Tino
Schaedler
Artist
Director
Photography
Interview
What does slowness brings into your creative life?
When we talk about slowness, it is a prerequisite for being present in the moment. Our life is full of non-stop distractions. We perceive most of our life through our phones, whether that's checking things, email, looking at Instagram, looking at videos on YouTube, ordering on Amazon, or whatever. It’s all around us. It's an overload. Your brain goes crazy as it gets all these impulses. Everything is on that mini-screen. Sometimes it feels like our perception in our life and everything that we do, is reduced to the head and that feels always very accelerated for me. As soon as I streamline the perception of everything that comes in from around me to my body being the interface, immediately everything slows down.
But was it something new to you or did you try to develop that slowness?
In my life, a lot of things have been the product of an accumulative journey. I first started reading The "Power of Now", for example, from Eckhart Tolle in 2004. I started meditation in 2008. After reading this book by David Lynch, "Catching the Big Fish", I started doing Transcendental Meditation and I tapped into what he's describing in his creative process, how he's accessing the unified field through TM and he sees things and he fishes for it, and he just uses this as inspiration.
I did that back then, and I felt like I was almost cheating, because it was like, suddenly, the ideas would just pop up. That was only because for those moments I was allowed to unlock myself from distraction and just be present and let things come to me.
Good Morning!
Tino Schaedler"I'm learning more and more that my true creation really comes out of the process when I am present, when I'm allowing really creativity to come out in a less convoluted kind of way."
Tino on the streets of DTLA
How does it look like in the life of a Tino Schaedler when he wakes up?
I wake up normally, most of the time it's very early at 4.30. Then I do a few things that I try to keep as, without thinking about it. I guess that's also what habits and a routine allow us to do. So, I go downstairs. I heat some water. I usually have two glasses of warm water. I feed the cat and the dog, brush my teeth, and take a shower outside on our patio, which is one of the first moments where I get kind of like, ah, you know, cause you're standing outside. It's whether it's cold or not that cold, or it's a beautiful morning and you really get that first hint of presence and then I go inside and start doing the spiritual routine. I've got these books, they're called "Daily Reflections". I read those.
And you do that every day? Every day?
Saturday and Sunday, I do a reduced version of it.
Okay, and if you had a long night out, maybe with friends - you do it?
Well that's usually happening, if it happens, only on Friday or Saturday.
So you set the rules?
I just try to give myself a break sometimes 'cause I think I have a tendency in general with things. I was like a raw vegan from 2003 to 2009, and I got militant about it.
Getting older made me realize that I can be more easy on myself after that. I do a combination of yoga then. Two types of breathwork, pranayama and this Wim Hof thing. And then usually I meditate for 20 minutes. Sometimes I journal a little bit, but once I've done that, I'm usually in a really good and balanced place and I feel like, okay, the day can come. And then my kids come down and hell unleashes and you can be more present at the same time.
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It feels like we actually inject the venom of this speediness lifestyle ourselves, right?
Totally. Progress in the Western world was always by definition perceived as something positive. We still have that inside of us where we all feel like, Oh, that's progress. That's good. But I think we're seeing a lot of the downfalls from it.
Like fast food, for example, aside from the fact that it's very unhealthy and also kind of addictive, I think it's also cutting away the social dimension. In that one book, they're talking about like how the Italians or Southern Europeans just celebrate it. It's not about food. It's about the time to come together, to be present, to sit, you know.
30 years ago, or even more, I was in Southern France in this tiny little village and they invited me and a friend for lunch. The lunch started at 12 and it went on until five in the afternoon.
If something doesn't work as it should be, like, how do you control yourself?
That's a good question. So let me zoom out. I think the more I'm able to be present, the faster I can resolve a project, I've reached that level where the idea comes usually super fast. And then it's just about execution.
Until recently I had like endless to-do lists and I just came to realize I never get anything really checked off and things drag on for days and days and days and then I push that away when I'm and I started limiting my to-do list and there's always one main focus of the day and I'm trying to also understand that my being present and having the time to design or having the time to do what I'm good at is a very valuable thing that I need to protect.
Do you ever feel like anxious or do you feel like this, okay, I should achieve more right now, or something feels a little bit off?
