An evening celebrating the arts, young and innovative creators were recently given the spotlight at a New York City screening event profiling their artistic achievements. Put together by blog and production company, That New New, and held in the East Village, the event celebrated That New New’s latest installment in their webisode series New New York which highlighted the art collective Y&S (Young & Starving). Y&S is an organization dedicated to supporting young artistic talent and giving platforms to artists whose work would otherwise fail to be showcased
Created by Charles Berthoud and Ben Clotten, That New New is blog, website, production site, and expanding interactive global network inspired by the arts, fashion, music, design, and technology. As part of the company’s production component, New New York is their webisode series which explores the creations, movements, and actions of young and creative individuals.
Q. Explain to me what That New New is and how it came to be?
A. We started That New New about six months ago, my partner Ben Clotten and I, and we decided to start with a blog where we curated contemporary art, music, fashion, technology, and then expanded into having a production site where we would produce a webisode series called New New York. This screening event was for episode four, five is coming out in March. On the side we also have musical mixes which come out regularly once a month together with some videos. Tonight we have a freelance photographer shooting pictures for us to add to the blog.
Q. What inspired That New New?
A. The idea behind That New New was to create a network where people could post all the original content that they found on the internet, no matter the location, an international crowd. That’s the ultimate goal for That New New, that at some point we’ll create a network of invite-only, where we get as many people to contribute and create the content that we’ve been posting so far. We have also gone into product design which will be coming into fruition in the next two months which we are very excited about. We don’t want to talk about that yet, but it’s coming.
Q. What has the reaction been like so far?
A. It’s been very good and this video is going to be posted on the Christie’s auction house website so that’s a positive push for us to show us that what we’re doing is actually getting a good reaction, a good crowd. The crowd that we wanted to attract, creatives, young people, people who are doing something interesting with their lives worth sharing.
Q. How did this collaboration with Y&S come about?
A. The people from Y&S, Vivian especially, has been a longtime friend and I love what she’s doing by giving the opportunity to young artists that don’t have the credibility yet in the art world to show their art, to have a space in which they can express themselves, which can be shared and its completely non-profit so I think its amazing that they are doing that. All of these people are working full-time on the side and they’re doing this just for the passion of the art and that’s something that often gets lost in the contemporary art world, which is very much about the value of the art more so than the actual content of the art. So we thought they were the perfect match for That New New.
Q. That New New explores fashion, music, technology, design, and art what is your history in these worlds?
A. I grew up in the fashion world so I have always been around it. How to organize events, how events should be, what makes a good event has always been part of my upbringing and fashion has always interested me so I could not imagine working outside of that field so I’m very glad that I’ve found something that includes all my passions into one and that I can share with a great friend and great colleague.
Q. What is next for That New New?
A. We are going to continue the webisode series, there is going to be twelve episodes in the season. We are going to continue doing the mixes, there will also be twelve of them, and then when the summer comes we will focus on creating the network and getting as many people involved in this as possible to achieve our ultimate goal of creating That New New for the purpose we first imagined it.
Additional reporting by Moshe Alpert-Eschbach
Comments