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.
Sniffin' Glue
The Making of ELASTEDINNER WITH ANDY
The King of Pop Art, our biggest inspiration, and the most enormous influence in contemporary art were coming to visit the Hinterland.
Always be Sceptical About Simplicity
Ping Pong mit den Rolling Stones (Deutsch)
You can't always get what you wantHero For One Day
Fool For a Life TimeP.L.O.
REBEL REBEL
VISIONS OF CHINA
Looking for the Thin White Duke
Joi Trouvé
DA DA DASOUNDS AND VISION
We are the Goon Squad and we're Coming to Town.
THE GERMAN DAYS
David Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti record ‘Warszawa’
“I do not do heels, and the climate ain’t right.”
Billy Nomates has announced details of a new EP, ‘Emergency Telephone’, and shared the first track from it – ‘Heels’. The release follows the Bristol and Bournemouth-based artist’s self-titled debut album, which was put out last year. The new EP will arrive on March 5...
Happy Birth David Bowie!
COPY, COPY. EVERYTHING’S A COPY.
"Formed in 1976 and comprised of guitarist/vocalist Toshio Nakanishi, vocalist Chica Sato, guitarist Hajime Tachibana, keyboard player Masahide Sakuma, and programmer Takemi Shima, the Plastics were the archetypal Tokyo new...
Rina Sawayama, Philosophical and Glittery Cute
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Resisting Reductivism and Breaking the Bubble. Why Barbara Kruger is More Relevant Than Ever.
The artist’s compelling and predictive use of aphorisms has blurred the lines between political slogans, poetry and the language of advertising, offering a dark mirror for our meme-driven age. PERHAPS WE’VE ALL had it, the Barbara Kruger moment. Maybe it was...
Dancing on the Berlin Wall
Universal Music Canada came to remind us of one of the most groundbreaking and edgy records from the ’80s. A deluxe expanded and remastered edition of seminal 1982 debut album ‘Cold War Night Life’ from Canadian new wave pioneers Rational Youth. At the dawn of the...
Afropunk ‘s Not Dead
The Stars of Afropunk Festival – In Pictures Since 2005, Afropunk has celebrated the music, fashion, and beatboxing of black artists – and seen the crowd swell to 70,000. Phil Knott talks us through who he’s photographed there. Comedian, beatboxer, and musician Reggie...
All the Joy and Despair of Youth
The poetic Dublin post-punk band are back with a daring new album. In a field of their own ... Fontaines DC (from left) Tom Coll, Conor Deegan, Carlos O’Connell, Conor Curley, Grian Chatten. Photograph: Ellius Grace Do bands have a “difficult second album” or a...
Ping Pong mit den Rolling Stones
Ping Pong mit den Rolling Stones„Ah, ein Konzert... Ach, die Stones... Okay, wir geh’n aber echt nur hin, wenn wir Pressekarten kriegen.“ – Als die Rolling Stones 1982 auf der Tour zum „Tattoo- You“ Album nach Hannover kommen, ist die Originalbesetzung von ELASTE...
Billy Nomates: “In a world of Yes Men, I’ll be a No Woman, thanks”
Few artists are more refreshingly direct than the Bristol and Bournemouth-based ‘no-waver’. ‘Deadpan yet biting’: Billy Nomates, AKA Tor Maries There is currently no shortage of post-punk acts with a line in confrontational Sprechgesang. Brighton band Squid’s is...
Dinner With Andy
The ELASTE squad had two icons who stood the test of time: Andy Warhol and David Bowie. The King of Pop Art, our biggest inspiration, and the most enormous influence in contemporary art were coming to visit the Hinterland. Thomas loved his silkscreen prints...
On Technodiversity: A Conversation with Yuk Hui
In the foreword to the book, the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler described Hui’s thinking as a “generous and open theoretical milieu for exploration of human experience in connection to the infosphere. IN HIS BOOK On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016),...
Every Place Is the Same
No place places, with a phone, anywhere else is always just a tap away. Anywhere has become as good as anywhere else. Those old enough to remember video-rental stores will recall the crippling indecision that would overtake you while browsing their shelves. With so...
From Gemany to Detroit and Back
Kraftwerk’s robotic rhythms resonated loudest in deindustrialising 1970s Detroit and gave rise to techno – starting a cultural feedback loop that continues today. ‘A feedback loop between Germany and Detroit that has existed for more than half a century’ ... Kraftwerk...
Kraftwerk: Their 30 Greatest Songs, Ranked!
From cycling soundtracks to anti-nuclear protest music, we celebrate the work of the late Florian Schneider and the groundbreaking group he co-founded. Kraftwerk in 1978, with the late Florian Schneider second from right. Photograph: Kraftwerk/Redferns 30. Expo 2000...