I've been thinking a lot about that and I have that sometimes, but it's a lot of times a specific type of work and it doesn't happen, for example, to me when I'm designing a set or when I'm designing architecture. I'm so in flow with that process. There's never the slightest moment where I feel like, Oh, you know, I'm not sure if I can get this done, or I can get this to the level that I'm expecting my work to be or to that, I want to deliver it. I feel very comfortable in a certain range.
There's another range, I think, which is probably maybe more in the branding world that I'm not educated in branding, but I've learned a lot about it, but there's sometimes that level where I don't feel where it can also work that I'm pushing away and I'm not facing it.
We all sometimes just need to think about what we're good at, but we also need to think almost about that secondary layer of what's still in that realm, where I can expand into. And I would always push for moving into that range as well because if I just stay in that realm of what I can do well, there is not going to be any evolution of creativity.
I have come to that place where on certain projects, I just know it's right, or it's not right. It's also being connected to your intuition and also just being connected to what you feel strongly about. That doesn't mean that you're a cocky asshole or whatever, but there's a certain expertise that you've built up.
On a certain kind of work, I just know sometimes it's right. That doesn't mean that I'm not flexible enough to adjust it to change it and to go out of my way to find a solution. I think it's more about like, how does that other person work with me on that? But I'm always super into throwing the ball back and forth with someone if I also see, okay, that's going somewhere and maybe also, Oh, that opened up a direction that I didn't even think about.
Don't be too narrow minded, open up for your sparring-partners or like the team in general, when you work on something, right?
Yeah, a hundred percent. Also with less experienced people, for example, I've worked with Eli Russell on the Kanye famous music video and then also on Fade. He was like super young. He was like 28. I was in my 40s. He almost couldn't articulate what he wanted because he was very new to a lot of these things. But his ideas in the end were great. I realized that because I allowed myself also to go on that journey with him.
Like, finding the understanding.
Finding the understanding, but that sometimes means to let go of your ego. In the end, that brings us back to being present to slowness because the ego is in the distraction and the future and in the past.
Because the ego is that judging voice that, that is full of like, Oh, you know, if you listen to this guy now. That is not going to be good for your future or he fucked you over in the past. That's the future and past.
I'm not saying I have perfected this or I have this purity of getting to that, but I'm always trying to stay open. But I also express it when I feel like, okay, I don't think that's the right way.
What was your initial idea for the piece, you did for Steve Lacey?
That project started cause, I've been in an ongoing creative work relationship with Steve and that commercial came in. In the beginning, it was going to be a brand experience. So the manager reached out to me cause he knew that I could help with that.
I started writing a creative concept for a brand experience, and then it transformed into, Oh, the client wants a campaign for billboards print and a small commercial.
More classic.
More classic, and maybe a little bit at the end for the launch, kind of like a brand experience. So the guitar that Fender created in collaboration with Steve Lacey is called the People Pleaser. I came up with three different approaches to how Steve could please the crowd. In a Steve Lacey kind of way.
The chrome limousine won!
The chrome was one idea also, but there was another idea. Cause I think I had come off that, Yves Saint Laurent commercial with, Austin Butler, who's the Elvis actor. I watched the Elvis movie on the flight back from Mexico City to L.A. There was something about it that I enjoyed, but there's also one scene where they're in this, tour bus. And it's Elvis, like, over-the-top plush and everything. I think... I had that in the back of my mind because I like design like that is crazy and over the top and a lot of the seventies design where the seating is integrated into the floor and all of that, you know, John Lautner.
I think on the day while I was writing up the ideas, there was an auction for Elvis's private jet. They had some images of the private jet and it was kind of like the bus plush on the inside, but a jet. So I'm like, Oh, that could be cool if Steve Lacey flies with the jet, you know, Elvis style, arrives somewhere, lands in the desert, and goes out on the wing.
Sounds like a higher budget though?
That's why I didn't get chosen. No, but it performs like this eclectic crowd. In the end, the lineage that Steve sees himself in is the old school rock star iconic rock star, not old school, but iconic rock star like Lenny Kravitz, Prince. That's also, I think what he is, he has a great presence on stage. He plays his instrument. It was always about celebrating Steve and creating something around him that through composition and everything heightens that appearance.
