Jefferson Hack

EO

You interviewed Malcolm McLaren for AnOther magazine in 1999. How did that conversation impact you? 

JH

I met Malcolm in the early ’90s. He was famously Vivienne Westwood’s partner. At the time, they operated a store called SEX at 430 King’s Road. Before SEX, there had been a sex shop called Let It Rock at that address. When McLaren and Westwood took over, they started selling fetish wear and making those famous silkscreen t-shirts. That was the beginning of punk in London, and McLaren was its impresario. He recruited the members of the band that went on to become the Sex Pistols. He produced their albums. He was even the manager of the New York Dolls for the minute that he spent there. For him, New York was always an inspiration. He was introduced to Hip Hop when it was still just a thing in the Bronx that hadn’t crossed over into the mainstream yet.

His 1983 album, Duck Rock, mixed African music, scratching à la The Supreme Team, and samples from the radio. It really set the template for what culture is now, particularly in the sense that it brought together fashion, music, and art. He was exiled from London for a while in the ’90s, but we hung out when he was back. I loved hearing his stories about punk, especially because I didn’t grow up during that time. I came to London in 1990, so my coming of age was  Acid House and took place during the second Summer of Love. The club scene in London was also beginning to take off. It was influenced by the music that was coming out of Ibiza and early Detroit techno. It was also the time of Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses. That kind of thing.

EO

In that interview, McLaren told you, “Culture doesn’t want what’s authentic. Mainstream culture wants what’s easily commodified, what’s easy to make money out of.” He also used the phrase “karaoke culture.” What do you think he meant by that?

JH

He was referring to a culture of simulation where everything is a...

EO

…reference?

JH

Exactly. He was a very acute observer. Already, in 1995, he was warning about a machine takeover. This was right at the beginning of the internet. We’re only just now seeing the effects of what he was speaking to.

EO

I would say that up until about three or four years ago, maybe until Steve Jobs died in 2011, we lived in a hardware society. Now, we seem to live in a software society: everything is subscription based; we’re trapped in, or by, the internet; we don’t ‘log off’ anymore.

JH

Yes, it’s all systems of simulation. Subcultures are born on the internet and experienced as microtrends. Being online is all super meta and abstract. We’re in an age of mass homogenization and conformism, which has everything to do with the tools at hand. Things like the internet and social media limit our ability to access new ideas and references. If everyone is using the same search engines, then everyone is led to the same conclusions. 

We’ve been conditioned to believe that we have the freedom to choose, but we’re actually experiencing a marked reduction in choice. Online systems have rendered us less intelligent, less curious, and less instinctual. They’ve also prevented the emergence of genuine subcultures. In fact, today’s “subcultures” are often quite aligned, both politically and economically, with the dominant culture. There’s imagined friction, but no real challenges are posed.

EO

What was the situation like when you founded Dazed?

JH

Rankin Waddell and I started making Dazed in 1991. At that time, the conversation was never about being recognized or making money. Whether you were a photographer, an artist, a band, or a stylist, you wanted your work to appear groundbreaking. The currency was innovation. We wanted to do something nobody had done before and to stand for something. Now, the cultural currency is fame. Everyone is asking: How do I get noticed? How do I get seen? How do I get more followers? How do I get more money from brands?

EO

“How do I get power?”

JH

Yes. That shift is shocking to me. It’s a zero-sum game. Humans have an amazing ability to trick themselves into thinking that we’re always winning. It’s a gambler’s mentality: the more I play the game, the more I’ll win in the end. But, really, the minute that fame becomes the currency, you’ve been bought and sold.

McLaren’s phrase, “a casino of inauthenticity,” this is exactly what it refers  to. When we did that interview in 1995, he was working on an art exhibition that involved building a casino. He made a slot machine with images of the Sex Pistols to comment on the way that things that are at once seen as transgressive are eventually commodified, and therefore reified, by the dominant culture. If you got three safety pins in a row, or something like that, you’d hit the jackpot. It was really prophetic. He made it right when reality TV started to become popular.

EO

I often think about how reality TV affects culture. The early ’90s was around the time when people started to become famous for just...

JH

being themselves?

EO

Yes. 

JH

And we were obsessed with it! I think the challenge has become figuring out how to have agency and produce necessary work. It’s also become so expensive to live anywhere. It’s always been hard to be an artist, of course. Like, artists in the ’70s didn’t have it easier. That said, the conditions, the standards, and the technologies are all different now. Back during the Just Kids moment that happened in downtown New York, you could squat in an apartment and host DIY parties or performances. No one was paying rent, or rent was very inexpensive. Food was relatively cheap, too.

