The Avant/Garde Diaries
In an Internet culture that rarely amounts to anything more than cool hunting, it's rare to come across a site that has any dedication to how creativity and the arts actually function. Sure, you can get your fix of factory visits and hipsters talking about themselves, but click your way around the Avant/Garde Diaries for a meatier conversation from (largely German) designers and artists discussing not only their own work, but what the fringes of their disciplines look like. Here are a few that I like, and if you're wondering how the production values of these short videos is so preposterously high, Mercedes-Benz foots the bill.
One of my favorite videos highlights a pair of Berlin-based operations, one a kind of convenience store/cafe in an old bus and the other a kind of creative collective called Balestra Berlin.
Also be sure to check out some interiors action in the video that pairs Marco Velardi of the great Milan and Barcelona-based magazine Apartamento with Christopher Nying, the founder of the Swedish clothing company Our Legacy.
Finally, check out this video on the Parisian bookstore Ofr and the illustrator Sophie Toulouse.
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