ELASTE: Last Exit, First Return

From DIY zines to AI manifestos—culture never dies, it mutates.

ELASTE was born in the noise of photocopiers and subway nights, shaped by pop culture, politics, and the restless pulse of early ’80s New York. Forty years later, it wakes again—rewired with AI, but carrying the same refusal to conform. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a remix. A last exit that became a first return.

ELASTE 1980–1986 — The Book

Apparently, the ’80s weren’t done with us.

Thomas Elsner and Michael Reinboth have unearthed ELASTE — our restless, neon, and nicotine-stained child — and turned it into a 560-page time capsule. Published by DCV, Elaste 1980–1986 brings back the magazine’s beautiful confusion: Warhol, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, DAF, and the naïve belief that pop could still save the world.

Now reissued as a best-of anthology, Elaste. 1980–1986 collects original photographs, interviews, and essays from the magazine’s sixteen issues — featuring icons like Andy Warhol, Boy George, and Keith Haring — alongside new reflections by its founders and contributors. It’s a document of an era when print was bold, culture was experimental, and style had an opinion.

Available from DCV Books: Hardcover edition, 560 pages, bilingual version, set to be released on November 19.

#1 The Hannover Mitte

Cris and Michael met at the legendary CASABLANCA in Hannover. Cris just returned from his first trip to New York and inspired by the scene was saying: “I want to publish a magazine.” Michael: “Me too.” We started the next day, snatched Thomas from the turntables at CASABLANCA.  No experience, no funds, no computer, lot’s of glue, fun and music. Three months later ELASTE was launched.

#2 The Robots

#3 The Andy Warhol

#4 The Russians

#7 The Sport and Recreation

#8/9 The Classic

#10 The Psychedelic

#12/13 WHY?

#14 The Patsies

#15 Punk macht dicken Arsch

#16 The Heavy Metal

From Duchamp to Demna

When a urinal became art and a hoodie became luxury, something truly magical happened — context started printing money. Luxury Readymade: When Context Costs £1,590 Once upon a time, Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal, signed it R. Mutt,...

“Fantastic Voyage” serves as Bowie’s Poignant Testament. an Impassioned Proclamation of Humanism.

It's a very modern worldBut nobody's perfectIt's a moving worldBut that's no reasonTo shoot some of those missilesThink of us as fatherless scumIt won't be forgotten'Cause we'll never say anything nice againWill we?And the wrong words make you listenIn this criminal...

Spray Nation

Spray Nation shares unseen photos of New York's pioneering graffiti artists Women on Train, 1981. All photographs © Martha Cooper, from Spray Nation: 1980s NYC Graffiti Photographs by Martha Cooper, Edited by Roger Gastman © Prestel Verlag, Munich · London · New York,...

Remembering Starman: Mick Rock’s legendary photographs of David Bowie as Ziggy

In 1972, David Bowie released his groundbreaking album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. With it came Bowie's alter ego and fellow Londoner and photographer Mick Rock. Ziggy was a glitter-clad, mascara-eyed, sexually ambiguous persona who...

Devo: “Kraftwerk from the waist up, Elvis Presley from the hips down” Gerard Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh on being bombarded by hippies at Knebworth in 1978, being told off by Neil Young, and their unreleased jam sessions with Bowie and Eno in Cologne We are Devo …...

When Andy Warhol Came to China

In late October 1982, Andy Warhol and a small entourage were invited to Hong Kong by Alfred Siu, a young industrialist who had commissioned Warhol portraits of Prince Charles and Princess Diana for I Club, a huge new disco he was opening on the island. Upon arrival,...

Brian Aris’ photographs of Debbie Harry

When photographer Brian Aris first met Debbie Harry in 1977 he didn’t know that much about her and scribbled down the phrase “punk princess” in his diary after the shoot. He could never have predicted that he had just met one of music’s next big icons whose career...

Lorde on David Byrne

On fighting stage fright, staying true to your inspiration, and the mysteries of songwriting It takes only a few minutes after they meet for Lorde and David Byrne to get in sync. The pop star, 24, and the elder statesman, 69, are on the rooftop of...

The Velvet Underground Meets Its Match in Todd Haynes

In the director’s hands, music subjects are as much about their cultural moment as about their sound — a good description of the band led by Lou Reed. Todd Haynes said his music-related films are really about how “the artist, or the genre of music, changes things or...

PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, Madonna: the unseen archives of rock photographer Tony Mott

Rock’n’roll photographer Tony Mott has led the kind of life that for the rest of us seems like a surreal dream. Travelling with Paul McCartney. Partying with Queen. He has photographed everyone from Prince to Rihanna to Marianne Faithfull. But when he talks about...

“I want to be that girl I needed when I was 15”

Beabadoobee channeled teenage misery and drug use into songs inspired by her grunge heroes – and now the 20-year-old is being hailed as the voice of Generation Z. After giving away physical copies of Doobee Zine at Beabadoobee’s sold-out show at London’s...

Welcome to the weird and lucrative world of fake punk.

Anarchy in the Vintage Punk Clothing Market. Over the last 30 years, pretend handmade original designs incorporating S-and-M and dirty graphics, innovative cuts and straps, military surplus patterns, tweed and latex — the stuff of the anarchic era that Sid Vicious and...

Charlie Watts Orbituary

Dapper and Elegant Drummer who was the Rock-Steady Heartbeat of the Rolling Stones. Unruffled amid excess, personality clashes and musical disputes, the Rolling Stones’ exceptional drummer used technique to deepen the meaning and power of their songs. Charlie...

Sex Pistols win legal fight against Johnny Rotten

The former Sex Pistols frontman, Johnny Rotten, has lost a high court attempt to block the punk band’s songs from being used in a forthcoming drama series. The group’s former drummer, Paul Cook, and guitarist, Steve Jones, sued the band’s ex-singer, whose real name is...

Louis Vuitton’s 200th Birthday Sparks a Host of Creative Collaborations

love maker, an astrologer, among others—to recreate the iconic Louis Vuitton trunk. In honor of designer Louis Vuitton’s 200th birthday, the luxury brand has commissioned 200 artists and visionaries—including an astronaut, a drag queen, a glove maker, an...

Parental Advisory: the secret history of music’s most controversial logo

In 1985, they founded the group Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). Its goal was simple, to contain the spread of indecent lyrics as much as possible, and stop them from reaching innocent ears. Bare-chested on stage, Prince swaggers, glistening with...

It’s A Face I know And Don’t Know

Ed Atkin's videos have made him one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, but what really animates this British artist are the emotions that slip off the screen. Of all the strange, attenuated long-distance calls of the last 16 months, the British artist Ed...

Sigue Sigue Sputnik at a Newcastle B&B

It was 1986 and I’d been on the road with Sigue Sigue Sputnik for a couple of days. They’d played a gig in Leeds the previous night and we’d just arrived at a little bed and breakfast in Newcastle upon Tyne. I dumped my stuff in my room and went down to the bar where...

Iggy Pop Ascends to Greatness

By the time of this picture, it was 1970 and I was working in Detroit for the short-lived rock’n’roll publication Big Fat Magazine. Iggy Pop and I went to the same high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I graduated a year ahead of him. I was not particularly into...

Anton Corbijn on 40 Years Shooting Depeche Mode

He thought they were pop lightweights – then turned them into moody megastars. The photographer recalls his adventures with the band, from desert trips to drug-induced near-death experiences. ‘I felt they had soul’ … Dave Gahan in Denmark, 1987. Photograph: All images...

David Bowie and Mick Ronson, Train to Aberdeen, Scotland 1973

"Maybe it’s got something to do with the ridiculously ‘glam’ look of the magic duo and the obviously mundane nature of their British Rail lunch." David Bowie and Mick Ronson on a train to Aberdeen, taken by Mick Rock. Last Ziggy Stardust Tour. “Taken on the train up...

Subway to Studio 54

Skaters, dancers, hustlers, boxers … Swiss photographer Willy Spiller prowled the streets of the Big Apple from 1977 to 1985. Leroy in Harlem, 1984 Sunday Morning on Orchard Street, NY, 1980 Whether he focused his camera on subway rides, dancers at the legendary...

A Brief History of Transformers

This simple electrical device does much of the fundamental work of modern civilization, and it does so modestly and invisibly. An early AC transformer constructed by George Westinghouse in the 1890s.  I have always disliked exaggerated claims of imminent scientific and...

Nightclubbing

Nightclubbing is the fifth studio album by Jamaican singer and songwriter Grace Jones, released on 11 May 1981. Like Josephine Baker nearly 50 years before her, it was when Jamaican-born Grace Jones left New York City and went to Paris in 1970 that she went from being...

Sniffin' Glue

The Making of ELASTE

DINNER WITH ANDY

The King of Pop Art, our biggest inspiration, and the most enormous influence in contemporary art were coming to visit the Hinterland.

