Conversation with Benedict Brink
Benedict Brink, an Australian, London-based photographer we hold very dear, respects the subject, allowing them privacy through her lens. Benedict captures the body in angles and forms that keep on giving tender honesty, leaving you feeling like touching the skin. Besides photographing life, fashion and creative projects, Benedict curates art exhibitions of female artists she admires, working in the media of film, and who knows what’s next!
Attendees: Divijah Rajendra, Nanna Svane,
Benedict Brink
Divijah Rajendra: Hello.
Benedict Brink: Okay.
Nanna Svane: my God. Boom and she arrived
Benedict Brink: I just realized I should have brushed my hair.
Nanna Svane: F*** It's a camera.
Benedict Brink: How are you guys?
Nanna Svane: Hello, dear.
Divijah Rajendra: How is London for you these days?
Benedict Brink: It's a good question because I think, sometimes maybe I can play my mood with London and…
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: It does feel very, Like it's a bit sad. But I guess at the same time,…
Divijah Rajendra: mmm
Benedict Brink: It feels like now and maybe it's things starting to creep back and people trying to bring projects and ideas back into that light so vacuum that happened. I've been noticing more and more kinds of things going on and people making things happen like talks and readings and screenings and sort of nice special small things starting up that feels like it's gonna tip over into this sense of life and culture and enthusiasm again. So I think it's creeping back. I think it's been weird.
Nanna Svane: But don't you also think, Benedict, the last time you and I met up in London, what two three weeks ago, I think or something like that. I don't know. I'm moving to London. So I would like to give a little bit more positive speech! Haha.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Nanna Svane: I need it to be the place to be, right?
Benedict Brink: It will be once you get here.
Nanna Svane: I think with any city right now that I've been visiting - primarily cities like Paris and Berlin, Copenhagen, London and Milan where I am right now, everything has this post reaction to it. I think all the wars that's going on and genocides and post / current political situations, covid. The industry's f***** when you're speaking about fashion. So I don't know. I think everything has kind of this reaction to it right now where people are, specially creative people. That's why I love what we do is that they (the creatives) find solutions in the setups that's there to keep the cities growing in a way, which I really adore and I think London is particularly good at that. Compared to some other cities.
Benedict Brink: I agree. There's a possibility for this kind of experimentation and freedom and bringing something new into it.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: And that is what I love about living in a big city. That people,… you just keep going and it will always be. London it's always going to have amazing people trying to make things and…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: do things and Yeah, it does.
Nanna Svane: It's happening. Yeah.
Benedict Brink: It does feel positive at the moment. I think there's this kind of stirring which feels really exciting.
Divijah Rajendra: I feel like the art scene in London is quite interesting and there's a lot happening and then the fashion scene. I feel like it's also coming back now again, it's been a bit hard but now some of the bigger brands are coming back and it still has this up-and-coming designers being there,…
Benedict Brink: Mmm
Divijah Rajendra: But totally, there was this moment in time where everyone was just going to Paris. Everyone was like moving to Paris.
Benedict Brink: It kind of became El Dorado.
Divijah Rajendra: But now it feels like Paris is overloaded.
Nanna Svane: Crazy
Benedict Brink: I wonder how Paris feels about this, probably the same. And I think …
Nanna Svane: I think so, too.
Benedict Brink: It always seems like it's a bit of a cycle.
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Benedict Brink: And I think it's easy to get into a sort of ‘Grass is greener' mindset too. If I just go there then everything will be perfect and…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: I don't know. I mean I've done it. I moved to New York and then I moved here. So I've kind of chased a dream and I think there's also something to be said for staying…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: Where you are and like you said Nanna, finding solutions within that, but I think the young designers in London, is always incredible and it's incredible to work with those small brands that are doing really interesting and creative things and that hasn't gone away and I think yeah, it'll come back. Hopefully better.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, so talking about the smaller brands. We wanted to ask you why is fashion something that you're interested in photographing and working with these smaller brands? Yeah, what is it that interests you or where did that come about and start?