EO

It’s hard to reason with the past. We’re in a moment of reckoning as these industries grapple with the new conditions of the world so we’re back at ground zero. Unfortunately, thinking about Smith’s Kids is a fool’s errand. We’ll never be those kids again.

JH

Looking at the state of arts education is telling. In the UK, art school used to be free. Now, it is pay-to-play, across the board. Artists  used to get social benefits. If you didn’t come from a wealthy background you could claim to have housing benefits, you could have your rent paid, or you could even have been paid to go to art school. This stopped around the mid-90s. But you can imagine why the UK was such a creative powerhouse at the time. Artists could go to school, get accommodations to practice, and didn’t have to worry about making rent at the end of every month. The Young British Artists (YBAs) all graduated from that system. I benefited from that system.

EO

Do you think that the school system recognized that there was a market to be tapped, hence the change?

JH

Well, they didn't have a choice. The government took away the grant system.

EO

Why?

JH

It was political. While there’s good data attesting to the value of a healthy and vibrant arts and culture industry, it’s often seen as an elitist waste of money by the mainstream. In the UK it’s especially hostile. We have a horrible tabloid media industry that aims to wreck anything with progressive social value. It’s  why we had Brexit and it’s why celebrities get hounded by paparazzi so much. When I was making Dazed, the number one UK magazine was Loaded and the number one newspaper was The Sun. They basically shared the same values: sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.

EO

All of the good things…

JH

The form of masculinity they advanced was very violent as well. They celebrated drinking and forms of machismo that are entirely taboo nowadays. Still, that’s what was celebrated when we were starting out. For the first issue of Dazed, I published a manifesto on the cover that read, “This is not a conspiracy. This is not a magazine.” When I wrote that, I felt that there was a looming conspiracy, at the core of which was a media ecosystem that was solely concerned with extracting value, dumbing culture down, and protecting the status quo. I thought all the men and machinery were more than equipped to deliver that. They did and they continue to do so.

EO

How long did you attend the London College of Communication?

JH

Only for a minute: I failed. I really wanted to do something smart like, I don’t know, go to a media studies class and read Noam Chomsky, but I didn’t get the grades to go forward with my degree. I had a troubled schooling career and I moved a lot. When I got to London, I was 18. The London College of Communication was the only school that accepted me. I got a spot in their one-year journalism course.

EO

At the time, did you see the promise of pursuing a degree in journalism?

JH

No, not really. I just thought, “This course sounds interesting. I want to interview people and maybe figure more out about journalism,” so I enrolled. It was not very inspiring, so I dropped out after a term or so. But, I met Rankin while I was there. He came into one of my classes to recruit for the student magazine. He was a third-year photography major. He was going to do the student magazine for all the combined art colleges (St. Martins, Chelsea Campbell, LCP). He came in and said, “Any of you guys want to be part of the magazine? Meet me on Wednesday at the student union canteen.”

I went to the student canteen on Wednesday at 12 o’clock and Rankin was there. No one else was, so he turned to me and asked, “Are you here for the meeting?” I said, “Yes,” he said, “Oh, great. Let’s hang around for a minute and wait, see if some more people come.” We waited for ten minutes, but no one else showed up. He said “Well, I guess it’s you and me.  Tell me, have you ever interviewed?” I said, “No, I’m unpublished.” He goes, “Okay. Do you know who Gilbert and George are?” I said, “I have no idea.”

EO

You two sound like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

JH

Right. He went on, “Okay. So, you’ve never had anything published, you’ve never done an interview before, and you don’t know who Gilbert and George are. But, if no one else is gonna show up, tomorrow at 10 AM, we’re going to Fournier Street and we’re meeting Gilbert and George. I’m taking pictures and you’re doing the interview.” Besides Hockney, they were probably Britain’s most famous living artists. That was the beginning of my and Rankin’s journey. We did three issues of the student magazine, Untitled. It was how we learned how to make a magazine.

EO

Who else was in your cohort? Did you imagine that the project would really take off?

JH

We had also found a great graphic designer, Ian Taylor. Together, we won the Guardian Media Awards for Best Student Magazine, Best Graphic Design, Best Photographer, Photographer of the Year, etc. We thought we had the buck. We were self-publishing. No one told us what to do.

Another amazing thing was that we had access to an Apple Mac, which, in those days, cost about 10 to 15 grand. We paid the Mac’s caretaker 10 pounds and he would let us take it out on a Friday evening when school closed. We would take it to one of our flats and work on the student magazine all weekend, not sleeping. We would go back to school at like 6 AM on Monday to return the Mac so that nobody noticed it was missing.

EO

Oh my God.

