Protests, talk of boycotting, and local shop windows declaring ‘No More Chain Stores.’ All this over a mini Sainsbury’s on Lewisham way. If you’re unfamiliar with New Cross there are two things you should know; the residents hate chain stores, and they like to get shit done. It was the ideal location for comic book-maker Dimitri Pieri to hold last Sunday’s South East London zine fest. Know for supporting the local arts community, the dimly lit Amersham Arms was chosen to house the event, and saw the entire bottom floor crammed with DIY enthusiasts keen to show off their stick and paste and photocopied and printed creations. Including Oregon-based feminist Alex Wrekk of Stolen Sharpie Revolution (a respected guide to zine making and zine culture) as well as plenty of UK self-publishers.

Peter Willis, an illustration graduate from the nearby Camberwell College of Arts and zine distributor, told Dazed Digital “I started making zines when I was about 12-13 because my sister wrote for fanzines and getting into punk introduced me to a lot of DIY ideas, opening up a world of kids in bedrooms writing down their ideas and trading them with people from all over the place.” He edits a journal called Limner, a stapled illustration zine exploring the art form from a more considered perspective. Amongst contemporary black and white drawings you’ll find critical essays on the teaching of illustration as well as its role in digital media. Willis says it’s the community aspect of zine making that really draws people in, and points us toMichael Crowe. Crowe is the author of the 40 page thick Mid-Midnight. Willis says it's full of “brilliant short stories that are unobtrusively clever, and often hilarious, and leave you with that satisfied smile when you read them.” We haven’t had a chance to read it yet, so you’ll have to find out for yourself. Crowe is also behind ‘Christmas Diaries,’ a collection of Xmas day entries from famous diarists, including Andy Warhol and George Orwell. A highlight: Samuel Pepys, who, on the 25th of Dec 1664, punches his wife, and doesn’t get why she’s miffed for the rest of the day.

From the 17th century and on to a zine about obscure punk bands and comic strips of oozing brains from Russell Taysom and Charlie Mellors.Flabby Dagger’s most recent edition contains cartoons such as ‘Teenage Mutant Chicken Nuggets,’ a gory homage to the fact that, apparently, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were, actually, quite twisted back in the early 80s. The chicken nuggets bit? “There are a lot of chicken shops in London.” Hey there, New Cross! While ‘Piano From Hell’ documents an exchange between Charlie and a bespoke luxury piano company, in which he sends them a sketch for a piano shaped like a giant penis. There’s also a sketch called ‘Keep Your Pants On.’ “Flabby Dagger is a name Charlie had for a band he and I were going toform. After a few practices we realised we hated each other’s songsso we started the zine instead. It means limp penis,” explains Taysom. “It's not that bad though - I bought a zine made by girls called Knob Vomit once.”

Poignantly named 'For You The Traveller', artist Nabil Sabio Azadi's new book is a collection of notable names, stories, telephone numbers, and hand-drawn maps as a 'Human Guide to the World'. From metalworkers, farmers, artists, writers, and scientists to designers and shipwrights from around the globe, the hand-bound rabbit fur books feature insightful snippets to local regions in Greece to Kenya to New Zealand. Dazed spoke to Azadi about the nomadic lifestyle and the gifts it bestows...

Dazed Digital: Why was it important to put this book together?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: A friend of mine recently observed that as person I'm very preoccupied with this idea of communitas — the intense, sacred way we all share and interact with each other over our lifetimes. I'd never even heard of this area of anthropological study but I had to agree with him because if there is one thing I know concretely about my art, it is that I'm trying to give people a sense of solidarity with it. This book is probably the most tangible way I've done it yet. For You The Traveller as a guide to the world and its people facilitates companionship and I see solidarity in that. Beyond bringing people together, the book is also a collection of parables: accompanying each person's telephone number is a lesson from their life. To me solidarity also means communicating universal experiences and emotions back to people in order to create a sense of communion.

