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INDIGO 2

Thursday, 23 February 2017

F I L M & TV 3, 4 & 5 A look at the Oscars: A lowdown on the best film nominees Has the Academy has included more film genres in its selection?

How acceptance speeches can become political: Asghar Farhadi and the Trump travel ban M U SI C 6 Anohni: one person, two genders – Best British Female and Male nominee F O O D & DR I N K 7 What is causing the vegetable shortage?

BOOK S 8&9 The relevance of 1984 in today’s world of alternative facts V I S UAL AR TS 10 & 11 Crossing oceans, breaking boundaries: how is the art world responding to the migrant crisis?

F ASHI ON 12 Interview with the President and Vice-President of DUCFS: reflections of the show T R AV E L 13 On ‘finding yourself’ through travel STAG E 14 Modern uses of staging in the West End F EATUR E S 15 Life as a post-grad: an alternative view of ‘student life’ C R E A TI VE W R I TING 16 Visions of the Future

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any people feel that culture and art have little bearing on the important aspects of life like economics, politics, and policy.

How could a bunch of movies have as much of an effect on the daily lives of people in the same way that banking services can?

While bread and butter issues are important, it is also crucial not to underestimate the power that culture has over us.

Culture permeates all aspects of our lives in ways that money or policy can’t, and affects changes in us on a deeper level that no interest rate change from central banks can affect.

One example I like to highlight is the dominant ‘ideology’ of meritocracy and social mobility in America – the ‘American Dream’.

While it may seem like just a nice abstract idea to have, academics posit that it is this idea that causes the American economy to be more dynamic, bouncing back more quickly after economic catastrophes.

New Orleans gets hit by Hurricane Katrina? The city of Detroit hollowing out due to demographic changes? Americans will just move and find opportunities elsewhere.

On the other hand, if Milan or Paris were to ever be destroyed by an earthquake, their respective countries would probably galvanise their entire state to rebuild these cities exactly as they were down to the last brick.

There are many other micro-sociological instances of how ‘ideas’ affect the world in ways hard policies can’t.

This is why cultural commodities – like movies – are important, as it is the ideas they propagate that really change the world. And this is why political statements made in the cultural sphere are arguably more powerful: because they touch a part of people that no other medium can touch.

Film & TV examine the Oscars in this light, scrutinising the ongoings and examining the exchange of ideas at the event. While we expect them to be publicly against President Trump, how this plays out is anyone guess.

IND IGO E D ITO R S YC Chin Olivia Howcroft (deputy) FE A TUR E S E D ITO R S Sophie Paterson Matthew Chalmers (deputy) C R E A TIVE W R ITING E D ITO R Anna Gibbs S TA GE E D ITO R Alison Gamble Christye McKinney (deputy) V IS UA L A R TS E D ITO R S Lolita Gendler Lucy Sara-Kelly (deputy) BO O KS E D ITO R Aaron Bell Tamsin Bracher FA S H IO N E D ITO R S Victor Schagerlund Emma Denison (deputy) FO O D & D R INK E D ITO R S Divya Shastri Robbie Tominey-Nevado (deputy) TR A V E L E D ITO R S Naoise Murphy Charis Cheesman FIL M & TV E D ITO R Simon Fearn Olivia Ballantine-Smith (deputy) M US IC E D ITO R Bethany Madden

YC

Cover illustration: Olivia Howcroft

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FILM & TV Thursday, 26 February 2017

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Oscar’s Special Welcome to Film and TV’s Oscar’s special!

By Simon Fearn Film & TV Editor film@palatinate.org.uk

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re the Oscars even relevant any more?

Do the preferences of a panel of industry elite really determine a film’s worth? Guilty confession time: I have only seen two of this year’s nominees (La La Land and Arrival). Has anyone seen Hell or High Water or Hacksaw Ridge? Does anyone want to?

Thankfully, Saskia Simonson is a much more diligent cinema-goer than I am, and is on hand with her verdict on this year’s Best Picture nominees and which look set for victory (over the page).

Daniel Gibson, on the other hand, is fed up with instantly-forgettable films begging for awards recognition. For anyone sick of being unable to enter a cinema from December to February without having a weighty biopic or Big Issues drama shoved in your face, you may have found a fellow sufferer (over the page).

Finally, our new Deputy Editor Olivia Ballantine-Smith is on the Donald’s case. Can an acceptance speech really make a difference when each day seems to bring a new outrage from the Oval Office? Olivia is thankfully in an optimistic mood, arguing that a little empathy goes a lot further than a grand political statement (opposite).

