QUNK!

01 THE HOLY SELF / SEXY CYBORG ISSUE

by Ed Lorem Itor

SMITH Editor in Chief

The Pope Of Trash Gives Sermon

John Waters’ prayer to Pior Pasolini : juicy dogma to recite and learn

The pope of trash ( his holiness , his sleaziness) has delivered a sermon to commemarate his 75 years orrn gawds sweet earth . And before you gasp for breath, this isn’t a newsflash of the earth shattering revelation that Waters , in the winter of his life , has done the cliche turn of finding the lightthough now you mention it , the tale of an aged homo artiste , having lived their life in sin and tack, deciding to hang up their cha cha heels for good to become an all American bible basher does seem apt of Walters flick.

Instead , the Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble director has expressed his exalted adoration for another great film provocateur : Pior Pasolini.

Both pushed audiences ( and censorship laws) in the ‘70s for their outre cinematic exploits. Waters’ mode of transgression was camp ; posturing himself as the postmodern Oscar Wilde and taking Sontangs assertions of “spirit of extravagance” “love of artifice “ as gospel via the employment of grotesquley fabulous characters such as Divine, Mink Stole and Cookie Mueller in hyperbolic plot lines that combined sequins and big hair with bad sex, gore and violence.

Pasolini was the enfant terrible of the Italian neorealists , an intellectual libertine whose unsanctifying of cultural taboo was immortalised in his 1975 film Salo. A reworking of the Marquis De Sade’s 18th century novel 120 Days of Sodom , Pasolini transports the commonly touted “most depraved book of all time” to the no less controversial setting of Mussolini’s facist Italy. Torture, rape, beastality, incest and murder ensue ( to name just a few of the horribles )

Though both directors explored the dark tunnels of perversity wherein the human mind can plunge in very different fashions , there is one trope in their films that ties them together ; namely , the eating of shit.

Waters makes a pilgrimage to the Pasolini memorial site in Ostia, Rome. For those unclued , its also the site where he was murdered in 1975 by Pino “ The Frog” Pelosi , a seventeen year old sex worker he had picked up for an evenings rendezvous. Undoubtedly awash with the magnitude of this defied place , The Duke of Dirt offers us his musings , observations and wisdom.

Hot takes include:

“There is a fence to discourage entry but by whom ? Homophobic pasolini haters ? Anti communists ? Ex catholic lunatics like myself ? “

“Security guards - what are they looking for ? Action ? What they used to call public sex in the time of Pasolinis murder? Wouldn’t that actually be appropriate here ? “

“This place is more like the stations of the cross if you ask me”

“We’ve all had bad evenings sexually , so who knows what pasolini’s state of mind was when he picked up 17 year old hustler pinot the frog at the rome train station , offered him 20,000 lira ( worth about 30 dollars then ) , bought him pizza and drove him to a secluded area . For what? A blowjob ? mutual masturbation ? Rear entry ? indiscriminate rimming ? Only god knows for sure ! “

“Do I believe all the conspiracy theories circulating today that Pasolini was killed for political reasons ? Nahhh. I just think he had a bad trick”

“Who later claimed a bull shit gay panic defence saying he was freaked out because pasolini wanted to put a wooden plank up his ass. A wooden plank ? gimme a break even i haven’t fantasised about that !”

Did the frog put out that night before he crushed pasolini’s testicles, ran over him and then set fire to his body? I bet he did that sneaky little queer bait”

In all his quasi religious drama , Waters then falls to his knees ( whimsically pondering is he is mirroring the stance “ Pasolini may have that fateful night to offer gay for pay Pinot his misunderstood admiration”) to recite a specially penned subversion of the Lords Prayer ( see overleaf) to then be overcome by a Texas cable tv style mania of speaking and spitting in tongues.

Oh and FYI , the shit ate in Salo was merely chocolate. In Pink flamingos , Divine ate actual shit.

Image courtsey John Waters Productions

Oh Pasolini you are our father who refuses heaven

Condemned be thy name

Thy boyfriends cum

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in purgatory

Limbo and hell

Give us our daily head and forgive our trespasses

And we encourage those to trespass our asses with permission

Lead us to temptation and deliver us to our chosen evil

I believe in Pasolini the Almighty

Creator of salo and mamma roma

Who was conceived by marx , delivered by the future spirit of maria callas

Suffered under the catholic church and was assassinated and buried unguilty

He descended into cinema heaven

And sinneth at the right hand Torio Calchina

From hence he will come to judge the censors , the fascists and the fag bashers

I believe in Ninetto Devoli

The love of Pasolini’s life

No matter he layed her head both a wife and children

I believe in the Venice finale , the rome film festival , the forgiveness of the damned and the resurrection of Pasolini’s reputation

And life everlasting for his brilliant mind

Hail pier paulo , full of grace

The unassured are with you

Blessed art thou amongst directors

And blessed art the root of thy doomed jesus

Oh Mary ! Gay Mary ! lay with us sinners now at the power of our resurrection

Amen

Fabulations and Fragmentations

All images courtsey Izzy MacCallum

Izzy MacCallum’s art celebrates the queer self imaginary

The biomorphic sci-fi horror of Ridley Scottts Alien. The grotesque glamour of botched plastic surgery. The absurd idealisms of consumer culture. The sexiness of a vampire. The utopias and dystopias of speculative fiction.

For multimedia artist Izzy MacCullam , artifice is authenticity. And fantasy a means of revolt.

Working upon the notion of disrupting “ the ugly colononial and patriachal obsession with logic and knowledge as a means of control” , their work explores the many multiplicities and mythologies of the queer self , using the body as a site of imagined escapism , pleasure and camp sensibility.

MacCallums artistic language is one of high octane , visual excess. “I enjoy extremes in aesthetics’’ they say. Using themself as subject , they present themselves in a series of fragmented, neo-pop portraits ; garishly coloured and mixed with the images of cartoon and video game characters, along with religious iconography. The work is created in a process that the artist refers to as “transpainterism”- creating multilayered digital collages of photographs , performance stills and found images , printing them on canvas and then layering over it in a mix of inkjet, oil and paint in varying build up and degree. The portraits are intentionally distorted , close ups of features such as lips blown out of proportion until unrecognisable and uncanny . There’s a trippy decadence to the worlds created in the work, an artificial almost nauseating sugaryness , the addition of the figures of Lara Croft , Peppa Pig and Pingu adding to the absurdist , Bosch-esque madness.

