Rip.

Interview with Jesse Draxler and Banks Violette

After two exclusive drops of artistic t-shirts, Jesse Draxler ’s creative lab, RIP, symbol of art, fashion, and music, returns with Skull, a new release in collaboration with artist Banks Violette. Raiders Logo/Skull is Violette’s original work, reimagined here and transformed into a striking two layer graphic print. Through an interview and a continuous exchange of roles, we delve into the essence of both artists, not only their creative vision but also the entire process of creation and the deep interconnection that developed between them. This ongoing dialogue and experimentation culminated in the creation of this distinctive piece.

What brought the start of this relationship between RIP. and Banks Violette?

Banks: I’ve spent the past few years deliberately avoiding making work, showing work, interacting with anything public, etc.. There’s a number of reasons why I made that decision but it feels like that choice has run its course, so I’ve slowly been re-engaging with the world and (at the same time)my own work. One of the things I’m most interested in while re-engaging is stepping outside and away from a purely gallery/museum-based model for how work is shown, discussed, and circulated: that’s always been a part of my practice anyway, and it just feels more urgently necessary (and obvious) now as a vital strategy than it ever had before. All of which is a long-winded explanation for why I was happy to work with RIP: it’s where my head was already.

Jesse: I’ve been an admirer of Banks’ work since the early days of Tumblr. His chandelier works, and the Whitney installation, were all circulating heavily back then and that’s where I first discovered his work. Since then he has remained as the creator of some of the most inflential work to my own lexicon, though it seemed as if he had dissappeared for a while. Fast forward to some months ago when I saw him reemerge on Instagram and had the notion to write him to see if he would be open to collaborating with my new brand RIP. To me it was a total shot in the dark at the time, but he quickly responded in favor of the project and the rest is the rest. I’m still incrediblity honored by his willingness to work with me and the smooth process we have had working together so far.

Can you tell us more about your experience collaborating with Jesse Draxler as an artist and Creative Director of RIP. ?

Banks: Jesse reached out to me about possibly collaborating on this project. I enjoy and admire his work, I think he and I have a number of overlaps and common interests, etc, so saying yes was pretty easy. I’d like to pretend the process was more involved and considered than that, but that was really the extent of it – knowing Jesse’s work, I thought this project would be in excellent hands. As far as the direct experience working with him, it couldn’t have been any more frictionless: we discussed different images/source material, settled on a few we both agreed would be effective, and the rest was Jesse’s work, with him creating everything into it’s final form.

Can you give us some thoughts on the pieces that were ultimately born of this collab?

Banks: I think the final versions of everything hit a target I’m always aiming for (in some shape or other): my work’s always been concerned with that overlapping space where a rare 7″ or tour shirt occupies the same precious space of a “fine art” multiple or edition, where the transcendence of a garage concert with 7 people and a broken PA overlaps and carries equal weight with culture that comes equipped with advanced degrees and pedigrees. What i mean is an idea of a mongrel simultaneity; a happy free-for-all space where history is collapsing, the world is burning, but the soundtrack is fucking amazing. This project feels like a part of that larger (but disintegrating) whole.

“What i mean is an idea of a mongrel simultaneity; a happy free-for-all space where history is collapsing, the world is burning, but the soundtrack is fucking amazing” – B.

“I think of myself like a prism, I fracture everything I focus my attention on and rearrange it” – J.

“I’m trying to describe in broad strokes those queasy instances where suspension of disbelief becomes inextricable from autoerotic asphyxiation” – B.

Jesse Draxler to Banks Violette: I read you say something to the effect of, being attracted to or aesthetically pleased by visions of destruction and violence, is only a few steps away from committing such acts. Can you expand on this line of thinking?

Banks: I think what I meant by that is there’s a potential in all of us for terrible things, thoughts, and actions. I’m not interested in a sociological framing, where an event or an idea I reference is held at arm’s length or i pretend to some species of critical remove/distance. What I’m pretty consistently interested in is the opposite: instances where the separation between states collapse, where a fiction (be it literature, subculture, music, etc) overwhelms that line btwn external and internal, or audience vs author. I’m sure that sounds vague, and in general terms it is, but I’m trying to describe in broad strokes those queasy instances where suspension of disbelief becomes inextricable from autoerotic asphyxiation,

JD: What is it about the icons you choose to depict in your work? How do you select which are appropriate / are you a fan of all the content you work with or is it the cultural relevance you are working with?

