November 2nd 2006

yes, i am still around after living in nottingham for 3 months and just wanted to say hi and show you what i have been busy with. stills of my movie "CONTROL" will appear in a few weeks, at least i think so. still editing you see. so if i sum up quickly who i worked with the last 6 months since my mail below, we'll encounter: tom waits, the killers, renzo rosso, depeche mode, andrea corr, U2, rutger hauer, bob geldof, as well as doing a series of 10 postcards of 'Helping Hands' for the dutch equivalent to the Samaritans (the SOS THD) with amongst others patti smith, nick cave, elton john, gwyneth palthrow. also i designed a dvd box for depeche mode and a logo for the city of The Hague, a great great town on the dutch coast. but the BIG thing is the movie. i was privileged to work with some great actors and a great crew. i am so exhausted by it and yet so energized by it as well. it took me most of the year to get this off the ground and i am delighted to be able to say that i shot it! we worked over the summer in nottingham and it was a blast, and that is not just the weather i am talking about. more will follow. keep safe. keep your pants on. kick bush out. keep africa alive. keep the spirit. phew.

February 9th 2006

Long time no hear. Apologies. I have been working on too many things and more specifically, i am working currently on my first feature film 'Control', the story of Ian Curtis. But let's first compile the last few months here for you. There were a few exhibitions on the U2 book, one in NY and one in Rome which i attended both. And fortunately i was not alone - in NY i had the privilege to be in the company of bono and edge as well as many other friends. The end of october saw the rehearsals and start of the Depeche Mode worldtour, for which i designed the stage. I have been very involved right from the start on this tour and my idea was to show a very different DM than on the last few tours, that included not just the look but also the way we see the band themselves on stage. For the last 13 years DM used backing singers on tour who usually only sang about 4 songs and i felt it would be interesting to see DM more as a rock band, purer if you like. So there are no backing singers on this tour and the band are a much closer unit as a result. The stage is a kind of 70's idea of the space-age and the visuals on the screens are mostly filled with live footage which is brilliantly edited and directed by someone going by the name of Blue. You might have seen his work on the last REM tour, which is where i spotted him. After the rehearsals in Florida I came back to London to work on the video for 'Talk' with Coldplay. This was an elaborate video for me at least -it involved a lot of greenscreen and consequently a lot of post-production. I really wanted to do this video and i also wanted to practice a bit, to prepare a bit for the movie. After the release of my dvd, i got such a buzz out of the reactions that i was interested to work on videos again so i went on from the Coldplay video to shooting a video for Depeche Mode in december in California. The song is 'Suffer Well' and it will be released around now. I feel that both those 2 videos are entertaining and good family fun ! I never thought of my work like that before actually. In between this i did some new work with Jose Merce, the flamenco singer, in madrid. It was very cold but we escaped to a few bars in between to warm up and shoot some photos indoors as a result.. This is the 3rd record i have worked on with Jose. Also did new shoots with Borek Sipek in Prague for a catalogue of an exhibition of his glass work and with Imi Knoebel in Dusseldorf for a catalogue of his shows this year. All my other time has been eaten up by the film and its many meetings. We now have the 3 main roles confirmed, which are Samantha Morton as Deborah Curtis, Sam Riley as Ian Curtis and Alexandra Maria Lara as his girlfriend. We aim to start shooting late spring and i will keep you updated as much as i can. And currently on my turntable or ipod or car-stereo are BOMBAY 1 "strobl", JOY DIVISION "unknown pleasures", PRINCE "the best of", ARCTIC MONKEYS, SOPHIE ZELMANI, NEIL DIAMOND, RICHARD HAWLEY and this beautiful record by THE NITS "les nuits". Very poignant record, worth finding.

Exhibitions

5th April 2007 - 26th June 2007 - PAN | Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Italy
"Heroes! like us...?"

14th April 2007 - 1st July 2007 - Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
"Broken White" Marlene Dumas - b/w photograph of Marlene Dumas, on show