Images from Sang Bleu

Upon first glance, it’s easy to classify Sang Bleu as a tattoo magazine, but its scope goes far beyond body ink, incorporating philosophy, fashion, art, fetish and “other subcultures to create a carefully composed image of modern urban societies and individuals”. The resulting mix is the creation of Creative Director Maxime Buechi, a celebrated tattoo artist with a penchant for porn, who also happens to hold a degree in psychology. Since founding the magazine in 2004, he’s created a publishing house, Sang Bleu éditeurs, and will soon launch fashion and art-focused Novembre Magazine. As difficult as it is to define the Sang Bleu, it is equally challenging to pigeonhole Buechi. Just when you think you’ve got him nailed, he reveals a geek’s love for science fiction and a heart-melting romantic side.

Elisa Lusso: Congrats! The new issue of Sang Bleu is out; your fifth son is born. Any postpartum depression?

Maxime Buechi: Most definitely! At each new stage of the process—receiving the contributions, designing, printing, distributing—you close options. You confront yourself with the actualization of your brainchild. There is something terrifying, always, but I’ve learned to work around it. I keep focusing on what’s next. I hardly look at it once it’s there, because I can’t change anything. When the time comes to start working on a new issue, I take a good look at the previous one, analyze it, criticize it, compare my analysis with the opinions I received and try to step it up.

Elisa: Sang Bleu is like a big container of minds and subjects, a book to keep rather than a magazine. How would you sum up its core?

Maxime: Its core is plural. First of all, it is social. We look for “realness”, like Jason Farrer says. My team and I go around the world, sleep on sofas, buy vodka for 30 people who come to a presentation… We want to speak to all of them, hear what they have to say, what they want, explain why, what, how. That’s what we do.

Its core is a perspective of things that all of us at SB share. It is an intuitive and epicurean approach to human activity. We will only speak about the things, ideas and work that touched us deeply, deliberately applying this to fields that are usually only approached in ultra-intellectual, pseudo-elitist ways. We believe in geekiness and fetishism of the most anecdotal to the most universal works of the human mind. I guess that’s what the title Sang Bleu is about: Everything is noble as long as it moves you.

Tattoo was a starting point because it is a perfect balance between art and craft. It is not craft because it carries sense. It is totally anchored in tradition and technique though, which prevents it from the temptation of post-modern self-referencing, which ended up turning fine art into an inbred creature. With Sang Bleu, we are trying to find the manifestation of this collective dream and expose it, leaving aside what we consider to be sterile close-circuits.

Elisa: Bondage shows up many times in your pages. What’s your definition of it? What do you like most about bondage?

Maxime

Maxime: Bondage is beautiful. Bondage cannot be badly done or it simply fails. It is the ultimate erotic sophistication and ritualization. It is very simple though, in the emotions and symbolic elements it involves. In that respect it very much reminds me of tattoo. Additionally, I love knots. As a kid I used to bind things together with rope or strings. It drove my parents crazy! I love their complexity and beauty. Even as mathematical objects they inspire me, because they belong to a very interesting field called “topology” that I studied a bit and which unifies many fundamental and otherwise “un-unifiable” scientific notions.

Elisa: What is your predominant erotic fantasy or practice?

Maxime: Haha. What a question… I might be fascinated by formal über-sophistication from an aesthetic point of view, but when it comes to myself, I have pretty down-to-earth fantasies. I am more drawn to extreme physicality, as opposed to mental sexuality…

Elisa: What’s your relationship with porn imaginary? Do you read porn magazines or watch porn movies?

Maxime: I do and have for a long time. At first, I was a “victim”. As a young boy, older boys had them and I didn’t really understand what it was all about. I couldn’t separate the staging of sexuality from a reality I hadn’t experienced yet. Now I look at them as an easy libidinal exutoire but also as “artistic” objects. Pornography drains so much human energy and attention that it has the means and mission to evolve very quickly and adapt to very subtle evolutions of our collective mind. It is like organized crime for economics. It goes everywhere legit business goes but ten years sooner!

Elisa: What else are you interested in studying and investigating?

Maxime: I crave science these days. I still feel that scientific thinking, even if abstract, or “philosophical”, is an important key to understanding our environment. I like science, from ecology to nuclear physics or astrophysics, as well as human sciences. In scientific reasoning resides the ultimate humanity. It is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. Unfortunately, I am rarely around scientists.

