Moon Lover

If you're reading this and it's still nighttime, get off your luscious ass and look at the sky.

There's a very red, blue moon tonight.

Ever your proud lunatic,

Mils

Talkie talkie

My Baba (father, in English) was just in town. Here to take care of me a little, council us on our business and tell me I look “too fit” from boxing.

We had some good old fun, had brunch at the Maritime on Sunday, and watched the painfully anorexic waitresses snub their little bony noses at the food we ordered. Baba always finds it highly amusing when people think I’m his girlfriend, so he stood a little taller when the girls snickered as we left the terrace arm in arm, and the dudes gave him a knowing nod –funny that people’s instinct goes to Gold Digger -heavens forbid a father would want to spend quality time with his daughter …?

So last night we had a 3 hour-long! interview with the darling and exuberant Autumn Sonnichsen of Eleela Magazine. We actually talked at this interview, which is, sort of, an improvement, but it was more like ramble and rant and I’m sure we’ll get in trouble for what we said. It was difficult to do a “sexy” interview. It was kind of funny though (to us), at the end, we’re sitting on the big sofa, the sun’s setting so it’s dark in the studio and Kate and I are frazzled from a long day with lawyers and accountants and now hours of yapping about ourselves and Autumn asks us to finish with something sexy. Kate and I looked at each other, and then it was unmitigated silence for a good 2.5 minutes.

“Uhh, I dunno”, was all I could come up with.

I WAS actually trying to think of something sexy to say, then I felt stupid trying to, and then I realized this is the point, I can’t manufacture sexiness unless I’m moved to, the old blog killed something in me, but it was something that needed to die anyway, so it’s actually a very very good thing.

So that interview won’t be out for a while, but have a peek at the mag, Autumn said it can be hard to find in the US, but it’s been trailblazing the Latin American market for 38 years!

Oh. In more shop talk: you can read some more thumb-up-my-butt Kate and Camilla musings at New York Arts Magazine. The print version should have more pictures –it comes out in June.

Kiss kiss kiss kiss

blah blah

milla

Dreamy

Last night, I had a dream that I was dead and that when you were dead, you became a star in the sky and all of this made sense when I thought about the speed of light. Like, "I wasn't even here in the first place. I was here in the past and all of this is an image traveling at the sluggish speed of light across eons to flicker for me now so, it doesn't matter if I'm dead anyway". At least that's sort of how it sounded in my dream.

In the dream, to make one's way to space, it was necessary to negotiate what seemed like an endless unavoidable criss-cross of electrical wires which, while generally harmless in the spirit world, still packed quite a punch. They had a way of running you off course like when you get churned up by the sea and can't tell which way is up. This is how the sky felt in my dream and, more than once, I found my way, unwittingly back to earth.

Love,

Kate

Distraction

As you may or may not know, we've left our post at Nerve. This makes me sad. We were big fans. Even back in college! I can't speak for Milla but I left because I've been distracted. It's what happens when you're down in it. You can't get your head up above the surface long enough to see anything other than the constant blinding lapping and slapping of the waves at your face.

Thanks to some fortuitous meetings and happy accidents, this is about to change. Someone sent me this and it got me thinking. From there, I went here and here where I found this and this and I started to feel my focus shift happily away from things like this which have in various forms, one indecipherable from the next, have surrounded me (literally) for the last few months. Not to say that things like this don't have their place in the world, I just don't want to share that place. Things like those have a way of crapping out your radar for things like this and before you know it, you've seen one silly putty snatch too many and you forgot that there's something else out there. But, that's just me, I could be wrong. I probably am.

Love,
Kate

Baby's first modelling job

Oh me gawd.

Hahahaha.

I look so dorky, I mean dykey.

Sarah Jessica Parker has a new clothing line called Bitten.

They paid me so much freaking money to eat pizza and sweat huge sweat stains on that nice little hoodie.

Like the boxing wrist wraps? Don't I look tuff.

Luv IT.

Chicks are gonna dig me now.

Hahahaha.

See if you can find me

-Mils

Feeling Sanguine?