I shall leave you to enjoy our veritable buffet of cinematic treats as I desperately pray that the Gala will screen Moonlight...

Photographs (left to right): Mbis257; Werner; Gage Skidmore

Manfred

By Oliva Ballantine-Smith Deputy Film & TV Editor film@palatinate.org.uk

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here are many, many things wrong with the new President of the United States’ (now temporarily blocked) travel ban. Clearly, there is a lot more at stake than just Holly-

wood.

However, Hollywood is also affected – specifically Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman has been nominated in the Best Foreign-Language Film category.

Farhadi said in a statement to the New York Times that he will not be attending the 2017 Academy Awards on 26th February because of the travel ban, “even if exceptions were to be made for my trip.” He sent a blunt message against “hardliners” and fanaticism, which we can expect to be echoed at the Academy Awards this year.

Hollywood is known for pointedly political speeches. In 1973 Marlon Brando refused to attend the Oscars in protest against the treatment of Native Americans, sending activist Sacheen Littlefeather, a member of the Apache tribe, in his place.

In 2000 John Irving used his speech for winning Best Adapted Screenplay to talk about abortion, and in 2003 Michael Moore attacked President Bush over the invasion of Iraq.

Most recently, Meryl Streep used her Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award to criticise Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter – without ever mentioning him by name.

Responses to such politicising are varied. Some maintain that actors are entertainers and should keep politics out of their work. Others believe that celebrities have a duty to use their public image to call attention to political causes or issues they feel strongly about.

Some speeches are more acceptable than others. A director winning an award for a film about climate change would be justified in using his speech to call attention to rising sea levels and deforestation. A director winning for a completely different film should probably not be making the same speech unless he wishes to be accused of paternalism and condescension.

The perception that the rich and famous of the entertainment industry are telling the uneducated masses what to think will not change people’s minds, no matter how many headlinegrabbing soundbites they use.

In this case, political speeches may irrevocably tip Hollywood over the brink, finally convincing the public that celebrities

are bleeding-heart liberals with no understanding of how the common man lives. Alternatively, they may begin to change the narrative.

The power of Meryl Streep’s speech came not from its politics, but from its empathy. In choosing to acknowledge one person – the disabled reporter Trump decided to make fun of – she brought her speech down to a more human level.

It is much easier to agree with a message of empathy for one person – and subsequently to change one’s behaviour – than it is to agree with a rousing speech about political ideas. This kind of speech does nothing more than make the people who agree with it feel good about themselves.

Asghar Farhadi’s refusal to attend the awards “even if” an exception is made is a declaration of empathy.

Farhadi’s refusal to attend the awards “even if” an exception is made is a declaration of empathy. His absence will be far more powerful than his presence.

What the Academy Awards need this year are similar acts of empathy from the other nominees.

Yes, most of them are wealthy and privileged, but most of them didn’t start out that way. And even if they did, it does not preclude them from using their art, and their position, to show empathy for those discriminated against as a result of ignorance and intolerance.

This year, the speeches at the Oscars are likely to be more political than ever. But perhaps what we really need is less politics and more empathy. Continued niggling between red and blue will change nothing. What we need, this year, is humanity.

FILM & TV 4

Thursday, 23 February 2017

And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to....

By Saskia Simonson film@palatinate.org.uk

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his year’s Oscars tale is one for the ardent dreamers versus the honest realists. There are of course a few of the popular dramas like Manchester by the Sea and Lion full of raw emotions, but several have broken free of this trend; chilling sci-fi Arrival, charismatic musical La La Land and Western Hell or High Water.

After last year’s boycott and Chris Rock’s #OscarsSoWhite speech, 2016’s cinema year saw more diversity across the board, nominating six black actors and three films based on African-American life for Best Picture, including Barry Jenkin’s Moonlight.

With the 89th Academy Awards only a few days away, here is a run down of the nine nominees for Best Picture.

Manchester by the Sea

by Kenneth Lonergan is the typical emotional drama that can clinch an Oscar. Casey Affleck is rightly tipped for Best Actor with his role as Lee Chandler, a tortured soul who, while leading his monotonous life as a janitor in Boston, is given guardianship of his brother’s son, Patrick.

It manages to radiate modest charm as Lee and Patrick help fix each other through their malfunctioning relationship and playful tiffs. It is both authentic and relatable and has you rooting for each character’s happiness.