Benedict Brink: Yeah, I was thinking about this and I'm probably going to be a bit long-winded but I guess fashion for me came second and photography came when I was studying. And when I was really young and I was very restless and I didn't know what I liked. I was studying Art Theory and Cinema and I was very satisfied doing that. But I never had this sense of this career or this kind of very clear-cut linear path, and I just sort of found photography, as a thing to do that meant that I could keep doing the other things that I was doing, which was sort of being a very romantic 20 year old wandering around the city and wanting to talk to people and connect to people and photography it was like a camera was a prop that let me keep living in this sort of unconfined way. And then I met some people who worked in fashion and they were sort of like why don't you do this as a job and why don't you make it your whole thing and I didn't even really think that was possible. I had no sense that I was very naive. I grew up in the countryside in Australia, and I had no sense of careers, it was just I had a sense of what I loved and what I was into.
Nanna Svane: She is also blocking out yours?
Divijah Rajendra: No. I'm hearing you, but I can't hear her.
Nanna Svane: No. No you okay, Benedict. You're lacking up or what is it called in English?
Divijah Rajendra: Are you still there? No, I think she'll come back.
Nanna Svane: She'll come back. It suddenly started to have a bit of slowness,…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah. good.
Nanna Svane: right? Hello Benedict.
Benedict Brink: All right.
Divijah Rajendra: So yeah, you were talking about growing up in the countryside in Australia. So where did it actually begin for you? Did you start working with brands? Was that when you moved to New York?
Benedict Brink: I moved from the countryside and that's where I was studying and that's where you… I had made this friend who was already a very successful stylist there and she kind of showed me this direction and she worked for a magazine and I started shooting some things for that.
Nanna Svane: In Australia?
Benedict Brink: Yeah, but all of it just very naively and then I finished my degree. I broke up with my boyfriend and moved to New York with 400 Australian Dollars in my bank account and…
Nanna Svane: Great choice.
Divijah Rajendra: My gosh.
Benedict Brink: This seems like a really good idea.
Nanna Svane: I remember, again referring to the last time we saw each other, you said you never had a real job and it really stuck with me. I would definitely define you as a quite successful photographer and definitely having a job,…
Benedict Brink: Hire me please.
Nanna Svane: Shout out, that's definitely an advertisement.
Benedict Brink: Give me a job in the bank.
Divijah Rajendra: What is meant by a real job?
Benedict Brink: I never went to an office. I never had yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: mmm
Nanna Svane: Lucky you.
Benedict Brink: Yeah, It's really lucky and probably at times it's been really stupid. I don't know, maybe I overestimated myself and sometimes it paid off just to be nicely ballsy.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: Yeah, I guess New York was like and I did have a real job like I worked for. I worked in restaurants, which is a very real job. And I kept getting fired because I wasn't very good at it.
Nanna Svane: very real. Haha.
Benedict Brink: Then I've always needed help from people. A friend of mine, my first American friend, kind of said to me ‘Come on, you're in New York. Maybe it's not waitressing. Maybe it's working with someone that you really admire’ and I told that my favorite photographer was Collier Shorr and it turned out that Collier lived upstairs,…
Nanna Svane: No way.
Benedict Brink: and I texted her.
Divijah Rajendra: No! Okay.
Benedict Brink: Yeah, really lucky.
Divijah Rajendra: Did you work for her?
Benedict Brink: Yeah. I did for a few years.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah. Yes, okay. I had no idea. Wow, that's amazing.
Nanna Svane: Amazing. I had no idea either.
Benedict Brink: Yeah. Yeah. So that was a real job.
Divijah Rajendra: How was that assisting such a great photographer as Collier?
Benedict Brink: It was amazing. It was really hard at that time for me to get assistant work because I was a girl. And I think after I started assisting Collier, I think she was already massive within the art world.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: It did kind of pave away. But when I was there first doing it, it still was really like you're not going to be able to lift anything and we don't really trust you to know what you're doing and it was all. I was spoken to yeah,…
Divijah Rajendra: Okay skeptical. Because you were a girl or woman?
