Pinar&Viola

What is the story of your collaboration ? We met during our masters studies. Sorry for not having a more entertaining opening ceremony to our story. But trust me it starts generic and unfolds into something unique.  Eight years ago, Pinar, a Turkish girl, comes to Amsterdam to work with the design studio of her dreams, Metahaven. Daniel van der Velden, co-owner of the studio, ends up convincing Pinar to enrol in the Sandberg Instituut, the postgraduate department of the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, Daniel, the mastermind matchmaker behind our collaboration, is also teaching at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem. He has a student called Viola, very interested in fashion and cultural upcoming phenomenas. After her bachelors, she went to Paris for a year to work for Change is Good and Donald Schneider Studio. Viola came back to Amsterdam to start her master study… at the Sandberg Instituut. But yet the story is nowhere near starting…  By the mid-school year, the school brought the class to Berlin for a field trip. One night, we ended up in a Turkish place, where Pinar offered her 'fortune telling' talent with the Turkish coffee cup. Viola was directly up for this. You have to know that at this time, we were not really friends, just classmates. Pinar started saying few things about Viola’s past, and when it comes to future, with no hesitation she says: 'I see a P, someone who’s name starts with a P, a woman, and her name is Pinar, yes, my name is written everywhere next to your name in your future'. Viola laughed out loud and concluded that the whole situation was pretty awkward.  Six months passes, summer, sea sex and sun. In August, Pinar receives a random e-mail from Viola. The school organised an exhibition for the class in the beginning of the second school year. Everyone was participating except these two fancy rebels Pinar&Viola. She was reaching out to her if she would be interested in making a last-minute collaboration, the idea was to make some t-shirts and an eventual performance. Hey ho, let’s go. The two girls who both share a very prominent visual signature of their own world, meet up to read around the future of cities, hopes and dystopias. They came up with a strong project, where they infiltrated in the gritted structure of the well presented exhibition, with two street-sellers who were selling their carefully designed t-shirts screaming 'Europolis 2100 Utopian Chaos' in an exhibition entitles 'Future Dystopias'. They both realised that something just happened there. They never could have pulled such an idea if they had worked alone. Something changed that night. After that one project more projects arrived and very soon Pinar&Viola was established. After four years in Amsterdam, and beyond, after designing the opening catwalk of Amsterdam Fashion Week, we realised that it was now time to explore different lands. That is why in August 2013, we moved to Paris. Since the beginning of this year, 2016, we are working with a beyond talented team of six in our studio next to Centre Pompidou. We so far collaborated with MTV, Adidas, Nike… our work has been shown in Paris Fashion Week, exhibited in LA, NY, all over Europe to China and Japan. We regularly give inspiration lectures about our future visions, which pave the ways to our digital couture collections that we launch every year. Since seven years, we live, reflect and initiate fast changing trends in our practice. We use the charm of fashion and image to make people overcome certain prejudices. Like we did since our first project, in our reality which may be perceived at times as dystopia, we strive to spread goodness and love through the power of the image. This year we are working on our next collection 'Healing Prints' and the 'Pinar&Viola for IKEA' collection, which will be launched in 2017. 

We saw that you have a blog of inspirations. It seems that you are very inspired by the New Aesthetic. How does this online selection of inspirations work ? How do you find your own place among all these references ?  Indeed we are interested in the new aesthetic, but without capitals. We live in a post digital reality, where our attention span is limited to a one click second and fascinations share the same DNA as novelties and fresh pasta of cinq days of storage life. So yes, we are interested in the new aesthetic, forever. We strive to hold the key to the future of image, desire, and aesthetics in our hand, that’s why we need to be in constant search of feeling what is there to come. Our blog (www.pinar-viola.com/blog) and our @pvinspiration Instagram work as online transparent displays to our research folder which are filled with inspiration for the digital couture we create. These images are coming from the highest corners of fashion and from dark corners of the web. They are collected to cater to our taste, some of them will be cut and pasted, destroyed and rebirth again as part of our work. This all in order to obtain the ultimatum visual expression.

We noticed that a lot of your works are used as a powerful voice for many strong themes such as freedom of sexuality, peace and equality… How do you think we can change minds using the tool of design ? Do you want to fix limits to your graphic and design expression ? We all have a reason to be in this world. The more you connect with yourself, the more that reason becomes clear to you. We believe ours is to give a voice to our fundamental rights as beings, which are being neglected for reasons which are beyond our control.  We imagine a future fuelled by a social transformation, where people think critically and are able to make ethical choices in all areas of life. We imagine a future where, the more we will be driven by technology, the more we strive for knowledge and for the recognition of the sacredness of nature. We imagine a future where instead of quantity, we choose quality, resulting in sustainability. And we would like to make this fantasy through this tool that we master. The tool that is so everywhere yet ungraspable, the tool that everyone has access to yet it seems that no one has no patience to elaborate, the tool that has and currently is being used to mislead masses… the image.

Is there particular visual cultures that you don't know much about, and you would like to explore ? Every day we are discovering something new. The more you broaden your horizon, the more curious you become, which eventually leads to new adventures. From ancient cultures to aliens, from home made YouTube videos to latest scientific discoveries, visual culture is everywhere. It is a matter of wearing the right glasses when you look around you.  Interview conducted in May 2016 ©ktlg