Fences follows the struggles of black American life in Pittsburgh as Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington), cynical after his own chance at a professional basketball career was ruined, dismisses his son’s dream of becoming a footballer. August Wilson adapted it from his play and he provides a powerful depiction worthy of its Writing (Adapted Screenplay) nomination.

Unfortunately, it fails to move away from the original static stage layout and lacks the flashy cinematic filming of a Best Picture.

Moonlight has already picked up the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama). Although, the Golden Globes aren’t necessarily anything to go by and this coming-of-age drama could be compared to Boyhood, which missed out on the Oscar in 2015.

But Moonlight is certainly still in a league of its own. It’s an intimate tale of self-discovery, following African-American Chiron’s transition from a young teenager to an adult.

It is by no means a comfortable watch as Chiron suffers under his crack addict mother and school bullies. The confused emotions are mirrored by the artistic camera work and arc shots that merit its Cinematography and Editing nominations.

This film is a rare portrayal of the complexity of joy, love and pain, which shines brightly among its fellow nominees.

La La Land

took home a record breaking seven Golden Globes and is set to be this year’s frontrunner with 1/6 odds. This magical romantic musical is only director Damien Chazelle’s (Whiplash) third feature film and it certainly dazzled the critics on its release.

However, The Academy Awards have always been critical of the softer genre categories. Only one winner of the Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) at the Golden Globes went on to win the Oscar – The Artist – Michel Hazanvicius’ black and white silent comedy. Still, many comparisons of this Old Hollywood revival can be made with the traditional and quirky cinematic methods that give La La Land its charm. So we could well see history repeat itself.

Love film; hate Oscar-bait

By Daniel Gibson film@palatinate.org.uk

T

he Oscars are a strange beast. Somehow, their position astride the tail-end of February consistently casts a golden shroud over the films submitted every year in the three months prior; as though the Academy members have the collective memory span of a small child.

For the casual moviegoer, the slew of biographical dramas and theatre adaptations released each winter in the run-up to award season is a constant source of amusement. Or perhaps I’m just being cynical and Martin Scorsese really does have a yearly film-making Gantt chart that happens to end the week before Christmas Day. In any event, the clear preference of the Academy for certain genres of film has led to a distinct “Oscar-baiting” trend which now almost parodies itself. The formula is clear to see: the Academy vot-

ers have a penchant for biopics, triumphs against adversity and anything that stars Meryl Streep.

Big sweeping themes on race, sexuality or terminal illness are also major plus points for any wannabe Oscar nominee. The upshot of this is that we end up with three months of the year where it’s impossible to move for all the untold heroes whose stories are now making the silver screen, replete with a soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat.

Over the past decades, this template has been rewarded time and again by the Academy. And somehow, these films ring hollow as a result – sure, you’ll initially leave the cinema deep in thought about what you’ve just seen, but the sense of audience manipulation is palpable and the film doesn’t linger with you for more than a day or so.

Spotlight, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave and Argo have all won Best Picture in recent years, and are all good films – but have I felt compelled to re-watch any of them? Not one. The art of producing a film that you’ll appreciate but never want to view again

is something the Awards season appears to have honed to a T. The reasoning for this seems to be that the template for “this is how an award-winning movie

When I sit down to watch any Oscar-nominated film, I’m not filled with excitement, but rather with trepidation. I know what’s coming. We all know what’s coming. should look” has typically come at the expense of entertainment. When I sit down to watch any Oscar-nominated film in recent times, I’m not filled with excitement, but rather with trepidation. I know

FILM & TV Thursday, 23 February 2017

5

Arrival

Hell or High Water, a gritty Western come he-

The Weinstein Company, a well known offender of Oscar-bait in the 90s, has since seen its moviemaking formula lose its

Hacksaw Ridge,

is this year’s outsider. The alien thriller has a haunting edge lacking from most sci-fis, heralding its place as a nominee. Its contention is raised further by Amy Adam’s convincing performance as Dr Louise Banks, a linguistics professor, who is able to communicate with the extra-terrestrials. Nominations are rare and a sci-fi has never won Best Picture. The revolutionary Avatar (2009) was the only real contender for the last decade, so it seems unlikely that Arrival is ground-breaking enough to steal the Oscar.

ist, avoids all the clichés of a back-country crime drama. Director David Mackenzie and writer Taylor Sheridan play on the mantra that “good people do bad things for good reasons”.

