In much the same way Da Vinci’s inventions were ahead of their time, Red Bull is creating a sound system so advanced it makes current sound rigs look like tapedecks. The Red Bull Music Academy World Tour kicks off in Cape Town with a three day event that we don’t want you to miss. Read on to find out how you can win a double ticket to the three-day event courtesy of one small seed and Red Bull.

Between August 29 and September 1st Cape Town will host the visionaries behind the world-famous Valve Sound System (UK), Dillinja and K-aze along with SIAN, DJ and founder of Octopus recordings (UK) and some of South Africa’s most prolific crews, DJs, promoters, producers and creative collectives. What is being done is the construction of a massive sound system that will travel to some of South Africa’s largest musical events as a tribute to the nucleus of club culture. When completed, the collaborative construction of the world-class system will be capped off by a three-day festival of sound. Taking place at The Assembly in Cape Town, September 1-3, it will feature a full spectrum of electronic music where all participating local crews will have the opportunity to perform on the newly built system alongside world-renowned selectors.

Dillinja – hard noize

Having pioneered the first filtering drum system and creating unique Amen breakbeats, Dillinja and K-aze are versatile producers and mix masters who, since the 1990s, have been lauded as versatile producers and mix masters. Fellow Briton SIAN throws down his own hypnotic take on techno with his avant-garde approach and trademark experimental DJ-ing style.  With a list of 26 talented and respected DJs throwing their hats into the ring, it’s almost guaranteed the event will blow everything else out the water.

Lemon D vs Aphex Twin – Manhattanannou

With the Red Bull Music Academy World Tour hitting over ten major cities all over the world including Berlin, Paris, Detroit, Melbourne, Rome, San Paulo and London kicking it off from Cape Town is a great hour we’re sure the city is happy to accept. Each stop will delve into unique elements of the Red Bull Music Academy experience, bringing together influential musicians from various corners of the world across different eras of music to pay tribute to the pioneering sounds that paved the way for today’s deepest funk and hip hop.

So be at The Assembly from the 1st to the 3rd of September to show your support and pride in Cape Town’s own vibrant and definitely celebrated club culture. For your chance to win a double ticket to the THREE-day event courtesy of one small seed and Red Bull rack your brain a bit, do a bit of research HERE, leave a comment below answering the following questions and tell us why you want to go. Winners will be announced on Tuesday 30th August.

1. What is the name of the Soundsystem that Dillinja and Lemon D built?
2. Name one of the famous Soundsystems owned by eccentric DJs during the early days of Jamaican Soundsystem culture.
3. Where would you like to hear the Red Bull Studio Signal Control Soundsystem aside from the Assembly next week? (Choose any party / venue. Who knows the Soundsystem might make its way there one day).

Matt Edwards talks to the Southern California-based artist about his most recent exhibition, The Artist in You, in which Biskup interrogates his own role in the esoteric world of fine art.

How do you go about creating your art? Walk us through your process…



I sketch a lot. That’s usually how projects start. When I get a vague idea of where I’m going with a particular show that’s when I usually come up with a title. After I have a title I start trying to make finished paintings. Lately I’ve been in this mode of working on paintings until I feel like they are about halfway done. Then I prop them against the wall in a place where I’ll see them a lot. I’ll just let them sink in and at some point I’ll have an idea about where to go with them. I usually take two or three passes at paintings.



Your earlier work from exhibitions like Vapor and Ether seemed to focus more on emotions and creating pieces that are aesthetically pleasing. How has your direction changed for your latest body of work?



Vapor and Ether were almost traumatic in their intensity for me. I was in a very difficult place in my life when I made those shows. It was like bleeding. It was so cathartic to paint like that. I shed a lot of bad energy when I came out of that period. People kept asking me if I was okay and all I could say was that all of those feelings were on the wall now and no longer inside of me. That’s not completely true, but the process was part of me getting better, not just me showing how fucked up I am.



The work you did for The Artist in You seems to question the art world as a whole. Is this a response to critics, museums and mainstream galleries not including ‘low brow’ as a legitimate art movement or simply questioning your own position as an artist in the art world?



I felt like an outsider and that’s definitely where it started. I wrote a section called “Sour Grapes For Rotting Vegetables” very early on in the process and it was just a tirade about the art world intelligencia. It was so brutal and raw. A lot of people responded to it and seemed to feel like that was the key statement of the show, but if you read the whole book there is a revelation where I actually accept that I am more to blame for those feelings and I am actually one of those intellectuals that I was railing against.



I still feel like there are some major prejudices against art that declares itself as visual art and that craftsmanship is still frowned upon by some

, but I am comfortable discussing it with people that feel that way rather than just writing them off as assholes. I learned a lot about how to talk about art in a language that crosses over from that kind of ‘artspeak’ and into layman’s English. I think the same thing is happening with my visual style. I am speaking two different languages at the same time and trying to find a hybrid that is both.



It seems as if there are a large number of successful artists creating work that doesn’t quite fit into the current fine art world and they are all being thrown together into this loose group under the term ‘low brow’ art. Do you believe the pigeon-holing of artists into ‘movements’ is another device that keeps the art intellectuals in control of what is deemed important?



