An Interview with Annalyn Fortunato

       

"Growing up, my parents always taught me the value of persevering."

Annalyn is sprawled lengthwise on a linen daybed imported from Los Angeles, her chin resting thoughtfully on a handmade Balinese throw pillow. Honesty hour: We've been fans of Miss Fortunato's blog since forever, and the sneak-peak of her apartment in a post entitled, A D U L T I N G, is bookmarked on the editorial team's Mac. "Dad bought me this place just last month, actually!" Her entire condo unit is the stuff Pinterest wet dreams are made of--all at once boho chic and industrial minimalist. Quarters like hers bear the telling signs of one whose wanderlust is always indulged. Travel, according to Annalyn, should not be seen as a luxury but a birthright. "Leaving home to explore new cultures and going away for a while to find myself... It's as essential to my being as air."

#Goals? A trendsetting independent spirit of Annalyn Fortunato's type is all about that life and more. When one's got at least 2k followers on all accounts, the upkeep required for relevancy could only be taxing. "I'm a tastemaker. I pretty much invented succulents."

If you thought Annalyn Fortunato's just like any other Internet-popular kid, think again. She constantly reinvents what it means to be a social media influencer, "I'm launching a non-profit foundation for the environment, we'll sticker-bomb the entire city with my illustrations inside out, that's the hot new thing now." Under the harsh sun you could almost see Annalyn's skin smoke and sizzle. "I mean, literally."

The night bleeds into day

Like my soul turn bright from gray

It's the chapbook launching of pen name Annie Lee Fortune at a new co-working space downtown. Annalyn clenches both eyes upon delivering the hardest-hitting of her heart-wrenching prose. She always performs her spoken word poetry with a theremin, her tattooed hands floating haphazardly over the instrument like a tone-deaf shaman summoning the gods. "There's, like, no science to it... I just feel my words and feed off of the energy of the crowd." It takes us a while to have a moment with Annalyn after her piece, especially with a satellite of adoring fans and approving mentors around her. On how she feels being heralded as the local literary scene's Next Big Star despite being around for only two open-mics, "It's something I always knew I was meant to be."

This was no ordinary celebrity profile. Our contemporaries are satisfied with interviewing their subjects for a day to flesh out enough of one's personhood. Not us, though. In this Annalyn Fortunato case study spanning months, we document the life and times of a generation's poster girl.

See, what has really transpired since is that Annalyn failed her Fine Arts thesis project one too many times so her parents finally cut her off and told her to get a job. What preceded this was a t-shirt line, an acting stint in indie movies, a pop-up restaurant selling fusion Korean pizza and a role in the national elections as youth correspondent. The common denominator? All short-lived and abandoned once the going got tough or something else became cool. We wish we could gloss over with a filter the point when the affirmation of Likes and Retweets dwindled the less she posted about a curated lifestyle everyone wanted. No more trips abroad, no more superficial involvements in vague community efforts, no more sidelines to add to the slashes in her name. Nothing for her readers to aspire to be now that she's planted root-feet and decided to be constant for a change. Annalyn is now a part of the family business, a pest control company.

This load of patronizing BS over the average achievements born from bourgeois flights of fancy would have been a waste of space had any of it been true. You know though, Annalyn Fortunato may not exist but you and I do. We are Annalyn in our glorification of Busy, in the bloated sense of self-importance we allow our accomplishments to make us feel. There's that Fortunato flair in us all when we want to dip into everything without committing to perfecting any one thing. From the still-shitty poetry of Annalyn Fortunato herself:

Self-love okay

Self-loathing necessary

Self-awareness best


Words by: Mariya Lim
Illustration by: Kolown

Street Team

remember that time when we spread poetry all over the city?
photo by Zack Aldave

Shots fired: Is Street Art Still Street Art?

Death of Street Art by Sever photo from 12ozProphet

Origins are important. History is important. Knowing ones origin and linage has always been a prime dictation of your identity. Your self awareness  always seems to come from your family background and origin, your parents came from here and there, hence you celebrate this and that. A very large part of yourself of course, but such things do not only pertain to self awareness and identity but as well as culture and the arts. 

An origin story is very vital for an art movement and not just comic book heroes, may it be from abstract, conceptual art, to street art. But even with it's vitality, the origins of a movement is often trashed and forgotten once it is set in the limelight. 

In recent years street art has boomed in a way quite larger than life, from being shrugged off as mere acts of vandalism then gaining respect as an art form.

Street art  has definitely come a long way.

Initially a movement that originated from system protest and punk ideologies, street art has now evolved into acts of commercialism and gentrification. It has become a movement commissioned on shirts, advertisements, and mass production, even though it had roots in a movement that supported both protest, Freedom and critical thinking. Street art questioned artistic formalities. It questioned the system. 

However, it looks like the success of street art comes its downfall. Due to its popularization and general appeal to the masses, street art is beginning to lose
it's essence, fighting for nothing but money and sales in a gallery that knows nothing about the struggle for progress, the sweat of protest. With popularity comes the dilution of what it's supposed to stand for. The movement has come to a point where being a street artist has become a wonderful selling proposition to a prospect buyer. 

Galleries have been marketing street artists as a new breed of great masters of art without knowing where street art and graffiti came from, without understanding the movement and how it goes about.

Galleries claim artworks to be street art in closed glass space where it is no where near the streets, how is street art such when it isn't in outdoor spaces, when it is safe, when it does not say anything other than wonderfully arranged, pretty and purchasable aesthetics. 

Street art has changed the landscape of the art industry, freeing the concept of art being elitist and exclusive in the walls of a gallery, to sharing it in open spaces to the public. But the very institution and industry that pushed them and denied them of their legitimacy in the art scene are the ones now claiming their brilliance and greatness.

How will institutions feel when they find out the very existence of the movement they support was caused by the opposition of what they represented? How will the artists feel? How will the people?