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As part of the Reference Festival, an interdisciplinary, multisensory event with a focus on fashion, music and art, which premiered a year and a half ago and was recorded in Berlin in January and made digitally tangible, the curator and super interviewer Hans-Ulrich talked Obrist and the DJ and music producer Honey Dijon talk about transgender models, basement parties, Quincy Jones, sustainable fashion, the future of creativity and Donna Summers “I Feel Love”.
Amongst other things.
A section.
Hans Ulrich Obrist:
I always find it interesting where it all begins.
Your parents had basement parties and that's how they introduced you to music.
Is that correct?
Honey Dijon:
My parents were party bunnies.
Getting together and listening to music is an important aspect of African American culture.
When I was three or four I had this kid's record player.
Before I had to go to bed, I was always allowed to put on a few records.
I've always had a very spiritual connection with sound, and my parents had a gigantic record collection.
Everything from Michael Jackson to Donna Summer, Donny Hathaway and Earth, Wind and Fire.
Loud basement parties, the swearing and the sound of cocktail glasses splintering on the floor - that was my first introduction to music.
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Obrist:
And then you started going to house music parties in Chicago when you were twelve.
Dijon:
Back then you only had to be 16 or 18 to get in.
I got a fake ID and told my parents I was doing homework with a friend.
Like other subcultures, these parties were not monitored.
It was mostly gay African Americans who created a safe space for themselves and black children of the working or middle class who put on the music.
The first house parties took place in the auditorium of the Catholic high school, on the roller-skating rink or in black gay clubs.
For me, the clubs weren't just places of entertainment.
It was culturally fertile soil and a community.
I have these four principles: "meet, make, create and participate" (meet, do, create and participate).
Obrist:
It can be incredibly formative to get to know the work of another artist.
Who were your mentors and what were your first transformative experiences?
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Dijon:
I remember a very specific experience like that. My parents had just moved us to the south of Chicago, to a place called Hazel Crest - 45 minutes from Chicago.
As I said earlier, the first house events took place on roller skating rinks.
I remember going to a particular lane and I think Maurice Joshua hung up.
I danced so intensely and got so lost that I stepped out of my body.
I could literally see myself dancing.
I remember telling myself back then, “I don't know what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do it.
But I want this music to be part of my life forever ”.
It was such a transformative experience.
DJ Derrick Carter, who was working at Import Records in Chicago at the time, is now my best friend.
When I entered the store, a world opened up for me.
Chicago was such a rich city musically.
Obrist:
What did you learn from Derrick Carter?
Dijon:
How to think outside the box musically.
And how to go the extra mile as an artist from a professional point of view.
How to bring different genres of music together to craft a story.
And I've learned that technically there is no one in house music who is better than Derrick.
The queuing of taking three disks and making it sound like one.
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Obrist:
So you learned by watching.
Dijon:
I learned through being present.
Obrist:
That is wonderful.
Can we talk about how the craft of DJing is a bricolage?
Dijon:
Well I think it's just a different way of telling stories acoustically.
To manipulate people emotionally through sound, frequency and vibration and to be able to take them on a journey.
Cycling, having sex or DJing are very similar.
Once you understand the mechanics, it takes a back seat.
If I show up somewhere to hang up, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
Intellectual mastermind, working for the renowned Serpentine Galleries in London.
Obrist has conducted extensive interviews with probably every artist, thinker and designer
Source: Brigitte Lacombe
Obrist:
When I look at your bookshelf, I see music, fashion and literature.
You told me that Sarah Schulman's "The Gentrification of Mind" is important to you.
Can we talk about it?
Dijon:
Fran Lebowitz said that we are living in this cultural moment because AIDS has destroyed the high-class, super creative people and the audience that valued them.
I read Sarah Schulman's book because I wanted to understand why I didn't feel connected to anything today and why I kept coming back to that specific time of the 70s and 80s.
What is it that attracts me so much?
As I read the book, it explained to me that the AIDS crisis and gentrification converge in New York City.
Many gays and trans people left their small towns and created a vibrant life in New York.
But when AIDS started, lots of apartments became vacant and all of these landlords were suddenly able to buy up lots of properties.
Then there is the new technology, it may be good for many things, but it is too disposable.
Nothing is allowed to germinate or marinate.
Everything is so fast, we no longer live with things.
It's no longer about whether something is good, you don't even have to be particularly good, you just have to have enough followers.
I think critical thinking has been lost, critical engagement has been lost, and this book is really great at explaining why we lost it.
I'm just curious, I'm a twin.
Obrist:
I am also a twin.
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Dijon:
So we both have short attention spans.
It's actually ironic that I don't like technology.
Obrist:
Your work has many facets.
