3331 ARTS CHIYODA |
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3331 Arts Chiyoda is a community arts organization based in Akihabara, Tokyo. Housed in a converted junior high school building, 3331 runs a large exhibition gallery on the ground floor where curators and other creatives are invited to stage shows and events not typically seen elsewhere in Tokyo. It also offers an artist residency that provides housing for visiting artists from around the world, a rare opportunity to live in the center of Tokyo. Tokyo is not known as a city with wide public support for the arts but 3331 looks to counter that history. Founded by a group of artists who all have a long history with public art practices, 3331's mission is to make art a more familiar part of the everyday. The former school building is owned by the local Chiyoda ward administration and leased to 3331 at below-market rates in order to provide public space for the local community. 3331 serves as landlord for the building, managing and renting out offices and gallery spaces to other arts organizations, from children's arts workshops to the internationally-renown graphic design magazine +81, among others. It's a nice place to go for a visit: walk through the hallways to see what's going on, eat lunch at the ground-floor cafe, or have a coffee and cigarette in the grassy courtyard out front. Like all galleries and museums, the art on display may not always suit your sensibilities but you can be sure to engage with something at this busy, vibrant center. |
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| 3331's website |
PHOTOGRAPHERS' LABORATORY |
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Photographers' Laboratory is a film processing and printing studio in Akasaka, Tokyo owned by Toshio Saito. For decades, Saito has worked closely with some of the most widely known fine art photographers in Japan. In 1974, he printed much of the work on display at MoMA's landmark "New Japanese Photography" show, the first major exhibition about Japanese photography outside of Japan that included photographers like Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu, and Masahisa Fukase, among others. Today, Saito continues to work with many of these same artists in addition to new generations of fine art and commercial photographers who seek out his expertise. We visited Photographers' Laboratory on a sweltering day in September, grateful for the cool recess of its basement location. The lab is a cluster of cramped rooms loaded with decades' worth of equipment and machines. Watching Saito and his assistants at work, it was unavoidable to think how their work becomes increasingly obscure even as the popularity of photography grows exponentially. Fewer and fewer people will ever see the inside of a darkroom or have their photographs printed by hand. A sad reality for sure. And we rued only too late the irony of documenting the lab's work with a digital camera, an act -- using the instrument of their demise -- that seemed ruder and ruder as each person asked, "digital?" But perhaps Photographers' Laboratory offers an antidote to technology's rush to make the past obsolete. By specializing in the upper reaches of his craft, Saito's future is possibly safer than most, or at least the horizon still distant. Or, more simply still, perhaps he's less concerned with these uncertainties as he just continues working the way he best knows how. |
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| Photographers' Laboratory's website |
GEORGE NAKASHIMA WOODWORKER |
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George Nakashima Woodworker is a custom furniture company located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, owned by siblings Mira and Kevin Nakashima. Founded by their father, George Nakashima (1905-1990), in 1947, the nine-acre site served as a kind of laboratory for integrated living, testing George's concepts of "decentralization, intermediate technology and living off the land" while synthesizing his varied experiences in the Pacific Northwest, Japan, and India, among other places. Today, it continues as an active woodworking studio as well as a heritage center preserving George's legacy. It is, above all, an exceedingly serene place. We were fortunate to visit on a day Mira was hosting a client and tagged along as they went through the careful process of selecting wood, a singular experience that probably best begins to distinguish the Nakashima studio. Divided among three buildings, the bulk of Nakashima's wood collection is stored in an enormous barn-like warehouse where lumber is horizontally stacked in the boule form of the log. Here, there are slabs and lumber that date back to George's early days in Bucks County, awaiting a project for which they'd be bested suited. Here, it's easy to remember the "soul of the tree," the elemental foundation that guides the studio's operation. It's easy, too, to settle into the rhythm of the studio, especially shaded under the towering oaks from the late summer sun. Everywhere is the sound of work: the buzzing of saws, the sander's squeal, the percussive thump of tools and machines that signal things are being made. And in the moments when work pauses, crickets -- or are they cicadas? -- while Mira's young grandson swims in the pool at the forest's edge. A day at Nakashima's is a powerful testament to George's legacy, that the work we do and why we do it is inseparable from how we do it. It's a legacy worth preserving and one Mira both guards and extends by continuing to evolve the studio's work in the spirit her father laid out. |
