Interview

Launch Mediaplayer »

Apartamento is the Barcelona-based magazine that makes itself at home everywhere it goes. Their fourth issue includes Grillo Demo's drawings of artists' homes (rejected, for the most part and unfortunately, by this very magazine), a supplement for kids, an original text by Chloe Sevigny—not to mention photographs of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's home shot, by Ari Marcopoulos. They recently launched their fourth issue in Tokyo, so we asked editors Nacho Alegre and Marco Velardi how Japan represents home.



INTERVIEW: Why Tokyo?

APARTAMENTO: Tokyo because is one of our best markets and, with Issue 4, Apartamento is introducing a Japanese translation supplement only for Japan. Our launch also happened to coincide with Tokyo Design Week.

INTERVIEW: What special arrangements did you make for a Tokyo launch?

APARTAMENTO: We decided to open a temporary restaurant, Tasca, where we serve a new recipe each day. More than 200 people were served over five days: pea soup, minestrone, tuna tartare, wild mushroom soup, and risotto with strawberries.

INTERVIEW: What's your favorite thing about Tokyo?

APARTAMENTO: I don't think there is a favorite thing about Tokyo–there are many. I think the retail and customer service experience is one of the best ones.

INTERVIEW: Tell me about the cover image. What is it and where did come from?

APARTAMENTO: It's a drawing of Groge Condo's bedrorm in his Paris apartment by Grillo Demo. There's a whole story inside, and you will find out it's all linked to Interview, which is interesting. I like the fact most people don't realize it's a drawing until they have the magazine right in their hands. I think it really fits Apartamento and, at the same time, it's a very high profile feature; we have discovered we can include a more diverse range of spaces in future issues.

MORE »

Launch Mediaplayer »

"I really had no intention of doing a book," said Bob Colacello, former editor of Interview, author of the magazine's infamous party column, "OUT," and right-hand man to Andy Warhol during the 70s and early 80s. A box of forgotten photographs changed his intentions.

Long ago in the Disco Era, Colacello was given a tiny tool by art dealer Thomas Ammann that would come to serve as the public's lens into uptown galas, the downtown art scene and Studio 54. The Minox 35EL camera, which Colacello admits to concealing in his jacket pocket, allowed him to snap everyone from Yves St. Laurent to Liza Minnelli, Diana Vreeland to the Kennedys–and Warhol himself, dressed up, undressed and misbehaving.

MORE »

The New York Yankees victory parade is making its way along lower Broadway's Canyon of Heroes as we type. And it seems that expected float jockeys like Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez have been joined–somewhat inexplicably, depending on how much you like "Empire State of Mind"–by a special guest. Some crowd reactions:

I love jay z's coat on the yankees parade! Hey yankees
–gipht

Watchin the Yankees parade..why is Jay-Z on a float?? i dont recall him swinging a bat this season..
–ThisIsBran

haha Jay-Z is too cool to wave at parades. Thoroughly enjoying watching the Yankees parade online.
–kourtbwong

the guys doing commentary on the yankees parade for mlb.com are retarded...they didn't know what they jay-z dynasty hand symbol was
–nyy7mantle

why is jay-z on the Yankees float in the parade. like uhhh you're not a baseball player homie
–thesaucyminx

We watchin the parade live in class...Jay-Z is on the float with the Yankees, lol..he's the man
–Spe_Did

MORE »

Possibly the only openly gay author from his native Morocco, the young Abdellah Taïa has chosen a vocation of literary transgressor and cultural paragon. Beginning with his second novel, Le Rouge du Tarbouche [The Red Tarboosh] published by French press Editions Séguier in 2005, the soft-spoken son of a civil servant began openly challenging Moroccan state laws aimed at silencing gay culture. A cover-story in the influential French-Arab journal Tel Quel followed, with the caption reading: "Homosexuel, envers et contre tous" [Homosexual, against all odds]. During the resulting public furor, and, amid calls for the author's indictment for heresy, Taïa composed the very personal L'armee du Salut [Salvation Army], a bildungsroman of his youthful dreams and indiscretions set in Rabat, Tangier, and Geneva. Along the way he introduces and confronts the figures that most affected his formative love-life: an elusive mother, an omnipotent brother, and a Swiss lover. (PHOTO: ABDELLAH TAÏA, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

Now published in English by academic samizdat Semiotext(e), Salvation Army is a valuable contribution not only to queer fiction but to North African diaspora literature as well.  A resident of Paris over the last decade, Taïa has joined the column of Moroccan expatriates–Tahar Ben Jelloun and Abdelkebir Khatibi, among others–who cast a telescopic eye over the thorny and often violent ideological interchange between postmodern Europe and postcolonial Africa. But Taïa's words are not scrawled with the bellicose politics of a partisan; rather, they are auguries of a familial world imbued with both magic and poverty; lilting and resolute; a prose of stark divinity and apostasy. 

We recently contacted Taïa during his reading tour of the US and asked him to share his thoughts on the state of literature, the sexual politics of the Arab world, and the role of cinema in his writing.


ERIK MORSE: The first chapter of L'armee du Salut painted such a vivid landscape of your childhood, particularly how you first became aware of sex almost through a kind of familial osmosis.  Can you describe a bit more about this house which plays such a fundamental role in the book?

ABDELLAH TAÏA: Hay Salam is the name of the neighborhood where I grew up. It is located in a city called Salé, near the Moroccan capital Rabat. Salé is known in the Moroccan imagination for its 17th and 18th century pirates who used to attack the Christian ships sailing through the Atlantic. I lived there from 1974 until 1998. Everything I have known about the world comes from this city and this neighborhood. Everything I want to put in my book is also coming from this world.  The house where I lived there was very small, only three rooms for eleven people. One room for my father, the second for my older brother, Abdelkebir, who exerted a big influence on me, and the last one for the rest of the family: my mother, my six sisters, my little brother and me. Life for me still revolves around these three rooms. The tastes, the smells, the images, the ideas of fear and transgression are all coming from this house, this poor family that I love and hate at the same time. For many years, we were really poor, we didn't have enough food and we fought with each other a lot.  The power structures within the family were a mirror of  the dictatorship Morocco was living under at that time.

MORE »