Índex per July - August 2016 a Huck

Ten years ago, we took a leaf out of someone else’s book and used it to light the first flicker of a flame. When Huckleberry Finn sets sail down the Mississippi, he leaves a trail of hypocrisy in his wake. The shackles of society – of “sivilized” sorts who preach the good word but keep other men as slaves – keep clawing at his back but Huck just keeps on paddling against the tide, no matter how hostile it gets. “Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t,” he says. “You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” Freedom. Space. Room to be. The one thing that keeps Huck going is an unspoken inner feeling: an unbreakable belief that independence will set…

With the Beastie Boys blasting from a laptop on the floor, Abood Damra – nicknamed ‘b-boy Vertex’ – swings his body through a few flares and freezes, then smirks as he bounces to the back of the room. He joins four other outof-breath dancers in a loose semi-circle before someone else jumps in to catch the beat. No one’s watching; this is just practice: fast-paced and sweaty free-styling three times a week, three hours at a time, at the Nablus Circus School. Until they can find a spot to call their own, this is home base for Palestinian breakdancing crew Stereo 48. Nablus is a bustling city tucked in between two mountains about 50 kilometres north of Jerusalem. In the early 2000s, Israeli forces identified Nablus as a hub for…

STEPPING INTO Natasha Khan’s East London home feels transformative. Outside, the morning sky is filled with low-hanging clouds, the heat oppressive in its humidity. Inside, save for the sound of Joni Mitchell’s Clouds wafting from a turntable in the study, a calming stillness permeates the air. As Khan – the one-woman dream-pop vehicle better known as Bat for Lashes – does her make-up in the bathroom upstairs, I potter about and take in the details. There’s a frankincense and myrrh air-freshener; a lilac-coloured succulent; a hefty Dictionary of Symbols; a tall but slightly wonky lamp. Stuck to Khan’s fridge is an old cardboard DVD sleeve for the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas alongside magnets that spell out the words, ‘Friends feel good’. Something lying atop her DVD player catches my…

Graffiti writers Utah and Ether are sneaking around the perimeter of a rail yard in Manila. The Philippine capital, notorious for corruption and violence, has put its public transport system on high alert since a wave of metro bombings in 2000. The area is the Fort Knox of subway yards: razor-wire fences, K-9 units and police officers all stand between them and the trains they’ve come to paint. Dubbed ‘the Bonnie and Clyde of graffiti’, the American couple has travelled thousands of miles to get here and they’re not about to give up easily. Then they spot it: a train parked just outside the depot on an elevated track, two-storeys high. From their hideout, they notice two policemen armed with assault rifles patrolling it. The stakeout stretches on for four…

It didn’t take long for DJ Shadow to realise the music business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. His debut album, Endtroducing..... would redefine the possibilities of sampling and earn regular spots in ‘best of all-time’ lists. But that came later. During its release in 1996, Shadow based himself in London – playing gigs, doing interviews, hearing the hype – before flying home to California in excitement. That’s when the first reality check set in. “I was still living in the same shitty flat, working in a town where nobody knew anything about my music or who I was. It felt like nothing had changed. People ask me, ‘What was it like to put out this incredible record that people love?’ Well, it was a cult phenomenon that happened…

GETTING EVERY MEMBER of Soweto-based punk band TCIYF in one place isn’t exactly easy. Since no one in their crew owns a car, you’ve got to pick them up from the rundown suburban house where one of them lives, give them a ride to wherever they want to do the interview, and then shuttle them between drop-off points. The band (full name: ‘The Cum In Your Face’) are part of a countercultural movement that’s taken root in Soweto over the last decade or so, bringing together metal and punk acts from across greater Johannesburg and, although the band hates the thought, bringing together the city’s disparate identities, too. When they do finally assemble, it’s at the parking lot of a local mall in Dobsonville: one of the group’s regular skate…

I see the Afghan community as a flock of sheep, all going together in one direction,” says filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat. “This society is so poisoned. After a few years of being part of it, you get so sick, your mind stops functioning and you lose all your visions and dreams. The price of being accepted by this community is giving up on individual thought and just thinking like everyone else... Or at least pretending to.” Shahrbanoo’s debut feature film Wolf and Sheep is a dreamlike portrait of an Afghan village stalked by the mythical two-legged Kashmir wolf. It’s an intimate portrayal of the community in which Shahrbanoo spent her teens, but at its heart lies a critique of the way Afghan children are raised to reject outsiders and soak up…

THERE’S SOMETHING eerily beautiful about a coal mine in the evening. The vast expanse, the giant machinery, the haze of smoke and dust that floats above a golden, man-made desert. Beneath the surface, though, something dark is stirring. It’s the evening before Ende Gelände, Europe’s biggest climate action for a generation. Just under 150 kilometres south of Berlin, the German village of Proschim is a hive of activity. Activists from all across Europe are descending on this sleepy hamlet with a singular goal: to shut down a coal mine that, as one of the continent’s greatest polluters, spits out an average of three million tons of CO2 per year. “I just think about the future, when I’m sat down one day with my children,” says Bethan Lloyd, a 29-yearold musician…