Benedict Brink: And you're a bit silly. You never make it. Yeah. Definitely and…
Divijah Rajendra: Wow.
Divijah Rajendra: I love that.
Benedict Brink: It's amazing.
Nanna Svane: Huge love, Sisterhood I love that.
Benedict Brink: So we worked with guys too, but she always had a strong female team.
Divijah Rajendra: That's amazing.
Benedict Brink: Every shoot had real conversation about the work that was being made and what the ideas were behind it, which I think was really different to a lot of assisting jobs that you could have had in fashion in New York at that time.
Nanna Svane: When we look at your career and your photography for the past many years it still has this very kind of high focus on life as it is and intimacy and with a lot of tenderness to it, would you say that as well?
Benedict Brink: Yeah, definitely. It's a good description.
Nanna Svane: Do you feel like that comes from where you're from or the way that you perceive life?
Benedict Brink: I think, I come from a physical place, but also from a family, who are certain ways and I think I grew up in a very creative environment and a very different environment. I think the culture of my family was incredibly different to the culture that we lived in, the physical space. And I think that is kind of outside the US, really informs it and I always feel like that and I think maybe being from Australia and coming into this bigger world does kind of make you have these sort of open eyes to things. And then I think I try to just hold on to it a little bit and gravitate towards people who also sort of have a lack of convention and a sort of openness and I guess some kind of defiance too. I think it's defiant to sort of hold on to a bit of tenderness, a bit of naivety, a bit of uncertainty. I think it's kind of a brave position.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, I was just thinking the same. Sometimes you can always think bigger and better.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: But I feel like what you do is look at the simplicity and the emotional sides of photography. Where you really bring out the intimacy and the tenderness. It's the small little bits of the whole photograph that really makes it.
Benedict Brink: Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: So emotional I think it's quite incredible.
Benedict Brink: Thanks. That's nice. I wish I could do something different. I wish I could go ‘Blockbuster Commercial’ just like that.
Divijah Rajendra: You really want to do that though?
Benedict Brink: Sometimes
Divijah Rajendra: So yes speaking of the people. We've been talking about your work right now. And what we also see is this contemporary teenage and coming of age element in your photography and we were wondering what type of people really inspire you? You've been talking about how you gravitate to the people, but what type of people are the ones that you really love to photograph?
Benedict Brink: I think some of that coming of age-ness is because of the work that I do in fashion. It's not all of fashion, but there is something that I love about it that is sort of performative and it's always a bit documentary. It's always about something that's actually there and something's real but I think sometimes the way into that honesty is through a bit of role play and a bit of fantasy and make believe and I think that really lends itself to a source of teenage way of thinking. And I think the other part of it is that openness that maybe that's a sort of time in life where you are a little bit more open and malleable and I think that's really beautiful. So I think I like photographing, like women of any age, but maybe there's a sort of energy and openness that has its own kind of adolescence to it.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, I was just thinking that, when I mentioned teenagers, it's not about the age of the person. It's more how that image is coming out as it's not about an age perspective on it.
Benedict Brink: Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: The openness after a photograph or how it's constructed. Its forms or in its styling or…
Benedict Brink: Yeah, which is interesting. I hadn't really thought about it until I was answering that question. I was like, that's weird. That's cool.
Nanna Svane: But there is this mix of boldness, which I really connect with being a teenager having both boldness and naivety, being that mixture of it which is really a compliment to your photography. Do you see the need of expanding your creative tools for the industry or is it a personal need of exploring? You are working with both photography, videography, exhibitions and curating. So do you feel like that need comes from within or externally?
Benedict Brink: I think it comes from within and sometimes it's effective industry-wise, I think. It would probably be easier to just do one thing. I think of fashion like kind of, should I sign out and sign back in again…
Benedict Brink: Is it Frozen? Okay, it's just mine.
Divijah Rajendra: No.
