From Mongolia to Uzbekistan and back again?! Yes we can!

Ugh. Ouch. Oooh. Em.... Ugh..... stop will you .... Head.... sore........

That's right hipsterettes, we are HUNGOVER. And we're loving it! Why? Because we have been out partying. Till the early hours. Till dawn to be more precise. Specificity, whatev's. And one thing you should know, contrary to popular belief, is that a hungover hipster is a happy hipster! 

So what happened?

Well.

It started in the early afternoon. After cycling around our fixies (fixed gear bicycle) and taking some serious photo's on our SLR's we decided to have a few bottles of our preferred flemish beer, the Westvleteren 12 from our preferred hipster hangout, This Is Not A Bar in the leafy suburb of Rathmines. This place is so hip that the only music they allow has to derive from that of a natural vocal origin. aka, singing acapella, spoken poetry or the general chitter chatter that sets the vibe on any hipster drinking night. Which is every night. Your liver doesn't wait for you, so why wait for your liver eh? That's right! So we down a couple of bottles and next thing we know we've drawn with chalk on the walls surrounding our table. Nyree wrote several times in the vein of school punishment lines, "ACOUSTIC GUITARS RUIN PARTIES!". I drew several pairs of deck shoes each with their own names, e.g. Deck Of Cards, DeckSavers, Shoe For Foo's and Nike Air Decks. After that we're on a makeshift stage drunkenly trying to do a spoken word version of "The Artist" and reciting our favorite poem, Hippopotamus by Fran Bell. (See below). We made friends with some band called Magic Finger after we bet them in a shot contest and by the time it got to midnight or the hipping hour as we call it, we had moved on with our new bessie friends to meet their manager in the VIP section of NIGHTCLUB. A who's who hang out and fake tan smelling dungeon of dance music. We all hit the smoking area cause even if Norman Cook, Underworld or David Guetta himself was playing, no hipster ever hits the dance floor in a club full of people dancing to dance music. And no hipster would listen to any of those main stream DJ's anyway. We smoke copious amounts of cigarettes, drink whiskey and ginger ale all while making no eye contact with anyone who's not in our designated group of friends. Even then, Nyree and I manage to not look at the band when they are taking to us. We leave the club at about 4 in the morning, go back and unlock our fixies from outside This Is Not A Bar, cycle to a house party where we stay for about one minute because we refuse to get off our bikes to go indoors and the girl who owns the house won't let us stay on our bikes and cycle around the house. Spoil sport. We hit an all night supermarket, buy two loafs of brown bread and two bottles of organic juice which contain peach, mango, and orange. So we are already starting fresh by getting 3 out of our 5 a day. Drink them while cycling and doing zig zag's across the empty city centre streets and finishing up in Phoenix park were we spend the good part of an hour trying to feed the deers frolicking through the fields. Hipsters care about nature. We didn't succeed. Then we went to a cafe and ate the vegan breakfast with bacon on the side. I said it before and i'll say it again, a hungover hipster is a happy hipster!

PictureFest 09 and the headline act is Sona Yergainharsian. Boom!

Playful protest - this gang of jokesters didn't like us driving down their path in Uzbekistan so they surrounded the car (but left about a 2 meter radius around us in case we got cocky) and then stopped. We were there for bleedin ages. We had to reverse out and go another way. Hilarious!

What better way to abandon your whole world and drive yourself, in an ambulance 10,000 miles away into deepest Mongolia. You abandon everything, people, civilisation, communication, and what a joy it is!!

Sona, your a lil hipster! I know it because I'm looking at these photo's and they are damn good! Danke, big schtyle!

P.S. We never found the band's manager in NIGHTCLUB. Supposedly he answers by the name of Frank and wears sunglasses indoors and always has a pink Ralph Lauren shirt on. If you see him say hi. And that the band he manages are crap.

P.P.S Magic Finger aren't crap. Their name is though.

P.P.P.S. 

Hippopotamus 

by

Fran Bell

Oh who am I

to say to you, the world,

that I am better than you.

Oh who am I

to say to you, the world,

that I please the eye more.

Oh who am I

to say to you, the world,

that my clothes fit to perfection

and my skin is smooth as silk

and my mouth speaks more clearly

than the rest of the common ilk.

Hark the day!

Hark mine eye

for I am but a hipster

watching the day

hipping by.

Fran Bell. Bruges. 1684.

Nyree & Brian

Hipsters we met and liked

"Whatev's, we're over it".

No Way Through To Car Park

This blog is hipstamatic, this blog is hipohmatic, why this blog is hip-lightning!

