This It-Girl Is Changing Switzerland, One Taboo At A Time

I first saw Jeanne-Salomé Rochat's work in December 2012, when a friend requested that I hunt down a copy of this cult tattoo magazine for him. He sent me the name, Sang Bleu, and a list of possible retailers in Manhattan. And finally, at a bulk tattoo and piercing supply shop on Canal Street, I found an issue for $85. It was worth the price.

Rochat is the co-creative director of Sang Bleu, alongside tattoo artist Maxime Büechi. She also directs Novembre, a Switzerland-based magazine about counterculture art and innovation in Switzerland. 

Rochat splits her time between Geneva, London, and Berlin, so when I was visiting the latter city on a recent trip, we decided to meet near her apartment, in front of the Kaiser's at Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg. I began by asking Rochat if she had any tattoos. "Just one," she said, pulling down her bottom lip to reveal, in janky prison lettering, the words "corporate cannibal." The phrase, she explained, is borrowed from a late Grace Jones hit that goes, "Pleased to meet you. Pleased to have you on my plate. I'm a man-eating machine, corporate cannibal, digital criminal." 

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FIONA DUNCAN: How long have you lived in Berlin?
JEANNE-SALOMÉ ROCHAT: A year, but I'm away about half the time. I have my clothes here, which is the main way I define where I live. 

How many clothes do you have? You're such a fashion plate; I bet you have a lot.
I have so much. Sometimes it kills me. But most of the time, I love them. Folding my clothes, for example, is something I love to do. Even if they are already folded, I'll fold them better. 

Novembre is so digital. If I had to describe it to someone who wasn't familiar with the magazine, I'd describe it as very new media. Was it like that from the beginning?
Definitely. We continue to try and build the bridge between fine arts with the more applied arts, which is one of the taboos of Swiss culture. 

I think the magazine's putting fine art on the same level as craft and commercial culture. You'll put fashion not just next to art or text, but overlapped with it, washed, and faded into it. It's all equalized in the same frame. Sang Bleu is more traditional, concerned with the double page spread. 
Sang Bleu is quite timeless. What makes it a magazine of today is probably the shameless juxtaposition of the various subjects we treat, but the content isn't organized according to an external schedule. Sang Bleu has it's own space and time, it's more about disorder and entropy. 

I don't know much about Switzerland beyond the stereotypes, like cheese, chocolate, neutrality, watches...and banks. Tell us more. 
Those things are really true, and that's what's funny about Switzerland: It's somehow so simple and caricature-like, but also full of contradictions. It's also still somewhat of a utopia. We also have a very strange relationship to being alive in Europe and the world. The question of representation and image, especially self-image, is rather complex. So, what's interesting about doing to a Swiss magazine with and abou