“Images are turned up in the constantly evolving process, they become mystified with every jpeg reuploaded, painted re-photographed, distorted, recreated. Compressed jpeg of a jpeg. Excellently crude. Badder the better . Rebirthed. A Trash Renaissance” they say.

For MacCullum , the method in which they produce their art is just as important as the final effect . The hybrid of techniques and mediums reflects the cyborg and cyberfeminist influence of their work , as well as communicating the idea of the multifaceted and ever evolving self . Further , by mixing the ‘traditional’ materials of oil and paint with the digital, they aim to distort and satirise bourgeois perspectives of fine art hieriches and high/low culture. “Oil paint carries a very old school, prestigious, and problematic cultural, historical value” they explain , “In choosing to paint absurdist queer imagery I appropriate this grandeur and ironically, false status of the medium. In doing so it degrades the medium and takes the piss out of colonialist and patriarchal notions of image making, and the normative visual and content expectations. It’s a tongue in cheek anti-establishment play with low art and high art , a playful mockery in oil paints on canvas.”

They pose the questions:

“On a surface value is it the same effect as traditionally painted?

I have the skill to paint it by hand so if not, what then is the inherent difference?

Is there any difference?

Does a painting without the digital collage have more or less value?

Would it be perceived to have less value to viewers?

Or inherently have more value?

MacCullum adds that they think the conversations ( fixed ideologies may be more a more accurate descriptor ) surrounding the authenticity or ‘worthiness’ of digital or multimedia art in many ways reflect the conservative and black and white way of thinking that upholds the damaging belief of biological essentialism, meaning the idea that there are only 2 fixed genders. “There’s complexity of the works and worlds underneath.” they said “I find the questions brought up around the works can often act as a metaphor, paralleling conversations about queer, intersex and trans bodily autonomy, gender identities, and self-creation. I haven’t found queer people take a biologically essentialist view towards the process of these works .Artifice is no less true and no less real than a more naturalistic self, or work. Arguably the manufactured multi process work is perhaps a more developed organism in some ways”

Central to MacCullums work is the concept of fabulations . Sitting within a similar mode as magic realism , fabulations are in essence a blur of the fantastical , mythical and the everyday mundane. By self consciously violating the boundaries of real/ unreal , the fabulation satirises the world - and its encompassing belief systems and norms - which is upheld as the unchangeable and logical ‘reality’. More , opening up the possibilities if we were to think and imagine outside of that.

Specifically , MacCullum attributes their understanding of fabulation to the feminist thinker Donna Harraway ( author of A Cyborg Manifesto : Science , Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century ) , who described her interpretation in the the film Donna Harraway : Story Telling For Earthy Survival as “the making of fables...wild facts, facts that won’t hold still... Worlding which is often full of animals and full of critters who maybe don’t really exist. Full of creatures of the imagination, children and impossible worlds, but also full of adults. Full of the serious; speculative fabulation, science fiction, speculative feminism, the speculative fantasy of an Ursula Le Guin.”

The idea of the fabulation is intrinsically tied to MaCullums exploration of the queer self construction and mythologizing. Again emphasizing artifice as authenticity , the fabulated , mythologized self acts as a mode of resistance and reclamation, a way in which the individual can claim autonomy and create an identity outside of the usual expectationsand oppressions- of normative society. The control of your own image and narratives - and by extension , body - was one of particular significance given MacCullums experience as a queer sex worker. In this , their art is an expression of bodily autonomy , subverting the gaze and playing topsy turvy with the traditional artist / muse discourse.

This leaning into the fantastical and strange , drawing upon the mythical symbols of otherness , allows for the exploration of self(s) outside of the usual social and real world conventions. As Maccullum explains , “ [The] Othering of queer people has led the LGBTIQ+ community to identify more easily with non-human and non-normative characters, creatures and villains. [This is] because imagination enables escapism, and imagination is key to gay sensibility .Because of fabulations’ inherent freedom and openness of possibility compliments and can embrace that of queer identities and experiences.” . By framing identity as something that can be multiple , infinite and not necessarily grounded in ‘reality’, MacCullum has positioned the queer self within the realm of the carnival and liminal , their work aligning with the notions of Queer Futurism. “Hyper embodiment, [the creation of] personas, can transport the viewer out of the drab, everyday monotony, departing us from the here and now.” they say.

Timothy Morton , the queer ecologist , stated in a recent lecture that she defined counter fascistic artistic action as “ creating realities , beauty , irony and ambiguity” , further beauty as “ not as a subject/object duality ...but a mode in which things happen...it intrinsically involves uneasiness” . MacCullum has emphasised that their work is not just a matter of creating portraitures , but the creation of worlds. The imaginary self is given context , a place to inhabit ; the blur between the inner self and the outer reality is the point of expression. The mix and hybridity of digital with oil, paint and ink relates to this . We could even view the ‘traditional’ mediums as symbolic of the ‘real’ physical reality and the digital elements as representative of the cyborg possibilities of the fantasy space. Discussions around the ‘authethic’ real world self vs the projected cyberspace image are prevalent today , and particularly potent when we consider this within the context of the queer self and idenity ; where there may be disconnect and dysphoria between the self and physical body , and the possibilities of the cyberspace actually allow for more possibilities to project the ‘authenthic’ self.

This seemingly paradoxical - yet very true of many queers’ lived experience - notion held reverence for MacCullum , and was something they thought important to represent . “There’s significant ease in transformation with the digital, as opposed to the paint transformations which are much harder and laborious to translate, the ease in switch from one outcome to the other is certainly not equal, which is connected to the subject matter gender or physical bodily transformation.” they said. “The ease of digital transformations of the self are often a far cry from real life execution of physical transformations- be that fabulative, mythological bodily transformations- or of gender expression...the digital can allow ever evolving and realising expressions of self that your present offline reality may not.”

