By JOP VAN BENNEKOM

[Jop waiting]

Assistant: Hello, are you still there? I know it’s very late your time but here it is totally crazy. She really wants to do this but she just has to finish this one call. And it will take another thirty seconds.

Jop: Okay.

Assistant: I’m so sorry. You know it’s crazy around this time of the month, because of the magazine. Before I will connect you to Ingrid I would like to thank you for being so understanding for all the rescheduling.

Jop: That’s okay.

Assistant: It has been very difficult. It really has been inhuman but I know that she really would like to help you guys out and she really wants to do this. So I’m glad we are able to get something together right know although it is very late.

Jop: Is this the first publicity of this book project?

Assistant: I’m not sure because this usually doesn’t cross my desk. I really don’t know.

Jop: I have been looking around if anything has been published already and I couldn’t find anything.

Assistant: She is ready. Here we go.

Ingrid Sischy: Hello.

Jop: Hello.

How are you?

I’m fine. How are you?

I’m good. I’m sorry you had to wait like this.

Oh, it doesn’t really matter. We had to reschedule a lot but eventually we got hold of each other.

That’s the good news. There’s good news and bad news. I don’t have very long. The good news is that we literally had no time because we are in between deadlines and we are still finishing the books, but I really like what you guys are doing so I told my assistant to figure it out.

Okay.

So you have me here. I was thinking a couple of questions. Does that sound good?

It is a five question interview so …

Fine. Start.

It’s like a 750 word interview. So how long have you got?

You ask me the five questions.

[laughs] Okay. Maybe they’re not going to be the five smartest questions ever because I’m not a journalist. I’m the editor of Re-Magazine and BUTT magazine. Those are both independent magazines that, in one way or another, work in the tradition of old ’70s Interview or at least refer to it.

Aha.

So my first question: why only publish the first decade of Interview?

We have been approached a lot over the last ten years to do books with the great archives that we have. We are not the kind of people that believe that much in using our energy in looking back. We are big people about paying attention to the present. You know? And we thought okay when we are dead and gone in 50 or 60 years someone can come along and do what they want with all that stuff. Right?

Hmm.

Then 7L, the publishing company of Steidl and Karl Lagerfeld, asked us to think about it. They really had a deep understanding of the history of the magazine and how we don’t want to be like other magazines and how we are not going to be nostalgic about the history. We never subscribed to the idea that in the old days the people were better radicals and people were more creative. So, we did think we could do this in a way where it wouldn’t be this great big mass-commercial book and we could send a message in a bottle about the spirit of it. And, frankly, honor some of the people who were so important to the history of the magazine. Who have either gone on or done other things and a number of whom have died primarily of AIDS. Steidl and Karl Lagerfeld were so great and open about how it could be about whatever we thought could be good. And so we took a weekend to decide, we got the team together and we said, “Okay, lets just put the whole 35 years in one room.” We filled the library and put them all over the tables to look at it and see what comes out. We started with October ’69 when the magazine started. And two and half days later we leave here at one in the morning still only half way through the first decade. [laughs] And we had come across so much unbelievable stuff that we thought okay. First of all, to have to read it all and make an educated decision will take us the rest of the goddamn year. Number one, right! Number two, this stuff is so great why don’t we do it decade by decade. Now we will do the ’70s, in a few years we will do the ’80s, because once we had the idea we flipped through the ’80s and my god it was so great. And by that time the ’90s will look interesting. And then we kind of came up with our own dumb categories, just the stuff that comes from the gut. So instead of one big fat book, let’s do seven books for the first decade ’69-’79. It could have been anything. We have for example a whole series of Truman Capote interviews that Andy got him to do in the ’70s.

That is a lot. That is already a big pile of interviews.

Major. We thought that could be a Capote book, or be this or that. And we thought of what people are really hungry for at the moment. So, the first book we named The Covers. The covers of the first decade are genius. Then we went for so many of the directors that we interviewed in the first decade (e.g. Pasolini, Truffaut). This is such a terrible moment of empty blockbuster films in America so we thought, “Let’s do one on directors.” Because this was the moment when people really started to treat directors like artists. And it was because of the magazine that they did.

Then we kept talking about how interesting some of the early fashion stuff was with Halston, Calvin Klein, and the Europeans, so we thought let’s do a book called The Fashion. Then we had to include the Warhol interviews, so we did that. There is also a book on photography (this is where Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts did their first photos). Andy would see where someone had a little talent and he would give him a shoot.

Did you also consider reprinting the whole thing?

