Surface To Air: How to be multi creative

18 Dec 2006 Category: Fashion, Features, Film / Animation, Illustration, Music, Worldwide

There are only few global entities like Surface To Air that consist of multiple outcomes and still manage to produce exciting stuff in various fields. That is to say their creative plurality operates in the interconnected fields of fashion, art, music, film, and party. Besides making MTV Awards winning music videos, they design their own fashion collection for men and do exhibitions and installation, if they’re not busy doing the art direction for magazines, CD covers, or shop interiors. They keep their own fashion shop in Paris and one with a restaurant recently opened in Brazil. Besides setting up a line of own club venues under a special concept, Surface To Air also launched the high-end fashion trade show Rendez-Vous in Paris. This January their Flip The Script book will be published, gathering famous movie posters redone by contemporary artists. All this collection of creative output comes from the Surface To Air headquarters in Paris, an additional branch in New York that has partly relocated to Tokyo recently, and a small unit in Norway. PingMag talked with the founder Jérémie Rozan about his multiple interests.

Written by Verena

Jérémie, Surface To Air came to life about six years ago originally set up by you and your friend Rajan, who is now living in Tokyo. Today it hosts 18 people. Please explain how your multi-enterprise evolved…

In Paris we are actually a group of five partners I encountered over the years: three and a half years ago is when I met Santiago from Argentina and we created a design studio together. For example we did the whole creative direction of the Loveless store in Tokyo. We created records covers for Sony or EMI, like for the latest Jane Birkin album. We did the same for Scenario Rock, our befriended band that has its studio in our basement.

Moreover we organize installations for Comme Des Garçons or redesign stores for the likes of Adidas. That’s the studio part. Furthermore we do music videos and film projects. Then maybe three years ago I met Aldric who was a consultant for clothing chains like And A shops in Tokyo. We teamed up, opened a store in Paris and gathered about one hundred designers in our store, located near the Louvre. Since three years we create our own fashion line in collaboration with Nicolas Andreas Taralis. Right now we have another men accessory and fashion line designed by the American Thomas Engelhart who previously worked for Thierry Mugler.

Wow, that’s a lot! That explains partly why you don’t have one but three logos on your website…

We change it all the time because we’re not convinced with the concept of a logo at all.

So you apply this no concept to your fashion line, too?

It’s just the clothes we would like to wear. We have pretty strong graphics with the clothing, all made by our studio.

Would you say that your clothing line reflects your attitude?

We share this dream, that the 18 people we have working here have the freedom to work on what they really want to do, have the majority of their time deditacted to their ‘mission’. We also keep all positions really open and flexible, so for example the commercial person that sells the space for our Rendez-Vous trade show can also draw a t-shirt design of our collection. So we really want to give the people a lot of freedom within the company.

That sounds like there is a lot of space for spontaneous action!

Well, we just do whatever we are interested in. If a client comes up and challenges us with a new media we haven’t been working in so far and we see something interesting in that, then we just do it. Spontaneity is something we want to preserve and therefore try to change activities all the time in order to stay fresh.

I think, throughout the years what people see in us is not a particular specialty anymore, but our way of thinking. That’s what we are interested in, too. Wether we design a coat or, interior design or let’s say, a perfume bottle. All these are things we had never done before, but still won one competitions with that.

How do you pick up something new that quickly then?

When we had to do the perfume bottle we basically taught ourselves 3D in fifteen days. It’s just work, really. But right now I can’t tell you more about it – it’s confidential still…

How would you respond if someone asked you to design a car?

That seems to be more technical…

We‘re always very curious about collaborating with people, and we like to do that quickly. We’re not very “French” in this way. If I met you now and you were a car designer and one day I got the opportunity to design a car – I’d just call you in and we would work together right away. But if we get too much into details, we loose the overall idea.

So - having a broad network is enough to just open a restaurant and a store in Brazil?

We‘ve done a lot of parties in Paris before and they’ve been quite successful. So we thought, why not opening something else over there…?

I heard that your Paris parties all had a special concept. Could you explain that, please…

We stick to the set up of having one band, one DJ for the people to dance, one media going with it (e.g. a magazine) and one artist. For example we had A.R.E Weapons playing, Paul Sevigny as a DJ, Dazed&Confused as the magazine to go with it and Kenneth Cappello as an exhibiting photographer. At other venues we had musicians like Amon Tobin, Gonzales or A Touch Of Class.

Why did you choose Paul Sevigny for example? The older brother of actress Chloe Sevigny?

The connection is: Kenneth Cappello shoots a lot for Dazed&Confused and is from New York. Paul Sevigny is also from there, but moreover he is A.R.E. Weapons’ band manager and also happens to be a great DJ. Our venues present a complete coherent concept where everybody’s coming from the same field.

You’re also into making video clips! You told me before that you work under the name of Rozan & Schmeltz together with your cousin, a director of photography. For Justin vs Simian’s video We’re your friends you recently got awarded at this year’s MTV Music Video Awards. I found this clip quite consistent having one clever idea followed all the way through and shot in a DV style. How did it all happen?

The lyrics go: ‘We are your friends, you’ll never be alone again’ and we wanted to do something quite sarcastic about that. I remembered from my own experience what people do at parties when everybody is about to pass out and looked at certain party crusher websites that show this stuff. For the installations in the video I worked with my set designer Jean-Michel. Previously we had worked on installations for the Japanese fashion designer Tsumori Chisato. It’s funny because since then a lot of people keep sending me crazy images like the ones you see in the clip. That is basically how we got started.

Now to the MTV Music Awards: The event was overshadowed by a nasty little incident with furious rapper Kanye West making a complete fool out of himself because he was expecting to win the award instead. During the ceremony he all of a sudden stormed the stage while you, baffled but nevertheless grinning, stood right next to him. Tell me more about that…

I was on stage with him, but when it happened I couldn’t hear exactly what was going on. I was pretty galvanized and was laughing.

Did you talk to him?

Of course, we did some interviews together. He was drunk. Later he asked his manager to get our number to send us some of his tracks to work on. We hung out and got along pretty well afterwards. He’s very provocative, you know. That’s his way of communicating.

What comes next for Surface To Air?

We will be involved in press, something like a magazine that comes out every six months or once a year. We will publish it on our own. And hopefully more films soon, too.

One last word about your all kinds of creative output?

It’s better for mental health.

Wisely put. Thank you Jérémie Rozan for giving us insight in the various facets of the Surface To Air shapes!

47 Comments

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3. I am an illustrator published in several books around the world. Enjoy my web-site!

   (nice magazine!)

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