Click to Zoom

****

May 14, 2009

A SHORT CONVERSATION WITH ITEM IDEM AND HIS NEW PROJECT

FilepMotwary: Item Idem, I saw some interesting photographs of identical men plus your portrait as Rei Kawakubo, what was this all about? 

ItemIdem: The pictures you are refering too are documents for a presentation entitled ENACTORS STUDIO, in Moscow few weeks ago, as part of the Cycles & Seasons festival. It was enhancing a retrospective of some of my projects, especially the ones relating to imagery relocation. The New York Times just called the presentation " Celine-Dion-at-the-Oscars channeling Renee Magritte. " 

The " Rei of Light " piece is a more singular image produced with an unique idea: Communicating. It mimicks whereabouts of a notorious portrait whose means are simply  to communicate values & a state of control on branding. My mirrored image is both an homage, and an explanation of this image, why it exists, what it is intending to communicate.

FilepMotwary:If I would ask you give me your proffessional outline, how would you describe your proffession and what do you do exactly?
ItemIdem:Well I'm probably a playful multitasker in the sense that I react to a brief, a problematic, with various answer fields. Work for me is more something ethereal, slightly intellectual, then I focus on which aesthetical answer to propose. That is why the range of my projects is often quite wide.  In & out the art topic, pre or post the branding question, with or without the style issue. Every question can provide multiple answers. It is something I am curious about.

FilepMotwary: Yes I agree with you. 
ItemIdem:Twisting artistic theories, replaying aesthetical codes, playing with serious branding & marketing issues, it is just very fun to interact with multiple sources of informations, and propose something fresh out of it. The same thing ( item idem ) but revigorated.

FilepMotwary: What is your collaboration with Collette about? Where are you based? 
ItemIdem: Colette is probably one of longest ongoing collaborator. My first job was to help them open the ephemeral " colette meets Comme des Garcons " store in Tokyo in 2004. I was simultaneously working for both colette & CDG. That was probably my last school ever, the best one.
Since that, our joint effort is more on the creative direction point of view. 
I am happy to be part of the family. Their vision is very wide & open minded, I appreciate such generosity. 
So we regularly collaborate on projects, installations, communicational schemes, products etc...

FilepMotwary: I wanted to ask you, you earlier said that you are coming to Athens. What for? How are you linked with the Athens Biennial?
ItemIdem: Well I initially wanted to transplant myself over there, I'm very pushy sometimes, I find it cute actually to be undesired. It's a challenging plus. So I had a project with my friend Dimitris Papadopoulos, whos has been running several guerrilla stores in Athens. Unfortunately, the timing was too short to be able to realize something with the ambition we had in mind. So I am just happy to be a simple attendee of the Biennale. It will probablt be extremely fun, and look well curated actually.

FilepMotwary: Thank you Item Idem