Rinzen

June 2nd, 2007

Rilla and Steve Alexander live in Berlin and are part of the Australian collective Rinzen (www.rinzen.com). For those unfamiliar with the name this would be an excellent chance to take a look at their website, check the header for this page during June that they did with the ocassion of this interview, checks the pics that illustrate it and well… read what Rilla, the only female in this group, had to say for all you Subaquatica’s website usual and ocassional readers. And for those who know the work of Rinzen already, we are sure you like it as much as we do because it’s truly amazing so just enjoy.

You come from a graphic design background but it seems like the work you have been doing for the last few years it’s mostly illustration and you have become more artists than designers. Am I right? How did this process happen?

Before there was Rinzen there was RMX - where, inspired by music remixing and the Surrealist’s Exquisite Corpse, we started swapping image files and reworking them over and over. At the time we were all working on corporate graphic design projects, and RMX was pure play - an outlet for our creativity. We drew, experimented with different styles and techniques and learnt from how each other approached “freedom”. It was so much fun and a bit of a wake up call - a jolt out of everyday. We realised we should work together all the time - doing the stuff we wanted for the people we wanted, while also working on our own projects and ideas. In the spirit of RMX we began by approaching many of our design projects illustratively which led to us also being commissioned for pure illustration projects. Nowadays we’re doing more and more painting, drawing, sewing and carving - both for exhibitions and for commissioned projects. We like to do “everything” and see our design, art and craft all as one. Whether we’re asked to design a fabric print, a CD cover or a poster or we’re working on pieces for our own exhibition, it all comes from the same place in our minds, drawing on the inspirations we gather around us, the places we visit and the people we meet.

Maybe it’s simply a question of gaining recognition and being able to be more liberated from the client’s restrictions because if they choose you for some project is because they trust that you are capable of doing what they need without much input from them?

Yeah, I think the more you explore and develop your own own ideas, the more people want to see what you will do when given a different canvas or world to work with. Obviously different projects have different restrictions - in some projects we are given a completely open brief to explore our own ideas, while in others we have very specific ideas to communicate. We try to work only on projects where we want to communicate that idea, so that our work has passion and meaning.

Do you precisely rule out projects where you don’t have the creative freedom you have nowadays? Would you prefer to focus only in purely artistic work?

We’re pretty lucky in that most everyone who approaches us gets what we do, and how we work and is really open to our ideas. While we love working on our own exhibitions and books, of course, everything we do feeds into other projects and often restrictions governing theme or technique pushes us down new paths. Collaborating with other Rinzen members or other artists also encourages happy accidents and different ways of thinking - and, at their best, relationships with people commissioning work can be the same.

Nowadays there’s a very interesting generation of artists from all corners of the world with different backgrounds, many from the street art scene, many from illustration and character design. I know it’s a very heterogeneous scene, if you can call it that, but what do you feel you have in common with all these other artists, for example the ones that you meet when going to events where you are invited or that you collaborate with in your own projects?

No matter what they’re making or in what style everyone is working hard to bring their ideas to life in their own ways and that energy is inspiring. We love going to events, like the Pictoplasma conference, where everyone - not just the speakers - sit together and draw and talk about things we’ve done and what we want to do together in the future. We’ve met many people at events like this who we go onto work with in our RMX projects and in other collaborative projects. We also just email people whose work we love and sometimes they turn out to be great friends we haven’t met yet.

I think that this whole interactuation between artists from different countries is possible because internet, cheaper flights, etc… but still you moved from Australia to Germany and have been living there for some time now. And now when I contacted you for this interview you mentioned that had just been in Copenhagen and now had to go in a few days to Biarritz… how’s been living in Europe so far and how’s all this travelling around?

Australia is a great place to live and eventually we will go home - but for now we’re really enjoying living in Berlin and exploring Europe bit by bit. Our location has always been almost irrelevant to our work because our projects come from all over the world and, wherever we are, we do nearly everything on email. Most of our projects are done without ever meeting and rarely for people in the city we’re living in. By living in Berlin, though, we can be part of more exhibitions, events and conferences - and be inspired by all the places we visit as a result. Our travels are like a lucky dip - last week we had a surprise visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. If there is one thing better than going to inspiring places, its going without even having planned it!

