KG: If you have a Flickr account, and a decent list of contacts then your photo stream has probably been tagged by this week’s builder, Cole Blaq. Legally known as Aran Jitsukawa-Hudson (which is an awesome name and far more interesting than yours or mine), Cole has done what is so difficult to do in our flabby sea of Mannkinder; achieve a truly unique style.

 

I sat down with Aran on a cold November night, thirty feet over the Autobahn on the backside of a billboard for BMW. We drank whiskey from the bottle and talked about Fritz Lange, the evils of Teflon and the enduring comedic value of the Maginot Line. We also talked about LEGO.

CB: Art history is all about theory, not practice, which is my grande critique of the art historian education: Most students miss empathy for the work, its material and inner pictorial issues. As I have a continuous creative output I see myself in the same line, except I am not offishal, Mr. Offisha. An artistic approach is quite different than model building. Models are nice to build and the experience from that flows into my free works.

 

It is another issue to create something new, something not based upon a real life or a concept draft. Spaceship designs for example reach within these realms, but are too bound to our standardized perception of what a spaceship must contain.

 

Bricks have their value; they lay out a foundation and a certain pattern which enables certain things, predominated directions and characteristics.

 

At the same time the pattern and the material itself limits a free artistic expression. These days I often come to the limits of the bricks being true to my expression.

CB: Seeing Banksy’s kind of black and subversive humor in bricks would be great, but you’ll have to be prepared to question all existing rules and cut your precious little bricks until they bleed.

CB: Hip Hop is a multifaceted issue. I love the idea, especially Zulu Nation and the oldschool attitude.

 

My experience with real life Hip Hop culture at concerts and other events was quite negative, too much wannabe gangsterism going on. People who can’t write, rap or express themselves otherwise in a positive way tend to compensate by being a bully. I have seen and heard some mainstream Hip Hop I feel quite disgusted as it is racist, sexist and dumb as ######. Bling bling and scarface’s the absolute idol. That is definitely not my understanding of Hip Hop.

 

Hip Hop is a mash-up culture and as soon it is defined and put into consumable borders Hip Hop is dead. Some parts of Hip Hop I love, like the turntablism or the spraypainting.

KG: What set or theme would you like to see our dark overlords come out with next?

 

CB: If by dark overlords you mean TLG then I would like to see a whole new product line and sales form. An artist line with order by parts at a fair price (unlike PaB) on a similar concept as the Creator sets. Actually most product lines encourage the collecting passion of the weak human, but does not really encourage the creativity of the strong human. That’s the direction the money goes, but encouraging creativity should remain the most important issue for a philanthropic toy.

KG: And finally, good sir, who controls the action?

 

CB: The Principle!

 

Call it God, Allah, Jahwe, Jehova, Jah or the whole bunch of other deities, excluding any so called holy people or prophets, they’re much too materialized.

 

And if destiny’s on a break we control the action.

Needless to say, Cole has my utmost and undying affection.