We can’t reprint the whole thing because it is so much material. You couldn’t humanly carry it. So we edited the seven categories and chose what felt like it was screaming to be seen again. We are representing it exactly as it first appeared.

In the same layout?

Everything is the same. Exactly the same, except for the picture book which is the photographs. It’s also the same layout but they are no longer with the interviews surrounding them. We thought they needed air so people could look at the pictures. And we have the greatest printer in the world doing it, Steidl, so he really knows how to make these plates look great.

Great.

Then we realized that we have seven books and they are gonna be so heavy, no one can carry them. Karl Lagerfeld designed a genius thing where you pull them and it’s got wheels on.

Sorry. With wheels on?

Yes, because once we were working on it, I couldn’t even carry three of them. So Karl said no problem, I’ll design a little trolley.

And this trolley comes along with the books?

Yes. But you should know that we are doing it as a limited edition, 2,000 copies, designed and numbered. I don’t want to give away what the trolley looks like but it is very, very handy. And one of the reasons why it took me and you so long to do this conversation is because at the same time we are editing the magazine and it has been fashion week here. So it’s like every time I look up I’m proofing more pages because we are on press right now with the books and when I tell you we are literally hundreds and hundreds of pages and it is just our same small team. So the reason the last week has been impossible is because I have been sitting here proofing it all.

I have heard that the special 35-year anniversary issue of Interview is like 400 pages. Is it out now in New York?

No, it comes out in a few days. It is the biggest issue in the history of Interview.

Is it included in the box?

Oh yes, in the box set will come the seven books I told you about. We are also reprinting the very first issue of Interview which is October ’69 and then also in the same set comes this October 2004 issue. So people actually get a lot of stuff. But it is not cheap.

I have seen it on Amazon and it is like $300?

No, it costs $1,000.

Oh wait, I’ve got it right here. $204

It’s wrong. They have changed it, because once they added up all the money that it was costing with the cart and the wheels, the seven books and the reprint and so on. It is $1,000 and this is covering their costs. Already apparently people are really calling up for it and people are calling here. It is signed and numbered, 2,000 editions. It is very Andy. It is like an art object. The whole set is like an art object.

And then later down the line, in a year or so, we are doing cheaper paperback editions. Never the whole set. So students and people who don’t have that kind of money can have it because there is major information in the books. But in the first round we have to do it in the Andy Warhol way.

How do you see the relevance of the material of the first decade now?

Well, being a human being that is curious about many things, these editions of Interview are so full with so much stuff, so many dreams and it is a particular period. And I’ve got to tell you as I was working on them I came across so many photographers who are no longer with us because of aids. So many fashion people and artists who became almost forgotten. I really hope that these books will remind people of what they did and brought to us, which is so much imitated and ripped off now. I really want to bring people the real thing again. And then there is a great moment of hope in the culture; hope on every level, the creative level, the civil rights level, the women and gay issues. It is exploding visually and emotionally. A whole series of feelings and dreams and all those things that deserve to be on the record because we all have read the official history. We have seen certain people become legends and others forgotten. So this is the real thing that happened.

How did it make you feel about Interview nowadays? What do you want to preserve of the old energy and old dreams from the ’70s?

Well, when Andy Warhol died, they asked me to come and do Interview, I believed – you know I’ve been the editor of Artforum in the ’80s – not to preserve the old days and don’t try to do what they did. A magazine is made for its particular time. Your decisions aren’t about the old days, your decisions are for now. Somehow the history of the magazine has gone through your blood, heart, and soul that you just have a gut sense and what feels right for now hopefully doesn’t betray what it was then.

Funnily enough when I look through the ’70s you smile and people always say, “Oh my god, but what we’ve done  in the ’90s and now in the 21^st century, it is ironic how parallel it is.” So many times we have done things without knowing how exactly it matches what was done. But for our time, somehow you hope that fate does it right so that people with the same spirit end up here again but for a different time.

Andy would have never gone back. Andy always said Interview is my greatest work of art because he came up with the magazine that somehow could do what he always was interested in. Being ahead, doing things in the present and then when you look in twenty years, people would say,  “My god they knew how to do that.” That’s my interest. I have always been interested in giving new people a chance and mixing them up with the legends. I have always been interested in breaking down the boundaries between the different kind of photography, high art and low art and making sure that they are both also secure and can be there together. That’s the kind of magazine we make now.

Well, thank you very much for this interview.

Is this what you needed?

Yes, very much so, even more. It almost started like a one question interview (laughs). Your answer was so long, it answered most of my questions.

Thank you so much for your patience.

Thank you very much.