Nanna Svane: No. Not at all.
Benedict Brink: I think sometimes being more simple and singular would probably do me favors, but I've never been very good at doing what I should do or what would sort of be a strategically smart thing to do. But I wish I was, I just can't be and so it's very much a personal need and I think I'm very driven by connecting with people and being allowed to have certain conversations. Photography was a way into that and…
Nanna Svane: Yeah for sure.
Benedict Brink: Now it feels like there are other ways into that, that might suit the conversation.
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Benedict Brink: So I just try and find the right medium for the right project or for the right idea I guess.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, I feel like that's so relatable.
Nanna Svane: Yeah for sure.
Divijah Rajendra: It was the whole aspect of being the best at something. I think I will never be the best at something. I would love to be great at a lot of things. I was also listening to a podcast the other day that was speaking about this aspect of photographers being art directors as well and how this world we're in it's better to have several talents and tools that you work with in order to make your project come alive. So it's both about getting the right people for the projects,…
Nanna Svane: But also expanding your own kind of tool set.
Benedict Brink: Really? I Always thought you both were so good at that too. Tailoring a project who you were working with and whenever I came and worked with you it always felt like you had me in mind. I think this is how we'll get the best results. Because this is what you're uniquely good at, we can't try and make you be something else. But I think it does help to sort of, the more you make and the more you do, the more interesting the work and kind of become and I was just thinking Divijah, maybe you can be the best being open and multifaceted.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah. No, exactly.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: What we've brought for this. It's like to be the best weirdo instead of the best?
Divijah Rajendra: It really is.
Nanna Svane: Weirdo, always.
Divijah Rajendra: I think that's a really interesting space to be in, how to expand your toolset. So could you maybe talk about a specific curation project that you've been doing lately or something maybe coming up?
Benedict Brink: So in February, I did a show called ‘Tender Looks’ that was at a bookstore in London called Tender Books. Very clever with the name, but it sort of came about because I had been and always sort of talking to other artists and photographers and feel very lucky to have a community of people who make work that resonates with me and…
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Benedict Brink: Yeah, is it that those conversations are sort of always ongoing and it leads to ideas like how can we put this out there in the right ways because maybe we're all feeling certain frustrations within industry or jobs or one strand of our practice. The show had six artists in it and I was thinking about spaces and I've always loved sort of unconventional spaces and not doing things necessarily in a white box gallery kind of thing.
Which can feel very austere. I mean, I love that I go to a lot of shows and I also love that kind of Stark Church formality to it. But I think I'm also really interested in using this sort of means that I have available to me and what can you make within the constraints of your own person or your own situation? And the people that I was talking to all make work that's very sort of personal and…
Nanna Svane: Thank you.
Benedict Brink: Tender and intimate and who's thinking about smaller spaces and I've done something with Tender Books before and it just felt like it's this really funny space where you have to kind of navigate around bookshelves and stairs and corners. And I love that Your body becomes part of the experience if there's one other person in there you sort of have to maneuver with them. so that becomes a bit of the show as well as How you move and how you're looking at things also in a space that is a commercial space. But a contemplative space as well is kind of an interesting balance and everyone makes work both commercially and then for us more Fine Art practice.
Nanna Svane: It's going on inside. Yeah, so when you're talking about this, I was wondering what kind of difference is there in the way of working as a curator then you working as a photographer and what kind of different processes are you going through when you're thinking about curation? Or maybe it's not even differences. It's actually similarities? Working with curation and working as a photographer on a project?
Benedict Brink: There is some similarity like I was thinking what you were saying Nanna about choosing the people and I think you do that on a photo shoot as well commercially and personally it's about this person's going to be great for this and this person and I really always loved in fashion that whole team. I love the assistants that I work with and they're very important in what they bring energetically to a set. I often don't work and always have assistants who come from art school, or I know them socially so I think there's that similar element that is combining the right mix of people. To say what you're trying to say to help you bring that in and…
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Benedict Brink: You find Art directors that you really click with and then that makes better work and stylists and the closer those relationships become I think the more effective you are as a team. And so I think that's similar to the experience of curating and working with people and I think maybe what's different about it is it's like ego comes into it in a really different way and I think I've often struggled with this hierarchy within photo shoots and onset because I'm trying to get better at sort of embodying that thing of like okay, it's alright for me to be dominant sometimes and it's alright for me to kind of take the lead on things such as female problem. But it's crazy.
