MSCHF Co-Founders Kevin Wiesner and Lukas Bentel Discuss Their Long, Strange Journey on 'Business of HYPE' with Angelo Baque
The duo riff on not intentionally seeking Internet notoriety, the power of humor and more.
What is MSCHF? To the co-founders of the Brooklyn-based creative collective, known for cleverly irreverent projects that range from the viral (the Big Red Boot) to the conceptual (a microscopic handbag) it’s hard to put an exact title on. At the beginning of their Business of Hype episode, the question, posed by host Angelo Baque, causes Kevin Wiesner and Lukas Bentel to break out in big grins. “MSCHF is very hard to describe quickly,” says Bentel, before later stating that it can be viewed as a “performance art practice,” wile Wiesner notes that it’s a “room for the [team] to have as much creative freedom as possible.”
Following last week’s debut episode with Denim Tears founder Tremaine Emory, Baque digs deep into the history of MSCHF, from Wiesner and Bentel’s days at the Rhode Island School of Design — the former studied furniture design while the latter studied product design — to their early creative process. “We [told ourselves that we had to] make something every two weeks, and even if it sucked we were going to put it out,” the duo notes.
Though MSCHF is no stranger to Internet notoriety, it’s not something they intentionally seek. “One thing we do very consciously is not made things that are reactive to the grind of the social media feed,” says Wiesner. “A lot of creatives are … making things that react to whatever is trending in their feed. That’s a recipe for burnout, and you get gobbled up by making what everyone else is making, not making new things.”
And everything ties back into humor for the MSCHF crew. “Humor is one of the best tools to get people to engage in subject matter [they'd otherwise be afraid of] if it was presented in a serious way,” says Wiesner.
“[Current culture is] not so much the future as it is the absurd intensification of the present moment,” says Bentel.
Stream the full episode above, or check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast platforms, and expect future episodes to roll out weekly.
