Michèle Lamy: I wake up not knowing what story I am in

Foucault once said that the 21st century would be Deleuzian. Now, living in the 21st century, it feels like almost dystopian – interview with Michèle Lamy on chaos, creativity, Los Angeles and Rick Owens

Interview with Michèle Lamy

Foucault once said that the 21st century would be Deleuzian. Now, living in the 21st century, it feels like almost dystopian – a last hurrah of our current system. I’ll not see the changes I hoped for; it will take time and a lot of resistance. Despite it all, the forbidden will be shared, and we’ll find a way forward.

It reminds me of the saying, You should have the spirit of revolution, but not actually do the revolution because it ends up killing people. A year or a year and a half ago, I was optimistic about the world. If it weren’t for the situation in the Middle East, it felt like everything was coming together – the mixing of civilizations.

My father was in the resistance, fighting in the mountains. When the Germans came, they had to hide. My mother stayed behind, providing food to the resistance fighters – our family owned a farm and a restaurant. She would deliver food on her bicycle, risking everything. That’s how I’m here today.

Michèle Lamy talking about philosophy: La Logique du sens by Deleuze – I attended his class

After boarding school, I made a decision I don’t regret: I enrolled in law school and studied to become an attorney. While I was there, I found myself drawn to the Philosophy and Literature University in Lyon, which was just next door. For two years, Deleuze was teaching in Lyon, and I attended his class on Alice in Wonderland and the mirror, which later inspired his book La Logique du sens.

Deleuze: it felt like surfing a wave. You’re holding onto something, going with the flow, not always sure what he was saying, but somehow understanding it on a deeper level. His words had a way of revealing something that stayed with you. After that, I followed him to La Borde, where we were involved in making a film. The story we wanted to tell was about a mental institution where the patients supposedly took over and locked up their guardians. We attempted to create this several times, especially during the events of May ’68, when we were living through the new psychiatry movement.

At La Borde, Guattari and Deleuze were there, and I wanted to… well, I wanted to capture that moment. The film was never made because Deleuze told us, “If you want to be here, you’re not just filming people – you have to live here and live their way.” One day you were cooking, the next you were witnessing electroshock therapy, which was, for some, the only way to bring relief.

It’s hard to believe that the 21st century will be Deleuzian

We’re right next to the Palais Bourbon, the building of the National Assembly, where the common voice should be heard – but people are behaving as if we’re back in the Third Republic, talking about war and another burning world. Things could have gone differently, but right now, they aren’t. We’re caught up in a war driven by those who want to sell arms and make money. With all these inventions and advancements, it would be exciting to channel that energy into doing something good.

It’s hard to believe that the 21st century will be Deleuzian. It feels like we’re stuck in a world where people are more concerned with profit than progress. We’re wearing multiple hats – trying to buy cheap and do things the right way, but it feels like we’re missing the mark.

Showing the walls, emphasizing the whole: brutalism is rough according to Michèle Lamy

If something isn’t decor, and you say it looks like decor, then it must be for an opera or a show. Raw is real, like the material it’s made of – it’s not about adding color or embellishment. Our aesthetic, our approach to everything, including our furniture collections, reflects this. We’re using plywood elements. Normally, plywood is used for fences, but we treat it like fine cabinetry, refining it for interior use, ensuring that everything fits together.

We appreciate what is raw, what is brutalist, and there’s plenty to showcase that. Something can also be raw in language, in the interpretation of things, and even in fashion.

Moose antlers are from Canada. Moose naturally shed their antlers, and there are people who collect them for trade. We can no longer import moose antlers, so we found elk antlers instead, which look similar. Elk also shed their antlers, but not at the same time or place, so you rarely get a matching pair. These antlers can weigh up to 40 kilograms, so while they look like trophies, they’re also substantial enough to be used as a backrest.

Interior Projects for Travis Scott and Kanye West

I’ve been working backstage with Travis Scott. He wants his own environment – a mix of a recording studio with plenty of couches and long seating areas, but he also needed a chair. So, we created a stool with an antler as the backrest. It fits with the raw aesthetic we were going for, as if we were in the woods, picking up materials and building something on the spot. It’s more organized, but that’s the essence of it.

Kanye West was one of the first to see the furniture we created for the Sunday Service Choir’s house. The gallery mentioned that he had been checking out our collection and wanted to pursue it further. When I was in LA at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanye was also building a house with Kim in Calabasas, where our atelier was located. We were hanging out, continuing to work on the project. After he separated from Kim, they weren’t speaking much, and she took over the Calabasas house, transforming it into something else. It was Kanye who told her, “You should do the furniture with them.”

Afterward, Kim started wanting something specific for the house and came back to us for the alabaster bed that Kanye had envisioned. I don’t need to explain why our collaboration works so well. Kanye appreciated our work, attended the shows, and suggested new ideas. While Kim is the one who makes things happen, even if 50 or 70 other people might criticize, there’s something constant in the work we all appreciate. Kim once told me something funny about their early days. This was years ago, when she had a house in Beverly Hills and had a lot more pillows around. She mentioned how her style has evolved since then, becoming rawer. They even went to Japan together. Now, she’s into concrete and other elements.

Despite everything that’s happened between them and beyond their relationship, the connection we had in our work remains significant and crazy in its own way. We recently did a photoshoot with Nick Knight featuring some of our large furniture pieces. What’s happening is that these artists, like Travis Scott, are the poets of our time, just as Deleuze was in his. I’m drawn to the concept of time as it relates to poetry, and I often turn to poets to express what I struggle to articulate myself. I use poetry as a kind of dictionary for finding the right words, drawing heavily from Langston Hughes, among others.

This voice, this expression through the body and the voice, is a reflection of what Deleuze might describe as delusion – a way of expressing something. These performers resonate with what people are doing today, like Marina Abramović’s recent show in London, where she had people experience seven minutes of silence at Glastonbury. It’s all part of the same continuum.