In a wild Texan backdrop, Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner Howard (Ben Foster) commit a string of armed robberies in order to raise the money to save their mother’s ranch. Its 2016 summer release suggested its unambitious intentions for award season, but sets it as the feisty underdog.

the token war film, doesn’t offer anything new. It does tell the beautiful and true story of Desmond T. Doss, who joined the US army as a medic. In a brave act of pacifism, he goes unarmed into the Battle of Okinawa to later be awarded the Medal of Honour. It provides the moral aspect and Spielbergean feel that the Academy Awards value highly, while Mel Gibson’s graphic battle scenes make for an exciting watch. Best Picture, however, seems doubtful.

winning streak. Lion could be its next best chance. Saroo, an Indian boy adopted into a privileged Australian family, urged on by the calling of his former life in India, begins a quest to rediscover his family in India.

Garth Davis’ first feature film tackles the question of identity and belonging with stunning scenery across India and Australia but it struggles to maintain its command over the two-hour runtime.

Hidden Figures

deals with racial inequality, but tackles it in a much more light-hearted manner than Fences. This feel good film is a biopic of three inspirational African-American women mathematicians who struggled against the discrimination they faced at school and work, to play fundamental roles in NASA’s success in the 60s. It may not have the intrepidity for the Best Picture but it is impossible not to enjoy this cheeky film.

what’s coming. We all know what’s coming.

Some take the hard-viewing route, trying to leave us with a sour visceral taste and a horror at the depths mankind can reach. Others go for the feel-good, triumph of perseverance route; giving us a brief moment of cheer that’s cheapened by the knowledge that nothing is ever quite as black and white as the film shows. For whatever reason, the weight of a movie’s themes has become considered synonymous with its quality, and lighter yet more entertaining material is overlooked.

But this year has shaped up rather differently to its predecessors. At the forefront of course is La La Land, one of only two musicals (alongside Les Miserables) to be nominated for Best Picture – and a small shelf’s worth of other awards – since Chicago in 2002.

Whether this is due largely to the film’s Hollywood setting is a matter for debate, but the manner in which both it and the theatre production Hamilton have already captured the public imagination

over the past year means that musicals are very much back in the mainstream.

You could also be forgiven for doing a doubletake, but the film with the second-most nominations is (gasp) a sci-fi: Arrival. Whilst science-fiction films do make the list on occasions, they are typically palmed off with the Best Sound Editing or Best Production Design awards. Not so this time; Arrival is also nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay too.

That’s not to say that the standard biographical fare isn’t still present. Hidden Figures, ‘the untold true story of African-American female mathematicians behind NASA’s 1960s space programme’ and Hacksaw Ridge, ‘the untold true story of an American pacifist combat medic who refused to carry a firearm to Okinawa’ both have nine nominations between them.

What’s perhaps more telling is how many other films cut from a similar cloth have barely registered on the Academy’s radar. Gold, Bleed for This,

and The Founder have all been met with a collective shrug from the critics. Collateral Beauty and Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk were actively panned.

Even Scorsese’s passion project, Silence, has been released to just that from the Academy, with only a solitary nomination for ‘Best Cinematography’.

It’s entirely possible that the natural order of Oscar nominations will right itself next year as we are doubtlessly inundated by a fresh wave of biopics.

But alternatively, we may very well be witnessing a shift at the Oscars away from the standard cookiecutter ‘drama with a universal theme’ towards the inclusion of other genres. Who knows, one day an animated picture may be given serious consideration (I kid, that will never happen). Like the cast of La La Land, we can only dream.

Photographs (clockwise from right): Dale Robinette; Amazon Studios; Entertainment One; Studio Canal; Lionsgate; Entertainment Film; Altitude Films

MUSIC 6

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Anohni: The greatest innovator at The Brits

By George Stanbury music@palatinate.org.uk

O

nly one of this year’s Brit Awards nominees can claim to be winner of the Mercury Prize, and a previous nominee for Best Original Song at the Oscars. Any guesses?

David Bowie? Skepta?

The answer is one of this year’s lesser-known nominees, Anohni, whose trail-blazing ways have brought well-deserved recognition in the form of a Best British Female nomination. While this year’s nominations have been defined by the mainstream breakthrough of grime and the posthumous recognition of David Bowie, her story is no less significant.