Banks: The imagery I’m attracted to is flat footed, blunt, exhausted, and what I think of as strip-mined: imagery that’s so conventional and over-used it’s difficult to imagine it creaking back to life. As an example, I’ve used the imagery of horses throughout my career, and a horse is a perfectly exhausted instance of an idea of American romanticism, heroic landscape, individualism, etc, etc.. Basically, it’s an image that’s been forced to carry a freight of meaning for so long (in my eyes, at least) it’s impossible to imagine that it could sustain continued interpretation or metonymic efficacy. And yet somehow it does: that corpse comes back to life, carrying all that exhausted meaning with it, and (just like a good zombie movie) that resurrection carries with it a surplus of misery and disaster. Appropriation-as-aesthetic-strategy (in this example) just connects to it’s logical cousin, which is grave robbing/violating the dead. Whether or not I’m a fan of the imagery is pretty secondary to that central idea

JD: How did the Sunno collab come about?

Banks: I had worked with Stephen O’Malley on a few projects prior to working with Sunn (I’d met Stephen through a norwegian musician named Snorre Ruch, whose band Thorns contributed the audio component to a show I’d done at the Whitney museum), so we knew one another’s work pretty well by that point. The project with Sunn was at the gallery I show with in London (Maureen Paley) and it was just one of those amazing alignments: Maureen was supportive of the show, Stephen convinced everyone else to participate, all the work was somehow finished and shipped in time, and I managed -somehow – not to fatally overdose (that last point is pretty close to miraculous, in all honesty).

JD: Five from your fav albums list.

Banks: Not sure I’m capable of answering/boiling it down to five albums overall, so I’m going with five albums this week:

Wagner Ödegård “Om Undergång och de Tretton Järtekn”
Wagner Ödegård “Om Kosmos och de Tolv Järtekn”
Svrm “Rozpad”
Sorry… “Drowned in Misery”
Nachtmystium “Blight Privilege”

Banks to Jesse: to what extent is place/geography important to your work? Or, phrased a little differently, do you see your practice informed by the landscape you either grew up in, moved to, or moved back to?

Jesse: I think of myself like a prism, I fracture everything I focus my attention on and rearrange it. In this way every input, and environment is obviously a huge input, informs my practice. This is augmented by the fact that I grew up in rural central Wisconsin, much different from where I ended up having a studio the past 10+ years, Los Angeles. That chasm has always interested me, especially in more recent years while establishing a home-base and studio practice back in the woods of Wisconsin. At the moment it feels as if I’m attempting to reconsile two very different identities.

Banks: With your own practice your work straddles a number of different positions/roles: music, design, art, etc, etc.. Do you see a division between those different facets of your practice or do they all exist in service to a greater whole?

Jesse: They all work in concert, an orchestra/symphony dynamic, or at least that’s what I like to think on a good day. The idea of world building has always interested me, complete immersiveness. I wanted my work to take on this quality, but not seperate from the world as it is, intertwined. So early on I targeted the main influences of culture as spheres to inflitrate. I wanted to see my work in a gallery, but also on a magazine cover, an album cover, a tshirt, I wanted to hear it, taste it. I want people to live in it, not be able to escape it.

Banks: your five favorite albums?

Jesse: Shiiit, same as you, unable to boil that down so instead here are three CDs that were sitting on my desk this morning when I left my Wisconsin studio: Mobb Deep – Hell On Earth, Roc Marciano – Marciology, and Darkthrone – Soulside Journey

Radical Iconography Productions / Jesse Draxler & Banks Violette

Credits:

Artist : Jesse Draxler / @jessedraxler
Banks Violette / @banks_violette_616
Label: Radical Iconography / @radicaliconography
Website: RIP-Radical Iconography Production / http://radicaliconography.com
Words: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci
Editor: Maria Abramenko  / @mariabramenko

Photographer: Leslie Artamonow / @leslieartamonow

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