I think it’s important to take responsibility for our places in the art world. I am interested in what we can do to make our work unavoidable to the establishment. Part of that is as simple as making it as good as we possibly can. I also think it’s important that we mature and welcome criticism. There are very few critical voices in the Lowbrow world, but there is a ton of really bad art out there. I hate to say that, because it is fun to have our little love-fest, but I want to see some bad reviews in Juxtapoz and Beautiful Decay. Even if I get called out and they hate my new show, I think it would be good for us overall to take some punches. Anything is better than being ignored and that is what is happening now, for the most part.



Do you feel that in the current fine art world the difference between a work being important or not is based on the quantity of work sold by the artist and the amount each work is sold for?

Is justification of importance directly in relation to price tag?

It’s all about consensus, really. An artist’s work becomes important and valuable because respected collectors, curators, gallerists and critics agree that they are. It is a carefully maintained system that works to distract people from knowing what they like just by looking at it. I can’t say I’m against that system because without it people would not spend the kind of money that they do on art.

I mean, if people were just interested in having good art on their walls they would think for themselves and buy what they like. Lots of people would lose their jobs and we artists would go back to being craftsmen rather than alchemists.




I have always related your work to artists like Gary Baseman and Jeff Soto. Are there any of your contemporaries that have influenced your work, or visa-versa?



I love those guys and I think we came from similar places. Same with Ryden, Camille Rose Garcia, Shag… We all love our art to be pretty and entertaining. I’m constantly inspired by my friends’ work, even if it’s how they market themselves or what kind of furniture they have in their houses.

We tend to feed off of each other’s ideas in a very friendly way.

Lately James Jean has been really inspiring, not just because of what his work looks like, but because he is changing and evolving with such force. He lets his work go wherever it needs to go. Of course Murakami is very inspiring because he thinks so big and has such a great grasp on his strategies.



What does the average day include for Tim Biskup?



It’s pretty chaotic, frankly. I work when I can. I make breakfast, take the kid to school when she stays with me, which is a few days a week, answer emails, sketch, watch a little TV, run a few miles, pick the kid up, make dinner, play ‘go fish’ or something like that, write a little, read, put the kid to sleep and then stay up way too late painting or answering more emails or working on the computer. When my little girl’s not with me I usually go out with friends, drink a bit, DJ at a club, etc. I’m such a total ADD case. I need to have room for chaos in my life. Thank God for my assistants. They keep me in business.



Can we expect more toys in the future, or is this new more surreal body of work less likely to make the jump to figures?


More toys, for sure. Not sure if the conceptual stuff will translate into toys, but I still like making monsters and pretty things.



What do you think is more important: being popular in the public eye or being considered important by intellectuals of the art world? 


Something in the middle would be nice. Mostly, I just want to be relevant to as many people as possible. It makes for better conversations.

Interview by Matt Edwards

Read the rest of issue 13

Part 2

Click here to view our #flashBack selection for September.

Beholders of Les Poupees – the thoroughly seductive characters created by Miss Van – can not help but be enthralled by these lascivious creatures, their overwhelming femininity and the pure eroticism emanating from their gorgeous frames. It’s been fourteen years since the original sultry-eyed Les Poupee de Miss Van first appeared.

Miss Van began painting in the streets at the tender age of 18, not with spray-can in hand, but rather latex paint and brush – as favoured by counterparts, Brazilian graff greats Os Gemeos. The year was 1991. The city, her hometown Toulouse, France. Toulouse is world-renowned for its graffiti scene, Miss Van and her accomplices back then (Mademoiselle Kat and Fafi), couldn’t have help starting a feminine graffiti movement in a more apt place. While the streets occupied her spare time, she was a full-time student completing a four-year degree in fine art.

Seven years on and with enough street-cred behind her, Miss Van held her first gallery exhibition at Galerie Diloy in Toulouse. By the time Parisian Galerie Magda Danysz had proposed to represent her, she had already exhibited in London and Rotterdam. She has since gone on to exhibit in Barcelona, L.A., New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Stockholm, Milan, Amsterdam and Anvers, as well as participating in prestigious group exhibitions alongside the likes of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, Swoon, Mike Giant and Takashi Murakami.

On querying the sensual overtures of her work, her response is simple – ‘I just enjoy painting my fantasies without censoring myself,’ she says.

Her buxom burlesque babes echo pure sexual frisson, though Miss Van is quick to point out that not all of them are vivacious pin-up girls – she ascribes them with varied emotions, ‘sometimes melancholic, sometimes arrogant, sometimes coy… much like us (girls).’ It is the sensitivity with which she conveys these feelings that is most laudable.

She has admitted to her beauties being semi-autobiographical, and although her work may have manifested in earlier years through her shocking pink hair and girly wardrobe, it has since steadily transformed to display her own emotional expansion, emerging from girlhood into womanhood and yet still oscillating between the two.Her newest body of work, which will be showing at Galerie Magda Danysz later this year,

explores a broader range of intensity and complexity of sentiment, from melancholic turbulence to the ambiguity and fragility that accompanies provocation.

The evolution is inspiring, beautiful and very real.

The now Barcelonan resident is venturing further afield, from curating big-name group shows and working on her first book, to exhibiting in Asia and South America. With the steady progression and unfaltering passion which encompasses this artist, one can only look forward to what her feminine evolution may unfurl. Though the gallery has taken precedence and the studio has offered a safer space to experiment, her provocative nature still revels in the thrill of the street.

Read the rest of issue 08

Read the rest of issue 08: Part2

Click here to view our #flashBack selection for September.