Nanna Svane: It definitely is.
Benedict Brink: And it's one of the reasons that I love getting older…
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: Because it gets easier to sort of do that and..
Divijah Rajendra: For sure.
Nanna Svane: I think that's such, sorry to interrupt Benedict, but I think that's such an interesting comment because the industry and the way we are taught to work is not to be dominant. We are not treated or…
Benedict Brink: mmm
Nanna Svane: raised to question it. I was raised by a single mom, very dominant, single for 15 years, she was a Powerhouse and still is, but I’m still insecure getting into the industry of fashion and trying to be independent and also trying to be dependent on myself and my creativity. I didn't feel like that was a welcomingness to it, and I think It's really interesting when you say becoming older, because I've been giving age a lot of thought. I'm young and I still feel like, maybe in 15 plus years, I'm validated as not important. Outdated. But the validation of me will grow in a way and I think it's so weird because at the same time the industry is sucking everything out of the youth as if we were the most important source of inspiration, right? And…
Benedict Brink: Yeah.
Nanna Svane: We're here to give everything. All right. It's such a weird system that It's so hard to navigate in, I think.
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm Yeah
Benedict Brink: When you think you're probably given this really limited window of you have to be just old enough to be taken seriously. And then once you're too old there's this sense of …
Nanna Svane: “You're not relevant.” Exactly.
Benedict Brink: what is too old but I feel this fear of running out of time and that's so f** up like it's such a Yeah,…
Nanna Svane: It's so weird.
Benedict Brink: and there is progress.
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Nanna Svane: With dominance? I think there is this when the three of us are sitting and speaking together. I feel empowered.
Benedict Brink: Yeah!
Nanna Svane: Owning what you want, but I feel like it's so hard. It really takes a lot of energy to go into a room and be like, ‘I know you think I'm not valid but I'm gonna make you believe in me no matter what’ I think that's across all genders though.
Benedict Brink: But crazy..
Nanna Svane: But really on female energy in the industry.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: Mmm
Benedict Brink: I mean, especially you guys, I know how hard you work and how kind of instrumental you both have been and making things happen and progress in Copenhagen and your industry. And you always both seemed to be sort of spectacularly grounded and confident in that…
Nanna Svane: Thanks…
Benedict Brink: Which always was like, whoa, these two.
Divijah Rajendra: It was to fight for it. I'm still like, we have to fight for it.
Benedict Brink: Yeah.
Nanna Svane: So we're doing that.
Benedict Brink: Mmm Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: I think that time and…
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: space is still not there for us to just be validated, but we need to fight for it. So if that's what we have to do...
Benedict Brink: Ugly, totally … You're doing a good job of it.
Divijah Rajendra: Thank you.
Nanna Svane: Thank you. And I think conversations like these are a part of that progress.
Benedict Brink: I think a little micro thing that you can do as well, this project that you guys are doing, the show for me, and the more projects like that. I want to go forward. It's like taking a little bit of control where you can in this small way that then I think has a big impact and I had a really funny thing where I always have to ask myself " Am I allowed to say …
Nanna Svane: God all the time. Yeah.
Benedict Brink: I'm gonna be curator now.” It's like of course you can.
Divijah Rajendra: Of course you can, this is the space we're in to do all the things we want to do. It's not supposed to stop us whether our age or…
Nanna Svane: Yeah. exactly
Divijah Rajendra: whether we're too young, whether we should jump out there and demand space for us to be able to do it.
Nanna Svane: Yeah, let’s make great projects.
Divijah Rajendra: <3
Benedict Brink: Love.
