The Strokes’ Nikolai Fraiture and His Brother Pierre on Their Wild Art Project
Images by Neil Sauvage
It is a bit unnerving being asked to meet someone down a dark New York City alleyway, but that is where Pierre and Nikolai Fraiture of Arts Elektra want to meet.
Based out of Manhattan, Arts Elektra—comprised of Pierre Fraiture, an accomplished multimedia artist, and his brother, Nikolai, an artist and our favourite member of The Strokes—is an immersive, experimental performance art concept combining music, paint, dance, light, and whatever they happen to find lying around. Their live performances are site-specific, drawing on whatever setting they find themselves in to create a truly engaging creative experience.
In the alleyway in Tribeca, I found myself comfortably un-murdered, watching Arts Elektra put on a secret performance. Immediately, I was captivated. The performance was sort of inexplicable; the music moving the dancer, moving Pierre’s paint strokes, moving the music; the context of the event so unexpected and strikingly vivid. Not lighthearted, but not so serious that there wasn’t space for fun and experimentation, with perhaps a moment or two of coy silliness. It was a good way to begin an interview. They finished their performance and we went for a walk.
Well, damn, that was something. How’d today happen?
Nikolai: We didn’t really plan to do any shows, it was kind of just because you asked about writing an article. We thought, ‘Sure, we can probably pull something together in a couple of days.’ And it worked out. The posters were found and recycled from the street, my wife made masks last night, whatever we had we just pulled together. Limited time and limited resources force you to be creative and experimental, which is the creative style of this whole project. Figuring things out.
How long has Arts Elektra been going along?
Nikolai: We started in 2017. We started playing together up in Connecticut at our family home, playing music and painting. It was cool, we were feeling good. The idea was that we work with each other and see how the music influenced the painting and vice versa. The next year in 2018, we did our first performance at the Luv Michael construction site. One of our friends reached out and asked if we wanted to play at the new World Trade Center. That was another site-specific show, where we brought a few things but tried to use whatever we could find around there as props and pieces of the show itself. Just like our show today; we tried to use whatever elements we could find on the floor in the alleyway and incorporate them into what we were doing.
You’re both making art independently on stage, but the pieces are shaped by one another. Can you talk a little about how your components interact with each other?
Nikolai: We have a barebones idea of what we are going to be doing before we start. Musically, I have an idea of the track in terms of length—basic form. Once we get into the performance, a lot of it is not planned. At the World Trade Center, Pierre threw paint on my guitar and we had this silly moment where I was painting the canvas with my guitar. The idea is that we have these basic components, but a lot of room to have fun and be weird if we want to be—just be expressive and build off of each other.
You mentioned earlier that these performances are structured in 12 chapters. What does this 12 chapter structure look like?
Nikolai: I think it started with Pierre saying this French phrase, ‘C’est le moment ou jamais,’ which means roughly, ‘Now or never’ in English. That’s what we used as the name of the whole concept. The first one was called The Awakening, as it’s the beginning of our project and of us working together. The second chapter was the one we did in Miami, which was based on a Summer Moon song that hasn’t come out yet. Our third one was called Lakes of Fire, it was the one we filmed while in lockdown. Me and Pierre were Upstate and clearly weren’t able to hold a live event because of COVID, so we made do and pooled our resources to make this video chapter instead. We were at home with our family, so we used them to star in it. We have one called La Machine Infernale which will be released on video through Art of Elysium sometime in mid-to-late September. We also have a few other satellite chapters here and there, as you just saw.
What do all these chapters lead up to?
Nikolai: So there are all these chapters that we record and perform, and we’d like to have them lead up to some sort of event combining all 12 for the 13th one. It would be cool if we could do it somewhere like the Guggenheim, where we could have the past chapters wrap along the stairs going up progressively higher, and we perform at the top and bottom to show that the process repeats itself. If not there, then maybe somewhere else where we have each of the previous chapters in separate rooms, translating that concept to somewhere else. That’s what we’d love, but it’s sort of a dream at the moment that we are putting out into the universe.
What are the goals of Arts Elektra?
Nikolai: The overarching creative goal is to finish this whole sequence and get to the 13th chapter. The main goal, though, is to contribute to charity. Every chapter that we perform, we partner with a foundation that is meaningful to us or to people that we know and raise money for that cause. For example, at 42 Walker and the World Trade Center, we partnered with Luv Michael, which is a volunteer program that advocates for autism education, acceptance, and meaningful employment. Pierre has a personal history with them and they do great work. The chapters that are video will probably be with Art of Elysium. They’re great. They work with young children, helping to heal trauma and cope with personal struggles with music and art. For me, that is right up my alley. Playing music was a way for me to heal and deal with what was going on in my life.
Pierre: It’s important to us that we do something positive and help in a way that is meaningful. A thing we say a lot is, ‘Do music, do art, do good.’ It’s also important to us that we maintain the integrity of the project. We were talking about how it feels like a lot of the big corporate money in Manhattan has sort of disappeared for a while because of COVID, so we can actually do things like we did today in the alley. A couple of years ago we probably would have been told to stop. The city feels a bit like an empty playground for artists at the moment and it’s providing an opportunity to make things that are a little purer and more experimental.
Can you speak a little about the resourcefulness in your projects, particularly what we saw today?
Nikolai: The idea of using these site-specific happenings and the environments around them as components of the art is something that we like to explore. We try to use any elements that we find in the space or in the street to help create the vision. A lot of the time we don’t really know how we are going to make things work, so we search and figure things out.
Pierre: That crate today, for example. Someone threw that crate out right as we got there and it just worked out because we needed something to hold the art piece up. We also have a French background which I think influenced that. Our parents were European post-war people with a reuse and repair mentality.
It’s a very strangely DIY, punk rock thing.
Pierre: Yeah, I mean we are really green and into recycling, which I guess is a big part of that lifestyle. It’s maybe not our main objective but if we are promoting repurposing then that’s great. You might call it DIY, we might call it being resourceful. Like we said, the corporate money is out of the city and it feels like the city we grew up in. It was crazy and loud and colourful. It was more dangerous, and you had to contend with people trying to rob you, but it was also a time when you could go out and make things happen for yourself.