JH

That was the equipment we used to make our student magazine. We were the kids of desktop publishing. If the Apple Mac hadn’t existed, we wouldn’t have had the means of production. We might have been photocopying it or something, like making a zine. The Mac enabled our higher production value. The first issues were A2 folded to an A4 cover, three posters.

EO

I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I’m with you in spirit.

JH

It started as a poster, which was the cheapest way to get it out. And then there was a year between issue 1 and issue 2. I thought, “Oh my God, we’re never going to get a second issue.”

EO

How soon after stopping Untitled did you decide to start Dazed?

JH

We had the bug for self-publishing. We were also very arrogant and naive. That combination is kind of lethal.

EO

[Laughs.]

JH

We ended up forming a collective of people who we met in college. We had an amazing arts editor, Mark Saunders. We also had Katie Grand, who was an amazing fashion director. And Katie England, of course, who, like Grand, was an amazing fashion force.

EO

Did Katie Grand cut her teeth with you or had she already worked elsewhere?

JH

Everyone who worked at Dazed had zero experience.

EO

Okay.

JH

Not only had none of us worked in publishing or media, but we also didn’t know anybody that had either. We were complete outsiders, but we didn’t care because we were making it for ourselves.

EO

Can you talk a little about the September 1998 Dazed issue? There’s something so ethereal about that cover of the magazine. It’s animatronic, cyberpunk…majestic, really.

JH

At the time, Katie England was the full-time fashion director of Dazed. Prior to that, she had been the right-hand-man of Alexander McQueen. She was able to bring Lee in as the magazine’s first guest editor. I remember when Lee came into the office to discuss the issue. He said, “I’ve just had this amazing phone call with Aimee Mullins. She is the most incredible person. Her energy, her philosophy of life, the creativity that she exudes, I want to work with her. I want her to be the cover.” It was an interesting choice because he had just started his own label. The show he was working on was No. 13 (Spring/Summer 1999)—the one where  Shalom Harlow gets sprayed by the robot hands and does the pirouette on this revolving stage.

EO

Yes, that show is amazing. While people tend to consider the finale as violent, to me, it’s so poetic, cinematic, and fun.

JH

Of course the finale is incredible, but the first model out is Aimee Mullins. She’s wearing carved wooden legs. He made her into a kind of mythological pan. It’s incredibly beautiful. The beginning of their journey together was at Dazed. We flew her over. Nick Knight did the pictures. Katie England styled it. Lee was on set. There were multiple people with different disabilities that were in the story, including Alison Lapper. Lee commissioned a number of designers to each make an outfit for each of them.

That cover shot changed our lives and the perception of Dazed. It generated so much press, it was our OK Computer moment (Radiohead, May 1997). We went from being from this rebellious, punky, underground magazine to being a mainstream force. It also changed the conversation around disability in a very significant way. The issue was celebrated for that.

It was also the first time that we’d done something that hadn’t caused a controversy. We got accused of a lot of bad shit by the newspapers in England during our early years. I mean, President Bill Clinton name-checked Dazed as being responsible for heroin chic.

EO

I want context. What was the magazine going through? What was the world like?  

JH

I mean, it was a moment of grunge, which seemed like a reaction to the very euphoric moment that came just prior. Between 1991 and 1994, culture in London evolved around electronic rave and dance music. Suddenly, though, Sub Pop started releasing records by bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney that had Indie energy. Meanwhile photographers like David Sims, Corinne Day, and Glen Luchford were shooting very raw, very real imagery. Jürgen Teller was doing it with Venetia, too. It was all analog, very natural, very raw and really about youth. Artists were representing the way that young people lived. There was a bleakness or melancholy to the videos that Corinne did with Oasis, for instance. She was looking at Robert Frank’s images of the Rolling Stones, Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and Larry Clark. Everyone was inspired by that neorealist, documentary approach—this unaffected view of the world that came from designers like Helmut Lang and Maison Margiela. When people looked at the imagery in Dazed and labeled it heroin chic, they were actually talking about neorealism.

EO

It’s so funny to look at Margiela and Lee’s trajectories now. They both approached storytelling in such intimate and profound ways.

JH

Lee was very autobiographical and very into history. He was cinematic and could have been an amazing film director. Every show was a movie.

EO

I agree. I think that Margiela is very much about process and story, while Lee’s work is like cinema. Those are very different machines.

JH

Lee’s shows were so layered. There would be like 15 different references that he would connect in a way that no one else thought to. He would pack a novel’s worth of references into one collection. That’s how he thought. It was just natural to him. I think what was great about Lee is that he was never intellectual about his decisions. He would never sit and have a conversation with you about something like philosophy.

EO

I mean, who cares?! He was able to communicate his genius visually. 