Bloody hell.
Yes, blood.
Let’s start at the feet.
I think I may have broken a toe, it looks bad. I’m trying to ignore it.
I keep hitting my right ankle on people’s elbows, so my right ankle is double its normal size. I’m trying to ignore it.
My left hip keeps clicking; I’ve been ignoring that for weeks.
I FINALLY got my period, which would explain my emotional state. Fucking shit.
Bloody nose in sparring last night, both nostrils, not very fluid, I think I’m dehydrated.
My first black eye from Muay Thai, not a very good one, looks more like poorly applied eyeliner.
I think my nose is definitely getting permanently fucked.

I trained with an insane woman last night, luckily in regular class, not sparring, so at least she couldn’t do any real damage. I really believe she is mentally unstable; it’s not the first time I’ve been stuck with her. She has very erratic movements, she has weird shifty eyes, she huffs and puffs all the time like she’s really upset, she gets visibly frustrated and tries, purposefully, to hurt me, which is dumb. She really should try another sport; she gets way too flustered with the boxing bit -the whole part about getting hit, which, strangely, is going to happen a lot in a …BOXING CLASS. I intentionally went very light with her because she is too out of control to handle regular impact; but going light also made her mad. It felt like being in a bad relationship: There she is getting upset, and I can tell, and I think I know why, but she won’t say anything, so I try and adapt to fit her, but that doesn’t work either, so I say, “Is something wrong?” and she says, “NO!!”. Christ, get me away!

It made me wonder, who the fuck am I training with everyday? You know? I mean, think about it, you’re facing a total stranger, trusting that they know what they’re doing, let alone trusting that they’re sane. I mean, let’s ignore the creepy weirdo woman for a minute, cuz I could spend yonks imagining what her problem is. But I know what MY problem is, I’m mostly sane, but even that’s tenuous. I’m obsessive, a grandstander, egotistical, aggressive, sensitive, and a crybaby for starters. Everyone’s got their axe to grind, and those of us who choose to grind it on someone else's head with our fists and shins, knees and elbows, well. Jeez.

My toe looks like a cocktail wiener with fluorescent pink nail polish.

Anyway, I’m nervous about the fight.

Temet Nosce.
Know thyself. There are other versions of the same phrase, but I like the Matrix so I use that one.
I have to know and come to terms with my shortcomings and weaknesses, as well as my strengths, in order to be a good fighter, let alone a good person –and I DO want to be both of those things.

So, Imma gonna tell ya what I’ve learned.

I’m a show off. When I know there’s an audience when I’m sparring, I get showy, hit harder, get pushy and aggressive. This is NO FUCKING GOOD.

I am emotional. If some human upsets me in my life, I carry it into the ring; it makes me weak (my period exacerbates this). As someone who tries, intentionally, to be impulsive and expressive with my emotions, I can sometimes feel like crying in the ring. THIS IS NO FUCKING GOOD.

I am a counter fighter. That means I don’t initiate so much, or play tricks, or defend, I REACT. For instance, the bell rings, I put a little gentle jab out, a little warning sign round house, but when they hit me, I come crashing back 10 times worse. I do this in real life. This is not necessarily bad, but something to think about. I think it works better in the ring than in the world.

Somebody needs to invent an ice pack that fits right on the nose.

My dad’s coming for an impromptu visit, he’s going to kill me when he sees how beat up I am. Heheh.

Pics to follow, when I get into the office.

SealedWithALovingKiss

-Mils

Young, dumb and full of fun.

Last week was an extreme week. We’re in a pretty needless legal battle, the details of which we can’t go into, but the situation is our first of its kind and therefore a little extra specially unpleasant.

On the more pleasing side of things, we went to see our adorable friends Jonathan, Sarah and Jared of We Should Do It All, speak at the Art Director’s Club as part of their duties as winners of the Young Guns Award. The panel was entitled Big vs. Small, WSDIA being the small, to BBDO’s big. It was incredibly interesting seeing what they shared and where they differed. Both were extremely precise, with exactingly executed campaigns, but the concepts and designs were polar. It was quite the exemplification of mainstream versus conceptual. The BBDO stuff was as you’d expect -TV bits for HBO’s Entourage, or print ads for Nike and Guinness that were super fast, very funny, slick and glossy. WSDIA presented stunning, beautiful, conscientious websites or interior architecture plans that still gave the instant gratification of a glamourous product but had a lingering, slow release of carefully considered ideas. They would take into account material, environment, interaction, palette, structure; it was a more unified application of marketing -more experiential.

