The Constant Siege

“Lagos Calling”, (above right) mixing African tribal style with working class British skinhead punk style. My good friend and constant collaborator, René Garza, and I had this idea about five years ago, and just finally got around to doing it last year. It felt good to get it out of our heads.

I don’t know when the idea for the Gnarls Barkley video “Going On” (above left)  was hatched, or shot, but it’s just coming out now and bears a striking resemblance to our inspiration. I think this is a lovely happenstance, and it’s happened to me before.

I’m a firm believer in artistic “multiples”, as Malcolm Gladwell writes about scientific discovery in The New Yorker:

“This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery — what science historians call “multiples”—turns out to be extremely common. One of the first comprehensive lists of multiples was put together by William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, in 1922, and they found a hundred and forty-eight major scientific discoveries that fit the multiple pattern. Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution. Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier. Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France. Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Bürgi in Switzerland.”

I think artists, and scientists, have to be finely-tuned receivers. In the artist’s case, receivers of fantasy and cultural tides, in the scientist’s case, of underlying currents and causes.

So it’s inevitable that the sensitive among us should “receive” similar ideas at similar times, and it’s only luck or position that leads one of us to do it before another.

I’m so in love with the idea itself, I don’t mind seeing it replicated. There’s enough of it for all of us to mine in our own ways.

Update: It looks like I spoke too soon. Turns out the production people for the Gnarls Barkley video were taking their inspiration from our shoot after all, and even contacted my stylist Rene’ in April to ask him where he had sourced the beaded African accessories. They didn’t bother hiring him for the job though, or crediting either of us for the advance “art direction.” You’re welcome anyway, Gnarls! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Update II: The email Rene’ received last month:

“Hey there Rene,

I got your name from [redacted]
We are producing a video for Gnarls Barkley and found out that you were the
stylist on the shoot with the skinhead look with african/beaded accessories.
For the video we are trying to hunt down some accessories, like beaded
belts, suspenders, chokers and thought you might help point me in that
direction.

Any advice?

Thanks,
[redacted]
Executive Producer

Revolver Film Company”

Again, I think the video came out wonderfully, and I’m proud to have been at least partially influential on its style. And I was firmly tongue in cheek when grousing about credit (although I listed credits as diverse as Nick Knight, Pieter Hugo, and Malick Sidibe along with my original fashion story, to show that we all exist and mingle in a cultural and artistic river ).

If anything, I was disappointed that the production team would contact Rene’ asking him for his style advice, and then not hire him for the actual production. That’s it.