1. WHO ARE YOU?
They gave me the name of Rico Scagliola, Italian in name only. I was born into a landscape made of lush flowered gardens, shopping malls and whorehouses on the very sunny Easter Sunday of 1985. Our neighbours had swimming pools. When I was a teenager I lived the life of a fifty-year-old bon vivant, now I‘m nineteen and my heart is heavy. I don‘t believe in anything except carnality.
I am Michael (maɪkəl) Meier, born on the mountains of Grisons. My soul is circa 520 years old, my body will probably remain forever young. In past lives I was a witch, a wolf and a callboy. My favorite food: Take Away. My favorite music: charts, my favorite day: weekend. I wish to make people dance on the inside when they watch our pictures. I am 100 percent Gothletic.
2. WHAT SHOULD PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT YOU?
We take everything and everybody seriously.
3. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE OCCUPATION?
Fitness, shopping, mountaineering, sex, alcohol & cigarettes, cooking, watching films, loneliness, dreaming, nude photography. We love the direct social interaction we have with people we portray and the liberating playfulness when we do self-portraits.
4. WHAT INSPIRES YOU MOST ?
One another, fame, the www, facebook, doom, decay & death, films (such as Elephant Man, Sunrise, Hundstage, Freaks, Lord of Illusions, Don‘t Look Now, Dressed to Kill, Martyrs, Der letzte Mann), loneliness, Vikings, fantasy, Indians, Deutsche Romantik, the Chrysler Building, Fashion, old ladies, U.S.A., Gothic, present pop and dance music, death metal, pornography, shiny surfaces, the suburbs, bodybuliding, the last hour before bedtime, failure.
5. WHO ARE YOUR HEROES?
Lady Gaga, Quentin Crisp, Alister Crowley, Helge Schneider, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus, Franciso de Goya,Thor, Iggy Pop, teenagers, Nietzsche, Emil Cioran, Queen Elizabeth I., Alexander McQueen, Stanley Kubrick, our familes and lovers, our muse Lark.
6. WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY?
The sadness that lies within and that in its best moments photography offers the viewer a direct and inescapable confrontation with a variation of reality. Also, as a media it‘s very handy and mobile, you can do it any time, any place.
7. WHAT WOULD YOU NEVER PHOTOGRAPH?
As long as it isn‘t for commission work, every thing is worth being photographed. We‘re not of hesitating nature at all when it comes to photographing.
8. WHAT WOULD YOU BE IF YOU WERE NOT AN ARTIST?
Rico: video store clerk, mortician, cook and restaurant owner, writer
Michael: porn actor, bouncer, healer, personal fitness coach
9. WHAT DOES “CONTEMPORARY” MEAN TO YOU?
To accept and embrace the present in all its highest and lowest forms without having any mistrust in it. Permanent change, not to settle down and not to feel comfy.
10. WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?
Acknowledgment in all forms, wind in our hair, sex, being understood without having to explain, not having to make compromises.