JH

He was very instinctual. He was definitely an intellectual in terms of art, movies and literature, but he never spoke in a condescending way. Like, if he was asked, “Why do you want to do Helen Mirren for a cover?,” he would just say, “Because I like her.” I think the other thing that people don’t realize is how he was as much light as he was dark. The Dazed cover, there’s no darkness there.

EO

To me it’s really cheap to say that his work is only about darkness. I think of him as optimistic, in fact, because criticality is a vehicle of hope. It’s a way of seeing and believing that one can do better and be more.

JH

He saw beauty in very unconventional places. It was so refreshing.

EO

What has been the hardest part about publishing Dazed year after year?

JH

The hardest thing for me has been trusting my gut.  The only moments when I’ve faced the most doubt were when I lost touch with my internal radar. I’m really grateful that we’re still independent and that I never lost control.

EO

Did you have a lot of opportunities to sell out?

JH

Yeah, there were a lot of conversations that were very distracting, but ultimately, I’m very, very happy with how things have ended up. There were challenges navigating along the way, of course. There were times when the debts were piling up and me and Rankin had to ask, “How are we gonna keep this going?” I think that for the first 10 years of operating Dazed, we were never certain that we would be able to get the next issue out. It was really precarious because none of us were interested in business. Dazed ran on favors and goodwill for a very long time. But around the end of the ’90s I realized you have to take care of business or you can’t do business. It’s the elephant in the room often.

Today, the fact that we do so much to give back is a reflection of how much we were given in the early days. Björk lent us like 20 grand to get going in a moment of crisis, and I’ll always be indebted to her generosity. It took us five years to pay her back. [Laughs.]

EO

How did that happen?

JH

We were just...

EO

..broke?

JH

[Laughs.] Yeah. We just needed to get the issue out and pay our bills. She helped us with that.

EO

When did you know that it was all worth it?

JH

Honestly, Dazed never really felt financially viable. When you’re creative you just want to spend your money on making great shit.

EO

So what drove you?

JH

Well, I wanted to have the most beautiful magazine, to print more issues, to do extra shoots, and to make shit happen. Obviously, when digital came along, we wanted to build a website and start embracing that change. But it cost so much money, and we simply weren’t in finance. [Laughs.] The hardest challenges were really nailing the business side of the magazine and staying true to our guts on creative decisions. I made some bad decisions hiring people because I didn’t really listen to my gut.  

EO

Can you speak more about that?

JH

On the business side it was harder for me to instinctively know what I was doing, and so I hired a few people that I didn’t really like. Everyone that I hired on the creative side, though, those relationships were fostered in the clubs.

EO

You mentioned to me elsewhere that in the early days, the best ideas would often germinate in nightlife spaces.

JH

Yes, I don’t believe in professionalism. I believe in passion. The former, which is all about crafting a CV and having the right degrees, doesn’t mean shit in our world of taste and of culture. Our world is all about instinct and being true to yourself and not necessarily knowing everything. It's about inventing the future. And I think the future’s invented more by mistakes than it is by design;  it’s about experimentation, which is always about failure.

EO

I was recently having a conversation with an architect about AI. He mentioned that AI can’t perfect architecture because that discipline is so unscientific. In other words, intuition and feeling will always be an essential part of making, sculpting, and creating spaces. I completely agree with that sentiment. The things that look the most intuitive actually require so much effort. People talk about this with regard to hiring: you’re paying me for the 28 years that I’ve done this, not the five minutes that it takes me to do the thing. 

JH

I think there’s a certain amount to be said for experience, but I think that experience is separate from the idea of professionalism we’re discussing. In corporate culture, people tend to fail upwards simply because they come from the right school, have the right CV, and present in a way that is ultra-professional. Those things can’t account for instinct or taste, though. I think the challenge is to really develop a practice that allows you to trust your gut, every time. For me, that has involved a lot of meditation and a much different way of tuning into that than it did before.

The problem with success is that it corrupts. David Bowie said to me that the worst thing for an artist or a creative person is to feel comfortable. The minute you feel comfortable, you’ve got to move on. For him it was essential, as an artist, to have an outsider point of view. As soon as you’re an insider, you’re no longer creative. It becomes about repeating a formula. Many artists that have made huge careers of doing...

EO

just that?  

JH

Over and over! They’re not the people I’m interested in. I like shape-shifters, people that are constantly experimenting, people that are...

EO

…never the same, totally unique? 

JH

Yes, they’re so important. I think that Dazed has been successful  because we’ve always kept people at the forefront of culture on board. All of what I’ve done is the net result of a lot of people that are way smarter than me. They’ve come together because Dazed has allowed people freedom to explore. My belief was that if you give great people space, they’re going to do things you couldn’t have imagined.