It’s approaching 10 on a warm Sunday morning in Bujumbura, Burundi’s lakeside capital. Women are heading towards the centre from all directions, walking in small groups to help sneak past the government roadblocks across the city. Their secret target is Independence Square, where they’ll assemble to protest President Pierre Nkurunziza’s illegal attempt to seek a third term in office – a move which has triggered a wave of bloodshed that’s forced a quarter of a million into exile. The clock strikes 10 just as the women-only group congregates near the statue of Burundi’s independence leader, Prince Louis Rwagasore. As the crowd swells into the hundreds, the security services realise what’s happening and descend on the square. Their brutal reputation for cracking down on rallies instils nervousness among the protesters. And…

Chris Christenson’ s route in life came down to one decision. The Californian had been ready to follow his friends into pre-med and become a doctor when another passion started to tug at him: surfboard shaping. “It was a case of, ‘Do I go to school for four more years or do I do this shit?’” he says, breaking into laughter. “I decided to keep shapin’.” Growing up in Long Beach, Chris had a Hawaiian neighbour who would build surfboards in his garage. It was just a small operation – a labour of love squeezed into spare time – but Chris would be transfixed. He’d sit there on his little bike, propped up by training wheels, and just watch the boards being finessed into existence. By the time he was…

At a 24-hour restaurant in Manhattan favoured for its peoplewatching, Gia Love is drawing glances from other diners. Wearing black jeans and a tank top, the tall 25-year-old cuts a distinct figure: flicking and smoothing a hip-length brown weave as she describes her first experience of a ball. “I felt like it was a space where I could be myself,” she says of the Hetrick Martin Institute, a non-profit dedicated to serving the needs of LGBT youth. “And there’s not many spaces where people like me, a trans woman of colour, can be ourselves.” Gia and her four siblings were raised in the Bronx by a single mother who did the best she could with the little they had. Although her family struggled to accept Gia’s gender presentation when she…

Foster Huntington is perched some 20 feet off the ground, leaning against the railing of a Dr. Seussian bridge spanning the two tree-houses that make up his home and office. Below, friends take turns skating around a concrete bowl, the rasp of grinding trucks punctuated by hoots of encouragement. As the sun sets and the temperature drops, the light takes on a purple hue; shadows encroach from the surrounding forest while steam billows from the hot-tub nestled into a nearby hillside. Dubbed the Cinder Cone, this piece of Never Never Land has been carved out of the Pacific Northwest for modernday Lost Boys. But life wasn’t always so idyllic. Five years ago, Foster was still stuck in another world, logging long hours in Manhattan’s ultra-competitive fashion industry. “I realised that…

Doug Stanhope looks like a washed-up car salesman: the calamitous sort you might find bumbling around a Midwestern town in a Coen brothers film, a down-beaten figure who’s had enough with America and its false promises. But when you catch him on stage – always with a drink firmly in hand – Stanhope is one of the most incendiary and divisive comics you can encounter. Any sense of apathy his appearance may give off is superseded by a biting wit and contempt for whatever he finds hypocritical, absurd or repugnant in life. As a self-described anarchist, Stanhope’s worldview makes him loathed by right-wing audiences. But nobody is free from the slaughter; no subject is considered off-limits. The comedian likens his shows to leading a crowd into battle – he knows…

MARC MARON REBUILT his life from a garage in Los Angeles. When the comedian reached his lowest ebb in 2009, having been fired for the third time in a row and divorced for the second, it didn’t look like things could get any worse. After two-and-a-half decades as a stand-up, Maron’s ferocious, bare-all sense of humour had alienated him from the comedy industry. Contemporaries such as Louis C.K. and Sarah Silverman had long since eclipsed him. Now he was going broke, feeling heartbroken and contemplating suicide. After running out of options, he converted his garage into a makeshift recording studio to pursue WTF with Marc Maron, a podcast of in-depth conversations with notable personalities: from Lena Dunham to Gloria Steinem, Will Ferrell to Neil Young. What immediately set the show…

A young woman fixes her hair before the start of a Kiki ball at the Rutgers Community Center in Manhattan, New York. “It’s hard to describe the incredible energy at a Kiki ball,” says photographer Krisanne Johnson, who spent weeks embedded in the story of one of New York City’s most vibrant subcultures. “Tables are set up to create the walkway, streamers are carefully hung and judges take their place. Everyone streams into the room and it’s electr ic. People are ready to battle it out on the dance floor. A local community gym is transformed into a room full of expression, creat ivity, openness and love.”…