DD: How did the project first come about and who was involved?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: I blame an afternoon in June — barely six months ago — when I was sitting in the sun with the dog here on the East Coast of Australia and the whole book hit me in the head. I'm not really an intellectual artist and my work doesn't come from any calculation. Like many people, I also live in a busy internal world where things present themselves to me however I personally feel that I'm sort of expected to bring them into existence. I am proudly just the General Contractor. Usually I end up working with photography and sculpture so in this instance I was being asked to do some things I'd never done like illustration, book-binding and working with fur. I told myself to buck up, started that night, and have spent every day on it since.

DD: What are the greatest things one can learn from a nomadic lifestyle?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: That the winds of change tend to favour the sails of those who politely yell out to it, "Nice to meet you!"

DD: Why do you encourage people to get out on to the road?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: There is kinship and adventure to be found on it. The road can be home and if you transact with people justly, they will help you.

DD: What has been your favourite/craziest memory from travelling in 2012?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: There have been waterfalls, tablelands, caves, wild animals from deer to kangaroos but, as many people would say, the most revelatory and absurd experience has been falling in love and getting a dog.

DD: The best place you have ever been to?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: The best place I have ever been to existed for approximately ten minutes and it was a wooden gazebo in Royal Park, Melbourne which a small group of close friends and I ritually dressed in long streams of toilet paper, drenched in hand sanitizer and set alight. It looked like a burning palace from heaven and the lashes of fire that night remain the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I am told that the gazebo has since been rebuilt.

DD: Your dream destination?
Nabil Sabio Azadi: I would like to go inside the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in Southern France. It has some of the earliest known cave paintings — they're incredible. Horses galloping across stone walls that were drawn about thirty thousand years ago. I wonder about Paleolithic people and what similarities we might have had to them emotionally. Anyway, no one is allowed in the cave in order to protect the internal atmosphere so give me a ticket to Easter Island instead and I'll show you a happy man.

Portraits by Angela Ferro

For You The Traveller is available for purchase online here

As a pendant to Nicola Formichetti's full-on fashion in the #Fantasia issue, we set out, guided by the superstylist, to meet some of the most exciting Tokyo design talent of the moment. Yuima Nakazato makes brutally futuristic menswear, famous for his holographic pieces. Though the designer tells us his next collection will be different. So keep an eye out.

Dazed Digital: Can you tell us when you launched your label?
Yuima Nakazato: After my studies at Royal Academy of Antwerp, Ann Demeulemeester said: "Individuality should appear in a course, as well as in a creation". I started my label in my hometown of Tokyo, 2009.

DD: Who wears your clothes?

Yuima Nakazato: Mainly youth but especially people who like fashion.

DD: What's your most famous design?

Yuima Nakazato: The most famous designs are the hologram items (made from special material like a jewel/beetle). In my first collection there was a men's hologram dress and I've continued it up to now.

DD: What's the best moment in your career so far?
Yuima Nakazato:When I see someone wearing my clothes.

DD: What are your hopes for the future?
Yuima Nakazato:I want to express a richness of mentality in my work.

DD: What's your favourite thing about Nicola Formichetti?
Yuima Nakazato:His creation stems from the fusion of two cultures, Japanese and Italian. This will continue to broaden the horizons of fashion.

PhotographyDaisuke Hamada

When Nicola first began his Dazed takeover, he emailed us about five innovative GIF designers from around the world. Now, we've asked these Tumblr-ers to make their own adaptation of Nicola's panda illustration, the symbol at the heart of Nicola's new concept fashion lineNicopanda.

We've already had contributions from GIF makers German Lavrovskiy and Mr-GIF, and now we're introducingAkihiko Taniguchi. Having already experimented with the presentation of GIFs in his project, GIF 3D Gallery,where he created an interactive space to display the GIFs as work's of art in a gallery, we asked Taniguchi a few questions about his custom Nico-panda-GIF and the future of GIF-making.

Tell me about the panda GIF you made.

Sometimes I make the visual sketch using processing. And again this time, I made the sketch using processing before converting it into a GIF.

Tell me about your practice and style.

I don't always make GIFs. I'm interested in modeling and composition - how objects overlap - and producing another meaning from there.

What do you do when you’re not making GIFs?

Surf the web. Make art work in other forms.