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| Nakashima's website |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 10 OF 10 |
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[Reviewing finished shirt; concluding thoughts about the shirt] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 9 OF 10 |
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[Production: sewing] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 8 OF 10 |
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[Production: cutting fabric] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 7 OF 10 |
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[What is a marker? reasons for using Gambert for production instead of Nancie] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 6 OF 10 |
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[Fabric shopping; sales model; challenges of selling online versus retail; pricing difficulties] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 5 OF 10 |
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[Gambert Shirt Factory; Tyler reviews sample shirt and compares to Nancie's sample; discusses production logistics] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 4 OF 10 |
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[Mailing; fifth shirt fitting; shirt sizing; laying out shirt on a marker; discussing production cost estimate with Nancie; considering another factory for production] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 3 OF 10 |
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[Tyler describes Outlier's business structure; picking up t-shirts from factory and preparing them for shipping; button sewing on to shirt sample; fourth shirt fitting] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 2 OF 10 |
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[Second shirt fitting; what is a pivot sleeve?] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
OUTLIER: MAKING OF A SHIRT, PART 1 OF 10 |
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[First shirt fitting; introduction to shirt and Outlier's working process; Abe explains production relationship with Nancie.] Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. See WORKING: OUTLIER for further information. |
WORKING is a series of short videos profiling the practices of small, owner-operated businesses. Inspired by Studs Terkel's landmark oral history of working people in the early 1970's, WORKING interviews individuals who have rejected the idea of working for others, instead setting up businesses in order to work for themselves. If Terkel's study triumphed the survival of the human spirit against the daily humiliation of the Job, the individuals presented here update that theme with personal examples of autonomy against the economies of scale that perpetuate the demoralized workplace. WORKING attempts to highlight the successes of these individuals in carving out ways to live, of tailoring a "work" situation that "works" for them, offering up business models that value independence over financial and/or material preoccupations. Terkel, quoting a union leader: "Once we accept the concept of work as something meaningful -- not just as the source of a buck -- you don't have to worry about finding enough jobs." WORKING seeks to learn about the actual practice and challenges of running a business by asking specific questions of how things are done. WORKING tries not only to look behind-the-scenes but also to consider self-assessments regarding the successes and failures of the respective business practice. Ultimately, we hope the profiles inspire you to do it yourself. Note: WORKING is interested in businesses which are rooted in physical spaces (e.g., offices, studios, storefronts) instead of freelance situations that can be transported city to city. The physical nature of these businesses demonstrates, at the least, a commitment to the city where their practice occurs, something increasingly important in stemming the homogenization and scaling of our cities and of unifying the strange divide between where we live and where we work. |
OUTLIER |
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Outlier is a clothing company owned by Abe Burmeister and Tyler Clemens, based in Brooklyn, NY. Since they produced their first garment — pants — in 2008, Outlier has carved out a niche in two highly-saturated markets: fashion and cycling. Their company tag line, “tailored performance,” refers to their primary inspiration and motivation as urban bike commuters. From pants, they’ve worked to expand a line of clothes they consider “future classics,” incrementally adding to their catalog rather than reinventing itself each season like traditional fashion companies who release new products while discontinuing previous ones. Outlier in some key ways is a departure for the WORKING series. Only Tyler currently works full-time for the company and they have yet to establish a permanent, dedicated physical office. Regardless, we were drawn to Outlier’s story because it underscores so many of the challenges involved in running a small business, especially in New York City. Because they produce