We were lucky to catch up with Rachel Haywire recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rachel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I grew up going to underground concerts and festivals. I had lots of artist friends who were making incredible work yet not getting proper recognition because they didn’t go to the right institutions. The mainstream art world had become sterile and I wanted to bring it to life with a vitalist force that transcended the political binary. I decided to take my experiences as a an artist and musician and bring them to life as a curator to form my own art gallery. I wanted to do things my own way, having always been fascinated by the scene Andy Warhol created, yet also envisioning a new type of art scene that mixed transgressive performance art with high fashion in a luxury gallery setting. This became known as the Fiume Gallery.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m the author of The New Art Right and run The Cultural Futurist Substack. (http://culturalfuturist.net) I am also a political consultant who has been working at the intersection of art and technology for what feels like a lifetime. My desire is to restore wonder and imagination to technology while creating a new realm of art through social alchemy. I’ve helped my clients scale cutting-edge trends as strategist futurist with an eye on producing cultural architecture with intended. I’m proud of the unique brand and aesthetic I’ve developed and the various communities in which I have crafted an entirely new social scene through my live events and salons.
I want people to be able to express themselves creatively in a refined way that keeps its raw edge. Scaling the fringe is my trade. I’ve been doing it for longer than I can remember. There is a distinct methodology involved that I am perfecting daily.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
The best way society can support artists and creatives is to reward them for originality and craft rather than derivative works. Pushing boundaries and taboos in the realm of art should be encouraged. We need to bring the deepest realms of imagination to life and cannot do that if we play it safe. So, the best thing society can do is drop its cowardice and desire for “safe art” because such a thing is not true art. True art is visceral and extreme.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The feelings of mania that I experience after completing an important project. It’s a rush of the spirit that reawakens me. I feel like I’m traveling through outer space and to the stars.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://fiume.nyc
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/culturalfuturist
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/missrachelhaywire
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/altculture
- Yelp: https://www.youtube.com/@rachelhaywire
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/experimenthaywire
Image Credits
Nick Dove took the two black and white ones.