23:Eng Interview 1 — Nigh Magazine

Thomas Subreville / Ill-Studio
Interview (2022)

Please tell us about yourself: how you grew up as a kid, in what kind of environment? Were you exposed to art and design from your early childhood?

Not really, I’m from a small town in the south of France. My mom is Spanish and my dad is French, so I grew up in a very strong Mediterranean culture. And nothing in my life was really connected to arts. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and it was very hard to access culture, because the only connection that we had were magazines. And I think the first thing that made me connect with the path I’m at today was skateboarding. When I was six or seven, my brother, who’s five years older, started telling me about music and skateboarding. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. This is happening in the world right now. And people are actually doing things in a different way. There was like a wave of people doing things independently and differently, whether it was skateboarding or music. And it connected with the idea of being part of a community that is not doing everything like the rest of the world does. And I think that was it for me. That feeling was so satisfying.

Would you say that the sense of community is not specific to skateboarding?

Not at all! Whether it was skateboarding, music, or whatever else some other people were into, it was important to me that it was a means of identification, a way to express yourself differently. I think it’s specific to a mindset, I think it’s people who were looking for alternatives. Back then, there weren’t many choices, right? You can play football, or you can do tennis, you can be a scientist, or you can be a writer… you know, it was very narrow minded. And I think what connects people like me together is a vision of life. It’s that never ending quest for something new, something alternative, something different. I think that’s how a lot of people connected back then in the 80s and 90s.
We are this last generation of people who grew up without the internet but are very used to it now. I was 25 when I had my first computer. I think that makes our generation so weird in a way. There are the worlds of pre and post the internet. And we’re very used to both. The generation right after us, they grew up with the internet, and the generation before maybe a little too old to get those codes. I’m born in 1980 and this generation this characteristic like growing up without the internet, but then using it as a tool to express ourselves.

Any artists or musicians you were into as a kid, or growing up?

To answer your question, I could name skateboarders, musicians, but I don’t want to point one out. There’s too many to name one, but for me personally it was skateboarding. Skateboarding led me to music. Music led me to fashion and fashion led me to art in that order. Art for me came a bit later on, because it was not accessible to us in a small town: there were no galleries, no museums. Also in France, art was a very conservative thing. Skateboarding was freedom. Music and fashion were freedom. But the art was not even in a conversation, because it was that thing in museums. Art probably came into the conversation through photography later.

Is there any cover arts for records or graphics for T shirts that left you with a strong impression from your early age?

That’s a good question. But it’s also a tricky one. I think a lot of the best record covers were discovered later on, retrospectively, from the things that I was really into growing up. If we talk about Wu Tang Clan, for example, I’m emotionally attached to their first album. It’s about the music, the way they dress, and everything. But I will not say it’s a great album cover or one of the best album covers of all time. I love that cover of the soundtrack of Antarctica by Vangellis that I bought in Japan last week. But I didn’t listen to that when I was a kid, you know.

How did skateboarding help nurture your senses, physically, aesthetically or creatively?

Skateboarding was my absolute passion for a long time in my life. Skateboarding has led me to a lot of things that I do today, but it’s not something that I claim as skateboard culture. There is not a single skateboard in my office now, you know. It’s not something that I’m nostalgic about. But for sure it changed the way I look at things. When I walk in the streets, for example, and find a skate spot, there’s always this little alarm going off in my head; “oh, that’s something you could skate.” This will stay forever, even though I haven’t touched a skateboard in 15 years. But also, I’ve noticed that I was into minimal sculptures because they recall the shapes of skateable structures. There’s an unconscious attraction to the architecture. There’s a French philosopher/architect called Paul Virilio. He wrote a book called the Function of the Oblique, about all walls in architecture being oblique versus vertical. And it took me quite a while to realize why I was so into this. And I realized that’s because of skateboarding. So I still have this in mind to this day, even though I don’t skate anymore. So yes, for sure, it had a huge impact on the way I see things but also like in terms of community. You don’t even talk about skateboarding with people, but you still connect. Because you grew up the same way. We don’t even need to say that anymore, but there’s still this thing in the air in my surroundings for sure.