The other day while having brunch (Not quite breakfast, not quite lunch) we were reminiscing about our formative hipster years. Nyree talked about how she would bring her school uniform to her auntie who is a well known fashion designer and have it changed from cotton/polyester to pure unadulterated hemp. Still keeping the initial design mind you. I though this was quite impressive that she showed signs of such hipster superstardom (hipsterdom) at such a young age. Nyree agreed and added that to finish off her 'schoolyard chic' uniform she would have a backpack which had on it, scribbled in various fonts with ballpoint pen and black marker, "I love cotton" and "Nyree & Cotton 4 Ever". She told me that saying she loved cotton while wearing a uniform which was supposed to be made out of cotton but was now made out of hemp was ironic. I agreed. We smiled. Nyree sipped her cherry Americano.

Some moments later I told Nyree that as a young hipster I would eat ham sandwiches in the school canteen while wearing a baseball cap from the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) which bared the quote "Animals Are Equals". Every lunch I was told to take off the hat as it was not part of the uniform. When that happened I would oblige and put the hat into my backpack and at the same time take out a book entitled 'Vegetarianism For Dummies", take a bite of my ham sandwich and have a good read before English class or double Geography. I told her this was ironic. She agreed. We smiled. I sipped my fairtrade soya coffee.

We also talked about how we would invite ourselves to our own birthday parties and not show up. All as a protest against society and how you have to conform to birthday traditions. 

When we finished our coffee we called the waiter over and asked him for the bill. He had an American accent and we found this quite interesting and therefore struck up a conversation with him. He told us he was from New York and to cut a long story short we found out he was a big fan of HipHop and in particular New York artists such as De La Soul, Jay-Z and Mos Def. At this conclusion he asked us -

WAITER: Hey, are you guys fans of HipHop?

NYREE & BRIAN: Em... we don't care either way really. But I suppose we do, on occasion, listen to songs from the underground HipHop scene in Belgium.

WAITER: Oh cool!

NYREE & BRIAN: Yeah. Whatev's. We like the lyrics. Good meanings in the songs ye know?

WAITER: Wow! So you guys speak Flemish?

NYREE & BRIAN: No.

WAITER: .... But you guys said you like the lyrics?....

NYREE & BRIAN: Yeah, we know. Ironic right?

WAITER walks away confused. NYREE & BRIAN put back on their glasses which consist of just the frames and no lenses. They pay the bill and leave.


ON SCREEN: If you can't stand the irony get out of the hipster kitchen.


End Scene.

Some people aren't born to be hipsters. Adam Welsh is. Check out the photo he sent in. If this guy ain't hipster then kill me now with a styrofoam knife and send me to hipster heaven where you get your own Barista and a free pair of deck shoes upon entry.

"No way through to car park". I'd put down a bet that the guy in the photo cycles his fixie everywhere and locks his bike in a car park space.

Nyree & Brian

Hipsters we met and liked

"Whatev's, we're over it".

The Children Of Dungu

Hipsters Assemble!

How goes it? All good? Yes? Brillo-pads! Nyree and I (correct grammar) have just been chilling mostly when not working on this bad boy of a project. Seeing as your a beautiful hipster reading this post you know what we're talking about. 'The usual' is how we refer to it. And if on the off chance that you are not a hipster and you are reading this and your wondering what 'The usual' entails? Here's the tip of the vanilla iceberg;

Drinking copious amounts of coffee in fashionable cafe's about good old Dublin town.

Wrapping an assortment of scarfs about our necks. All linked in to the particular colour scheme of the outfit.

Wearing designer glasses even though we don't need them (We both, in fact, have the vision of a hawk. A fashionable hawk mind you.)

Chatting to other hipsters about hipology, hipchanics and hipmatics.

Reading books by authors who are all dead or close to death.

Walking around IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) for 4 hours straight and when the security guards ask us if we are OK, replying only in Flemish.

Eating only Vegan foods with our hipster gang. Then sneaking off like covertly and tucking into Bacon Double Cheese Burgers from Burger King after saying goodbye. We will admit that here. With you. For you. Because we're friends.

And last but not least, listening to music through the medium of vinyl. No iPod's of iPhone's for us thank you. We don't conform. (We are in talks with Apple about the Hipsters we met and liked App. We'll keep you updated).

The femme fatale that is Della Kilroy sent us in some seriously good pics and a lovely copy (A phrase we use in the biz for accompanying text. Whatev's. ) to go with it. We're just gonna let these do the talking for us. All jokes aside. Beautiful moving shots. Check em out.

Congo Chronicles -

I took this series of images while in a remote village in the North East Democratic Republic of Congo. The community featured lives in constant fear of attack from Joseph Kony’s Lords Resistance army and it is one of the most underdeveloped places in the world. This does not take away from the spirit, hope and resilience of the children. These images reflect a simple time where children, some suffering from trauma and memories of their time with the LRA, play and share with each other. There was a language barrier between myself and the children pictured; yet a universal language emerged with the use of facial expressions, laughter and miming. These are the children of Dungu.

