SSENSE: Beyond Control Editorial

I’ve sadly neglected this blog for a while now, due to some big changes and challenges in my professional and personal life. To my “loyal readership”, my sincerest apologies. The big news is that after a very introspective January, I decided to take on a full-time position as the Art & Design Director at SSENSE, a leading Montreal-based fashion company. The images above are from my first ever fashion editorial!

This is my first in-house job, and I’m quickly learning that the challenges are quite different than those of agency or freelance work, but I’m really excited to be able to dig so deep into, and feel ownership over, a single, unique brand. I’ve also been impressed by how different the fashion industry is from the advertising industry. Obviously, there are a lot of overlaps, but the attention to purposeful craft is very refreshing. The creative team at SSENSE is very talented and there are big plans for the company on the horizon, so please stay tuned. Here’s hoping my immersion into the world of fashion might also improve my wardrobe as well!

The decision to return to full-time work was not taken lightly, and was in part influenced by my thinking around the predicaments of flexible labour (which in turn was influenced by the discovery of both the original and reinvented International Typographical Union). About how, no matter how much we might think of working for ourselves as a form of freedom, fundamentally, one still does not control many aspects of one’s labour, least of which, that of any form of security/solidarity. A job obviously doesn’t solve this, and it doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned LOKi Design as a a company, far from it, but it should give me the time and space to think about how to do things right the next time I try.

More practically, I also felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of projects I was taking on, and realised how much I was neglecting my own artistic practice. Ironically, taking on a full-time job seems like the best way for me to free up my time to refocus on it, by clearly drawing lines between my work and my art. So, as spring approaches (late as ever in this city), I’m really excited that my focus is finally returning to Four Minutes to Midnight.

As part of this process, I’ve reinvigorated my tumblr blog to collect and showcase inspirations, and I’ll be recommitting to using this site as a more open way of documenting and thinking through the concerns, conception, collaborations and production of the next issue of Four Minutes to Midnight.