In this time of perfectly branded Instagram accounts, sponsored Facebook live events and heavily curated everything, few artists embody the bravado and brazen attitudes once found to be the hallmark of rock 'n' roll. Though Ali X has chosen not rock but Techno as his central genre, he nevertheless continues to create his music his way, unapologetically coercing his audience to submit to his grimy, funky loops and industrial machine sounds. 

After disbanding his Techo/House super group Azari & III, Ali spent time moving around some of music epicentres to settle in Mexico City, where he has found a new home, new community and new co-conspirator in Ximena. Together Ali X x Ximena are educating Mexico's future generations of electronic musicians about what real Techno music is and why it should be thus. 

In this interview with Ali, we talk about his formative creative pursuits in video terrorism, his experiences with drug addiction and how he now uses that relationship to rekindle his relationship to making his art.

Ali talks about the music scene in Mexico City. The crazy, chaotic atmosphere there and how that chaos translates into a feeling of freedom that feeds his creativity. We discuss the nature of isolation in creation. What it allows for and what it can take away. Ali also talks about the emotional impetus required for him to get into a creative headspace. We talk record labels, PR and having somebody in your corner. 

Finally, we talk about dance music culture now vs. during the early years of techno and rave and about our collective memories of primal and transcendental parties, and why that spirit doesn’t seem to exist so much anymore. 

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Music throughout the show are all upcoming releases from Ali X x Xemena. 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thealix/

Cartoons are often reserved for the funny pages or maybe the New Yorker, so if you saw some of Michelle LeFade's work for the first time, you could be forgiven for feeling like they don't belong in either. The stories they tell, and the manner in which she tells them don't often resort to word bubbles or ellipses. Instead, it's the line and the thickness of the brushstroke, the hyperbolic nature of the character's bodies or the wry smiles they wear that tell you more about what's going on in the frame. 

It's for reasons like these, along with a host of other more varied examples, that I wanted to invite cartoonist, illustrator and visual artist Michelle LeFade onto Mind to Make. I wanted to find out where Michelle got her style from, how it's evolved, what of herself she puts into that work, and where she's diverging from that path? 

In the interview we discuss the answers to the aforementioned questions, as well as the importance of staying true to your own perspective and how retaining your own voice can be the inlet to your own creative discovery and peace of mind. We talk about what it means to become a “professional” artist, and the role that social media is now playing in that process. Related to that subject, we discuss how time influences branding and the importance of staying true to your artistic vision through the rebranding process. Michelle talks about playing with audience perception, scale, form, minimalism and balance in her work and how she manipulates her practice due to necessity and how she still makes it work for her. 

Other topics include fetish, the feminine and the sexualization of women in art, using yourself as a subject, retaining old ideas as fuel for impeding creative blocks, and the single-minded focus that comes from working with ink and brush.

MICHELLE LEFADE 

Instagram: @mainmitch

 

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Aaliyah - O.I.A.M. (D. Matthew's other bootleg)
Missy Elliot & Janet Jackson - Burn It Up (BOT SHUDDIDOWN Edit)
Missy Elliot - Lose Control (Machinedrum Remix)
N.E.R.D & Rihanna - Lemon (BSNYEA Edit)

This week on Mind to Make, I'm speaking with visual artist and film maker Oliver Husain. Oliver is the creator of MTM logo (yeah!) and his pieces involve image, sculpture, movement and textile. In this interview we discuss the importance of training to underscore your practice. We discuss Oliver’s early influences, his humbling and educational experiences connecting with artists in other cultures and how the spaces you create in and show your work in change the context in which you see that work. For Oliver, perspectives ultimately remain constant despite the inspiratory sources we encounter, but technology is a tool he uses to breath new life into his work. Lastly we discuss the importance of not defining what art means and why being sure and safe are perhaps the biggest obstacles to achieving your artistic goals.

Music throughout the podcast was taken from Oliver Husain's films - Green Dolphin and Isla Santa Maria 3D (Sound design/Music by Michelle Irving) which can be found along with the rest of Oliver's portfolio at http://www.husain.de/

If you're in Toronto between May 10th - June 16th, you can catch Oliver's latest show French Exit at the Susan Hobbs gallery

 

OLIVER HUSAIN BIO

Working at the intersection of moving image, performance, sculpture and installation, Oliver Husain has developed a captivating and curious art practice. Oliver Husain (1969, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. He came to Canada in 2006 having completed a short-film trilogy set in Shanghai, Jakarta and Hyderabad. Husain studied fine art at the University of Baroda in India, and holds a BA and an MFA from HfG Offenbach, Germany. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Gallery TPW, Toronto; Western Front, Vancouver; Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; and Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany (with DaGroup). His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto (2016), Art Museum at the University of Toronto; Depth of Perception (2015), Oakville Galleries; Qual und Wahl (2013), Kunstverein Wolfsburg; Blowing on a Hairy Shoulder/Grief Hunters (2011), ICA Philadelphia; and Q (2005), Para Site, Hong Kong. His films have been screened at numerous international events, including Toronto International Film Festival; Experimenta Festival, Bangalore; Malaysian Video Awards, Kuala Lumpur; New Generations Independent Indian Film Festival, Frankfurt; and San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. A monograph on his work, Spoiler Alert, was published in 2012.

With every new artistic endeavour, we can discover not only a new destination but also the path that led us there. But how to stay on the path, and what path should we take? As someone who has often struggled with these questions, I became increasingly interested in meditation as a means to helping with focus and intention. I found that as with most journeys, it helps to have a guide. 

So on this week's episode of Mind to Make, I speak with artist, musician, film-maker and now meditation & mindfulness instructor/counsellor Josh Reichmann about how our minds play such an important role in the process of art making. We discuss Josh's introduction into mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism and the various forms and meanings attached to those terms, as well as how they manifest themselves in us and others. We discuss addiction, suffering and finding meaning and compassion both for ourselves and others. We talk about how having a moral or ethical framework can and should be as important as what we are trying to say with our work. We speak about how mindfulness can be a first step to beginning a journey along the middle path of creation and discovery.

It should be noted that the concepts Josh and I discuss in the program are complex to say the least. Though we stray from our own conversational path on several occasions, I would attribute this to my own learning as an interviewer as well as to the depth and complexity of the subject matter. I hope to further explore this topic with Josh in a future episode to derive more clarity on the topic, and would invite listeners to put forth any questions they might have as a result of hearing this conversation. 

Josh very modestly had this to say of himself and his career thus far...

I wrote and recorded with Tangiers and released three records with that rock band and toured around and made music videos. I continued on to release five more solo records. Most were about telepathy and magic. My recent feature film was just completed and screened for Cannes and Lacarno film festivals considerations by Telefilm. It is featuring members of the Tibetan community and focuses on the bardos and self immolation and living in exile.

I graduated as a Contemplative Psychotherapist and counsel and teach mindfulness and meditation through the Tibetan Galugpa tradition of which I am a student. I teach meditation at a Tibetan temple.

I'm writing more film...and a new record.

You can get more information about Josh's counselling practice at www.joshreichmann.com

The song used in this episode, After Live is written and performed by Josh Reichmann, released on Hand Drawn Dracula