Links:
http://keepdriftingfun.com
http://www.facebook.com/KeepDriftingFun

So, firstly, rather than crapping on and on about the nitty gritty of what’s in in, we really should talk about what’s important to you, the consumer. You’re the most important part of this DVD, because without you, it has no audience. So in order to make the two of you come together in a harmonious and non wallet/purse bashing manner, it’s really cheap. Cheap you say though??? Yikes, it mustn’t be all that good. Meh, don’t believe the hype, it’s great. And for the same price you’re not even going to get your hands on one of those fancy Pizzas with the big leafy bits on it with Fetta and stuff.

Anyhow, here’s goes with the menu.. so to speak

From the golden days of Aussie drifting, back before you needed expensive underwear and a race transporter to be somebody, we go ape with the monkeys who made the sport what it is today in Australia. There’s footage from the track, off the track, the odd broken nail and every now and then someone gets politely punched in the head. It’s the way drifting should be.

Now talking about Aussies who love to drift, we take it even further by seeing what these guys get up to in Japan. Josh Young may like candle lit dinners and long walks on the beach, but put this guy in an AE86, on a track in Japan and he’ll show that rev limiter who’s Daddy he is. And not in bad way, he can steer! Track, Touge, he’s got it sorted.

Our boy Laurence, he can drive too. A cordless drill that is. He’s the master of zip ties, vending machines and tyre levers. Oh, and he’s also a gun cameraman!

Jesse, well he’s not quite Tron Guy yet, but he sure has become popular on Facetube as James May so hilariously put it. He has funny hair and likes big words. When he’s not peddling performance parts (har har har), he’s our on the track, or off it, helmet optional giving his S13 a flogging. He’s no Harvey Wall Banger though, he also can steer, very well infact. Makes us wonder if he’d do well as a wildcard in another country.

There’s a cute little segment featuring a bunch of stunt riders from Australia. They ride hard, crash hard and pull funny poses for the camera. Cunningstunts, FUF, FTP and a bunch of others. Legend status really.

Then to go and mish mash everything together, footage from Multiplex in Japan. It’s a combo of drifting, stuntriding, Japan and the odd can of Red Bull. Japan’s top stuntriders take on American’s best to see… well, who’s the best and some weirdo Japanese guy tried to convince us that the viewers wanted to see his man bits. We didn’t film it by choice, so you don’t have to see if.

Coming from Europe we nabbed some great footage of drift from France, Germany and Belgium and put it all together for you. Who says BMW wagons can’t drift!

Then more from Japan, we give you a cut and uncut look at a Crazy D1 Street Legal class driver who likes cutting donuts in his workshop. Nothing got destroyed unfortunately, but he came damn close!

We met up with the owner of the ARC factory, those guys who make the crazy aluminium products and chucked a couple of questions at him. And last but not least, J-Rock, the crazy American guy in the backwards baseball cap, showed us all of the goodies you can find at your local UpGarage store… Drools.

So there you have it, all that in a DVD that’s over 2-hours long, with no spoiled rich guys trashing rental cars and going “hey, we just trashed that rental man, we’re sooo cool!!”, it’s all real stuff, as it happened, we enjoyed filming in it and putting it together, so we hope you enjoy watching it just as much. And on a boring but serious note, if you like what you see and you think we could do more, buy a copy and you’re helping us on the road to future Phat Sliggitys.

Hmm, maybe that’s what Phat Sliggity means.

Find your copy of Phat Sliggity DVD in our shop: http://zengarage.com.au/shop/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=214

Zen Garage – I picked up your Digital-Diaries book at my local art bookshop in 2000, at the time it was perhaps the most risqué book that Ariel Bookshop in Sydney sold. I had to own it, and felt almost nervous to pay for it over the counter. Back then it was the most ‘in your face’ book sitting on my bookshelf at home. It’s 2012 now and I think it’s still the most intimate and graphic book on my shelf. I’m curious as to what you think of Digital-Diaries in retrospect?
Natacha Merritt – What a beautiful visual you gave me in that question formatting. Every time I look at it I am unabashedly ridiculously proud. I love those images. I look at digital diaries today and frankly I’m surprised at how risqué it still is. I thought, at the time it came out, “12 years from now this won’t seem risqué at all”. I honestly thought that puritanical values were surely going to become a thing of the past at that, in year 2000 we were at the dawn of a new Renaissance. Oops. I had no idea the Christian right was about to make such a violent comeback and start striping away women’s rights…. again. I really thought that my work would soon appear like a Botticelli or something like that, that it would not be shocking within a few years.

Zen Garage – I thought Digital-Diaries worked so well as a book, from its stand out, jump off the bookshelf cover design through to it’s use of low resolution digital images in print. I’ve had a lot of friends simply not understand your work usually based off punching your name into Google and browsing images, which is a completely different experience to actually holding and browsing through the book. What are your thoughts on this?
Natacha Merritt – The work is able to play off itself and tell stories in book format. The texts I write are just as important as the images. I realized this in working on my new book Sexual Selection. Even since Digital-diaries, after a brief membership site adventure, I mostly avoided posting images online. Although I was an early adopter of all digital technologies, my work breathes better in print format. At the moment I am working on a large scale fully immersive print collection that highlights the theme of my new book Sexual Selection.

Zen Garage – I saw you speak at AGIdeas conference in Melbourne 2002, a conference which invites some of the world’s most established designers of multiple genres. How did that go down?
Natacha Merritt – It was a fantastic experience. Honestly I’m not sure how or why they invited me to speak. Luckily I had just spoken at Ars electronica in Linz, and I was determined to be much more prepared and articulate. I remember while preparing for the talk, thinking to myself, wow, I haven’t “prepared” a presentation since high school. It was the first time I really sat down and thought about my process and its meaning in a larger context. I had up until that point been creating from a very introverted perspective.