Queer repesentation within the cannon of western art is sparse. This is of course not surprising given the histories of european institutions and artistic circles are steeped in patriarchy and privilege; consider the Royal Academy only elected its first female president , Rebecca Salter, in 2019 ( a move 250 years in the making, and even then , being white , old and wealthy can’t exactly be applauded as a breakthrough in inclusivity ). MacCullum points to one of the most overt examples , depictions of the greek goddess Hermaphroditus in the classical world , noting “Though not without problematic points like perpetuating myths about intersex people , it’s still incredibly powerful experiencing beautifully made works of art, which to a modern day audience beautifully depicts a marginalised body, and a trans person could see as herself”

From A.D to circa Francis Bacon , it’s a case of decoding almost hidden ambiguously placed signs and symbolisms - things generally only the astute art historian could recognise , again perpetuating that art is only something the wealthy and privileged can enjoy. Although the hierarchies of the elitist art world are to say the least , problematic , MacCullum recongnises that better representation of queernesss and queer bodies in this ‘high brow’ ‘respected’ realm could have a powerful , trickle down effect . More , a subverting and claiming of that space. “Queer bodies in fine art have a permanence and a stillness, they command you to respect them” they say ,“Better representations in fine art are similar to better representation in everything. We don’t want to make a few tokenised people in the inner circle, we want art to be tangible and touchable by queer people without being watered down, passable or amicable.”

Crashing down from the glorious world of fabulations and fantasy , the reality of being a queer artist in the bricks and mortor physical world is *ahem* , a bit shit. MacCullum points out that these problems often start at University ; the lack of queer tutors , the lumping together of queer students during crits and group projects as if their gender or sexuality made their work inherently similar , and the presumption that because of their marginalised status , they hold the duty to educate the audience about ‘LGBTQI + issues’ . “ Which is a kind of colonialist , capitalist what can I get from this mindset , and drive[s] away pleasure for pleasure’s sake” they say.

Past graduation , the structural elitism and closed door mentality of the art world means that even getting your foot in the door is a struggle , it’s who you know not what you know nature of networking disproportionately favouring the nepotism of the already privileged and wealthy. Adding to that , it’s no secret that being an artist is not the most financially stable of career choices - bluntly , it’s easier to pursue your dreams and hone your craft when you’re safe in the knowledge that mummy and daddy will pay your rent. MacCullum makes the valid point : “How can queer people [be expected to] improve artistic representation when they work full time in cafes or bars? When do we have the time to make beautiful ground-breaking contemporary art?”

A great proportion of the solution is of course the necessary evil and constant devil biting at the heels of any creative - more money and better funding. “ I want to have shows and exhibitions, to sell to private buyers, earn a living. [ But] we need more queer art spaces , queer artists need money, our projects need more funding, and we need companies and institutions to not expect people to work for free.”

You can see more of Izzy MacCallums work at the Camberwell College of Art 2021 Graduate Showcase

( Re)Werk / (Re)Model

Gartruche is a self created , self informing icon

All images courtsey Gartruche Nunnick

Many fashion themselves on the image of others. Even those whose claim originality when pushed , or closely examined will show the evidence of some stylistic copy-catting. And who could resist ? We live in a world saturated with images of glamour and aspiration , of icons and idols. 200 years of photography has yielded an abundance of beautiful faces and outfits to fetishize , from the smoky eyes and cupid bowed lips of the Vampish silent movie star Theda Bara , the first ‘it’ girl, to the brand flexing digi-dolls of instagram grids today.

Before photography , there were still beauties that were famed and emulated - faces and outfits pedestalled as the era’s immortalised perfection. Pre the all seeing glare of the camera , celebrities and trendsetters were captured in oil and ink , their likeness , hairstyles and get ups crafted by the great artists of the day. It’s hard to think now that walking around a gallery was once the equivalent of swotting up on the catwalks for next season’s hottest trends. Who was painted that year equalling who was hot ? and who was not ? Now more than ever in the age of the internet it’s something that seems a novelty , completely redundant. But what if you twisted it ? What if the painting of the icon you’re emulating is one you’ve created yourself ?

Gartruche is a drawing , a character with features that are Area 51 via 90’s supermodel Amanda Lapore ; huge heavily lashed eyes , razor sharp jutting cheekbones and silicone plump lips , a huge alien perfect head resting on an insignificant , spindly body. Gartruche is also a 21 year old non-binary model living in London. Having moved here from New York three years ago to attend London Contemporary Dance School , they have walked for Art School and Charles Jeffrey and featured in a campaign for gender fluid, sustainable latex brand Studio FCLX. Oh , and they can be seen boogieing their socks off in a Studio 54 inspired short film for Gucci.

So Gartruche is both the person and the drawing . Confused ?

“ In simple terms , Gartruche is me.” the flesh and blood incarnation explains , accent still heavy with hey im walking here ! New York drole. “ Gartruche is a gender non-conforming alien, a character that i draw , i produce and i perform. I’ve created ways to characterize them by what they look like and how they act”

‘Gartruche’ as a name started as a pseudonym of sorts , a pen name to sign off the drawings they were creating of their hyper embodied , character. “ I was trying to figure out how to be my own kind of artist.” they say. “ I’ve taught myself through stylizing my work first and foremost before ever trying to make it realistic or be in any relation to anything else. I would sign it off at the bottom of the drawing , and somehow I realised that as the person writing that name and doing the drawing I was actually Gartruche . That we were the same thing .”

Even for those of us who have not gone so far to create our own avatars , our identities are of course constructed. We pick ‘n’ mix from our influences and experiences , glueing together the myriad of cultural puzzle pieces on how we choose to present to the world. Further, any queer worth their salt will wax lyrical on the artifice of gender .

* Insert Judith Butler quote here * . Having already decided to shimmy of the shackles of the boy/girl binary , the Gartruche character is very much linked to their non-conforming expression. “ Gender and identity are relatively the same thing for me . Gartruche is my gender in a way- performing them is very similar to performing gender , when I think about the attributes that make them up. [ It’s a version ] of myself that has no limitations , my truest form”

It’s the Hyper Self , a functional and actualized mode that seeks to bridge the disconnect between the sometimes dysphoric perceived reality. “ Sometimes I do experience dysphoria because naturally I will still view myself as ‘dead name’ [and with] my biological body” they say . “ Gartruche is their alien appearance , and alot of how I identify with my gender is alien , I don’t really feel comfortable being human or being natural. It’s a reference to trans-ness , how people change their bodies. The crazy slanted eyes, the massive cheekbones , them hyperfeminine aspects that are taken to the alien extreme.”