It was very motivating for me to watch WSDIA speak. It was a reminder that there are other people, like Kate and I, taking a big risk, a leap of faith, to make a dream real. It can be very scary and very isolating to do what we’re doing. The context of the panel –Big vs. Small, was a reminder in the David and Goliath style, that small can definitely challenge big, if not very well knock Big on its ass. I was also very struck with their integrity, they work entirely for portfolio, not selling themselves just to work, it’s a luxurious position to be in, but one I aim to attain.



Saturday was the EP release party for Heloise and The Savoir Faire. I was feeling pretty tired and I can’t turn my head from a recurring Muay Thai injury, but since we shot the cover, I pony-ed up the goods and went anyway. The inimitable Todd Thomas is now designing costumes for the band, and Heloise was looking as glowingly stunning as ever in her fluorescent yellow cocktail dress. Because of the neck injury, I took up residency on one of the banquets and became impromptu coat check girl –which included minding Elijah Wood’s messenger bag, I’m intentionally dropping his name because truly, it’s surreal to look into those big blue eyes and think, “I’ve seen you wrestle with Smeagol".

Elijah was there because he signed Heloise to his label Simian, and since this new development good things have definitely been happening for the band at a super quick clip. Every time I see them they get exponentially better sounding, her voice sounds especially killer. Speaking of killing –Heloise and Joe Joe threw CDs out to the crowd and the very first one almost took Constance’s eye out, one hit my boob and everyone starting ducking because the CDs were basically Ninja stars, it was scary. Con has a big puncture wound on her eyelid. Nice gesture, bad idea.

I realise we’re always plugging friends here, and I thought, is that weird? And then I thought, no, everyone I know is truly special, and the stuff they do is interesting and creative and I’m happy to shout about it.

Late night thought: Watching South Park and seeing the Saddam Hussein character is eerie and feels sort of inappropriate now.

Sunday was awesome, after playing Doctor Milla and tending to Constance’s eye, we hopped on our bikes and rode to Red Hook. There’s a new garden centre right by the water, it’s in the middle of nowhere, nestled among junkyards and redbrick factory buildings. As you approach you see hibiscus trees and hanging baskets and they blast classical music and then you realise they have the most unbelievable view of Lady Liberty, we got there just as the sun was at its most epic -shafts of light carved in the sky from clouds to water. Around the corner is Steve’s Key Lime Pies. Steve was there; grilling lamp chops with his wife and cutie fat baby. We ate one of his signature mini pies, which is stuck on a wooden stick, dipped in dark chocolate and frozen. Yes, please.

Then we explored a bit more, and ended up and the Pioneer Bar B Q shack -I like to eat dinner after dessert, it’s my new habit. We had the best pulled-pork ever, and Constance kept beating me at Connect 4. It was a great day.

Kisses dudes.

-Milla

It is neither SHE nor ME

Kate is giving the best phone ever, RIGHT NOW.

Hilarious, describing the Kate and Camilla ego...

funny.

mils

Critical schmitical

Okay, so I think my new name should be Ranterella or Polemica, something like that. I’m always outraged, and I’m always outraged that I’m outraged. I prefer action to passivity any old day, and outrage, though elevated, is ultimately passive. So, it’s a frustrating situation I’ve created for myself.

The rant of the day relates to the recently released short list of Turner Prize nominees. I haven’t gotten through the list yet and I’m already confounded, annoyed and well, outraged.

First work I’ve looked at is Zarina Bhimji

Great name, interesting work, but Turner Prize worthy? Not clear on why. Whenever I’ve been able to, I always make it a point to see the Turner Prize winners in London, at the beautiful, regal, original Tate Britain. Last one I saw was quite a while ago, when the only photographer included was Wolfgang Tillmans.

He was certainly an innovator, his unusual, random, scattered, installation harkened to the surrealists, while his loose, erotic, intimate, imagery challenged the formality and beauty ideals of the then current Photo Lords: Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Gregory Crewdson et al. He was a controversial selection, but look at most popular art and commercial photography today and it’s directly traced back to him.

