Left: Sebastian Zimmerhackl. Photography by Nadia Morozewicz
Even if you don’t know who or what SELAM X is, chances are you’ve seen their work. Together with Beauty_Gan, they created the AI Kylie Jenner cover for the inaugural issue of Dazed Beauty, produced 10 Nike projects this year and digitised Esmay Wageman’s glass masks into the “Esmay” face filter for the SLEEK 62 print beauty editorial, Glass Skin. The team has six core members in Berlin, but with interns, freelancers and collaborators in different cities who stop by, their office in the heart of Kreuzberg is crawling with a mix of energies and styles.
“Fuck a clean studio, fuck black and white – it is just way too boring,” says founding member, Sebastian Zimmerhackl, 37, who is responsible for creative direction, concept and strategy. “We laugh loud, smoke and drink here. Everyone can fly their freak flag; some of the people like MotorCore, Gabber parties, others are in the gaming world, but these things intersect.”
Left: Claudia Rafael Photography by Nadia Morozewicz
There is nothing Spartan or monastic about the office. From the softly glowing collection of neon artworks, to the boxes of video games and fluorescent flowerpots caked with motivational stickers, it is a place where people indulge in their every whim to compose a maximalist oasis — and this is how the team works: by mixing things that don’t inherently go together. Although AI, VR, AR and 3D are hallmarks of SELAM X’s work, it is always integrated with the team’s diverse backgrounds in gaming, business or print media to create something different.
“Combinations like art books or fashion with augmented reality, just like artificial intelligence and beauty, are pairings that create our new world,” says Claudia Rafael, 37, who comes from a publishing design background but is part of the team that’s testing the boundaries of AR face filters at SELAM X’s MASK OFF exhibitions and meetups. “Today, we live in a time of hyper individualization. The narrative was once about classy beauty, but now new ideas about being different/special/diverse are rising.”
A defining element of the SELAM X team is that the members range from late Gen X to early Gen Z, mixing digital natives who grew up gaming, with a generation that came of age in analogue. For the youngest members, Lukas Schmeck, 23, and Pascal Wiemers, 22, who work in creative direction and CGI, they find that there isn’t too much truth in generational stereotypes when it comes to working in the digital field.
Right: Lukas Schmeck. Photography by Nadia Morozewicz
“I was born the first year of Gen Z, but I don’t fully feel like I belong there. Still, I also definitely don‘t belong in what is said about Gen Y,” says Schmeck. “Sebastian is one of the oldest members of the team and he is better at social media than all of us. It’s this blurred transition which is what is happening in the media, and that will only continue.”
Still, Wiemers sees the benefit of growing up with special effects and credits the 2001 BBC dinosaur documentary, Walking with the Beasts for part of his interest in digital creation.
“People were building rigs to try to figure out how dinosaurs moved and then rebuilding that in CG and 3D scanning it,” he says. “They already had the technology, but it was super expensive. A computer that could handle that kind of technology would cost $20,000- $30,000 and the software $10,000. Now, you have Blender, which is free and you can build a computer for $1,000, which is really fun. This is really exciting to me, the democratisation of tools.”
Although the crew doesn’t all hail from Berlin, let alone Germany, there is something about the city that brings people together that otherwise would only meet in Facebook groups or niche online forums.
“It is important for us to first build the culture and then build the product,” says Zimmerhackl. “We do workshops on the weekend, but it is always an open-door policy. We’ve had people come and knock on our door, saying that they will start tomorrow and sure enough they were sitting at the desk the next day and were immediately part of the crew. It is important to have the physical contact, we want to be able to be there for each other – it’s important.”
Check out more shots from the studio below:
All photography by Nadia Morozewicz.