Nanna Svane: But Benedict, if you should listen to one concert…
Benedict Brink: right
Nanna Svane: With an artist who passed away, who would it be?
Benedict Brink: Wait, so the question again.
Nanna Svane: If you could listen to a concert by an artist / musician that passed away, who would it be?
Benedict Brink: Prince
Divijah Rajendra: Good one.
Nanna Svane: Love, good one. Yeah, what about you Divi?
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, I've been thinking about this question. I really think it's a hard one.
Nanna Svane: Mmm
Benedict Brink: It's really tough.
Divijah Rajendra: But Houston, Whitney Houston.
Benedict Brink: Yeah.
Nanna Svane: Whitney Houston, good one, my God.
Benedict Brink: Nanna?
Nanna Svane: Yeah, Amy Winehouse, really.
Divijah Rajendra: Ah! I was thinking about Amy Winehouse and…
Benedict Brink: Wow.
Divijah Rajendra: Then I was like, the movie just got out.
Nanna Svane: Yeah….
Divijah Rajendra: I don't know about that one. I'm skeptical.
Benedict Brink: No.
Divijah Rajendra: I'm so skeptical because I feel like it's too soon.
Nanna Svane: Don't know about that one either.
Divijah Rajendra: I feel like the casting for it?
Benedict Brink: It feels wrong. Yeah, leave her alone.
Nanna Svane: Benedict, do you have a favorite part of the body that you like to photograph?
Nanna Svane: I think that's so cute. Yeah. But the belly button also because I feel the belly button in general is so unsexy.
Benedict Brink: Yeah.
Nanna Svane: I remember this Greek myth where they spoke about that's where we got all together. So the universe was gathered in our belly buttons and…
Benedict Brink: Amazing
Nanna Svane: I think that's the kind of feeling I get when you photograph the belly buttons like there is this capturing a universe…
Benedict Brink: That's so nice.
Nanna Svane: Which I really really adore.
Benedict Brink: Yeah, I like this,… like cropping in on something. You're making it small, but you're also making it sort of epic by then blowing it back up again.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: And I love this idea of bodies and body parts becoming kind of geographical in a way kind of a map of experiences. I also love the sort of belly button or the nipple as an eye. These sorts of rounds are eyes and…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: it's all about looking and looking back out.
Divijah Rajendra: Right, right - That's an interesting interaction between looking at it and…
Benedict Brink: So yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: looking back at it.
Nanna Svane: Everything in an eyesight.
Benedict Brink: Yeah. Yeah, I love that description.
Divijah Rajendra: So moving on a bit. We wanted to talk about this book that me and Nanna are currently reading. I gave it to Nanna as a birthday gift and it's called; ‘Bad Taste: Or the Politics of Ugliness.’ by Nathalie Olah. Have you read this one?
Benedict Brink: I really enjoyed it. Yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: I'm not even done with it. But I'm just so intrigued by the idea of it or what I want to do.
Benedict Brink: mmm
Divijah Rajendra: I'm just going to read the opening quotes out loud. It's from Chapter One ‘Tastemakers’.
“Consider the exact sense in which a work of art is set to be in good or bad taste. It does not mean that it's true or false that it is beautiful or ugly. But that does not comply either with the loss of choice which is enforced by certain modes of Life and all the habits of mind produced by a particular sort of education.” This is John Ruskin ‘Modern Painters’ Volume Three, 1888.
Then the second quote is “To me bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone is watching one of my films. It's like getting a standing ovation.” And that's John Waters ‘Sharp Value’ 1981. I found these quotes super interesting and how they talk about taste and I wanted to ask; What does bad taste mean to you? And is there such a thing as taste? What is bad taste?
