Interviews

“What I feel like we’re seeing so much of in the age of the internet and social media is the workification, monetization, or commodification of every aspect of the human being that could once be seen as outside of the grind of activity.”
—Josh Cohen (Riding the Dragon)
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“I saw, in all these different practices, some kind of artistic creature who uses science but also design and technology to re-investigate the relationship with the Earth.”
—Ruben Jacobs (Riding the Dragon)
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"As an artist you have a choice what you create, and I always wanted to make pictures that would use beauty and touch people and move them and inspire them."
—David LaChapelle (GUP Magazine)
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"I will always have problems because I’m a self-made photographer. When you are an autodidact, you learn only from your mistakes. So, I learn a lot."
—Audrey Tautou (GUP Magazine)
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“One moment, you have no clue what some piece of mathematics is saying or how it’s working, and suddenly there’s like this neurological shift and it clicks into place.”
—Dr. Holly Krieger (John Adams Institute)
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"A computer doesn’t emotionally interpret the picture. It sees a woman, it sees a child, and maybe it can recognise ‘grieving’ because it knows from all the other pictures that it’s supposed to be grieving, but it doesn’t feel anything."
—Max Pinckers (GUP Magazine)
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"School is supposed to be a place to learn, not a place to compete and get the highest scores. It’s a place to let a child discover who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are.”
—Rina Mae Acosta (John Adams Institute)
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"Some scientific discoveries have come from looking at something that seems to be – at that moment – irrational and then discovering that it’s not that irrational. So, the earth isn’t flat, it’s a sphere."
—Klaus Pichler (GUP Magazine)
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"It’s not my aim to make statements about the idea of distance, but rather to question it. Much of my work is personal and comes from a point of feeling. To me, practice is a means of sense-making, and of being-in-the-world."
—Katrin Koenning (GUP Magazine)
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"They’re in a lot of ways trapped not only in male bodies but in male identities. [...]They did a really good job of putting a masculine identity on themselves, because that’s what was dictated. At Esprit, they’re taking it off."
—Jessica Dimmock (GUP Magazine)
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"The effect of seeing affluent lifestyles on television has been proven to a) make people think more people have that kind of lifestyle than really do, so it’s a distorted view of what’s normal but b) it also stimulates desire for those things."
—Lauren Greenfield (John Adams Institute)
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"It’s easier not to be so beautiful, to be able to move through life a bit under the radar, and to be able to focus on what you feel really matters, rather than have to deal with the distraction of other people’s intense focus on your appearance."
—Sage Sohier (GUP Magazine)
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“It’s weird, though, because I’m not doing this for fame and glory. I don’t want to do it for myself, I want to be a vehicle. I want to be the vehicle through which speaks little whispers of God.”
—Lake Montgomery (Riding the Dragon)
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“Every sex worker wants to use a condom. Come on. It’s the clients. And if you’re in a desperate situation, you’re willing to take more money to not use a condom. These are vulnerable populations.”
—Lisa Johnston (Riding the Dragon)
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“The future is our shared responsibility in the present.”
—Amy Webb (John Adams Institute)
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"Somebody wants the experience of completely giving up responsibility – in every way. [...] You give it up, and you can go to this place they call ‘subspace’, which is somewhere in your head apart from your body."
—Elizabeth Heyert (GUP Magazine)
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“I guess with any creative person, you’ve always got this bombardment of insecurity when you’re analyzing your own work. So there’s always some sort of insecurity with it, but that’s what pushes you to your next project because you’ve never really solved the use of the blank piece of paper.”
—Mandy Smith (TEDxAmsterdam)
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"When an image is duplicated a lot, then we recognize it as an archetype, so then we duplicate it a lot. And then because it’s duplicated a lot, it’s being viewed a lot, and this has an influence in our brain."
—Coralie Vogelaar (GUP Magazine)
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"By the time you see the world, you’re seeing it through the lens of your language."
—Lera Boroditsky (John Adams Institute, 2016)
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"I wanted a picture that was more the visual equivalent of speaking."
—Stephen Shore (GUP Magazine)
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“We all have to deal with the deepest and most difficult questions in life – no matter how nice our wardrobe is, or no matter how good our education is, or no matter how packed our social schedule is.”
—Jay McInerney (John Adams Institute)
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“It’s sad to see people whose lives think for them, instead of the inverse. We have to think our life, we have to build it, we have to sculpt life. And time. We have to do something interesting with time.”
—Pierre Liebaert (GUP Magazine)
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“Why should art always be so silent, always be so meek in its desire to change the world…? I think it’s a disaster to leave it so that the only people trying to change existence are large corporations and bigoted polemical groups."
—Alain de Botton (TEDxAmsterdam)
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