IN FLAMMEN

DOCUMENTA BOUND – KASSELER KREUZ
Feel the Burn

Always be Sceptical About Simplicity

Ping Pong mit den Rolling Stones (Deutsch)

You can't always get what you want

Hero For One Day

Fool For a Life Time

P.L.O.

REBEL REBEL

Looking for the Thin White Duke

Joi Trouvé

DA DA DA

"Ein Jahr (Es geht voran),"or "the Great Regression".

From Duchamp to Demna

From Duchamp to Demna

When a urinal became art and a hoodie became luxury, something truly magical happened — context started printing money. Luxury Readymade: When Context Costs £1,590 Once upon a time, Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal, signed it R. Mutt,...

read more
Watermelon Sugar

Watermelon Sugar

When Pop Culture Icons Met: Andy Warhol and Tina Turner’s Unforgettable Encounter In the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York City was a boiling pot of emerging talent, cutting-edge artistry, and vibrant social scenes. This era saw a blurring of the lines between art,...

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Photography Is Dead

Photography Is Dead

Wim Wenders, the iPhone, and the Tragic Demise of an Art Form Smartphones have accomplished what centuries of technical advancements couldn't: they've killed photography. Yes, you heard it right. The art of capturing moments, emotions, and stories through a lens is...

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Orbital Link With sleaford mods On ‘Dirty Rat’

Electronic duo Orbital have teamed up with Sleaford Mods for a new single called "Dirty Rat." It's the first song we get to hear from Orbital's forthcoming tenth album OpticalDelusion that's coming out early 2023, which follows the duo's 2018 LP Monster’s Exist. It...

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New York’s Fashion New Guard

Elena Velez, Willy Chavarria, and Theophilio’s Edvin Thompson – are three visionary designers shaping New York’s independent fashion landscape. Ahead of their respective SS23 shows during New York Fashion Week, they discuss their brands’ origin stories, what drew them...

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The 80s, Musics Greatest Decade

The 1980s was when a fusillade of new genres emerged, and many are still with us today, such as hip-hop and house. Dylan Jones has mined the archives to select some of the most crucial tracks in the rise of these two...

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Songs for Europe

Songs for Europe

What music did Bowie and Iggy listen to in 1970s Berlin? A new compilation, named after one of Bowie’s local haunts Cafe Exil, offers a speculative guide to the pair’s soundtrack favorites. Do your wurst ... Iggy Pop and David Bowie in Berlin. Photograph: Rex...

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The Great Regression

The first time I ever heard of DITZ was either at the Hope and Ruin, or Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton, around the time of the debut EP. It was probably a Love Thy Neighbour night, and they were on first. I have no idea...

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Ten Legendary Shows That Made CBGB Famous

Ten Legendary Shows That Made CBGB Famous

CBGB in 1983 (Image credit: Jack Vartoogian \/ Getty Images) When Hilly Kristal opened CBGB & OMFUG (Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers) in December ‘73 at the intersection of Bleeker and Bowery in Manhattan’s East Village,...

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Depeche Mode – Nothing

Sitting target, sitting waitingAnticipating nothing, nothing Life is full of surprisesIt advertises nothing, nothing [Chorus]What am I trying to do?What am I trying to say?I'm not trying to tell you anythingYou didn't know...

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 LaLaLa It’s The Good Life

David Wrench and Evangeline Ling threw absolutely everything at their 2018 debut album Now! (in a minute), a hectic, head-spinning blast of freewheeling freak-pop genius. On its follow-up Astro Tough, they’ve...

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Has Being a Female Pop Star in 2021 Become Unbearable?

Has Being a Female Pop Star in 2021 Become Unbearable?

New releases reveal extreme attempts to protect themselves from the damage caused by fame. Pop stardom has never seemed less aspirational. The mechanisms of pop stardom have never been subject to as much scrutiny as they are now. Britney Spears’ conservatorship...

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Cutting Mark Zuckerberg Down to Size

Cutting Mark Zuckerberg Down to Size

When the history of the first decades of this century comes to be written, there will be few more telling artworks than Ben Grosser’s film Order of Magnitude. In the 47 minute video, Grosser, a digital artist and professor of new media at the University of Illinois,...

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In Praise of Copying

In Praise of Copying

What if copying, rather than being an aberration or a mistake or a crime, is a fundamental condition or requirement for anything, human or not, to exist at all? Is there anything that does not involve "copying"? And if that is the case, why exactly does copying...

