursley to order, trainers from a selection @ www.boo.com

p.276
satin ruffle skirt by Sonja Nuttall, neck ruffle from Liberty’s, gold arm cuff by
Van Der Straeten @ Erickson Beamon, tights by Wolford, shoes by Converse from
a selection @ www.boo.com

276 277
 photos: Marcymay

278 279
 previous page: dress by Maria Chan, skirt + sleeves by Robert Cary-Williams

opposite: left: top by Godfrey, skirt by Robert Cary-Williams, boots by Ghost, right: top + skirt by Ghost,
shoes by Manolo Blahnik for Clements Riberio

this page: dress by Meg Andrews, coat by Christophe Lemaire

280 281
jacket + skirt by Ghost
283
 stylist: Rachel Davis
make-up: Giselle
models: Meredith @ IMG, Lucas & Ann Louise @
Assassin, Francessa @ Models 1
thanks to Clerkenwell House
left: top by Godfrey, skirt by Robert Cary-Williams, boots by Ghost, right: top + skirt by Ghost,
shoes by Manolo Blahnik for Clements Riberio left: dress by Donna Karan, right: dress by Ghost
284 285
 photos: Alex Hoedt

286 287
288 289
291
 Six issues of Tank including p&p UK & Ireland £60.00 · Overseas £72.00

Method of payment: cheque postal order

Cheques or Postal Orders in Pound Sterling only, made payable to: "Tank Publications Ltd."

Access/Visa/Switch/Am Ex number:
(Please circle)

expires end: valid from:

Subscription starts from issue: #7 #8 #9

(Please circle)

collect all six

Please return form to: Tank subscriptions, PO Box 25319, London NW5 4ZD, UK

Name:

Address:

Daytime Tel:

Signature: Date:

293
 Stuart Shave - Director of Modern Art Inc Greg Chapman - International youth culture consultant + sneaker dealer
wears
295 Levi’s® Vintage 201 no.2 Denim wears Levi’s® Vintage Closed Front Jumper and Levi’s® Vintage 501® xx First Blue Jean 294
 2/3 of Hammer + Tongs - film production company
Adam + Saunby - Art Directors/Copywriters Dominic Leung wears customised Levi’s® Vintage 506 xx Type 1
left:Levi’s® Vintage 501® xx - 1955 · right:Levi’s® Vintage 201 no.2 Denim
297 Nick Goldsmith wears Levi’s® Vintage 1 Pocket Sack Coat - The Carpenter296
 Mike+Rebecca - Conceptual Graphic Designers Aloof Designs - 3D Designers
Rebecca wears Levi’s® Vintage Closed Front Jumper Michelle Kostyrka wears Levi’s® Vintage 40’s Short Sleeve Tee
Mike wears Levi’s® Vintage 1 Pocket Sack Coat Sam Aloof wears Levi’s® Vintage 50’s Long Sleeve Tee
299 298
 Heidi Easton - Film director/Writer Vanessa Walters - Novelist
wears Levi’s® Vintage 501® xx First Blue Jean - The Cowboy wears Levi’s® Vintage 506 xx Type 1
301 300
 photos: Barnaby+Scott styling: Charty Durrant
fashion assistant: Sarah Broom
hair + make-up: Emma Libotte
co-ordinator: Nadine Sanders
a TANK production

Jenny Copnall - International mountain bike cross-country racer Pinar Yolacan - Artist/Fashion designer
wears Levi’s® Vintage 501® xx - 1955 wears Levi’s® Vintage 501® xx - 1955
303 302
Levi’s® Vintage Clothing Alexander Jovy - Oscar nominated film maker
wears Levi’s® Vintage 1 Pocket Sack Coat