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
The Cure’s Robert Smith: ‘I was very optimistic when I was young
– now I'm the opposite'. The singer and songwriter has been curating the Meltdown festival, and is planning to record the first Cure album in 10 years. But will it be fuelled by magic mushroom tea? The first thing Robert Smith does is apologise for the makeup. He...
Joy As An Act of Resistance
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Smoking on Airplanes
Madonna Revisited
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New York City. 1981-1983: 36 Months That Changed the Culture
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David Byrne’s Cheerful Dystopia
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COOL BLEIBEN
Against All Logic
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New York, New York
From Americana to Gen Z, this is the definitive guide to NYC style. https://youtu.be/tGzCFcx_90A
Reasons to Be Cheerful
David Byrne: ‘I’m able to talk in a social group now. At 65, the phenomenally creative David Byrne is still rock’s renaissance man. As he launches his first solo album in 14 years, he reveals why he’s started collecting reasons to be cheerful. The first time David...
Important Listening
I compiled this non-definitive list of albums that young people should check out. A light education, a starter kit, a history lesson - not available on Soundcloud or Bandcamp. If you are older, add to this list and pass it along. If you are younger, put your AirPods...
Takashi Murakami & Virgil Abloh – ‘Future History’ @ Gagosian (London)
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China’s Youth Breaking
Through The Great Firewall. In the latest installment of Global Street Style, i-D gets to know Shanghai's bold new generation of artists, designers and musicians working their way around China's Great Firewall. With a strong focus on nurturing local sounds and...
CLUBBED
Rick Banks compiles a visual history of UK club culture Manchester-based designer Rick Banks has compiled three decade's worth of nightclub graphics into a new book. In a Dezeen exclusive, he picks out five of the most important examples and explains why they were so...
“Draw the Raised Bridge”
Redescovered artwork by Banksy. Hull, England.
Kraftwerk Win Grammy Award
Kraftwerk has won the Grammy for best dance/electronic album. The band already won a lifetime achievement award four years ago. https://youtu.be/L4hGaV5BA2M
Tree of Life
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is proud to present Tree of Life, an exhibition of never-before-seen archival works by Genesis P-Orridge: a suite of 30 recently discovered magic marker drawings from 1974-1975. This is the fourth show of Genesis’s work at the gallery, and the first...
“Just be Bono, but be less of an arsehole”
'The idea of a rock star is offensive' – meet Shame, Britain's most exciting new band. The shouty south Londoners write songs about politics, perverts, and their insecurities, and reject the laddism of the indie scene. But can they get big before they burn out? Young...
A New Coke Classic
Last week in Atlanta, Neville Brody announced “TCCC Unity: The New Typeface for Coca-Cola.” It may seem incredible that Brody, once the maestro behind The Faceand Fuse magazines and the emblematic types of the late 80s and early 90s is currently creating type for one...
Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han
You tweet therefore you are; like and you too shall be liked; confess every last boring detail and you too shall be saved. – During a commercial break in the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple broadcast an ad directed by Ridley Scott. Glum, grey workers sat in a vast grey hall...
Ten memorable moments from the history of cult magazine The Face
ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF NICK LOGAN/THE FACE ARCHIVE. You’ve likely seen the images of Kate Moss, bounding across the sand in the buff in one, her face scrunched up and beaming out from underneath a headdress in another. Shot by photographer Corinne Day, Moss was then...
Away with DAF!
For the 40th anniversary of DAF, a lavish biography of the electro band and its great era in the early eighties pays tribute. No, he is not a nostalgic, the Gabriel "Gabi" Delgado: "Unfortunately, it is unfortunately - I say sadly - that the stuff stays from there...
Depeche Mode – Heroes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6yzrZfgQvI 40 years ago, David Bowie recorded "Heroes," a song that tells the story of two lovers who embrace in a kiss by the Berlin Wall. How the song was recorded gets wonderfully retold by producer Tony Visconti, in a post/video we...
Gay Party Music and Social Media Induced Narcissism
Casey Spooner and Michael Stipe penetrate queerdom. When Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner formed the electroclash duo Fischerspooner in 1998, they set out to open minds and expose the masses to worlds of art and performance through synth-heavy dance music. They...
Interview with James Turrell
Next month, an extension to our gallery, called Pharos, will open, housing four new works by James Turrell, as well as works by Jean Tinguely, Charles Ross, Richard Wilson and Randy Polumbo. Read more about Pharos here. Elizabeth Pearce: Do the four pieces of yours in...
Is Fashion Modern?
A FULL LIST OF THE 111 ITEMS in the MoMA exhibition. • 501 Jeans (Levi’s). 1947 example from the company archive • A-POC Queen Textile (Issey Miyake). Example from MoMA’s collection • Adidas Superstars. 1983 pair from the company archive • Air Force 1s (Nike). Three...
F O R E V E R
Sprüth Magers presents FOREVER, a new site-specific work by Barbara Kruger. For this installation, which occupies all four walls and the floor of the Berlin gallery’s main exhibition space, the artist has created one of her immersive room-wraps and several new vinyl...
China bans Justin Bieber for “bad behavior.”
President Xi called on artists to promote socialism rather than be “slaves” to the market or chase popularity with “vulgarities.” China’s media regulators said “artists, film-makers, musicians and television personalities should spend time in rural areas to form a...
Great Modern Things
Neon is one of what Andy Warhol called “the great modern things” – a kind of lovely thing that can only exist in the modern world. Neon is up in lights, again. The gaseous element whose glamorous glow has been appropriated by one artist after another since the 1960s...
DUST REMAINS
Mortality according to ELASTE x Thomas Elsner.
WOOD SWIMMER
"The Woodswimmer," is a stop-motion music video shot by Brett Foxwell. "Fascinated with the shapes and textures found in both newly-cut and long-dead pieces of wood, I envisioned a world composed entirely of these forms.”...
The Green Box Shop Saves Us All
Musician Frank Ocean headlined New York City’s Panorama Festival at Randall’s Island Park this weekend wearing a T-shirt with a simple message: “WHY BE RACIST, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC, OR TRANSPHOBIC WHEN YOU COULD JUST BE QUIET?” In today’s political maelstrom, and the...
RAF Sympathisant
A$AP Rocky professes his love for Raf Simons. A$AP Rocky hasn’t been shy about his thing for Raf Simons. In his song “RAF,” an ode to the Belgian designer featuring Playboi Carti, Quavo, Lil Uzi Vert, and Frank Ocean, Rocky raps: “It’s rare Raf when I wear Raf, bare...
TRUMP TV
We’re Approaching a Major Turning Point in Trump-Era Pop Culture. Critics and audiences alike can be suspicious of art that looks like it wants to have an effect. We like to be unsettled but we also want our politics to be confirmed; some of us disdain “preaching to...
ZEIT GEIST
German ZEIT Magagzin about ELASTE. Now on display the original ELASTE in the "Geniale Dilletanten" exhibition in Dresden's Albertinum Museum. Einige Leser haben mir nach dem Newsletter vom Montag gemailt, weil sie wissen wollen, wie das Elaste-Magazin aus den frühen...
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.“