Gartruche is a true gen z , a digital native that moves freely between the physical world and the cyberspace. It’s also a time in which presenting the smooth edged, perfected digital self is nothing short of an expectation, and the dual realities blur. “My identity is so amalgamated with the internet.” they say. “ Creating your perfect self, the perfect instagram self. Beautiful in a way that is transhuman , to be perfect with no flaws ...the body almost mechanical”

Intrinsic to Gartruche’s character is the idea portraying the aura of an ‘icon’ ; a notion both heavily cliched and elusive. “ I love to think the creation of Gartruche is the creation of an icon. [ They are ] my own icon.”,they add ,“In a very stupid in satirical way”. Given this , it’s not surprising they cite Warhol as an influence : arguably the creator of the modern concept of celebrity with his much quoted idiom “ In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes” , propelling to fame his entourage of misfit superstars- the doe eyed manic pixie dream girl prototype Edie Sedgwick , transgressive rockers The Velvet Underground and their gothy songstress Nico , trans glamazons Candy Darling and Jayne Country to name a few - via mere association. Naturally , they also cite the influence of pop chameleon extraordinaire , Lady Gaga, as ,“ She was one of the only people I had access to as a kid that really was different and was vocal about that .”

And much like their idol , they have been ruminating about how it can be lonely at the top , even for now at least , being at the top is still a fantasy. “The constructed image ...the idealised Gartruche. I feel like sometimes people find it hard to relate on a more human and personal level because they are such a constructed concept of being so alien and different. I was watching Lady Gaga’s monster ball the other night , as she was crying before she went on stage because she still felt worthless , she was still absolutely nothing. I really resonate with that , because in reality Gartruche is still really nothing . All they have is this thing they have created which is fake . At the end of the day , at the end of the party , they don’t have anything else.”

Sarah Garfield : EMOtional Designer

Darken your clothes and strike a violent pose. In conversation with the emerging talent

All images courtsey Sarah Garfield

For Sarah Garfield , the creation of her final collection at Central Saint Martins in MA Womenswear ‘Catharsis’, was exactly that: cathartic. “ It was such a release for me” she says ,“ both emotionally , physically and creatively. I was in a lot of emotional pain and had felt depressed for a long time that I couldn’t fully express what I wanted to. So I was like this is me , this is my closure”

Like every single facet of our lives , studying fashion design in the time of covid has posed a myriad of challenges to the usual status quo of working . With university closures has come restricted studio access , a lack of hands on technical support , the task of trying to organise garment fittings and collaborators over zoom meetings and of course , the aforementioned emotional toil of living through a global pandemic while trying to create a fashion collection that’s the culmination of your lifelong passion and five years of rigorous hard work.

For Garfield though , they’re were some silver linings to the disruptions. Changes after all , even when not necessarily desired , can present the opportunity for reflection and better, innovation. On a practical level , she says she appreciated the extra time afforded when not factoring in the travel and daily pack up and set up of working on campus . Further , working through the creative process in isolation allowed her to form a more intimate relationship with her craft . “ I think in many ways the collection was stronger [ because of this] ...not being in the studio environment around other people , it was just me and my work”

The clothes ? “ Elevated Camden market”, in the *slightly sarky* words of her tutor. Garfield has reinterpreted many of the aesthetic tropes that fall under the heady -and black lace trimmed- umbrella of gothic , as she puts it “ a real delve into dark subculture” . In a colour palette of black , red and beetlejuice-esque humbug stripes , the decadence and overblown proportions of High Victoriana mix with the teenage angst ridden traschore of myspace era emo. Reworkings of leg-a-mutton sleeved , eye wateringly cinched circa 1890s jackets , smocked band t-shirts , artfully distressed patchwork knits and ethereal , asymmetric hemmed waterfall skirts . And of course the all important ripped tights , which came courtesy of friend and London College of Fashion student , knitwear designer Georges Trochopolous .

“ I used a lot of vintage lace , re-worked a lot of pieces , specifically knitwear. I hadn’t done knit before so I really pushed myself to do it, I literally started in lockdown and I love it!

“A lot of draping , I looked at a lot of uneven hems . I started doing it in my pre-collection , building up bias strips of fabric and draping them. It was all very instinctive.

“For the knit dress I did , the pattern came from all the draping I had done during lockdown. This was when CSM was open so I could pattern cut properly. And the top was hand knitted , I was really building up the knit. Georges did the panels , then I hand stitched it all together . It was so time consuming it was disgusting , I never want to make it again !”

“This shirt was made from draping as well. I found the fabric in Shepherds Bush market and I was obsessed with it. I bought a really small amount at first because i didn’t know if i was actually going to use it but then i went back to get more. I tried to do a pattern at first but couldn’t , so I just worked with draping until I was happy with it. The skirt was the same process of making square strips , that what the trousers were too , strips on the bias . It was just a continuous process of draping .”

The jewelry was made in collaboration with Others Are , an independent Glasgow based jewelers run by Kirsty Mcqueen , a graduate of the city’s respective art school. The shapes of the pieces were inspired by Garfield taking a trip to Edinburgh - the brooches , necklaces and pendants abstract reimaginings of the spires , gargoyles and decorative gravestones of the city’s medieval churches.

Garfeilds mooboards uncover the depth of her “ Delve into dark subculture” from which her influences are drawn . “ I looked a range of things - fine art, vintage couture.” she says , “ I just wanted to get everything I loved and put it together really, it’s not much deeper than that”

Images of noughties teenagers at a Slipknot gig sit alongside female punk icons Nancy Sturgeon, Cat Woman and Jordan Rooke, heyday music press editorials of Kurt Cobain and My Chemical Romance frontman Gerad Way and trad 80s favourites Sisters of Mercy and The Mission . Grainy 19th century ‘death portraits’ ; corpse sitters posed in their best garb for the flash of early photography , the morbid practice common at the time and in accordance with victorian beauty standards - for the women at least- where doll like fragility was prized , sometimes thought to capture the model at their best. Detailed annotations of the mourning costume seen in like also feature , with particular emphasis on the sleeves and bodice work.