Elisa: How are you channeling your creative energy right now?

Maxime: I tattoo a lot. Because it is a very Zen activity, and it pays my bills. I am also finishing the first issue of Novembre Magazine and trying to figure out how to pay back the printers.

Elisa: The first time we met was in Luxembourg at Colophon, the International Magazine Symposium, where you were leading a conference about the state of independent magazines. Has anything changed since then?

Maxime: Yes. I think there are some tangible new “movements” in independent publishing that didn’t really exist then. They still might be in an embryonic stage, but they exist. The independent magazines of the ’80s and ’90s are not independent anymore. Fanzines are just a playground for illustrators, and the web has over taken the mainstream mass, actuality-driven magazines. Paper publishing must redefine itself, leaving to online publishing what it does better and exploiting what could never be covered by it. A lot of new publications are exploring these aspects now, like Lurve, Some/Things, etc…

Elisa: Among the things you’re doing, you’re also teaching typography and editorial design. What kind of relationship you have with your students?

Maxime: I love teaching, but too much of it killed the thrill. I like having a real relationship with students as individuals, but there is only so much individuality my brain can take, you know? I quickly get bored of simply spilling knowledge, so I prefer to focus on small clusters of people during workshops or lectures. I don’t teach a lot anymore, and I much prefer it this way. I get so excited every time!

Elisa: Describe Novembre Magazine. Do you feel lonely in the autumn?

Maxime: Novembre is the way we feel towards Switzerland, I guess. Serene and melancholic, still surrounded by the best that nature has to offer. Novembre is a magazine for Switzerland, to manifest what we think is good in and outside of it. It also comes as a need, as there isn’t any edgy publication for art and/or fashion here. Still there are amazing artists and a quickly developing fashion scene.

Elisa: Tell us a little bit more about the other editorial projects you’re working on with Sang Bleu éditeurs.

Maxime: Sang Bleu éditeurs is a publishing house that allows us to deeply explore given topics that we might only introduce in the magazine. We work with people who identify with our approach and think we can understand and serve a specific editorial project they might have. We have recurrently worked with the Swiss artist Emmanuelle Antille, for example. The last book [we did] was Restrain & Release, which actually presents the eponymous movie that we developed and [Emmanuelle] directed. It will also be the first of a series of “sex movies” I am working on, called Monographies. It is complicated, but very exciting. It will be online only.

We also worked with a (married) couple of painters, Luc Andrié and Elisabeth Llach. We recently published Alles Wird Gut, a monographic catalog for Elisabeth. Luc is an Editor for Novembre. The last book we put out was InBetweenOut/Black Mirror in collaboration with the Swiss curator Marco Costantini. It is a pretty experimental exhibition catalog. For this one, we had to apply our experience in magazine publishing to try and make it more than a simple compte-rendu of the exhibition, to make [it] an experience.

Elisa: What will be next “reincarnation” of the magazine? That is, how do you see it evolve in the next ten years? Will it change its identity and turn into something else?

Maxime: Sang Bleu is so multifaceted that it can decant into many things but still keep its overall identity. I have no clue how it will evolve, and I like that. I am happy that we now have all these means and media at our disposal. Whatever happens, the form can change but the essence will stay.

Elisa: Are you scared of death?

Maxime: Not really. At times it makes me sad and melancholic, but not scared. Sometimes it even makes me happy, serene. I wouldn’t want to be immortal.

Elisa: What would you like someone to ask you in an interview? Ask yourself a question…and answer.

Maxime: Who I’d like to thank for their dedication, love and support (in the scope of Sang Bleu).

And the answer is: My family—for being the proof that unconditional love exists. Jeanne-Salomé, because she really understands me and loves me for what I am, not what I think I am or what other people think I am. Adrian Wilson for the most consistently valuable work and friendship. Really Sang Bleu would not be what it is without him. Ben Perdue for his dedication and generosity. Ian Party for being one of the most challenging people I know, relationally and intellectually. Leo Carnevale and Vincent Lemaître—for having believed in me and my project in the first place. Jason Farrer for being a brother from another mother. Alex Binnie for having told me in 2004, “I will support you”, and been true to his word. Diane Pernet, I owe her a fair amount of key acquaintances. Alban Adam and Lotta Volkova, for demonstrating me what the modern bohème is.

Elisa: What’s the first thing you do when you get up?

Maxime: Kiss my love.

Images from the first issue of Novembre Magazine