Going back to the topic of the last generation of pre and post internet era, we’ve seen the birth of the internet, and now YouTube and social media are taking over. As a studio and a creative person, how have you perceived the evolution of the Internet?

It’s an amazing tool for people like me, because you can show your work, your personality to the world around you, without having to be extravagant or screaming out loud. You see what I mean? Before the internet, it was hard for a lot of people to show their talents because you had to be a part of specific community. Since the democratization of the internet, I can now take a photo and share it in 10 minutes, and you guys in Tokyo can see it. Which is amazing because it allows so much freedom and independence. You can pave your own way with the internet, if you know how to use it.
When it comes to the evolution of it, I think it got better and better for me. In the 2000, for example, everybody would have a website. But a website was just to show your work, whether a photographer or a painter. It’s just projects. Right now if I want to take a photo of this bottle of water and put it on the internet, I can and I love that freedom, because it’s not about sharing your work, it’s about sharing your personality. And I think that has evolved over the last 15 years. Now if I want to see photographers work, for example, I go on their Instagram, because you want to see their personality. You want to see the inspirations, their aesthetics, their tastes. I think that’s how you connect to people. I think it’s so cool that we can share more than just work. To me, the outcome of the project is as important as the process, or the inspirations behind it. Because we do a lot of things from our own exhibitions, fashion to music, and it’s super important to communicate about the vibes in general, the world that we live in, and not necessarily about that one thing or the other thing.

The evolution of technology will continue. In this era of continuous technological advancement, what do you think are the important quality or visions that creators should have?

The technology remains as a tool to express yourself. And the things you want to say still come from yourself and from your mind. With all the endless possibilities of technology and the internet, it’s even more important today to cultivate your own self and your own vision. And this is not on the internet, it’s on you to be curious. Go outside, look at what’s going on, analyze the world around you, travel, look through books or whatever. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I think it’s very important to get off the internet. The internet is a perfect tool to look for stuff, get and share information. But the people that I see as very talented, that talent doesn’t come from the internet. It comes from their own brain and their own practice. So, before you go on the internet, think about what you really want, what you’re good at, what inspires you, and to decide where to go. You’re the only one who has these answers. I think the internet is amazing but it’s still a tool. It’s still a vector to express yourself.

You are 100% self-taught in terms of Art and Design. How would you think that has influenced or nurtured your aesthetics and creativity?

There are good and bad sides of being self-taught for sure. But I’m going to focus on the positive side of it. First of all, I think not learning anything specific, not having a Diploma or master allows you more freedom when it comes to what to do for a living. If you study art, you most likely want to become an artist. If you study photography, you most likely want to become a photographer. But if you don’t study anything, everything’s still possible. Pretty much everything within the creative world that I wanted to try, I’ve tried. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. That has been a very interesting and key elements in my evolution.
Through these experiences, I started changing the way I was thinking about seven or eight years ago. I thought, “I’m not a photographer, I’m not a painter, I’m not a stylist. I’m not anything specific. The value of my work is more in my analytics, my vision or knowledge, experiences, research.” My talent is not in creating images. It’s in telling stories. Since then, I started switching the studio practices. One day I showed up and said, “we need to stop getting paid for images. That’s not what we do.” Let’s say we do a credit direction for a collection or a campaign, the list of deliverables is not really on us; the photographer, or the video director, or whatever. I think where we are useful is before the shoot, for example, to connect cultures together, to make sense of things, to bring some cultural references. And that expresses itself into the form of photography, or a film, a book, building, or a chair, or anything, as long as the vision is the same. For example, we’ve been designing a chair with a Norwegian company and designer. But it’s the story that we developed, behind the concept of the chair. Whether we do creative consulting, strategy or creative direction, it doesn’t matter because the vision is the same. I think being self-taught has led us to that; the way of thinking that you can’t learn at school. You can teach photography or technical stuff, but you can’t really teach inspiration or curiosity. Having said that, we do work with a lot of people who have amazing talents and skills that they’ve been learning at school. The combination of both is extremely important, like writing a story without the book is useless. So, it is extremely important for us to cultivate the mindset, this way of doing things but also to work with people who are not self-taught and know how to turn the story into a physical product or image.