You worked with fashion designers Riccardo Tisci and Kim Jones.
And then there is the photographer Steven Meisel, how important was he to you?
Dijon:
I am very grateful to have gotten into Steven Meisel's orbit.
He was the first to photograph black trans women like Connie Fleming, who was a huge inspiration to me.
I saw in her something I could be, because until then I didn't know how a black trans woman who wasn't beautiful in the classical sense would fit into this bourgeois world.
There are hardly any creative blacks in the fashion world.
Not even now, we can talk about diversity as much as we want.
Steven Meisel was one of the first to perceive and document people who were marginalized and were not considered beautiful.
And then he showed this cool girl who came across as super grim and chic and was part of the music and cultural scene in downtown New York.
I became obsessed and collected all of his pictures.
I remember hanging up with him at some point.
Steven Meisel taught me that I can be beautiful in my own way.
Active in fashion shows around the world - in 2020 Dijon launched its Honey Fucking Dijon clothing line, which was created in collaboration with Comme des Garçons
Source: Reference Festival
Obrist:
With Riccardo Tisci and Kim Jones you then started making music for fashion shows.
Dijon:
I met Riccardo while clubbing when he came to New York.
He invited me to hang up on his very first Givenchy show at the after show party.
That was in 2005. He booked me quite a lot after that.
Riccardo is rooted in the club culture and loves electronic music.
Through him, I got to know a lot of great people from the fashion world, contacts that have led to more orders.
I also played in a pretty cool club in the East Village called The Cock.
That's when I met Narciso Rodriguez and Hedi Slimane.
The clubs were our cultural centers - that's how I got into the fashion world.
But Kim Jones was the one who supported me the most in what I do.
I first met him through an exhibition he had realized for the London avant-garde boutique “Pineal Eye”.
It was about Chicago house music culture, which he knows incredibly well.
That was in 2001 I think.
That's when I heard his name for the first time.
And from then on I only talked about Kim Jones until I was introduced to him at a party in New York,
and the rest is her story
, as they say.
We can talk without speaking.
I recently noticed that we've been working together for over ten years.
Obrist:
You have just come back from Paris.
Did you work on his latest show there?
Dijon:
Yes, I chose pieces by Kraftwerk, Anne Clark and Patrick Cowley for the Dior Men's Show.
Three different songs, all of which had a huge impact on house and techno in their own way.
Without Kraftwerk there would be no techno, without Patrick Cowley and Hi-NRG there would be no synthetic, progressive music of this kind. Then the industrial sound of Anne Clark.
It was all so trend-setting.
“I have just curated an Enzo Mari exhibition”: all-rounder Hans-Ulrich Obrist.
One doubts whether he ever sleeps
Source: WireImage
Obrist:
You also make fashion yourself.
Can you tell us about your own clothing line?
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Dijon:
HFD (Honey Fucking Dijon) is born from the desire to celebrate people who feel invisible.
The fashion language and the dress codes - I had the feeling that it was more and more about things and products.
If I were to create products, it would only be if there was an emotional and subcultural connection to them.
It has to be tied to what I live and to the culture I am talking about.
Many of the slogans that I use as prints come from my favorite songs, the imagery from my favorite clubs.
I will do the next collection together with photographer Bill Bernstein, who documented New York club life in the 70s - from “Studio 54” to “Peppermint Lounge” to “Better Days”.
For me it's an uprising against forgetting.
I'll steal that from you.
Obrist:
You may.
Dijon:
I want to honor these cultural and artistic movements.
Because with what we're doing today, we're standing on these people's shoulders.
Obrist:
In her book, Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes that we as a species now have the opportunity to come into direct contact with one another, to unlearn our own thought and narrative patterns and to learn anew.
In a way that allows us to be in real communion with our environment, as opposed to a dominant colonial separation from it.
Of course, this also applies to the fashion industry.
How do you judge that?
And how important is it for you to think about the environmental dimension of fashion?
Dijon:
The new generation of young people I meet are into upcycling and recycling.
They take things that already exist and put them in a new context.
The whole principle of the fashion industry of constantly producing new things violates the idea of sustainability.
Why don't we take what is already there and give it a new context?
The fabric and all the stuff we need is already here, it's the tailoring, deconstructing and reconstructing ideas that we need.
One of my favorite designers right now is Duran Lantink from Amsterdam.
He takes the slow-moving fashion houses and creates something new out of them.
That feels very modern to me.
Obrist:
That is part of the recycling dimension.
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Dijon:
Upcycling is better than recycling.
Obrist:
Upcycling?
Dijon:
Yes.
Take things that already exist.
We live in a world where celebrities can only wear a couture dress once.