“ There are things in my immediate field of interest and things I do go and actively learn about’’ she says. “ Like the mourning dresses , gothic literature. Things I haven’t been immediately exposed to and seek out”

Direct fashion inspo comes courtesy of archive catwalk snaps. Naturally Mcqueen appears - notably the ‘Joan of Arc’ and ‘ It’s a jungle out there’ collections , along with Junya Watanabe , Anna Deemelster and Olivier Theyskens.

More , the capturing of homemade creation inspired by a certain other designer of Antwerp fame.

“ This image was really important, I found it on Showstudio submissions , they have an archive of people who have done DIY stuff” says Garfeild. “ It’s meant to be an interpretation of Margiela but it looks nothing like [it] ! But I’m still obsessed , I love the patching of the patterns , and she’s so serious and got her teddy. In a way i feel it’s ‘very lockdown’ , [that] she’s in her shed wearing a dress she’s made”

She also notes the work of Rotterdam based photographer Ari Versuluis , best known for their ongoing project ‘Exactitudes’ ; a quasi social profiling of subcultural tribes , styles and tastes. Beginning in the late 80s documenting the skinhead and tracksuit clad gabber boys of his home city and now turning his lens to the e-boys and girls of London , the series explores the sometimes paradoxical nature of ‘alt’ culture looks - individualism transpiring to uniformity. Dmena Gvaslia credits ‘Exactitudes’ as a major influence on Vetements’ AW17 stereotype inspired collection.

With subculture informing so much of Garfield’s work , thoughts turned to how in the last year , many of the ritual goings on that we usually associate with making up youth cultural resistance have been made an impossibility. “ The clubbing element had been removed - the glamour, the dressing up” she explains. Further , what is , and how can we interpret subculture without these things ? “ My interpretation is that it became more raw , stripped down” she says , “ [and] this is quite a cliche thing to say , but I feel like [it] transferred itself to the internet”

“ I’m quite fascinated that people are creating these whole worlds from their bedrooms”

Garfield admits Tik Tok makes her “feel old”. Her early adolescence was spent revelling in the last days of emo , quintessentially knocking around Camden , watching Tim Burton animations and listening to MCR. “ I was 12 in 2006 so I just caught the end. I wish I’d been like 16” she says . “But I did get a taste of it , and i think because i did only get a little taste it made me more hungry [to explore it ] as a young adult”

Fashions of course recycle. Garfield’s pre-teen exposure to the emo subculture obviously left a lasting impression ; now in her 20’s , she’s exploring the imprints the era had on her , both in her personal style and designs. Although when the scene was at its peak , she was probably too young to even convincingly lie to the beautician at Claire’s she could get her cartilage pierced , her enthusiasm comes from a place of nostalgia, some lived experience . Yet now , through instagram and of course Tik Tok , we’re seeing emo style 2.0 . e-boys and e-girls - most of them not even on solids when The Black Parade was released - donning the smudged eyeliner , striped fingerless gloves and neon accented side fringes of the mid noughties. Mind springing back to some of the latest in Versuluis’

‘Exactitude’ series , what does she think of the revival of the fashions that informed so much of her formative years ?

“They always look aesthetically attractive , it’s an imitation and a lot more polished. It’s very manufactured , sometimes a bit too much. They’re interpreting it through a very filtered gaze”

“If you actually look at real pictures from the 2000’s a lot people actually looked terrible - there’s so much clashing, the hair looks burnt and the hair is terrible”

“[ However] everything that is referenced always comes from the past. I do think its good they’re reinterpreting and moving it forward”

On the subject of progression : needless to say , trends do not sit in a vacuum. With every new wave of youth constructing their image , perfecting the hodge podge algebra of reinterpreting, reduxing and recycling the looks of fashions past to get the one that just feels right to them comes a reflection of how they see ( or want to see ) the world around them . Clothes can have a rupture inducing power , and from the high hairsprayed do’s and makeup theatrics of the gloomy post punk rockers in the 80s to the headline creating moral panic over the tightness of skinny jeans circa ‘07 , as Garfield says “Goth is pretty queer”. Aside from the more literal ways this can be conveyedsuch as casting and styling - in her work , this mood translates via the playing with elements that are usually categorized as traditionally masculine or feminine , “ I’ve got a lot of stuff which is a mixture of super elegant and super aggressive... there’s a gender mix, a crossover” .

Acknowledging the current mainstreaming - some may argue tokenisation- of the ‘ androgynous look’ she adds , “ [ Although ] there are alot of brands promoting themselves as that it feels really lost...I do think my brand has an authentic connection”

There’s also the element of sexuality , and more how her designs play with the complicated nuances of intimacy. Further, symbiotic with the current state of her relationship with it. “It is important to me that my work is ‘sexy’, [but] it became more focused on emotions , not just sexually charged .”

“ I don’t like clothes completley devoid of sex, I just dont find them intresting or desirable”

With Garfield now done with her studies , thoughts have turned to the future of her brand - how she can be the one evoking desire with her clothes. She’s savvy to the fact that the all guns blazing , avant-gardism and experimentation that can get a graduate hype doesn’t necessarily translate to a designers long term commercial viability.

“ I’m starting to think of ways to produce stuff that’s more ready to wear , because of some of the pieces were so labour intensive it would be ridiculous to reproduce them” She highlights knitwear ,scarfs, gloves and the ruched band t-shirts as things she could push , along with taking some of the more decorative accents of her work - such as mohair and lace trims- and rendering them onto simpler designs. The plan is to stay in London and get a capsule range together by the end of summer.

“I feel like there’s so many avenues I could go down and now I’ve got the time I can properly , and do it at my own pace. I feel so fortunate to have so many tools at my fingertips , like the ball is always in your court, y’know ?”