Anohni’s career has been characterised by her public expression of her transgender identity, providing a voice for those who share similar experiences. Her music, bold and uncompromising, departs from the other nominees, striving to shine a light on marginalised sections of society.

Anohni, formerly known as Antony Hegarty, first sprung into the spotlight as lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons. I am a Bird Now, the group’s 2005 Mercury Prize-winning album, mesmerises listeners with introspective, disarming vocals and mournful strings. Revered stars such as Lou Reed and Boy George queue to lend their voices or instruments on the album, but it is the lead vocalist and her disarming honesty that steals the show. Songs such as ‘For Today I am a Boy’ and ‘My Lady Story’ provide humility and potency to the often trivialised emotional complexities and difficulties faced by transgender people and their pursuit for truly free gender expression. Lyrics such as “one day I’ll grow up, I’ll know whom within me” highlight a remarkable sense of clarity through a difficult time, grappling with the prospect of future fulfilment and self-satisfaction.

This seminal work gained a degree of mainstream success and a Best British Male nomination for Anohni, though this is a label she feels does not

Her music, bold and uncompromising, departs from the other nominees, striving to shine a light on marginalised sections of society. validly describe her gender.

Having worked with Future Feminism, a campaign group, she explained in an interview with The

Guardian that, “cowardice and shame” stopped her from asking people to call her “she” earlier than she did. When further drawn on the topic of her gender, she notes that “I don’t feel emphatically female, it’s more subtle than that”.

Armed with a more detailed understanding of her own identity, she adopted her “spirit-name”, Anohni, and set her sights on other issues of importance to her. In 2015, she provided the lyrics to the song “Manta Ray”, written for the eco-documentary Racing Extinction.

This song garnered an Oscar nomination, the second ever for an openly transgender person.

Having been refused an invitation to perform, she boycotted the ceremony, calling it an institutional reminder of her “inadequacy as a transperson”.

Following this, she set about creating Hopelessness, a protest album that pours scorn on the complacent greed of Western society, the damage of rapidly advancing technology and American foreign interventions. Gone are the strings, and the album has a distinctly claustrophobic electronic pop-feel, aided by the flawless production of Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never.

The album’s eponymous track startles the listener with a cutting refrain as she asks “how did I become a virus?” Moving beyond issues of gender, Anohni

Anohni’s home truths provide grounding and perspective by boiling polemical issues down to the deeply personal. seems more preoccupied with our place within an ecosystem, a dilemma growing ever more unavoidable. Her track ‘4 DEGREES’ is an apoplectic number, belittling climate change sceptics with an ire not seen in her back-catalogue.

Lyrics like “all those mammals, I want to see them lying, crying in the fields” paint the climate change debate in terms of pain and suffering, stripping down the issue in terms we can all understand.

This is continued in ‘Crisis’ where she humanises and gives depth to the growth of extremist sentiment by asking “if I killed your father with a drone bomb, how would you feel?”

In ‘Marrow’, the claim that “we are all Americans now” highlights a collective blindness to alternative views as we shroud ourselves behind our privilege. At this year’s Mercury Prize ceremony, her live performance was accompanied by a woman seemingly smeared in blood, uncomfortably juxtaposing the human cost of conflict with the privilege of a celebratory black-tie event.

With irreverence, Anohni gives a voice to those who are repeatedly silenced by Western media, positing alternative views simply and with devastating truthfulness.

Amidst the collective mourning of the end of Barack Obama’s presidential reign, her track ‘Obama’ decrees a legacy of “executing without trial” and “betraying virtues”. Her reference to Guantanamo Bay reminds us that nearly eight years after his promise to close the detention camp, it still stands and represents a damaged legacy.

In a period of such uncertainty, Anohni’s home truths provide grounding and perspective by boiling polemical issues down to the deeply personal.

A new EP released in March, Paradise, seemingly mocks a political landscape which, one assumes, will be eviscerated by her incisive approach. Whether she walks off stage with the Best Female or not, taking heed of her messages are, to her, worth far more than the prestige and success attached to her brilliant career.

Illustration: Katie Butler

FOOD AND DRINK Thursday, 23 February 2017

Sorted Food YouTube’s recipe guide for students

By Robbie Tominey-Nevado deputy.food@palatinate.org.uk

J

amie, Barry, Mike, and Ben are lifelong friends who, apart from Ben (a professional chef), have never possessed any culinary talent or knowledge, and it wasn’t until they started following Ben’s back-of-beermat recipes that they realised that cooking isn’t so difficult after all.