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Downtown 1981

In 1981, writer and Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien, Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a graffiti innovator and noise music artist who’d just begun to exhibit his paintings, hit the streets of lower...

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Find a New City

Find a New City

Move to the Big City with nothing, make friends, make art, struggle, but make it. There’s a very romantic American story that I love, that lots of artists who are young and starting out love, too, and it goes like this: Move to the Big City with nothing,...

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The Velvet Underground Review

The Velvet Underground Review

Velvet Underground emerged as part of a richly interdisciplinary artistic adventure in the American late-1960s. Not so much a rock band, more a way of life.  They were part of a complex social ecosystem of experimental artists in New York, named after a book...

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Earl Slick: “Bowie had gone levels into insanity”

Earl Slick: “Bowie had gone levels into insanity”

His association with David Bowie stretched over five decades, he has played with everyone from John Lennon to the Cure to Carl Perkins. It’s not surprising that Earl Slick was in the middle of a tour when the first Covid lockdown began. The guitarist is, by his own...

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The Art of Punk: Winston Smith and the Dead Kennedys

The Art of Punk: Winston Smith and the Dead Kennedys

“If you use a razor blade and glue, you can suddenly change the world.” —Winston Smith Terrific 15-minute documentary of collage artist, Winston Smith, and his collaborator, Jello Biafra, about the origins of their work. When he saw the Dada-esque posters of punk...

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How Luxury Fashion Extends Brand Identity Through Art

How Luxury Fashion Extends Brand Identity Through Art

Mixing Paintings, Sculptures, Coats, Leather Bags and Sneakers Where Art, Culture, and Commerce Intersect Across the street near the corner of Crosby and Howard Streets just a block away in the edge of New York’s Chinatown on one early evening, a series of TV monitors...

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Sisters with Transistors

Sisters with Transistors

Inside the Film About Electronic Music’s Forgotten Pioneers They turned drawings into symphonies and made black boxes sing. Why were they never given their due? The maker of a new film, full of revealing archive footage, aims to put this right Turned down Hitchcock …...

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Warhol Foundation Loses Prince Appropriation Appeal

Warhol Foundation Loses Prince Appropriation Appeal

An appeals court ruled that Andy Warhol violated a photographer’s copyright by appropriating her image for a silk-screen he did in 1984. Andy Warhol’s ”Prince,” which became the subject of a court case over copyright issues.The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual...

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Why Bands Are Disappearing

Why Bands Are Disappearing

"Young people aren’t excited by them". Maroon 5’s Adam Levine was scoffed at for suggesting there ‘aren’t any bands anymore’ – but if you look at the numbers, he’s right. Wolf Alice, Maximo Park, and industry insiders ask why. “The moment that we started a band was...

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The Cassette Tape Era

The Cassette Tape Era

Lou Ottens, the inventor responsible for making music literally fit in the palm of your hand, has died at the age of 94. The Dutch native was the head of product development at Philips in the early 1960s when he began developing cassettes as an answer to the large and...

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JAPAN’s Quiet Life Gets Another Listen

JAPAN’s Quiet Life Gets Another Listen

If ever there was a band who could have literally taken over the world but failed to do so as a result of “artistic differences,” it’s Japan. But that doesn’t mean their legacy should be any less celebrated. And Quiet Life – their third, final, and most successful...

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Do Everything Feel Nothing

Dry Cleaning’s assembled observations capture the distortion of life on and off the internet, of spewing our deepest emotions into an anonymous void but biting our tongue when we encounter a real person. Type what you really feel, then close the tab and delete your...

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Ma' Ma' Raschplatz Da

»Just what is it that makes today’s home so different, so appealing?«

(Richard Hamilton, 1956)
Wenn der Postmann zweimal klingelt, liegt meist ein kleines Kärtchen in meinem Flur. So auch diesmal »Basement« Hannover Raschplatz. Eröffnung Freitag 12.6.81 22h. Knapp am dreizehnten vorbei, dachte ich und lenkte meinen Wagen einige Tage später durch die trostlose Gegend hinter dem Bahnhof. Beinahe am Ziel angelangt ging ́s dann auch noch in den Keller. Gleißende Leuchtstoffröhren, Pirelli Gummi auf dem Boden, die Decke unverkleidet, hier und da ein bißchen Chrom. Der erste Blick signalisiert, hier wollte jemand der Café– und Diskothekenszene mit ihren pastellfarbigen, schimmernden Barocktempeln eine Ohrfeige verpassen.“

GLOBAL SCOUTING LOC/SHT