locally, we were particularly curious to see how their production process worked when so much of New York’s once mighty garment industry has been offshored and lost. Visiting the garment district today is a clear reminder of that past; it still remains a hive of small-business activity, albeit smaller and less visible. Our visits with Outlier over the course of six months to the garment district showed us a network of small businesses, a microcosm of the city at large with its layers of interdependencies. As they will readily acknowledge, Outlier is a business born of and reliant on New York’s resources. Outlier proves how despite knowing little about clothing, good ideas and resourcefulness can go a long way in establishing a business. And still, Outlier represents a paradoxical bind many manufacturing companies face who market a “local” brand while depending on the internet for sales. In some ways, Outlier has no choice but to use the city’s garment factories. Because their mission of “tailored performance” promises a base-level of quality and because their production runs are relatively small, what cost savings that may be gained by offshoring production are minimal at best. Local garment factories, only a bike ride away, can be easily monitored and more importantly, relations easily formed. A paradox, however, emerges on the income-earning end of Outlier’s business, where the retail industry’s standard mark-up structure makes traditional sales outlets cost-prohibitive for small businesses that operate on already slender margins. And so while being able to locally produce high-quality goods, Outlier finds itself unable to fully benefit from the abundance of New York’s retail street scene. Instead the company experiences a strange inversion of globalization’s supply chain by boasting of a hyper-localized manufacturing system while having to depend on the internet’s placeless-ness for sales. That said, for small companies like Outlier, while it makes good sense — business, personal, political even — to produce everything locally, we wonder how long this production model can be sustained. Already, in the course of our filming, Outlier’s locale expanded, slightly yet meaningfully, across the Hudson River into New Jersey. And while this WORKING video series likes to champion the local guy, we will be very interested to track their growth to see how new challenges affect their business model. As it stands, we think the situations Outlier currently tackle are highly intriguing and compelling. The video posted here is a short trailer for a much longer feature-length profile documenting the development and production of a garment — a shirt. The full-length feature learns about Outlier by observing the company at work, following Abe and Tyler as they figure out how to make a shirt that meets their own exacting standards. Much of the time is spent on location at the garment factories they collaborate with to design and produce their clothes. By focusing attention on a specific product and showing some of the unseen effort that constitutes its development, this next edition of WORKING hopes to offer a nuanced and complicated look at the practices of a small business. |
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| Outlier's website |
DEPOT |
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Depot Cycle & Recycle is a bicycle shop in Ichikawa, an eastern suburb of Tokyo a little more than an hour's bike ride from Shibuya. Established by Seiya Minato in 2001, Depot first began by offering bike parts and accessories to Tokyo's far-flung messenger community. Seiya made his mark too by importing many foreign brands into Japan, introducing companies like ReLoad and Freitag to Tokyo's cyclists while encouraging local producers to develop their own products. Seiya presaged Japan's street trend of fixed-gear track bikes and for years was the only Tokyo-area bike shop selling used keirin frames, working with local frame builders to resell retired bikes. Now that the trend has exploded into a media-recognized phenomenon, spiking prices to unaffordable levels, Seiya has concentrated more on encouraging bike culture, the "things around the bike," as he puts it. "I'm not so interested in the bike... I like riding bikes." We talked to Seiya about running a store and was particularly curious about why he was way out in Ichikawa when shop after shop was springing up in central Tokyo, feasting off a scene he helped develop. "We were born here," he explained, "we should do it in our place. It is our reality." If you spend an afternoon at Depot you will meet all sorts of people: shoppers, messengers, neighborhood residents, and certainly his two young daughters, Aika and Yume, and his wife, Mami, who may be nursing their newborn son. It is a kind of, er, hub for a community that responds positively to Seiya's infectious energy, generosity, and kindness. And then it becomes clear that Depot was never about scenes but about the strength and sincerity of relationships. Like the best kinds of bike shops all around the world, it is a community service. |
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| Depot's website |
POSTALCO |