Zen Garage – At AGIdeas you raised and presented some defined definitions between pornography and art. Has your definition changed over the years? And do you find that some people still don’t get it? If so, how do you deal with the haters?
Natacha Merritt – A definition I was proposing at the time was that porn comes from a place where people participating in it are doing it not out of choice but out of circumstance. Because they are not able to do anything else. I also used to think that if the person behind the lens -like myself-does whatever it is she is asking of the models, then it is not porn. Now my definition is more nuanced. As a woman I think that 99% of pornography is simply a lie. The women are lying and I think that most the men are too. It’s a self-perpetuating market place for lies. I think it’s sad that pornography in America is where adolescents get most of their sex education. I’m much more clear about my own work now. What it is and what it isn’t.

My images have never been porn everyone involved was proud to be there, and is proud of the final product. The fact that some of the images might turn someone on, or even inspire an orgasm is fantastic. Isn’t it strange that there are few present day artefacts that do this in our lives? I really believe that art has been hijacked by puritanical values. At least in the US, which has in turn impoverished our sex lives.
The only similarities between my art and pornography is that some my images explore sexuality, both in humans and in plants and insects.

Zen Garage – At AGIdeas you presented some new work, to be a part of your next book, is that work a part of Sexual Selection or was that work intended fora book that was never released?
Natacha Merritt – The “next book” you were referring to was never released. I think the images were/are strong but the story wasn’t mature yet. A few of those images made it into Sexual Selection. Digital-diaries, although shot in a few years took my entire short life (21 yrs) to really create. Sexual selection took 12 years. It’s really about having something meaningful to share with the world. Sexual Selection, my new book, is as much of an artistic journey as my first work. Whereas digital-diaries was the story of my won sex life and the early evolution of digital photography. My new book Sexual Selection is a journey through the science of selection. I reference the primary scientific literature while freely anthropmorphizing and writing about my own sexuality. The texts are a loose story that is the backbone for the photography.

Zen Garage – Since Digital-Diaries, D-life and Zumanity (for Cirque du Soleil) you’ve become a Biologist and released your new book, Sexual Selection. What inspired you to return to higher education to study biology?
Natacha Merritt – It took going back to school and obtaining a degree in biology to admit to myself that I was an artist. I am sure there were easier ways! But the reason I chose biology is that within biology and specifically evolutionary biology and genetics I was able to come closer to fully understanding why I was so drawn to making sexual art. From the day of my first botany class I was hooked. The natural world is endlessly more kinky and sexually creative than humans. I was also drawn to the non-subjective nature of science. Math, physics, chemistry is extremely exotic to me.

Zen Garage – The concept of sexual selection was first introduced by Darwin in 1859, what’s your take on this concept?
Natacha Merritt – My book Sexual Selection begins with an introduction by Richard Price followed by a quote by Darwin. Each chapter opened with a direct quote from the primary literature. the loose story is the evolution of Sexual Selection from Darwin’s era to today. I am fascinated by the fact that at the time that Darwin first suggested Sexual Selection as an evolutionary mechanism he had to justify that women could even make worthy choices at all. until I actually read a few of Darwin’s main works, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I am fascinated by the idea that what we know scientifically depends on the questions that researcher were able to ask. and these question are inevitable delineated by societal values. At first my text editor, an extremely progressive intellectual feminist (among other amazing attributes) was sceptical of the concept of Sexual Selection. She thought of it in terms of Eugenics and was worried that it was exclusionary towards non-reproductive sex. But as we progressed in putting the text together a different image emerged. Sexual Selection has evolved as a mirror image of the way science has evolved. Its become much more diversity affirming. Sex change, eusociality, cryptic female choice, sperm competition… All of these theories are part of Sexual Selection research today. In other words there are many many ways that species have found to reproduce. My art and my images celebrate that.

You can order your copy of Natacha’s new book SEXUAL SELECTION by visiting: http://shop.bongout.org/p-1450-sexual-selection-natacha-merritt.aspx

DETAILS
- DATE: Saturday, June 30th 2012
- TIME: 1:00PM – 6:00PM
- VENUE: The Entertainment Quarter – Rooftop Car Park
- ADDRESS: Lang Road, Moore Park, NSW

The boys have created a one page site which has all the details you need to attend and/or register your vehicle. Visit: http://www.the-lowdown.com/showcased

Check the full feature: http://www.the-lowdown.com/s-chassis-siblings/

VIP cars, Oni camber and impossible ride heights might not be for everyone but it’s another way to enjoy cars. I think we should all have a good attitude towards every form of automotive tuning culture and try to appreciate the work that people put into their pride and joys.

Enjoy cars!

Links:
facebook.com/maihammedia
maiham-media.com
high-top-fade.blogspot.jp

In 2002 I got to meet her when she came out to AGIdeas conference in Melbourne (here’s a photo of her and I), and despite a lot of people writing her work off as porn not art I was all the more convinced she’s the real deal.

A few weeks ago I got an email from her publisher in relation to her new book. I’ve not kept in touch with what Natacha’s been doing since 2002, turns out she’s now a biologist and her latest book Sexual Selection compares and contrasts the sexual intricacies of plants and insects with her own elaborate sexuality.

It’s awesome. I love it. Not everyone’s cup of tea, definitely not for the everyday coffee table, but definitely sits proud on mine

Visit: http://natacha-merritt.com

Links:
depthofspeed.com” target=”_blank”>depthofspeed.com
jdmlegends.com
http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18260
http://zengarage.com.au/?p=4445 Datsun porn right here. Southern California Datsun collection: Well shot, great cars too!