Benedict Brink: I think Bad Taste, the idea of taste, for me what I find compelling and interesting and I guess good is when there's something a little off that's what I am drawn to. What I don’t like is when things are too tasteful or correct or perfect. It's a little stifling. And it's a little boring. The degree of subversion is, I think good taste, is allowing some sort of chaos into it or some sort of question, just to throw things off. So I guess bad taste is good taste in that sense. And I think what's actually bad taste is cruelty. Mockery. Callousness, punching down - that's bad taste.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, when I read this I was thinking about taste in general and I was thinking about how it's such an individual perspective on something. Like you can say this would be bad taste and…
Benedict Brink: mmm
Divijah Rajendra: I find good taste hard to define? Taste is such an individual perspective on it.
Benedict Brink: And then it becomes a whole thing for everybody. Being a sort of ‘Taste Maker’ in a way and who gets given that power?
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah opinion maker.
Benedict Brink: What I say is good, is so personal and it is also so dependent on background, class, culture like this yeah, it's such a complicated kind of Matrix of desire,…
Divijah Rajendra: But that's what I kind of got from the first quote.
Benedict Brink: I guess.
Divijah Rajendra: It's like if you look at something it's not whether it is good or bad taste but it's also these certain modes of life that's mentioned in the quote and…
Benedict Brink: Mmm
Divijah Rajendra: As you are saying with the culture aspect, the education part of it. There's different aspects of it that affect the way you look at a piece of art or film or music. And I think upbringing as well has a lot to do with it.
Nanna Svane: Even the geographical point or the educational point all of these things really enforces us to look at things differently and… for me, I take this as broadening out the perspective of taste and listening to how we perceive The Taste in different aspects is more important that whether saying it's good or…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, for sure. Bad taste.
Nanna Svane: What is @arrangem3nt?
Benedict Brink: My second instagram profile. It has pictures of the stacks that I always post, pieces of plastic bottles and containers and bits and pieces. Piled up in these kinds of weird sculptural forms. It's just like a sort of positive impulse.
Nanna Svane: Can you talk about the stacks? The stacks are so funny. The stacks are something that you've been posting since I got to know you years and years ago and I started to send you stacks of stuff when I was out drunk. What's up with those Stacks? I'm just doing stacks because you were doing stacks.
Benedict Brink: Which I love! You and three other people send me stacks and sometimes they come through when I haven't done it for months. I think it's a sort of creative pointless exercise which I think is really beautiful.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Benedict Brink: And it's like we're in this moment with these things around us. Here's a sort of document of this day. And I find I often do them when I'm on holidays. Often do them when I'm somewhere else and you've got a little bit of time to be bored and just have restless hands,…
Nanna Svane: And time to balance, because balance is actually a very important element in those stacks.
Benedict Brink: It's a very important part of it. Because you have to be impressive too, you have to get the proportions all weird so that people really wow by your stack.
Nanna Svane: You should do something with these Stacks Benedict.
Benedict Brink: No, I really want to. Yeah, so this kind of arrangements as the private burner has now been renamed I guess it's what I'm working on at the moment, and It's the idea that is for it to be a sort of platform to house all of these other ideas like the shows I want to put on, the sharing of reading materials, the kind of curation of other artists and other artists work and the marrying of those things together. So it's a sort of curatorial exercise I think but also just a platform to explore these other ideas And to sort of work them out and…
Nanna Svane: Good..
Benedict Brink: and it will have an online home and then it will take over physical spaces that are appropriate to each project and it kind of does so that's the sort of idea of it and… I think within this space there's a dean of stacks and maybe they're not just mine. Maybe it's a sort of crowdsourced project of Stacks all around the world One Summer Yeah,…
Nanna Svane: Love that though.
Benedict Brink: Something like that.
Nanna Svane: @arrangem3nt and @us2u have the same energy. Right? There is this strength in sharing and I love that and…
Benedict Brink: Yeah, I hate gatekeeping.
Nanna Svane: That’s the word I'm looking for.
Benedict Brink: I think also as women there are so many things that you get excluded from. I want to be open.