• Image 1 – Joyful Abandonment 1: (The Mango Tree)

This image features a mango tree where most of the children shade from the hot sun. Swinging from the branches are two young boys. One of the boys, who doesn’t know what age he is, escaped from the LRA, he has a scar from a gun shot wound on his left arm. To me this image reflects hope and serves as a reminder of what childhood should be all about. A joyful attempt to abandon ones troubles perhaps.

 

• Joyful Abandonment 2: (Worlds Apart… Or Is It?)

This photo was taken of a little boy playing with just a rubber tire and a stick. He was shy but happy and very appreciative of his simple possession. Worlds apart from the developed world of play stations and constant entertainment, or the simple joys of back to basics play?

• Joyful Abandonment 3: (Tongues Out)

For a lot of the children in remote Congo they have never seen their own reflection. Once I showed them images of themselves you could hear sounds of laughter, shock and lots of smiling. Some were most amused by the colour and look of their tongue.

• Playful Protest 1: (The Skeleton)

This photo was taken in Dungu village when a boy, seeing I had a camera, was determent to show off his hoodie. His friends laughed behind me as he zipped up his jumper in playful protest.

• Image 5 - Playful Protest 2: (Children Say Boom)

On my first day in the community where the children, featured in this image, live I was imitated by a girl who copied my walk and hand gestures. I played along and 2 minutes later had around 10 children playing a version of the game ‘Simon Says.’ With no official language in common this image reminds me of the universal language of play. I told all of the children to say BOOM and then pose, this image is the result.

Uber Dankeschön Della, these are gonna be a great addition to the show!

Talk soon Hipsters!

Nyree and Brian

Hipsters we met and liked

"Whatev's, we're over it".

The Greek Connection

Paris Kontogiannis, a hugely talented photographer from Athens is next up. We've known him a long time and we think that he is so uber cool that we couldn't possibly do this project without having him in it.  Σορτς is supposedly the Greek for hipster according to Google Translate. It's probably wrong. But I ask you this reader, are we not more hipstamatic that we get the translation wrong? Surely the obvious choice for a hipster would be not to use Google Translate in the FIRST place but we've pre-empted that thought and done a full circle and gone BACK to using Google Translate because it's even more hipster to do so. Do you follow us? No? Here is what the Paris had to say:

"The one with the grafiti and the other with the little child are somehow following the concept of joyful abandon in the sense that a child is the representation of the joy and an empty park with the clouds is for me the representation of abandon or the one with the einstein saying that love is the answer next to a guy that looks troubled. But the same feeling is generated to me in the third photo that does not have any emblem of joy or sadness.  For me a noir looking person with a hat from the 20's walking alone in London is an abandoned person trying to maintain a joyful style in his life."

We love these photos Paris, danke so much! Or as they say in Greece (According to Google Translate), σας ευχαριστούμε!

Nyree and Brian

Hipsters we met and liked

"Whatev's, we're over it".

Hello Hipsters! Welcome to the blog for Hipsters we met and liked. If your reading this then you are most likely a hipster that one of us met and liked. And if not, then get out of here!

We joke.

Stay and have a gander. Feel really cool by looking at all the cool photographs we're gonna be using in our uber cool show at the end of the year, which you are part of! So super thanks, or in true hipster fashion, "whatev's, we're over it".

We'll be using this blog for all of us to collectively get a feel for how the piece will be shaping up through the photographs that are being submitted and it's a great way for all of us to keep it touch. This show will be as much ours as it will be yours. 

To get the ball rolling, here is what our beautiful hipster Ruth Smith has contributed with the following text to go with it:

This was taken in Sanya, China during one the big event days. I operate the sound desk/music for the day and there were huge crowds all around the barriers,...so much so that I had to reinforce the barriers with sandbags and my pathetic attempt with rope. 

This boy stood in the gap for the two hours of the event, watching intently and never smiling, looked kind of sad all the time. 

Just as I was playing the Team Sanya (boat) song (Eye of the Tiger - Since they have a Chinese crew member on board called Tiger) as they were docking out to sail to Auckand, the barrier gave way and a bucket full of Chinese folk fell in towards the sound desk, pulling cables and killing the sound throughout the whole village. 

Mayhem ensued with all the event staff and local electricians frantically trying to get the cables back in. And after it was all sorted and all the boats had docked out I turned around to see a little wry smile on this fellas face. 

Now it's your turn! Go for it!

Nyree and Brian

Hipsters we met and liked

'Whatev's, we're over it".