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Postalco is a stationery and leather goods company based in Tokyo and owned by Mike and Yuri Abelson. They moved to Tokyo in 2001 from New York City where Yuri worked as a graphic designer and Mike as a product designer. As Postalco, the Abelsons partner their individual strengths to produce finely-crafted products that have garnered them praise and devoted fans not just in Japan but around the world. We met up with Mike and Yuri at their shop in Kyobashi, a sober, no-funny business neighborhood wedged in the shadow of Ginza, Tokyo's commercial bright star. The shop is a fully-realized distillation of Postalco's elegantly utilitarian sensibility; their complete product line is displayed alongside office supplies, art projects, and a small library of reference books and curiousities. At first the shop might appear to better fit in high-end Ginza -- Postalco is not cheap --but its presence in a decidedly workmanlike neighborhood on the fourth floor of a faded office building is, to us, a quiet testament to more humble concerns. And in the end, it's the kind of place you enjoy looking to find. Later on we visited their office/studio in Kobama, a leafy neighborhood only a few train stops from Shibuya yet where the thin-air cluster of Tokyo's high rises recedes quickly into a distant memory. The contrast in settings between shop and studio seems to highlight a good balance in their approach to work: their ability to unify what they want with what they do and to craft a lifestyle that works. It's nice. We talked with Mike and Yuri about issues of craftsmanship and why they run their business in Japan. Postalco has always struck us as a perfect Japanese company: simple forms that belie obsessive attention to details and quality, masking intricate design considerations and construction challenges. While they've been expanding their presence in the United States, Mike and Yuri spoke at length about how living in Japan is important, if not vital, to the success of their company. For us, each time we visit Tokyo we wonder how we could ever figure out a way to move to that city we love. What makes Postalco so perfect for this WORKING series is the way Mike and Yuri have answered this question: by pursuing their interests so resolutely that they've had little choice but to do what they want. Mike and Yuri show that by concentrating and perfecting the skills you have can very well lead to broader horizons, new lessons, and richer experiences -- the kind of life you want. Yeah. |
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| Postalco's website |
KNEE HIGH MEDIA JAPAN |
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Knee High Media Japan is a magazine publishing company in Tokyo owned by a husband-wife partnership, Lucas Badtke-Berkow and Kaori Sakurai. Founded in 1996, Knee High's first magazine was TOKION, a highly regarded and influential publication that spotlighted Tokyo's burgeoning youth culture while considering the outside world from a compelling we-are-on-the-same-team perspective that effectively kickstarted the trend of product collaborations between businesses we still see today. Since then, Knee High has branched off into new publishing directions, beginning with family (MAMMOTH - est 2000), travel (PAPER SKY- est 2002), Tokyo subway commuting (METRO MIN - 2002-2003), and plants (PLANTED - est 2006). In addition to their independent publications, Knee High also offers a consulting service (KNEE HIGH CREATIVE) to other businesses, helping clients set up magazines and catalogs infused with Knee High's singularly syncretic sensibility. We've long admired Knee High's work and even while we were disappointed when PAPER SKY ceased its bilingual text we continued to buy each new issue. Knee High's publications always include some of the things we love best about Japanese magazines: intriguing photography, fresh design, and the enthusiastic curiousity of the hobbyist coupled with the organizing mania of the expert. But most of all, the unwavering spirit that guides Knee High's work is the sense of mutual interests the magazines share with its readers. Knee High always manages to avoid the cliquish elitism that dooms other magazines, perhaps because it lacks cynicism and self-importance. We've always perceived the editorial focus of each magazine to be narrow, sharp and deliberate: clearly their aim was not growth in terms of market share but something more personal. While Knee High's magazines will never dominate the mass newsstand, they instead help to define the terrain they operate within, raising publishing standards by focusing inwardly on quality and excellence in the pursuit of idiosyncratic interests. They produce the kinds of magazines we love to read, even if we can't read them. We visited Lucas and Kaori at Knee High's office located in a converted house in Shibuya as they were winding down for the new year holiday. They have the rare good fortune to possess a garden where they cultivate herbs and vegetables and relax under maple and persimmon trees where the noisy mejiro, a lovely white-eyed green bird, feasts off the last of the year's fruits. We were especially interested in listening to their experiences as partners running a small business in Japan. |
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| Knee High's website |
CETMARACKS |