Nanna Svane: I call it the Cake Society. Men, they each have a cake. Women are sharing one cake and have to fight for their piece. It might sound banal, but there is a big difference, I think, that women compete more and find it harder to empower each other, because there is not unlimited cake for us. And that mentality is so damaging. I think it should be eliminated. We’re trying to do that, all the time by sharing. You should always empower people, especially empower other women to do what they want to do. And I think that's what really should be brought to life, that there is unlimited cake for everyone.
Nanna Svane: It is.
Benedict Brink: I'm going to be generous with myself, with my ideas, with my energy with other people. It's hard.
Nanna Svane: Yeah, because you don't become more special by holding up stuff.
Benedict Brink: It's worth it.
Nanna Svane: For sure. Our name ‘us2u’ comes from this mentality. Everything comes from sharing. Particularly it was very important for us, that nothing was capital or everything was capital to make it in eyesight. Or ‘eyeheight’ in English?
Benedict Brink: Eyesight is nice though. I think it's better. I think it is so cool that you guys are doing this.
Divijah Rajendra: Oh thank you..
Benedict Brink: When are you launching it?
Nanna Svane: Madonna, Benedict… Right now we don't know. We don't have anyone to make our website ‘Shout out!’.
Divijah Rajendra: But we need a website.
Benedict Brink: I love that a website has already kind of become old-fashioned.
Nanna Svane: Yeah!
Benedict Brink: You'll get there. You will. It's really good. I'm gonna ask you my question after your question.
Nanna Svane: Sorry. Benedict. Go go.
Benedict Brink: Please go, Nanna.
Nanna Svane: No, you definitely start because mine is more of an ending one.
Benedict Brink: I have this other project that I'm working on and have been working on for so long. It's one of those ones that's rattling around in there, but it's a film project and it started out as sort of a weird documentary, but a documentary about anger and about how women can't express it. And how they feel it and how it's bodily. It’s sort of keeps evolving and now I don't know if it's in chapters or if it's just changing, but I still want to have conversations with women about anger. But I also want to have conversations with women about faith.
Nanna Svane: Okay.
Benedict Brink: Which feels almost like a sort of opposite to it in a way? It feels like a nicer place to start because it's so hopeful and it's so sort of optimistic and positive. And I think this format of having conversations is sort of like casual interviews with people is such an interesting way to build an archive. So I wanted to ask both of you, if I can interview you for my project?
Divijah Rajendra: Would love that!
Nanna Svane: That would be so fun. Of course!
Benedict Brink: Wow. Yes. It's perfect so we will talk very soon. It's so nice. Thank you for having me.
Divijah Rajendra: Thank you so much.
Nanna Svane: Yeah. Thank you so much, it was really interesting.
Benedict Brink: Wait for the emails this week.
Nanna Svane: Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much Benedict and have a very very lovely Sunday.
Benedict Brink: You too, thank you.
Divijah Rajendra: Keep in touch. Yeah.
Benedict Brink: Bye.
Conversation ended after 01:41:37 👋
Some links Benedict wanted to share:
Impressions of Benedict. Need more! Read here!
Black coffee and then decide
On Sundays I long for…
Books, ocean, conversations, movies, more!
Ocean or mountains?
Ocean. But Mountains too
Favorite music video?
Michel Gondry for Kylie Minogue
I dream to work with …
Bigger ideas
Favorite book right now? Literature and Visual?
Non fiction - Teju Cole, Black Paper.
Fiction - Adania Shibli, Minor Detail . Augustin Fernandez Mallo, The book of all Loves,
Visual - some recent gems in my collection -
Anne Collier - women with cameras which I found second hand at Tender Books.
Same as
The secret life of Syrian Lingerie - Intimacy and design by Manu Halas and Rana Salam
Marcelo Gomes - Pathemes - a work of art in pages
September books editions - All beautiful, sensitively made.
Favorite last song on the dance floor?
Rhythm of the night, corona
Intimacy in one word?
honesty
SEX is?
Sexy. Funny. Powerful.
How do you measure a feeling?
Follow it around
I sleep naked, yes or no?
Whenever possible
IRL, what RN is on your to do?
Too many things, without enough small first steps maybe