Ever Heard of A Rapture? is a trash core and glitter heavy vision of every parents nightmare.,taking inspiration from the angst ridden and sicky glamour of the films of 90s queer cinema darling Greg Araki, the dreamy hopelessness of Virgin Suicides and the sugary debauchery of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antionette , along with the the all out revelry and hedonism of noughties teen drama Skins. Created by the aptly named George Apocolypse , he has assembled a cast of gorgeous misfits and crafted a world of glitchy , disgusting decadence.

Visit QUNK!’S Vimeo platform to see the fashion film created of behind the scenes footage , featuring sonics from DJ Antimanifesto.

cyberfeminism : chopped and S C R E W E D

image courtsey Valerie McClaren

Coder. Writer. DJ. Cybernetic Pixie.

Valerie McClaren reconfigures , chops and screws the 1991 VNS Matrix’s Cyberfeminist Manifesto for now.

Followed by Q and A.

Q&A

How would you define cyberfeminism ?

Cyberfeminism lives in the fluid connections of new media and human-computer interaction, in the impermanence, the slippages of genre, a website, a reactive installation at a pop-up gallery.

I wouldn’t define cyberfeminism personally . Cyberfemininism has no specific content, ; it only functions within a 90’s paradigm, that requires one to engage with an internet that no longer exists. Cyberfeminism was killed by its own naive self awareness.

Engaging with cyberfeminism asks you to shed the prevailing social myth of contemporaneity, of being on time, current, in that suspension tank between past and future. Doing cyberfeminism in 2021 is a suspension of disbelief, more of an archival project than an ideological position, it is an excavation of hopes already dashed in search of new possibilities, a project attempting to sidestep the preclusion of potentiality that flows out from the material conditions of the modern internet (corporatised, monopolised, advertised) that make a position of hope at best naive and at worst completely untenable.

Engagement with cyberfeminism is for the purpose of extricating oneself from the hopelessness of digital culture through a set of visions of an internet viable as a terrain of struggle, of liberation. personally.

What was your methodolgy when approaching the original VNS Matrix manifesto ?

I tried to treat the anti-theses as a series of questions rather than the negations they are.

A lot of the first wave movement was centred around the optimism as felt around the internet pre the dot com bubble burst. In your opinion , what points from the original theorists are now obsolete , what has changed and shifted , and what new methods of approach/ understanding do we need ?

I really like the application of the ‘waves’ that feminism has into cyberfeminism. Engaging with cyberfeminism in the present is to hack the wave algorithms of the digital ocean, to use legacy code to unlock potentialities that have since been patched out of the latest ‘stable release’

the internet in the 90’s, viewed in part through chrome tinted goggles,, was a domain of free ideas, as opposed to the modern internet, a space where commodities escape, become unmoored from physical scarcity, everything is infinitely reproducible (dated as of the NFT). The dot com bubble for me is the point where cyberfeminism collided with the materiality of capital and shattered against that impenetrable wall, it was the moment when the internet was placed under the jurisdiction of corporations, domain names became investments, property, had value to the value-makers, and thus the avant-garde was expelled, there was now a price to engage with the internet as anything other than a consumer, the first search engines; under the illusion of ‘bringing everything together’, making the internet ‘easier to navigate’, in actuality flattened and centralised the process of discovering new spaces on the internet, they installed a freeway on the digital ocean that made surfing so much more difficult.

Google’s bias became the lens through which every user experienced the internet by default, you only see what Google thinks you want to see, websites that could respond to this change rose to the top and the avant garde was pushed to the abyss past the third page of a google search. We no longer even say we surf the web, if anything, we scroll (up>down, hierarchy) or browse (like one does shop shelves), the tesseract was flattened, digital portal to the unknown turned into a flat plane.

To be idealist for a moment, navigating cyberspace before the hegemony of search engines was like a fractalized rabbithole, its shifting continuities were based on affinity and interest, there was a temporality to it. The internet has become ahistorical.. The id of the matrix has been castrated; or rather, sealed. This invisible centralisation of the possible modes of navigation through cyberspace is convenient for capital, it allows for censorship inside a system where the policing of ideas is incredibly difficult, anyone can host a server, but not everyone gets shown on google search results, cybernetic capitalism’s runaway system was recaptured in the year 2000’s after a decade-long war of attrition on an infinite plane, not through conquest but through control of the very engagement one can have with the terrain, which was packaged as this like individual power to see anything the ‘heart’ desires. Google is horse blinders marketed as agency, a conflict being rendered more and more visible recently as google’s neutrality becomes a difficult notion to defend, technology is at once the most ideologically loaded and the most meaningless, a technology can be co-opted, detourned, more easily than any idea or piece of media, but when designed with a purpose, it forms a completely seamless integration of medium and message, amplified by a unity of intent in the technologies that surround it.

Your a coder, what are the potentialities of coding in relation to cyberfeminism ?

cyberfeminism is really fun in relation to coding as its genesis was basically the first the thing about coding is that its possibilities are in one sense made infinite, but in another infinitely limited, by the scope of the language one is using, all coding languages are a way of making binary useful in a particular use-case. cyberfeminism realises this, and creates the first initiatives to get more women into coding. Coding is in one sense really liberating because it makes computing legible, thus accessible to humans but in another sense is really insidious in the ways that it encodes ideology into that very form of our engagement, bias is treated as though it disappears when the code is translated down to binary, the dualisms of 0 and 1 are unchallenged, the transistors escape analysis and the authorial bias becomes impossible to trace

Will the internet ever truly be anarchist ?

Cyberspace is a fantasy, an imaginary plane onto which we can project hopes, potentialities. Cyberspace is a thought experiment whose only prerequisite is a suspension of disbelief. One has to believe in cyberspace as a terrain outside the physical to envision free space; cyberfeminism, for me, is a studied suspension of disbelief. A materialist analysis of cyberspace is an abortive project, once we factor in the physical (the server farm, the lithium mines) digital space is exposed as not at all separate from meatspace, but where’s the fun in always being correct?

