BLINK & IT'S ALL GONE: In-Store Book Signing with Michael Dupouy
26 May 2022Celebrating the launch of ALL GONE 2021, UrlfreezeShops sat down with author and co-founder of La MJC, Michael Dupouy, at the exclusive book launch and signing to discuss the joy of print and the importance of documenting street culture.
Chronicling each passing year’s highlights, stand-out moments and memorable releases, Michael Dupouy’s ALL GONE offers a resounding reflection on contemporary culture’s most important landmarks - a document of subculture, community and street style's influence.
Since the publication was established in 2006, Dupouy's ALL GONE has continually provided an encyclopaedic consideration of what made street culture shine over the past 12 months. A cultural tome that serves as the perfect record to look back at the past year and remember the high points, over the course of the publication's yearly editions, ALL GONE has become an authoritative voice and important figurehead of documenting the underground.
Celebrating the release of ALL GONE 2021, UrlfreezeShops hosted an exclusive book signing and launch party at their flagship London store in Soho. Soundtracked by Rinse FM's Grainger, the night further exemplified ALL GONE's cultural significance as an authority on street culture. Featuring artwork from Bored Ape Yacht Club across the edition's two covers - "Rise of the (Bored) Apes" and "(Bored) Apes Together Strong" - the coffee table book offers an insightful and focussed selection, chosen by a true authority in street culture.
Sitting down with Michael Dupouy, UrlfreezeShops delve into the author and tastemaker’s world of culture, discussing the importance of documenting each passing year, street culture’s meteoric rise and the beauty of print.
What initially inspired you to start ALL GONE?
At the time, La MJC owned the merchant site WESOLDOUT.COM and sold products that were 100% dedicated to street culture. It was a partnership with the store colette and we were among the first to sell these sorts of objects online. I had already been collecting them for years, and my first job was as a journalist. I thought it was a shame to have all these products and all these images, but not to have a space to tell their respective stories, and to explain why they were going to become cult objects. So I decided to showcase them with high-end presentation, suitable to sublimate them, and to remember them for eternity. ALL GONE was born like that. These products can be more easily inscribed in the collective memory when they are printed in a coffee table book, and this is the purpose of the book: to document, to remember, to transmit knowledge - like an encyclopaedia. If you try to ask Google what was cool in 2006, you'll have a hard time! If you have the book on the other hand... it will be a bit easier!
What is the process for determining which street culture moments to feature?
I live in the culture as a passionate person, who has been immersed in it for almost 30 years. I'm lucky enough to have met and hung out with the major players of the culture, to have seen them grow and transform it. I've been a privileged witness of the evolution of our scene that went from a niche culture to a mass culture in a short period of time. This has shaped my tastes, my convictions, my ideas and it is with this strong cultural background that I choose the elements that compose the pages of ALL GONE every year for the last 16 years.
Have you found that the process has become easier or more difficult as street culture’s output and prescience within the wider cultural canon has increased?
It has become 20 times more difficult today than it was 16 years ago. For me, for consumers, for stores, for the players in this scene, there's clearly too much stuff coming out, and it's getting harder to navigate. That's the downside of the limitless expansion that this culture has experienced over the past 20 years. To choose is to take risks. From coverage to content, I take a lot of these risks every year. I have to deal with the obvious, the commercial successes, but also explore the products that have been less exposed than others, but whose story must be told.
Having spent the past 16 years cataloguing street culture’s most important moments, I’m sure you’ll have witnessed a vast change from 2006 to the modern day. How has the culture transformed over the years? Do you see these changes as a positive thing?
Of course it's a positive thing. You can see the glass as half empty and complain forever that everything has become mainstream, that the underground has disappeared. But you can also see the glass as half full, and be happy that our culture is so influential that it is taking over the whole world. That a whole generation swears by it, and that this new generation was born under the influence of the pioneers they admire and who motivate them to do better in the future. I'm a natural optimist and I'd rather live in an era where I can walk into a club wearing sneakers, than the one I knew where wearing a pair of Air Force 1's kept you out of the fancy clubs in Paris. It seems absurd today, but it was true a few years ago.
All Gone offers an encyclopaedic consideration of the past year, commenting on specific moments, products and art with reverence and passion – why is it essential to document street culture?
Because the internet is a fantastic tool for promoting the instantaneous, but it remains totally futile if not useless for remembering the past. ALL GONE makes sense when you look at the collection from its inception. If you flip through the pages from 2006 to nowadays, the evolution will seem obvious. When paper books were announced to be dead with the advent of social networks and the web, it will always be necessary to spread quality information, to document all of these products and cultural moments in time, and explain why they reflected that time.
What is it about print, and physical media in general, that particularly resonates with you?
I come from a print background. I was a journalist when I started and I'm hooked on the idea of the materialisation of the written word and photography. I don't mind the digital world, I live with it like everyone else does, but I love books, magazines, and catalogs too much. The touch, the quality of the paper, the inks, the finishing, all of that is very important to me. Spending days at my printer's and seeing my baby being made at the beginning of the year will always be a special moment for me.
Why is it important for you to maintain your connection to physical print in an era where culture – even the featured artwork from Bored Ape Yacht Club on this edition’s cover – is moving into the purely digital realm?
I am a product lover, and when I say products, I obviously mean physical objects, with which we live and share a story. BUT I have nothing against the digital world. I live with my time. I don't criticise the era that we're in and I appreciate how our culture is always one step ahead and already embraces the Web3 and NFTs, for example. 2021 was just a step in that direction. We haven't seen anything yet and there are permanent bridges that will be created between the two worlds, between the physical and the digital. What a time to be alive!
What has been the defining cultural moment for you in 2021?
It's very difficult to single out one. A year is long and always full of learning. And the last two years will remain marked by Covid and the way people have relearned to live with this virus that has disrupted our daily lives. Whether we accept it or not, the explosion of NFTs and Web3 remains a defining cultural moment. It will be impossible to think about 2021 in the future without remembering the emergence of those phenomenon. It's hard to pinpoint the contours today, but big brands and many artists are already embracing it. There will be major connections between the two physical and digital worlds, much faster than we can imagine.
