2FACED1.com shows one persons two different faces in photos;
Persona 1: WHAT YOU WANT TO BE CONSIDERED AS
Persona 2: WHAT YOU FEAR TO BE CONSIDERED AS
This leads to a discussion about stereotypes and inner fears of getting misunderstood by the surroundings. Thoughts that every thinking modern day person does reflect upon. We're asking every day people from an innercity context where old categories as ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality and class are reassessed, why they choose to look like they do. We’re diggin' deep, peeling off garments, codes and attributes. We’re searching for transnational identities - is the conclusion that we choose whoever we want to be today?!
A 2FACED1 STATE OF MIND
A 2FACED1 is highly aware of existing stereotypes related to your own ethnicity, color, nationality, gender, sexual orientation and class. You’re trying to avoid them but sometimes also play with them to make people think twice about who you are. Two faced doesn’t mean anything negative here, it explains the double folded view you have on identity if you’re not the existing norm. Self awareness is a gift, because it also helps you to understand other peoples situations better. To be a 2FACED1 is to have the feet in different worlds, be able to move between them but feel rather at home in that space in between. You've stepped out of your comfort zone and has become one of the new identities where ol' categories are mashed up and rootlessness and non-given identity just means major possibilities.
2FACED1 is a state of mind, 2FACED1.com is a display-window for this mindset and the network of 2FACED1 includes all of you progressive non-stereotypes with a double perspective on identity.
2FACED1.com:
Decida - Editor, Founder, Creative Director (Stockholm) Oscar Stenberg - Web, Photography (Stockholm) Linn Marcusson - Writer, Style Assistant (Gypsie's Mega Trip) (Stockholm) Spoek Mathambo - (the Zombo Blog) (Johannesburg) Alex Dabo - ( the Do The Dabo Blog) (Stockholm) Mira Bajagic - Event / Production (London) Pernilla Philip - Design (Amsterdam)
No need to introduce NENEH CHERRY for my Swedish and UK readers, some of the Americans might know a bit less. You better google her if you enjoy M.I.A. and others. (Update! Via Conny på Strand "Neneh ringde precis från London. Hon sa att allt känns fruktansvärt bra inför spelningen i morgon. Bandet, med medlemmar från bl.a Massive Attack, låter som en "swinging" ångvält!")
Then we have the band formed by the four Scroggins sisters. ESG. Incredible, incredible, pioneering ESG. Of course the music nerds knows. But the younger generation is also familiar with ESG, at least through other artist who sampled their shit! ESG has to be one of the most sampled band in the music history, their song UFO must have been used about a hundred times...a few of them songs include: Biggies "Party & Bullshit", Public Enemy's "Night of the Living Baseheads", Big Daddy Kane's "Aint No Half Steppin", Tupac's "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z." and Mark Morrison's "Return Of The Mack" and EPMD's " Chill".
THAT kind of quality.
ESG created an unique sound and became a major influence on the HIPHOP, HOUSE, POST-PUNK and POP music scenes about to be developed. Their eclectic work made a perfect soundtrack to the early 80's arty downtown NYC scene, and yes U guessed it, it works as good today! I could go on about ESG but I think the music says it all. Here is a SPOTIFYlink.
I don't think you should miss this if you have some sort of interest in this thing called music.
The amazon and original 2FACED1 ARI UP past away not yet a year ago. From what we know the last recording made with her is this song to her son; "Sunshine Taboo" with Petter Wallenberg.
ARI UP made the song together with Petter without him knowing she was suffering from a deadly form of cancer, and two months after their meeting she past away. "Sunshine Taboo" is capturing her true story of the anxiety of a mother who's son is gay in an environment where it's treated like a crime. In other words; ARI UP's paradise of JAMIACA (where she settled down after a pretty 2FACED1 life; growing up in Munich, moving to London where her mother married John Lydon (Sex Pistols), touring with The Slits, and then Indonesa) didn't become the same paradise for her 16 year old son. Please listen to the lyrics.
Wallenberg wanted some help from his 2FACED1s for the video, you can spot a bunch of people you'll recognize in the haze who all wanted to celebrate the life of this extraordinary woman and bringing attention to this issue. I've been doing some styling, Martin Bergström has been le maestro of Scenography, Cinematographer is Christian Hagward, Editor Lucas Peña and WALLENBERG himself as the director.
You'll recognize FILIP in greenHERNANDEZ CORNET shirt, and a 2FACED1 custommade jacket you've seen before and a lot of flowers! But that's not really as important as the story behind this song.
Kool Keith, MF Doom, Anticon ppl, Company Flow, Def Jux ppl, Madlib, RZA and etc yes, but RAMMELLZEE was the first rapper (well of course we have SUN RA & Co. before that) to dig into Mathematical Science, Numerology, Egyptian mythology, Mysticism, Afrofuturism and coded language. RAMMELLZEE past away nearly a year ago, and I wrote a little bit about itHERE.
This installation by Directors Andy Bruntel and Felipe Lima, is featured at the Art In The Street exhibition (I wanna bitch slap myself for missing it while in L.A. some weeks ago) MOCA:
"RAMMELLZEE viewed lettering as a form of weaponry and believed graffiti could liberate the power of the alphabet (My note: power of language the way we choose to express things, wich also make things what we do see them as, Semiotics etc.) as a theory put forth in the manifestos “Ikonoklast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism”. A reclusive artist, RAMMELLZEE all but stopped exhibiting his work in public and spent much of the last two decade of his life in his TriBeCa loft he called the Battle Station, where he was rarely photographed without wearing one of his handmade, science fiction-style masks. He died in 2010 at the age of 49."
Poly Styrene. I just read an interview with her in the last number of i-D, cause she was about to release a new album called "INDIGO GENERATION"(and I'm guessing that generation has clear similarities with the 2FACED1s, since Poly mos def is a an original 2FACED1...). But now instead, another one of UKs original amazon has past away, Poly the 25 th of April, only 53 years old. Via Jan Gradvall I found following blog about the former X-Ray Spex singer, the UK punk band behind "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!", jump over and read more:
"I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being."
Dang!