Now, 7 years on from when they first uploaded a YouTube tutorial on how to create homemade pizza, they have become the largest cooking channel on the site, with over 1 million followers. Sorted has developed as its own social media platform, using its website to host the recipes shown in the videos and as the focal point for a rapidly growing community of new cooking enthusiasts.

With a brand focused on mutual learning, the mobile app soon followed; it allows an in-depth food experience and a platform for content sharing, which is something which the likes of Instagram cannot offer.

SortedFood is truly a great starting point for any student who is slowly being driven up the wall by a monotonous cycle of £1 pizzas and mum’s bolognese, offering simple, healthy, and most importantly, tasty recipes that you can replicate at home with very little culinary expertise. Furthermore, the website is beautifully crafted, combining clear and concise recipes with some artful photography and graphic design.

In summary, the guys at the heart of this hugely successful channel are leading the fight against the disheartening revelation from the Co-op that a quarter of Brits aged 16-24 have no interest whatsoever in learning even the most basic of cooking techniques, citing the frantic millennial lifestyle that eliminates any chance of developing these skills.

Photograph: We Are Social via Flickr

7

Lettuce pray this greens shortage ends

By Reece Moore food@palatinate.org.uk

T

he cold and wet winter months have wreaked havoc on European vegetable harvests, especially in Spain, Italy and Greece. This has had a major domino effect on the prices and availability of certain vegetables in Britain such as courgettes and lettuce.

Various supermarkets have had to react to the current shortages by increasing prices, and in some cases rationing. For instance, Morrisons have put a limit on bulk-buying of iceberg lettuces since so many people were doing so due to shortages in other retailers. They have “imposed a two-lettuce limit and banned shoppers from buying more than three heads of broccoli per customer across its 492 stores,” The Independent reports.

Furthermore, The Co-op has, according to the BBC, asked customers to “shop responsibly”, but is yet to put any purchase limits on their products.

It’s not just in-store that is being affected, as online shopping has also seen some major changes.

Cambridge News claims that “iceberg, sweet gem and romaine varieties [of lettuce] have been taken off sale completely by some online stores.”

According to the Spanish Association of Fruit and Vegetable Producers (FEPEX), the current ‘greens’ shortage will probably last until April.

The UK is doing what it can, with a lot of the lettuces that are currently available on supermarket

shelves probably coming from the west coast of the USA. Of course, this could have major effects on our spending habits, and maybe beneficial ones. For example, Teresa Wickham, when appearing on BBC Breakfast said that “you could just go for frozen broccoli”, or you would have to put up with the high cost. This may force people to explore alternatives to their usual shopping choice, leading to greater variety, and possibly a reduction in future strain put upon vegetable farmers by very high continental demand.

Indeed, it isn’t just our diets that are at risk. Instead this is just another blow for those that already struggle to feed their family; never mind feed them healthy food. The Mirror reports that “shortages abroad are likely to increase wholesale prices here

of courgettes by 140 per cent, broccoli by 122 and lettuce by 63 per cent”. This could have a huge strain on already financially challenged families.

Various supermarkets have had to react to the current shortages by increasing prices, and in some cases rationing However, this is not something that has never happened before, though it doesn’t happen often.

Nature has shown that it has no care for the demand and supply mechanisms that we are so used to, and hopefully it will have a positive impact on the heightening demand and diet options of people in the UK and around the EU. On the other hand, if you can’t quite go through a couple of months without having your fill of crisp, iceberg lettuce, then do not fret. The Daily Mail revealed that there is a “hopeful entrepreneur… selling a box of iceberg lettuces on Gumtree”, of course there will be a bit of inflation, with the box of 12 lettuce heads going for a measly £50 (£4.16 each).

Photograph: (left to right) Gertrude K via Flickr ;Netstrolling via Flickr; Rootology via Wikipedia Commons

BOOKS 8

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Books gets all political 4 (or 5) writers on how Nineteen Eighty Four was always twenty seventeen...

FACTS

FA C T S

By Caitlin Allard

W

ar is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

FACTS

of our world today was TS outlinedTheby structure C Orwell in written in 1948.

FA These apparently 1984, conflicting statements

Image: Mariam Hayat

Oceania which offers lies as state sanctioned truth – ‘2+2=5’, ‘War is Peace’.