So why don't we give these dresses to young designers instead of donating them to museums?
Why don't we continue the conversation?
What is once in a museum is not really alive, and I think the whole point of clothing is that it is worn.
I love the idea of taking a heel from the 1960s and combining it with a Nike sneaker from today.
Do you understand what I mean?
We live in a moment where we have all the information and all the tools.
There is no past, present or future.
Only in this way will there always be new things.
“It's actually ironic that I don't like technology”: DJ Honey Dijon - Born in Chicago, lively in Berlin
Credit: PA / Diego Corredor / MediaPunch
Obrist:
And then there is the idea of longevity.
I have just curated an Enzo Mari exhibition (for the Triennale Milano, editor's note).
An Italian designer who died last year in his late 80s.
He is still a great inspiration to many young product designers today because he created things that will last.
When I was a teenager, I bought a calendar from Mari that I still use.
I never had to buy a new one, and a calendar is usually a disposable product.
Dijon:
I wonder where this idea comes from that things should eventually no longer be relevant.
I think this is really a tool of capitalism and its industry.
I still have records that I bought when I was twelve years old.
A good example is “I Feel Love” by Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, one of the most important songs of all.
I play it for 10,000, 5000 or 200 people, I don't care.
The piece was created in 1977, almost 50 years old.
Is it losing its value because it wasn't made last year?
I find it interesting to think about who decides if something is relevant.
What is the concept of old, new, or timelessness?
Everything will be old for one and new for another at the same time.
We need to change that conversation.
Nothing is new and nothing is old.
It's just a question of how you design it and how you bring it into the conversation.
Obrist:
One of my favorite books is by Norman Minnick: Advice for a Young Poet.
Given your immense experience in so many different fields - music, art and fashion - I was wondering what advice you would give a young designer, a young artist, a young DJ, a young musician in 2021?
Dijon:
When I started Honey Fucking Dijon, a friend asked me why I wanted to make clothes in a market that is so saturated.
I think the best any designer can do is to be clear about who you are and why you do what you do and be sure of your own voice.
You have to be true to your story.
Quincy Jones says: "You will only be as good or bad as an artist as you are as a person".
So work out the people first and then the art.
The idea for HFD is based on gay and lesbian people of color.
And music culture, a subculture that I didn't see anywhere.
So I made up the hashtag #bethethingyouwishtosee.
Why do you want to be a designer?
Why do you want to do fashion?
There is no right or wrong answer to that.
But I think it's important to understand what to say and who to speak to.
Obrist:
That leads me to my last question.
I always ask about the unrealized projects.
We know a lot about architects' unrealized projects because most of them publish them.
But we know little about the unrealized ideas of visual artists, poets, musicians and composers.
So I started to record the unrealized projects of these artists, because I think it's important to make them visible in order to advance the realization.
Can you name one or two of Honey Dijon's favorite unrealized projects?
Dijon:
My goodness, there are so many of them!
I think my biggest unrealized project is shoes.
Do you know how complicated it is to make shoes?
For every design you need strips of different sizes, then different materials and colors.
It is a question of economy and therefore my most frustrating unrealized project, because many trans women have bigger feet than the shoes on the commercial market give.
Shoes are so incredibly gender specific.
If a man, or someone who identifies as a man, wants to wear high heels, you can get them, but they are incredibly cheap.
In Paris I have now noticed that the dress codes there portray such an antiquated idea of femininity, and men's clothing is also so old-fashioned in what it thinks is masculine.
In my circle of friends in Berlin, where you have all of that, we will develop into a species where people have a combination of all kinds of body parts, all kinds of different gender expressions in one.
That's what I wanted to make shoes for.
It's a nightmare.
Reference agency & initiator:
Founded by Mumi Haiati, Reference is initially a PR agency, primarily in the areas of fashion and art. In summer 2019, he and his team presented the Reference Festival, a tightly packed program in a Neukölln parking garage with well-known participants such as the artist Wolfgang Tillmans, the music producer Michel Gaubert, the fashion label Comme des Garçons.
The second festival, in January 2021 and supported by the Berlin Senate for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, had to take place digitally, performances were recorded in an observatory. Honey Dijon and Hans-Ulrich Obrist conducted the (virtual) opening discussion of the Panel Talks by Reference Realities, excerpts of which are reproduced here.
Together with the curator, the idea arose to create a sponsorship award aimed at young creative people who are underrepresented in their industries (e.g. non-whites, transgender people): the Reference Prize. In cooperation with Slam Jam, the Milanese fashion multi, whose founder Luca Benini is also responsible for the Spazio Macchio art space, the applicants are to be supported by well-known mentors in developing an aesthetic vision and implementing it economically.