Talking about Rinzen, how do you manage to do projects as a collective precisely with you two living in Europe and the rest in Australia? What kind of projects do you focus more on as a collective right now?

The five of us are scattered even further around the world now that Craig has moved to New York - though our different locations still don’t really affect the way we work together. We’ve always done some projects individually, and others as a group - each of us contributing elements and then someone taking the lead to pull it all together. Even while working on different projects, though, we explore themes collectively and our ideas and approaches interbreed. We started the Rinzen Care Pack last year to experiment with ideas or techniques that are new to us. It gave Adrian a forum to write a story, for Craig to work with photographers Lyn and Tony in a way he hadn’t previously, and for Steve and I to play some more with drawing and painting in ink. It really is a “care package” to each other - of the ideas we’re playing with and inspired by at that time. So far we’ve made one - to the theme of “In the Milky Night” - but we’re currently working on the next one.

It looks like a huge effort and a lot of work in the projects that come not from an institution or company but directly from you, like the RMX projects such as the last book. There must be a strong motivation behind these projects, right?

The RMX projects are just so so fun that we manage to forget all the work that goes into putting them together as books and exhibitions. The latest book - Neighbourhood - took over 2 years to make, but it was all worth it for those christmas-morning-like feelings of opening the packages and seeing how the toy had been reborn. There is a liberation from your own preciousness in the RMX projects - its addictive.

But at the same time being projects with a lot of other artists involved I guess they never end up like you first intended. Is this part of the fun of it or sometimes it can be frustrating not getting the feedback you expected from other participants? Maybe a little bit of both?

We think carefully about who we’ll invite to be part of the projects and in the RMX projects, which piece we’ll give them to remix. But we never cease to be amazed by what comes back. In “Neighbourhood” people who had never sewn before came back with the most ingenious sewn creations, and others - who we thought would sew - treated the toy’s surface as a canvas. We were really scared to send some of the toys off for their next round of remixing because they were so “perfect” already - but the sacrifice pretty much always paid off. Not only do the participants have to let go of their creations and see them altered beyond all recognition, but we also have to abandon any preconceived notions of how we see the project turning out - afterall, you can’t delete any part of a process that is all about sequential reworking.

Changing the subject a little bit I would like you tell us about your creative process. Maybe it’s more analog than it seems, maybe you focus more on the process itself and let it take you wherever or maybe you always have a clear idea on what you want to acomplish… can you elaborate on this, please?

It’s definitely different for each of us. Steve draws constantly and most of his work develops in his notebooks. If the ink soaks through onto the next page he’ll make a sketch based on that. His paintings usually start their life in his notebook, but he is just as comfortable work directly onto the canvas (be it a real canvas or on screen) and developing it as he works. I think more in words and my notebook is full of ideas for how my worlds fit together. When I start drawing, different characters emerge and I put them into these situations. In our 10 day workshop in Sapporo in February we took the participants through some of our creative processes. We began by drawing anything and everything that came into our minds and gradually refined the shapes. We allowed our work to be reworked by others, creating shapes using elements created by others and at one point painted over everything and began again.

What have you been working on recently?

We were in Barcelona in April to do a shoot for Puma, and Steve visited Milan to customise an MTV Toy along with Jeremyville and Tado. At the moment we’re putting together a booklet documenting the Sapporo workshop and planning a workshop for Mexico in October.

And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?

We’re currently working on a snowboard jacket and plush toy for Billabong… and we hope to start working on the Rinzen book soon.

Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?

We would love to do large scale sculptural work…somewhere you can walk into and around, be part of and believe in…create a whole world. Mmmmmm….

Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?

At the moment we’re really into Mr Squiggle. He was a marionette who used to be on Australian TV. He had a pencil nose and would transform the squiggles he was sent by kids into drawings. He drew everything upside down and when he was finished would say “Upside Down, Upside Down..everything is upside down these days, Miss Jane”. He drew on a grumpy blackboard friend who would groan “Hurry up”.

Entry Filed under: Artists