Cyberpositivity is only feasible from an immanent digital perspective (hope requires some degree of naivete), you have to throw yourself completely into it to see the potentialities, materialist logics only hamper the experimental nature of cyberfeminism, one needs to have tunnel vision to fully explore the digital and its potential; it is a given that digitality is founded on the oppressive structures of society but to attempt to disentangle the digital from cybernetic capital is to waste your energy, digital anarchy and experiments in freedom through cyberspace must reckon with the rotten scaffolding, but must also take on the futile task of building an outside from the master’s bricks, we can host our own servers but the cobalt in our microprocessors comes from Congolese death-mines, we must on the one hand reckon with our complete subsumption into the fucked ethics of technology but on the other hand use the tools that these self governing oppressive structures produce to fuck shit up. The internet is nothing but also everything, Big Data may have set up a panoptic tower in every interface but that should not stop us from always trying (and failing, but trying again!) to subvert it at every turn, we can strategically fuck up the SEO algorithms, make the predictive algorithms slurp every drop of our data-vomit.

We may never have the free reign we once had on the early internet again, we can never surf the way the 90’s cyberfeminists could; that era is inaccessible, erased both by the ways we are taught to engage with the web and by the increasing control capital has over what is visible in cyberspace, the centralisation of web navigation has closed off so many modes of traversing lines of flight through cyberspace, but the more centralised a cybernetic system is, the more impactful sabotage becomes (every data analyst knows this), an anarchist engagement with networks should be a hacker mentality, a spanner in the repositories, decentralisation has become anyone’s game, cryptocurrencies exemplify this, the once-revolutionary dis/organisational framework of decentralisation has now become a founding tenet of technocapital, morphed into an atomisation of nodes, there is no intrinsically radical technique for engaging with the digital, it’s all about how the techniques are used, be it counterintuitiveness or just plain inefficiency. Solanas talks about unworking, doing work badly to gum up the gears of the patriarchal machine, and I feel that the best way of resisting capitalist hegemony over the digital is to make tools that they can’t use, ugly programs, broken games, useless AIs, introducing elements into the digital space whose assimilation is a fatal error.

Liquid Sky:

New Wave Hallucinations and Sex

Abombinations

Chaotic musings on otherness and the monstrous feminine in the cult classic

All Images Liquid Sky (1982) , Distrubuted Cinievicity , Dir. Slava Tsaukerman

Sex! Drugs! Aliens! Electro!

“ I kill with my cunt !” snarls |Magaret , the bisexual drug addicted self proclaimed slut and model whos fashionably andrognous body is now playing host to an endorphin feeding micro alien. The hungry little being , hailing from a never specified outer space nether , has transported itself to the avante garde underground of New York’s punk scene , searching for a fix. Knowing as any culturally astute cynic does - that where creativity is , drugs follow- the alien has come not just to hang with the cool kids , but to steal their heroin , or more specifically , feed by osmosis off their opium haze high. However upon arrival , the alien discovers it prefers the taste of a more organically produced chemical kick ; the hormones produced during orgasm. And when they feed , they kill. So now Magaret, trussed up in all her Bowie-esque glory and saved by this morbid fate cos y’know , men are awful at making women cum , will kill anyone she has sex with. Le petit mort is turned grand.

A fabulously jarring psychedelic trip of a film , Liquid Sky is nearing 40 years since its initial release. Combing all the elements of a sexy/edgy romp - fashion, music, drugs, intercourse- with the surreality of B movie sci-fi , the cult classic was the creation of Slava Tsukerman who directed , co-wrote and composed the films synth laden kraftwerk go to the circus sounding score. Having morphed from another of Tsukermans projects - a Les Yeux Sans Visage adjacent tale of girl-becomes-cyborg-experiment-of-crazyscientist-father titled Sweet Sixteen - the flick first premiered at the Montreal Film festival in 1982. It sits within the realm of the midnight movie , trashy fur coat hiding some rather societally probing knickers.

Liquid Sky’s plot may centre around the never-seen alien , yet what it’s really getting at is the subject of alienation , the aliens closer to home . The drug addicts , the queers , the new wave punks , themselves looking like they may as well have come from another planet , day-glo makeup and outlandish outfits a freakish hallucination against the grey , blood spattered concrete of pre Giuliani New York. The cohort of characters within the film , the belle epoque of otherness. We are let into their world in an almost voyeuristic sense- though this effect may be in part due to the intentionally naive camerawork- the dirty cramped apartments tarted up with neon lights and kitsch nick nacks , the basement clubs evoking more the seedy mechanical detachment of Nightclubbing by Iggy Pop than the disco bop of Nightclubbing by Grace Jones ( released a year prior to the film, fyi ) . It’s a world that on first glance looks a dream , a playground of bohemianism . Clubbing every night! Fashion shows in the club ! Sexual liberation ! Sexual Freedom ! Gender fluidity ! Everyone looks fabulous ! Everyone is high !All! The ! Fucking! Time ! Margaret is bisexual , living with her dealer and performance artist girlfriend Adrian. They’re in a (seemingly) open relationship, and Magaret has, along with her knowing disregard of feminine norms , a liberated independent woman , disregarded the expectations of how a woman should behave sexually. She’s also seemingly well read on cultural theory. When her acting teacher , a psuedo woke slimeball from the acid generation ( who she’s fucking ) starts on a proto beam me up softboi rant about her ensemble ( which is bomb : suede patchwork mini , blue beetle crusher platforms , makeup a la mondrian) saying she ‘looks like a hooker’ and would ‘look better in a turtleneck and jeans’ she quips back “ you dont understand do you ? At least a hooker is independent , i’m no victim “. When he continues on to some eye-roll worthy generational one up manship , she replies “ You thought your jeans stood for love, freedom and sexual equality. At least we know we’re in costume”