That he's in the middle, basically.
He's in the middle and he's kind of like that, that hero. There was another concept, I think, which was inspired by that REM video where they're, I think, "Everybody hurts", where they're getting out of the cars and onto kind of like the freeway ramps and everything. That's always been a video that I loved because it's so surreal where they're getting, going up onto the car and he sings there. I think that was probably the main inspiration for what we did in the end.
Why the chrome?
Like you said, I've got an obsession with chrome. I'm working on this art series. It's been an ongoing process where I'm chroming all these iconic objects, like a Polaroid camera.
I mean, your vinyl player.
My vinyl player, like lots of different things. I wanted to give that limo a little bit, that Elvis transformation through the lens of Steve.
I think Chrome has a dichotomy, the beautiful dichotomy of being totally contextual because it mirrors everything around it, but at the same time, almost like a heightened presence. It's just such an incredible thing at the same time. It just really adds that layer of distorted reflections, specifically on something like a car or on amorphous shapes where it's like refracting and bending reflections.
I think there's just so much you can do with it. When I studied architecture, I was really into, I guess what was called natural phenomena. Shadow and light brings architecture to life, but it's also. Reflection, refraction, a lot of the work of some of the artists like Doug Aitken that you're mentioning that did that House in the Desert or Olafur Eliasson, that has always spoken to me because I feel like it also adds that layer of sensory perception, which is another aspect that I'm really interested in with all my work and moving over the past few years into more immersive.
Like creating more immersive experiences, immersive spaces. Chrome, if you imagine, for example, an infinity room, that is as close as you can get to an immersive space without having projection mapping or LEDs or whatever, because it's the extension and what's happening is it's just coming from, it's animated by the reflection and by you being in the space and then mirroring to infinity.
What's the next thing you're working on with Steve Lacey?
He's recording a new album at the moment and there's another tour in Australia, New Zealand and Japan happening in February next year. So I'm I'm starting to think about what we're doing for that. One thing that's super exciting is he's also performing at the Sydney Opera House, which is an iconic architectural building. I'm excited to do something for that. That's the kickoff for the next phase of Steve's creative expression, I think.
But you became a creative director to him now, or are you more like a...
I mean, he has a creative director, which is also like a creative partner to me. You know, it's, it's Oz Taylor, who's amazing, super young, 28 or 29.
I guess I'm somewhere between creative director and kind of like the main designer for Steve. Right. I think that's. been becoming more and more important for him as he really sees the potential of the world that you build and design around an artist. And that can be as abstract as a Fender commercial where we're also just making sure it's in line with what Steve's aesthetic is.
To designing a tour, to designing maybe sets for an album launch or for music videos. I think…
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New practices or some other wisdom or maybe even books you came about in the last few months you want to share?
I got an unexpected tax return the other day and I immediately ordered a cold plunge and I'm building a sauna up on my upper hill. (...)
Is there any (new) advice to young creatives you can actually share?
What I didn't do in early years of my career, I never really allowed myself to step into my true creativity, but always sold my creativity as a currency in exchange for money. I'm learning more and more that my true creation really comes out of the process when I am present, when I'm allowing really creativity to come out in a less convoluted kind of way.
Sounds very esoterical, but in the end, it is really about listening to your inner self. I think there's also, everyone has to go through their own process, how they get there. For me, it was through meditation. It was through breath work. through yoga in a funny way. I started all of that from a completely different motivation, but through the years, it really converged with my creative process.
I think aligning with your purpose and creating value out of that for giving it to other people is I think where true creativity is coming from and that's connected to creating mindfulness to probably also a little bit of spirituality. That's been my experience. That's been my path. And that's where my head is at.
Lovely said. Thank you Tino.
Thank you, Andreas!
Listening Chapters
- Full interview
- Slowness and its impact on creativity (Part I)
- Slowness and its impact on creativity (Part II)
- Morning routine
- Creative productivity
- Self-doubt, and intuition
- Collaboration
- Case: Steve Lacy
- Fascination: Chrome
- Art, design, and world-building for Steve Lacy's music projects
- New practices
- Advice
Show Notes
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Johann König
Berlin, Germany