Lets get back to Bhimji. Empty spaces have long been a favourite of grad school art projects, vacant lots, off-season swimming pools, derelict homes, and on and on. Some have done it better than others, and though originality is not the only marker of creative achievement, in my opinion, if you’re going to revisit a well-used concept, let the crux of your work rest on a familiar trope, then there must be an element of reinvention.

I don’t see that in Bhimji’s “Love” series. I don’t see the creation of a new object, or a reformed beauty in the object either. And if the value in her “non-narrative imagery” lies in the narrative surrounding the subject matter, then I see it more as a journalistic record. Photojournalism is totally valid too, and maybe the risk that the Turner Prize is taking, is by aggrandizing that medium.

Vented. Released. Relieved.

Okay, now I need to look at the other artists.

XO

Milla

Goings on, accompanied by snaps of everyday light extravaganzas

So, I promised to do it, but I didn't go to the opening, I suck, I know, Hermit Milla won't come out from under her rock until I'm good and ready. Maybe spreading the word will make up for it? My super fab friend Phoebe is pals with William Stone, and with his show's title of "Let's Subtle Down Together", I'm bound to love his work too since I just love brains that appreciate puns. Anyhoo, it closes soon, so check it out.

In other art news my dear friend Eso has a gigantor steel sculpture up in Red Hook, and yes, I suck, I hermited out of that opening as well.

And Mr. Schuster, charming Photo Editor of Mass Appeal, is co-founder of The Humble Arts Foundation. The last show of theirs that I saw BLEW ME AWAY! I haven't been so excited about photo in a while. I encourage you to attend their exhibits, both online and real. Rumour has it they're seeking out a gallery space, which would be wonderful.

Lastly, my pal Joel who runs Guernica is having a cocktail hour this Thursday at Gallery Bar. His literary magazine is a lovely, thoughful, enlightening creation, take a peek.

Our intern arrives today. She's cute cute cute, but Kate and I are going to have to get used to having someone else around. It's going to be a big old learning experience for all!

Loving the weather!!

Milla

Do you really want to hurt me?

Ever have one of those days where your brain is so full of thoughts, a constant barrage of ideas and connections that it all feels like too much? I’ll try and walk you through this as coherently as I’m able.

I’m fascinated with the idea of female violence. Kate and I were talking on Friday about our violent impulses. I’m not even sure I can admit to you what went through my head, I could barely tell Kate, but I did. It was weird; it had to do with a crying child and me punching...........it. Okay, I said it. Hate me if you want, judge me, it’s easy to do, I am a little ashamed of it so that shame, it’ll make one vulnerable, anyway, I know I have enough self control not to punch a kid in the face. But I have to think for a moment, about the flash: a sudden, vivid, out-of-the-blue image that was primal and unconscious and made me shudder; and as repellant an image as I found it to be, I have to acknowledge that my brain was responsible for it.

So, I’m kickboxing, most everyday. I think about it all the time. I fall asleep imagining combos, I shadow box to the mirror to study my form, I spar twice a week. I have a bruise on the bridge of my nose from where I keep getting hit. One of my sparring partners popped my cherry – gave me my first full-on, free-flowing nosebleed. I pissed a few people off yesterday, literally not aware of my own growing strength -kneed a girl in the gut so that she couldn’t breath for a good long while, punched a pro fighter in the head so hard she came right back and gored my kidney with a sharp left hook. Violence. I choose to submit to it on a daily basis. But, it is controlled, it is a meditation, it has rules, it is not the biting, scratching chaos of a street fight. It is not the murderous assault of a psycho killer, but it is, nonetheless, violence.

My therapist tells me my eyes light up when I talk about boxing. There are probably only 2 other things in the world that excite me as much.

I learn so much from boxing; its parallels to life are absurd they’re so obvious:

Getting angry gets you nowhere.
Hit too hard expect to get hit back harder.
Escalation isn’t wise.
Observe, consider, and strategise before you act.
Be daring but not reckless.

You get the point.