But Liquid Sky isn’t a flag fly for a brave new diamante studded world. Though posturing herself as libertine , the sexual liaisons Magaret has would be described as a grey area at best. Her girlfriend Adrian is cynical , cruel to her , mocking and caring more about how much dope she can peddle than intervening when her lover is being coerced by sleazy men in plain sight ( the pop freudian explanation would be she is jaded by a childhood with a psychotic mother) . Amongst her scene , she is both praised and mocked ; her look attracting gaining subcultural kudos and simultaneously ridiculed within it. The paradoxes of time and place are laid bare .The sexual freedom afforded by second wave feminism just a decade or so before ( the generation that thought jeans stood for love , et al) weaponised by the patriarchy to the mean the constant expectation of sex - not submitting and run the risk of being labelled gauche and unmodern. Further , she dresses like a hooker so is asking for it - the Madonna/ whore complex stays constant. In the micro society Magaret inhabits same sex couples and genderfucks are accepted and unquestioned , not worth batting a heavily mascara-ed lid at . But yet again , flower power utopianism is exposed as a pipe dream- having more opportunity to love who you want hasn’t necessarily equated to people giving or receiving any more of it. Reflective of a generation that deified the effeminate art rock outputs of late 70’s pop and who’s coming of age erupted parallel to punk , Magarets image is one of shock factor bricolage and confrontational glamour. More she is of the assertion , a product of the postmodern post-war years , that her style choices are rooted in a statement of individualism and ritual defiance . She has come to New York under the fairytale pretence to escape the stepford wife trappings of her sweeter than sweet Connecticut upbring - to express herself , be who she wants to be , break the mold. Eye wateringly cliche yes , but it holds true and doubtless was a less tired line in the 80’s. Once she has found her fellow creatures in the concrete jungle , thinks she can now wear whatever she wants , they still judge her appearances- showing the contradictions of how subcultures’ resistances through rituals becomes codified stylistic expectation, punks pseudo political elitism mixed with the image conscious commodification of new wave.

Magarets body is the site from which the whole film revolves. Her body out dancing in the club , frenzied shapes like robotic Rites of spring. How she decorates it. Her body ingesting drugs and fucking. And of course , the alien parasite inside it. The scientist who has been studying the alien phenomena - he has observed unusual deaths in punk circles- and now upon knowing its location , watches Magarets through a telescope in his apartment ; the gaze clinically detached with more than a hint to Rear Window perversion. She is framed as animal , creature, an oddity unhuman so therefore allowed to be examined as such ; exotic and both equally feared and eroticized. On her are projected the patriarchal systems fears , and as such she is a figure encompassing the trope characters of the monstrous feminine in horrors cannon.

Sensuous and with a face near only seen under artificial lighting she is the vampire , existing and destroying at night. She is the Succubus , possessed , an evil seductress daemon. The deadly girl/ boy hybrid - a woman armed and weaponised with the beast like sexuality of a man , an androgynous confuser unleasing in her lovers something deemed more grotesque than a junky invisible alien- a suggested lean towards bisexuality . The sex binary play is exemplified to meta point with the inclusion of character Jimmy - played by the same actor as Magaret, Anne Carlisle- failed hook up turned model rival , her masculine doppelganger. And most overtly , she is the Vagina Denatus . The venus cock trap , a killer cunt.

“ Whether I like someone doesn’t depend on what genitals they have , as long as i find them attractive, don’t you think ?” is Margaret’s point of view. Though once she becomes aware of her astro given ‘power’ , she retailates at the world trying to fuck the hetro into her ; transformed into the patriachal antichrist, a castrating man killer , punk Kali. Just after that infuriating drip of a monologue she destroys her acting professor . Lying on his bed framed with a subversive neon ring lit halo - is he a martyr of men ? Sacrificed for the feminist cause? - she gives him his last squirt of pleasure and he is left truly, forever breathless with a suitably phallic ice-glass shard through his forehead. Adrian comes home to to crime scene , and after a characteristically deranged display of attempting to cowgirl style the corpse, delivers these lines :

“So your dead now Shit

And your going to hell

Straight from your marijuana jungle

Straight from your lies, lies, lies, lies

You dropped dead fucking

It suits you well

You go to hell

We’ll go to hell

I’ll go to hell too

But i know i’m damned and you never knew

So you weren’t ready to go to hell

For me it’s easy

I’m not dancing in marijuana jungles

I live in concrete mazes , stone and glass

Hard like my heart

Sharp and clean

No romantic illusions to changing the world

I don’t lie to myself that love can cure

Because i know i am alone

And you fought that every day you lived

You lied , lied , lied, lied

You go to hell

Suits you well Shit”

Later there’s a fashion shoot.It’s on a skyscraper rooftop and Magaret and Jimmy are modelling , along with all the other faces of their ‘it’ crowd for the fictional Midnight Magazine . From the hype and clamour we can deduce this is the hottest publication , and the editorial is a fever dream of shoulder pads , extravagant gowns and kabuki style makeup. Between look changes Magaret and Jimmy start arguing , identikit bleached blonde quiffs bobbing and angular jaws verbally spitting at each other. The other models and shoot team , picking up on the tension in the air join in on the taunts - fashion bitches love a cat fight - surrounding the two in a mob-like ring as if betting on a * ahem* cock fight. Feeding off the animosity with glee , the circle start shouting encouragements for them to hate-fuck. The voyeurism is uncomfortable and sickly. Margaret , now seething with rage and knowing of her skills, starts to try and seduce Jimmy ( “ You are the most beautiful boy with the most beautiful cock”) , him feigning nonchalance at first but then giving in . He is a man after all and cannot turn down the prospect of a cheap thrill. She fellates him annihilation, proclaiming to the confused and horrified crowd , “ I kill people who fuck me. I kill with my cunt. Write about it Midnight Magazine, I’m going to be the next sensation!”

Because if sex sells , so does death.

“So I was told I should come to New York Become an independent woman

Thoughts Written Upon The Onset Of My Awakening From The Eternal Comedown

Poems by Esky Safarsh

images film stills Awakening From The Eternal Comedown , courtsey Esky Safrash

Esky Safrash is a 21 year old French / Persian multidisciplinary artist.

An exorcise in the magick self imaginary, the poems were written during the production of their short film Awakening From The Eternal Comedown in spring this year , functioning as both personal narration and a reflection on the works themes of death, re-birth and growth , the power of ritual and the human willingness to heal. Further, they capture the sometimes seemingly paradoxical nature of that willingness - the self deprecation , the painful existentialism , the violence of the self purge- in lucidly visceral detail.

“ I see the poems as if i was narrating and reading them to heal a body that was poisoned with venom , and [to] start the process of separation from this infected part of their body so the rotting flesh doesn’t expand to all the other organs or body parts”

Both the film and poems will form part of a larger body of work they are creating titled Being Broken Hearted Is Just A Losing Game , which will premiere this summe