Depeche Mode before they were Depeche Mode
After their 1986 album Black Celebration, new wave legends Depeche Mode fully committed to being the most gloriously gloomy band next to The Cure to appear on stadium stages. Earnest pleas for tolerance like “People are...
STUMM433
Daniel Miller on Mute Records and his latest most ambitious project STUMM433. In 1978 in London the young musician by the name Daniel Miller recorded two songs, “T.V.O.D.” and “Warm Leatherette” under the moniker The Normal. He knocked on the door of Rough Trade...
SWEET HARMONY: RAVE | TODAY is an esenting a revolutionary survey of rave culture
SWEET HARMONY: RAVE | TODAY is an immersive retrospective exhibition devoted to presenting a revolutionary survey of rave culture through the voices and lenses of those who experienced it. The exhibition, opening 12 July 2019, will recapture the new world that emerged...
“You know what I wouldn’t do? Launch another style, fashion or music magazine. If I see another independent magazine that is desperate for a Prada ad in it… please. Why? I love that the fashion industry has supported the new talent, but it seems to me that right now...
Two Scratchers, Beef Jerky, and a Power Ball
A rapper doing jazz, a rocker doing rap, a trumpeter doing electric guitar. There are no rules in the musical realm of trumpeter-turned-rapper Pan Amsterdam. After a persona shrouded in mystery, he revealed his true...
Keith Flint: RIP The Orginal Firestarter
By gleefully escalating the moral panic around British dance culture, Keith Flint, the Prodigy frontman showed that rave could be the true successor to rock’n’roll. With his punk aesthetic of piercings, spiked hair and intense stare, Flint became one of the UK’s most...
Artists Become Famous through Their Friends, Not the Originality of Their Work
While past studies have suggested that there is a link between creativity and fame, Ingram and Banerjee found, in contrast, that there was no such correlation for these artists. Rather, artists with a large and diverse network of contacts were most likely to be...
Of course we’re fucking relevant
Andy Warhol on Junk Food, Coca-Cola, Drugs, Painting, and God
by Christian Wegner This interview was conducted at the third Factory, at 860 Broadway, in June 1977. It took 90 minutes — or the time of one full tape. I had thoughts about some of the questions, but mostly the interview was improvised. Andy was really on that day....
Internationalists
If you believe you have an equal share In the whole wide world and all it bears An' that your share is no less or more than Your fellow sisters and brother man Then take this knowledge and with it insist Declare yourself - an...
Poundshop Kardashians
I drink and watch the zoo in motion Beautiful people devoid of emotion Sterilized, pedicured, pedigrees and mankind Thick as fuck and soulless And no longer fear genocide It’s gonna end from what I reckon As I puke my guts...
Ghosts Don’t Walk in Straight Lines
Opening next Thursday at Red Hook Labs in New York, “Ghosts Don’t Walk in Straight Lines” is a chronicle of the artist and model Saskia de Brauw’s slow, southward amble from Manhattan’s 225th Street to Battery Park over the course of a single day in May 2015. The...
Advice for Young Creatives
“Destroy your computer,” says Jamie Reid when asked what guidance he would give young artists. “Most jobs are about enslavement, break free if you can.” It’s the sort of no-nonsense advice you’d expect from a man who has spent five decades on the cultural frontline,...
A Very Los Angeles Welcome
Since leaving his native Australia in 1980, the musician Nick Cave has made his home in many cities, from London to Berlin to Brighton. But perhaps nowhere does his lushly dark aesthetic make more sense than in Los Angeles, where he now often spends time with his...
ST. VINCENT
'Savior (piano version)' performed live at The Belasco in Los Angeles with pianist Thomas Bartlett.
Love is Magic
A silly, smutty slice of arch brilliance that also makes room for quiet introspection, John Grant, the American musicians's fourth album is an accomplished balancing act. An epic of squelching synthesisers and breathlessly far-ranging lyrics – touching on everything...
Jenny Holzer on the Power of the Word in Art
As her work goes on display as part of a new group show, the provocative artist reflects on a career making the written word an art form. In the beginning was the word, and the word was art – though rarely do we conflate the two. Image and text are largely considered...
David Bowie’s first demo track discovered in old bread basket.
Long before Aladdin Sane or Ziggy Stardust, a skinny 16-year-old with ambitions to be a saxophonist agreed to do lead vocals on a demo track, in a small studio in south London. Now the only known recording of the resulting session, with David Bowie singing I Never...
The Man Who Fell to Earth
It was Bowie’s most celebrated film – and photographer David James was on hand to capture the star at his intimate and engaging best.
Kraftwerk Drawings by Yosuke Kawamura
Kawamura became a leading force in the alternative movement known as “hetauma” (so bad that it’s good), which came to exert a powerful influence on the history of illustrative art, and he attracted widespread attention with his abundant output of works. He has been...
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.“
