He dropped out of high school and didn’t finish his art studies either, but that did not prevent him from making it big in the industry. Paris-based graphic designer and video director Alex Courtes is a busy man, but he still managed to invite us for a coffee in his apartment and escorted us on his motorcycle to Machine Molle, a motion and graphic design agency. Here, Alex is working on...

Watch this interview with Spanish subtitles on Milestimulos – Blog de difusión cultural y artística.

In Paris we met with one half of the design duo that makes up Studio Deubal. Deubal is a French creative agency consisting of Stéphanie Lelong and Olivier Marquézy. We fell in love with their original character-based title sequence designs. When we visit Olivier in his studio, he’s on his last legs. He’s been pulling an...

There’s no stopping the tidal wave of digital animation coming at us on the web, in the cinemas, and on tv. But there’s also a counter movement (if you can call it that) of animators who use old school animation techniques, like stop-motion. Stop motion animation is the “slow food” of animation. It’s hands-on, physical and magical. But also a lot of hard work and very time consuming.

One of the rising...

“I knew from a fairly early age, about 15 or so, that I wanted to be an artist. The problem was, my father was a detective in the police. In his view, artists were almost as suspect as criminals”, explains Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. He obviously withstood his father’s objections to his artistic ambitions and followed his vocation. Good for him and for us, because Edwin Wurm is now one of...

Imagine that. Bumping into a famous music video director somewhere where you least expect it. And you just happened to be there with a crew to shoot an interview. It happened to our Pretty Cool People crew. They were in a city in the South of Holland called Eindhoven to shoot a Pretty Cool People Interview with Miranda July and they sort of bumped in to director Mike...

Miranda July was a prolific performance and video artist in the 1990s who stepped into the mainstream limelight when her 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know became an international hit. But instead of working on a second feature film, Miranda has been “in a hurry to do everything else”. Like making exhibitions featuring do-it-yourself art taken from the ever-expanding Learning To Love You More project, an ongoing collaboration...

The lovely, multi-talented Anna Biller shocked and surprised audiences everywhere with her high-camp (s)exploitation flick ‘Viva’. The film takes place in 1972, during the heyday of the sexual revolution. Anna Biller plays Barbi – a bored, naive suburban housewife who gets sucked into a life of prostitution, drugs, sexual experimentation, nudist camps and orgies, and subsequently reinvents herself as the self made, sexually...

Taika Waititi is a director with a very original mind. In his homeland New Zealand, he’s known foremost as a stand-up comedian. But Taika also directs, writes and paints. We met him at the 2007 International Film Festival Rotterdam, where he presented his first feature film, ‘Eagle vs Shark’ – an offbeat romantic comedy featuring two socially inept misfits. The soft spoken and romantic Lily, who works the counter at a...

TKV is the artist name of Sashka (1988), a Serbian street artist, living in Belgrade. Doing stencil art is a basic need for TKV: she has to go out and leave her creative marks throughout the city. It’s as essential as eating or sleeping.

Since graffiti – like in most places – is prohibited in Serbia, TKV has to be very careful not to be caught by the police. That’s the reason...

Aleksandar Macasev doesn’t mince matters: “The real center of power in Serbia is the pharmacist. Give the people a lot of tranquilizers and they will not complain.” According to the Belgrade based artist and graphic designer, a lot of Serbian people are on drugs.

Macasev came to Belgrade in the beginning of the nineties, a turbulent time of war, protests and isolation. This period had a big...

Director and visual artist Ivan Sijak (1969) is considered as some kind of local hero of the creative scene in Serbia. On a lot of people that were young in the nineties his music videos had a big impact. Artists that grew up with seeing his stuff on tv can still relate to his visual language today.

Sijak took us around the old town of Belgrade, pointing out the remains of...