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Cetmaracks is owned by Lane Kagay who began manufacturing front-end cargo racks for bicycles while messengering in San Francisco. Initially Lane used his welder to repair iron gates in San Francisco but soon realized that this line of work would lock him to a city he wasn't sure he wanted to live in forever. In 2007, Lane moved to Eugene, Oregon, a town famous for its "alternative" lifestyles, which for him meant somewhere cheap enough to pursue his interests yet creative enough to support them. Cetma embodies the best of small business. Adhering to no kind of business model, Cetma follows an organic growth pattern where yesterday's needs determine today's activities. In an era where "sustainability" has been sadly relegated to the marketer's lexicon, Cetma creates a product that comes from a personal need predicated on the idea of living a life that supports itself. We were especially interested in learning about Cetma since Lane actually makes something. For all the talk of offshoring American manufacturing, its heartening to see that manufacturing and production of real goods continue in places like Eugene. Perhaps someday a large foreign company will produce bicycle racks with an economy of scale that severely undercuts Cetma's pricepoints, driving Cetma out of business. But that day seems unlikely since the demand for these racks are fueled by people who ride bicycles, not cars. And unless there's a large shift in the general population to bicycle commuting, a small business like Cetma appears safe from corporate predation. We root for these companies that produce goods -- tools -- for specific people and communities, who practice and use and need what they make. |
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| Cetmaracks' website |
CAUSE & EFFECT |
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Cause & Effect is a post-production studio in New York City owned by Jason Zemlicka and Jamie Hubbard. Their work runs the gamut of commercial broadcast spots to music videos to what is called "branded content" (don't ask us what that means). Drawing heavily upon the large media conglomerates headquartered in the city for their client base, Jason and Jamie have created a business in a competitive industry already saturated with talent, reward and heartbreak. What distinguishes Cause & Effect from other post houses, though, is not only their intense devotion to client needs but their individual personality traits that together create a workplace that is friendly, fun and inspiring. Simply put: they are really nice guys. We visited Cause & Effect's Chelsea studio as they were busy expanding their office space and talked with Jason and Jamie about what motivated them to leave the relative security of their previous jobs to break out on their own. As talk of recession and a Global Financial Crisis dominated the airwaves, they spoke candidly about running a small business, independence and risk taking. Every business venture is at the start a calculated risk; Cause & Effect, however, spends less time calculating, instead following their gut instincts that so far have led to success. For them, in the end, the possibility of doom is preferable to the status quo. |
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| Cause & Effect's website |
MYORB |
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MyORB (My Orange Box) is a graphic design company run by Lucie Eder based in New York City. The "orange box" in its name refers to a design school project of a literal orange box used to distinguish Lucie's portfolio from the ubiquitous black. Today, this drive for distinction continues to underscore the work of this small design studio. In its own quiet way, MyORB works assiduously with its clients to produce clear graphic information that help clients best understand and express their own identity. In fact, MyORB's chief strength is identity development, championing the belief that good design can be both revelatory and transformative. We spoke with Lucie at her office in SoHo about independence and self-determination and how these values struggle at times for control over a small business. We were interested to see how a small design company operates in a city full of designers where clients have a wide range of studio options, from large multi-national offices to desktop amateurs with budding design aspirations. We were impressed with the way MyORB's client list has evolved -- nearly entirely word-of-mouth recommendations, which indicates not only client satisfaction but also a kind of informal affinity network of small businesses, the kind of network we admire and seek to support. |
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| MyORB's website |
KIOSK |
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Kiosk is a kind of general store if the world could be seen as a small town. Owned by a married partnership, Alisa Grifo and Marco ter Haar Romeny, Kiosk features a rotating exhibition of everyday products from around the world, smartly selected with an eye towards craftsmanship and singularity. "Their beauty," Kiosk writes in its mission statement, "is sometimes hard to see in today's market; our motivation to start Kiosk was to shed some light on these anonymous objects and support independent producers." In a retail world of endlessly repetitive consumer choices, Kiosk celebrates the child-like joy of discovery all too often lost in the anxious marketplace. One of Kiosk's defining characteristics is the boosterish positivity underscoring each selection, most directly evident in the often personal mini-stories Alisa