I watched Lady Vengeance last night. A film by, Park Chan-Woo, also the director of Old Boy, another really excellent, twisted film. Lady Vengeance has dodgy spots, but for the most part is a pretty rare and special story. I would rather you find it and watch it then tell you too much. Anyway, the brutality, particular to female sensibilities, seemed expertly depicted. There is a particularity to female violence, see any case study of female serial killers and you’ll see how their pathology is always essentially female. Even the way women commit suicide is particular to women – we tend to kill ourselves in clean ways, private ways, with overdoses or poisonings, usually with the thought of sparing those who will find us (or so I’ve read from the experts who study such things). Men are more brazen, less considerate, choosing guns first and hanging second, not at all concerned with the aftermath of their decision.

So, the creative culmination of such unresolved ideas is, of course, a photograph. Above is an early exploration of ours into this idea, but Kate and I have long flirted with the idea of The Tableau and at dinner, last Friday, after my shameful admission, we toyed with the idea of a new photo project depicting some manifestation of female violence. Not aggression, not hysteria, not masculine emulation, but a specific, essential feminine ferocity. Something physical, not necessarily psychological, something powerful and empowered but not political per se. How to capture it all in a picture? Not sure yet, but we’ll figure it out.

Camilla

I'm happy with this life, thanks.

Kate's just discovered Second Life.

It's already driving me bonkers.

But you can fly in that world and it REALLY looks like dream-state flying.

That's something.

Everyone complains about TV. It's uber cool not to watch it, but I think we're forgetting about the computer screen's brain sucking power.

More on this later. Someone just carjacked Kate's SecondLife car, she's freaking out...

Mils

What'd you say? I said live it up!

Okay, I must say, days like yesterday, I have to talk about. I'm such a moody baby that when a day like that comes along, I want to shout about it. It was BEAUTIFUL. I got to work from home, which meant sitting on my roof, nekkid, with the laptop, doing bids for jobs that will pay me good money to do good work. I get to iron out details on my cell with my business partner, who is also my best friend. I get to eat fresh pineapple and listen to excellent music, write stories on my break, take pictures because I feel like it, and think. Days like that make me understand, make me bristle with electricity.

In other thoughts:

Sometimes I wonder if I actually speak English, or if I'm really just speaking Millaese and it happens to use the same words but means absolutely nothing to English speakers. It's like the way French and English have the same alphabet -that's me, same alphabet, different language. Therefore please take my million sorrys if you no get me what I say.

Well.

Tonight Caroline and I are going to see Air and TV on the Radio, then an after party where the Junior Boys (who love Rush too!) are DJing. She wants to meet at 7, this looks like it's going to be a long night -I think she's more hard core than I am, but I’m excited.

Here's an adorable, dorky guy, doing classic stop animation to one of my new replay-everday songs.

Enjoy:



Milla

On Slowing Down

Kate here! Bwahahaha! Slowing down has been a theme these days...

I was trying to explain to someone the other day why to take a picture of one thing rather than another. I was trying to explain why it wouldn't look the same way through the camera as it looked to her eye and that so much of image making has to do with slowing down of the process of seeing. You have to think about the way your brain sees and then try to make your completely deficient camera/lens apparatus replicate the result. All of the synapses firing, all of the rods and cones, all of the associations made as the image travels deeper into the cerebral cortex and disperses through the brain; all of this needs to be synthesized into focal lengths, apertures and watt seconds.

When you have a partner, a collaborator, all of this needs to happen in unison. This is something Camilla and I take for granted. The kateandcamilla brain, operating on it's own with it's own associations, color and technical preferences takes over. Yet every once in a while, everything comes to a grinding halt. Milla's ego races off in one direction and mine trots off in another. This is when the complexity of this process is illuminated. The light reminds Milla of Egypt and me of my mom and I have an idea I see in black and white only to look over my shoulder to find Milla pumping up the saturation. Over lunch yesterday, a friend told me about this. It reminded me a little of what we're trying to do here. Slow it down and suss it our for us and for you.

Slow it down.

SnapShotDiary#89

There's been way too much socialising going on these past few weeks and after a particularly involved business meeting on Friday, Kate and I were about at our wits end. I don't quite know why it's so hard for us to be social, we love people, love socialising, but maybe our stamina isn't so great, that and we're awful at remembering names.