How did you start making GIFs?

I was seldom making GIFs until now. But I was happy researching internet art and making my own artwork for several years. From those activities, I noticed the importance and peculiarity of the GIF. Then I made GIF 3D Gallery this summer. This is an internet artwork, which can put GIFs onto a pedestal in a 3D gallery, and be viewed online. I made the pedestal for the GIFs at first. Then, I came to make GIFs for the pedestal.

What’s your all time favourite GIF and GIF designer?

Anthony Antonellis, Francoise Gamma and Matt Goerzen. He is mainly a painter, but I think his GIFs are also the concept and statement of his work.

Recent months have seen a return of the GIF as an item of popular discourse and funny thing to drop into an email. What do you put this down to?

1. The decline of the flash and the spread of Tumblr.
2. Increased susceptibility to the internet in daily life.

A GIF format is a very old graphics format. However, compared with other graphics formats, the GIF is special. GIF can use a transparent background and it is always related to a background where it's placed. GIF resembles three-dimensional sculpture rather than pictures and photographs which always cut off the world squarely. GIF exists like a substance with mass.

Where do you think the art of the GIF maker is going?

It is not only a question for GIFs. Some internet artists feel that the relation between actual space and the internet is sensitive. I think that two trials exist there.The first is the trial which tries to place GIFs (internet artwork) in a gallery on the internet, and the second trial which tries to put GIFs in an actual space.It will have to do with the materiality of the aforementioned GIF. I think GIF became a media independent from other image formats. Although it is not applied to all GIF makers, I think how actual space and the internet are mediated/connected is something important to consider.

Matthew Stone is currently exhibiting his second solo show at the Hole Gallery, New York. Love Focused Like A Laser delves further into his exploration of spirituality, performance and the hope to attain credible conversations about love. In simple terms, his new works captures performers, using laser lights, on film and then engrave the images onto wood, using a computer. Already known for his beautiful photographs, which focus on the movement of the human body, captured by Matthew with intensity and passion, the artist talks to Dazed about how lasers feature in his new project and an upcoming collaboration with DJ MikeQ, as we show the pictures exclusively above.

DazedDigital: How did your exhibition at The Hole Gallery come about?


Matthew Stone: Well, it’s my second solo show at the Hole Gallery. About this time last year, November 2011, was when I did my first show there and I’ve been working with them since then. I’ve been making these new photographs, which are lit with club lasers, and Kathy Grayson (who runs the gallery) saw the photos and said, "Let’s do a show of just these!" Then I explained to them I wanted to try and develop this new technique..

DD: You use lasers, cameras and computers to engrave the images onto wood. What is it about the technique that inspires you?


Matthew Stone: Well basically, the idea for the lasers, came when I was in New York. I was in a nightclub and they had this laser, and I noticed it was doing interesting things when I photographed it. So that’s where it stems from. I then bought lasers and did a whole series of experiments. Played around with them. And because they were lasers, I was thinking about ways to present the images and I came up with the idea of laser cutting. I did tests with laser cutting and I wasn’t getting what I wanted. So the final images are cut with a computer controlled spinning drill head.

DD: So more of an engraving than a cutting?


Matthew Stone:Yes, like engraved paintings. It’s a spinning drill bit that cuts through the top layer of the wood and from certain angles, in the grooves, you can see the grain of the wood. It's hard to see them in a photograph though. You need to stand in front of it.

DD: How do you get the lasers to bounce off your performers?

Matthew Stone:I use long exposure, and I’m in front of the camera, drawing with the lasers, moving around and drawing on parts I want to be brighter. I guess it's like a light drawing. What I like about it is that it’s really physical, and a really different energy from the process of making it. There’s movement from the models and there’s movement from me, so the end result feels like documentation, a sort of performance of gesture. It’s shot in the dark, and there are just these dots everywhere, so there is this increased sense of freedom for the people that I’m photographing. Just because you feel less naked. It’s fun, I put music on, I recently realised how I had created this nightclub in my studio.

DD: Do you have a soundtrack?