writes to introduce each product. We were greatly impressed by Alisa and Marco's enthusiasm for the manufacturers they've met and come to represent in the SoHo shop. In thinking about their space as a kind of museum they solve at least two problems of traditional museums and other "curated" stores. First, they tackle the museum's static, proprietary displays by offering a wide price range of products anyone can afford to take home (not just a souvenir but the actual thing). And second, they avoid fetishizing products by emphasizing the humble utlitarian aspect of well-made and well-designed goods. After all, a dustpan no matter how exquisitely crafted is in the end just a dustpan. Nothing precious here. We were curious to hear about Kiosk's struggles to survive in a neighborhood we seldom visit anymore after the arrival of so many chain stores and outside businesses that have little interest in downtown. Kiosk is the kind of business all too often mourned with gauzy nostalgia when they close in the face of rent increases or online competition. That it survives in the heart of one of the world's fiercest retail centers ought to call out all those who support the little guy since Kiosk stands as a friendly yet determined advocate of the personal. It is a place you remember long after you visit. |
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| Kiosk's website |
THE DISPENSATION Before it all gets wiped away, let me say, there is wisdom in the slender hour which arrives between two shadows. It is not heavenly and it is not sweet. It is accompanied by steady human weeping, and twin furrows between the brows, but it is what I know, and so am able to tell. |
ACROSS FROM WESTERN CITY |
A ROLLERCOASTER IN WASHUZAN |
THE ECSTASY OF TRANSCENDENCE The sweetest man in Tokyo. |
TOMITY Tomity profiles Toshihiko Tomita, a professional track cyclist living in Tokyo, Japan, as he embarks on his 25th year as a Keirin racer. Keirin cycling is one of Japan's most popular gambling sports in addition to being one of two original Japanese athletic contributions to the Olympic Games (along with judo). This short documentary surveys the sport of Keirin as Tomity reflects upon his long career and considers life after professional cycling. A de facto ambassador of Keirin, Tomity is perhaps the most visible promoter of the sport to fans of track cycling living outside of Japan. |
TOKYO SKIDS Fast and furious skidding, Carnival style. |
TOM CRUISER Where are you going? |
AFTER MODERN HISTORY is a report on world events that re-edits the news of the day by linking together images according to a totally idiosyncratic perspective of pattern recognitions and typologies. AFTER MODERN HISTORY lifts photos from daily newspapers and re-organizes disparate, often atomized subjects into newly imagined affinities. For most people caught on the hard end of luck, the newspaper can be a lonely place. But in this second draft of history, bad news is no longer so isolated. There is no dateline. Each collection of clippings is published as individual, pocket-sized books. Special thanks to Sarah Charlesworth. For ordering information, please send an email here or contact the distributor below. |
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Distribution: Textfield (North America); Motto (Europe) |
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| WEEPING 48 pages, 4 x 5.75 inches, Risograph, b/w interior, 2/1 cover, perfect bound, 2009 Collection of newspaper clippings from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal of people crying. Part of the series, After Modern History. |
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| BICYCLES 48 pages, 4 x 5.75 inches, offset, b/w interior, 1/1 cover, perfect bound, 2009 Collection of newspaper clippings where bicycles appear incidentally to the photograph's subject. Part of the series, After Modern History. Printed in New York City. |
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“So, we should take Cascade Express, go down Gulch, stay to the right and when it veers close to Boulevard, duck down the unmarked trail. That’s Exro’s, I think.” “Sounds good.” They board the lift, a wide quad chair that skims swiftly along the mountain’s rise. He folds the trail map and sticks it back into his chest pocket, removing in turn the small flask of whiskey he nips from in order to relax. Okay, slowly now: deep chesty breaths of fresh air, exhale. The dense clouds which obscured visibility all morning long begin to part, opening up the mountain to the sky and the sun that later will cause them to shed layers in the afternoon’s warmth. For now, though, it’s all good – “epic,” he catches himself muttering to no one in particular. They sit mutely, transfixed by the revelation of the volcano’s snow-capped peak looming up ahead like a gloved fist. At the summit, they plop down onto the hard-packed snow to strap into their boards, each still lost in the reverie of the ascent. When they finish, they look at each other and speak for the first time since catching the lift at the mountain’s base. “Uh, which way were we supposed to go?” Left or right or straight? “Um, shit, I don’t remember." |
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General inquiries: mail[at]tramnesia.com Book distribution: Textfield (North America), Motto (Europe) |
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TRAMNESIA 2007–2010