As some of you know, I'm preparing for the World Kickboxing Association Amateur Nationals. This means lots of training, and it can be very hard to fit it in with our erratic work schedule. Saturday was spent making up for a lot of missed work-outs, doing pad work (kicking and punching with a partner holding big punch pads -for those of you who don't know), followed by cardio and bag work. Afterwards I got my hair cut, a task I would really rather do without, but I don't think I can pull off a shaved head, so I best get used to it.

I walked around the Lower East Side all afternoon in the breezy cold sun, ate the most delectable malted chocolate ice cream at Il Laboratorio del Gelato THEN bought the best $2 dumplings in town and watched the neighbourhood kids play baseball. The one pitching (pictured below) was the most marvelous, precocious little shit. He was the tiniest one of the bunch but threw like a monster. He'd wind up, in an almost theatrical way, then BAM, pitch it so hard and fast the kids would strike out every time.



Every Monday, Kate and I walk to work together. We call it our "walk and talk". A time to brainstorm, plan the week, catch up on the weekend, and do easy business. Each time we take a different route. These are some snaps of our walk today.











Brooklyn, rotten, beautiful, Brooklyn.

Kisses,

Milla

LOOK at me! DON'T look at me!

Sarah McColl (above), one of my oldest youngest friends and ultra talented front-person and co-founder of Pink of Perfection, has diversified her broadasting talents to Conde Nast's new vlog venture Elastic Waist.

She and Sebastian, her equally talented fiance and P.O.P. visual/tech man, came to Kate and Camilla Studio a couple weeks ago to ask us how to help people look better in pictures.

After garbling a lot, talking over one another, and a few stilted car show model hand gesture moments, we managed to get a few gems out.

It's all in the editing.

Really.

Follow this link to watch the vid!

Enjoy!

K+C

I'm strong, but not THAT strong

The title of this post is a nod to Kate -our communication has become so nuanced, so on-point, that we can anticipate when the other's on the verge of an emotional nose dive. I was warning her this morning, that I could carry her through, but not all the way. Ah, it takes years, years to learn how to argue the way we do! Hehe.

Had dinner with two extremely well-coiffed, sparkly, handsome men last night: Mr. Ryan Pfluger and Mr. Clayton James Cubitt aka Siege.

The Roebling Tea Room was our selection for the evening's round table discussion into photo nerdom.

We talked about the relevance or irrelevance of Flickr in the contemporary photo world. None of us use Flickr, or had even really heard of it until recently. I guess it has become something of a cult community, and though I've always thought of photography as a democratic medium (something I cherish and champion about photo), I am also an elitist (yes, I said that). Even among Flickr's open, egalitarian community, there are those who rise to the top, potentially a meritocratic ascension, but then what? As Siege cleverly put it in reference to the multitudinous web hits some photographers get on Flickr, "I'd rather have $25,000 in my bank account than 2.5 million pennies scattered around the world" -and I agree, wholeheartedly.



More on this later, I have to strongarm Kate into contributing.

In the mean time, I hope you take a moment to meditate on these Utahscapes, they make me happy.

XO

Camilla

Tyra, can you hear me now?

Kate’s apparently gone mute. But then again, secretly, I’m verbose, and once past the icy exterior, very chatty. So, bear with me, I know it seems like Camilla ALONE in Blogland, but Kate’ll come out soon, she needs coaxing.

We’re shooting BABES! This time it isn’t a job requirement they strip. Which may disappoint some of you, but after Nerve and some unmentionable EX-clients, I’m a bit tired of the insatiable gorge-fest in naked voyeurism. Don’t get me wrong, I am mesmerized by a sublime pair of tits, or a muscled beauty boy, but always having to photo with the intention of giving someone damp panties, gets old –when it’s the REAL thing, I could do it forever, when it’s simulated sexy stuff, wah wah, I’m bored.

Anyway, more importantly, the NEW babes -we’re shooting for Fusion Model Management. So we get to see their new girls and boys and help them build their portfolios.

Kate and I want to be guest ANYTHING on America’s Next Top Model. And this feels like good practice. We get to “teach” these youngn’s (ummmm yes yes) how to be models. It’s fun, in a girlie, Tyra Banks OTT kind of way.

Anyway. Stand by for a steady influx of babes like this:


Bisou and slaps,

Milla