Matthew Stone:Different shoots have different soundtracks, I was playing DJ Mike Q, he plays house and DJ’s a lot of balls in New York. I was playing his music, while I was shooting in London. We’re actually working on a project in Miami... it’s coming up at the beginning of next month.

DD: Performance does seem to feature throughout the series, and in a lot of your pieces. Do you see it as integral to your work?


Matthew Stone:In general I feel performance is important to my work, but in a way what I'm specifically interested in, is people and interaction. A friend of mine the other day said, “Yeah, but you love people”. Not as a bad thing, but as a reason.. I don’t know, I do love people, there’s always performative element just because people are involved

DD: Do you explore the performance of certain behaviors and spirituality in your work?


Matthew Stone:I mean, I understand if I think about performance and spirituality then I think about ritual. Ritual being something, an action, which allows us to step out of the everyday routine and become conscious of something else. Perhaps something more important. I think that those things occur in secular society as much as they do in religious society. In terms of the lighting, the works are lit so that when you walk in to the gallery you are met by the works that are dimly lit, in a big black space, so it has an almost church like feeling. The works are laid out in a symmetrical way as well, with three pieces on either side, and a large piece at the end, there is a feeling of entering a chapel like space.

DD: So the gallery space has the feeling of a church and a club all at once?


Matthew Stone:Basically the lights in the gallery space are set up on a timer, and we’ve had it on remote, so that I can switch between the kind of church like lighting, to literally all the lights are out and it's red and green laser dots everywhere. Sort of caressing the room. So that’s how the installation works. I think that nightclubs are in terms of transcendentalism, are spiritually more relevant places than churches.I mean I think that the kind of urges that draw people to dance, are the same things that took people into churches or into religiously conscious ritual.

DD: How do you feel this exhibition builds on your manifesto or links back to it?


Matthew Stone:We had a dinner for the exhibition and I read from it, I read the manifesto – I thought it would make the dinner more of an event - but as I read it, everything just seemed to fit perfectly with the show. The first line was reflected when I realized I was standing there in the dark with moving lights around the audience and me. Then also, as I read the end of manifesto, it was the title of the current show. I mean I don’t think I make artworks specifically to evidence and explain a set of clearly defined ideas, but I feel like it’s natural that the art that I make will be informed by the things that I’m thinking about

DD: All the artworks have a positive strain in them as well.. they come across as quite optimistic.


Matthew Stone:I think that hedonism is something that’s necessary sometimes, and something to celebrate. For me, realistically, when I look at all the things I’ve done, I don’t think it's that we oppose old ideas about performance and spirituality, but that we find new ways to communicate. Ones that are meaningful and sincere. To find ways to talk about aspects of humanity that are more linked. I think that those conversations are the most important.

I think there were a lot of ideas that were posed in the 1960s that seemed to fail, and I think now everybody understands, everybody experiences love, whether it’s the desire to be loved, or to love someone else, or to feel love, or loving someone... everyone experiences it. But for some reason talking about it or posing kindness, always seems weak or nave. I think at the moment, one half of me is taken up by creating propaganda for the idea that kindness can be a strength, and that it's not pathetic. And that it doesn’t mean we have to give up on exciting lives to communicate with people on a level that is respectful.

In a way the 20th century created a strong mythology for the idea of the artist or rebel, which is often based on the idea of rejecting ideas of morality. I think that was an important thing to happen, because it destroyed a lot of hypocrisy, and essentially destroyed a lot of cruelty. Now we’ve got to a point where we have to remind people that kind of violent rebellion was not about creating or validating through violence. It was a passionate attempt to destroy a morally corrupt or rotten society of Post-Victorian attitudes including misogyny, homophobia, and racism.

DD: Can you tell us more about your upcoming project with DJ MikeQ?


Matthew Stone:Well, the collaboration with MikeQ will probably take place onDecember 7th, in Miami. Basically we’re designing a performance. We’ll be presenting some more of the works that are in the show, with his music, but they’ll be music, dance, ballroom, work on the wall and an audience to watch it.

Love Focused Like A Laser will be at the Hole Gallery in New York from November 10 – December 31, 2012