Richard Pandiscio's ones to watch - musician Andrew Kornweibel, fashion redesigner Geova Rodrigues and artist E.V. Day

Interview, Sept, 1999 by Richard Pandiscio

He Blasts the Bleeps That Make Them Bop

Imagine you're having a party, everyone is happy, everyone is having fun, but still you want to punch the energy level up higher. That's when it's time to pop on the music of Friendly, a.k.a. Andrew Kornweibel. Your sound system blasts off with a wobble and you think your living room's been gate-crashed by the delighted bleeps of drunken dancing robots. Welcome to the world of Friendly. The twenty-eight-year-old, who places as much emphasis on performing as he does on knob-twiddling, has quickly become one of the most popular live club acts his home city of Sydney, Australia, has seen in a long time. On-stage Friendly shines with a mix of idiot dance moves and goofy energy. "I don't like the concept of someone just standing behind their equipment," he says. "I write specifically for performing live and I try to be as visually exciting as any other live act."

Kornweibel got his own platter spinning in 1996 when he established an independent label, Gulp Communications, to better distribute Australian electronica. "I started Gulp out of frustration because I had a shelf full of DAT tapes that weren't going anywhere, and so did a lot of my friends." The first Gulp compilation album brought Australian electronica the attention Kornweibel knew it deserved - and enough critical recognition and popularity for Friendly to release his own debut solo album, Hello Bellybutton, in 1998. Bellybutton, a collection of cheery trip-hop-dance-pop foot-stompers earned him a nomination for an ARIA award Australia's equivalent to the Grammy.

Kornweibel has just released his second Gulp compilation in Australia, and is recording tracks for a new Friendly album to be released later this year.

She Blows Up Fashion

Some people put their old dresses in storage; artist E. V. Day blows them up. In her continuing installation series, called "Exploding Couture," Day creates the impression, just as the name suggests, that viewers are looking at a dress in mid explosion. Using an elaborate system composed of suspended monofilaments, Day sustains an imaginary moment in time just after a taffeta ballgown has exploded, creating the impression that hundreds of pieces of the dress - from sequins to tattered tulle - are being propelled outward by the force of the blast. "It's not a piece about someone violently destroying a dress," says Day, 'but rather something orgasmic - a celebratory expansion of energy." Artist Charles Beyer likens the energy of the work to Bernini's Ecstacy of St. Teresa because, he says, it mimics a preserved moment of rapture.

Previous to the explosion series, Day, who completed her graduate studies at Yale, worked with surfers' wet suits, reassembling them into new "second skins" for imaginary otherworldly creatures. Her latest pieces can be seen through November 6 at Track 16 in Santa Monica, California.

He Redesigns It

In the world of Geova Rodrigues's Geova clothing, nothing is sacred but originality and style. Dr. Frankenstein-like, Rodrigues reassembles and restitches anything he can obtain (preferably for free), from couture to cast-off curtains, into his one-of-a-kind fashion creations. So a Dolce & Gabbana pant becomes a Geova sleeve, a Katharine Hamnett sleeve becomes a Geova pant, a skirt from Daryl K found in the trash outside a secondhand clothing store is turned upside down so that K's hem becomes a waist, a leather halter top from Kenar becomes a shoulder bag, and two airline sleeping masks are transformed into a brassiere. Even a leopard skin-pattern suit by Jean Paul Gaultier, once owned by Elton John, has been transformed into a short cocktail dress and three men's shirts.

A painter (now a painter with a sewing machine), Rodrigues started working with clothing in 1998, when designer Jussara Lee had the foresight to provide him with some fabric remnants and asked him to hand-embroider some of the pieces in her collection. The embroidery and collaged pieces that resulted are remarkably delicate but boldly inspired. "I make clothes, I don't think clothes," says the Brazilian-born New York City resident. Watch for Geova's third collection this September and see if you can spot the retrofitted Yves Saint Laurent pumps, the Mexican hammock turned skirt, and the wedding veil fashioned from a ball of twine. Fashion insiders like model Kate Moss, as well as such fashion-forward stores as Louis Boston and Barneys, know to buy quickly before Geova has a chance to transform the pieces he's just shown into ever newer incarnations.