The plurality that is engendered by our ‘Global Village’ – the internet, social media, ethical relativism, ‘freedom of speech’ – is being exploited by Trump. Fragmentation is rife, certain minorities are being oppressed, and Trump offers not a ‘unified truth’ but ‘alternative’ realities. As we navigate our way through the myriad of possibilities, it is becoming increasingly impossible to know which narrative to question. Trump’s reality needs alternatives to give his version power. Blatant lies have thus become a form of political statement.

Orwell, in his proposed preface to Animal Farm, demonstrates the need to hold on to a society governed ‘By the known rules of ancient liberty’.

Let us not doubt our reason in an age of ‘fake news’, ‘alternative facts’ and ‘truthiness’ (‘presenting something which is not true as the truth’). Counter the lies with the facts. After all – what is the alternative?

S T C A F

TS C A F

Are we still slaves to the system? We become enmeshed within inescapable debts: student loans, mortgages, bills, whilst low wages in comparison to cost of living force us to sacrifice large amounts of labour to survive.To escape the system would mean losing a home, friends and family, so we are forced to remain working against our will. This system could be seen to provide freedom through direction, a course to follow to endure life. The inability of the people to recognise flaws in the system cements the power of the government regime. They must believe in false information whilst being aware that it is false, a concept called ‘doublethink’ illustrated by the belief that ‘2+2=5’.

The Trump administration specialises in very little, but it does in ‘double-think’, the sort of high concept game of truth or ‘truth’ that you can dismiss at your peril.

Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the president, coined the term ‘alternative facts’ to defend false statistics released about Trump’s inauguration. They’re lies, but when you don’t trust who defines the truth (as many apparently don’t), who is to say fact and alternative fact don’t enter the debate on an even keel.

There is hope. Independent journalism still exists.

Divisive policies are facing much rebellion; anti-Trump protests are continuing, and 4.2m people joined Women’s marches across the US at the end of January this year, partly in response to Trump’s policies on abortion and contraception. Sally Yates, now ex-US attorney general, defied Trump by telling justice department lawyers not to defend his executive order regarding the travel ban. We must be educated and vigilant, fighting against divisive policies and false facts to remain aware and independent, else face the depths of Orwell’s prediction.

TS FAC

D

uring Trump’s presidential election campaign, Matthew Norman wrote for The Independent that ‘the truth has become so devalued that what was once the gold standard of political debate is a worthless currency’.

With China’s ‘Great Firewall’ continuing to censor online access, with more than 80 journalists jailed in Turkish prisons after the failed coup of July, and with ‘post-truth’ voted by Oxford Dictionaries as its international word of 2016, it is not surprising that Kellyanne Conway’s phrase ‘alternative facts’ prompted hundreds to reach again for their ragged copy of Orwell’s political dystopia. Traditional distinctions between fact and fiction have become obscured; truth has become subjective; history a literary narrative, and language, more than ever, a means of political control. ‘How’, Matthew Norman asks, ‘did we come to [this] mass state of altered consciousness?’

Caitlin Allard, Anna Ley and Lucy Charlotte consider in their articles how Orwell’s warning Anna discusses the correspondence between ‘Newspeak’ has an unexpected relevance in 2017 as we face down the threat of ‘alternative facts’. Caitlin unpicks the foundations of the Party, revealing the mechanical construction of ‘truth’ by falsehood.

and Trump’s desire to control his own political narrative. Similarly Lucy describes how ‘Big Brother’ in the 21st century is a metaphor for the media which, she believes, has ‘an unprecedented ability to control every aspect of our lives’.

Is the future as bleak as Orwell’s dystopic novel foreshadows? Is (as Noam Chomsky argues) the notion of a ‘truth seeking media...a sham’?

Has our postmodern disdain for the truth translated into a limited and limiting view of the world?

There are disturbing points of comparison between today’s society and Orwell’s fictional state of Oceania. However, Trump’s America is somewhat different. Kellyanne Conway’s phrase ‘alternative facts’ implicitly acknowledges the ‘alternative’ is a deviation from its ‘fact’; she admits that there is another side. What is dangerous is that Trump’s administration does not care. Josephine Livingstone (The New Republic) argues that it ‘doesn’t even try to cover up its lies. Instead, it assumes that ideological divides among the Americans will ensure that the lies don’t matter.’ A far cry from the totalitarianism of Orwell’s

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By Tamsin Bracher (Books Editor) books@palatinate.org.uk

are explained in the book with striking accuracy, yet are based on fictional principles.

They can now be illustrated by our reality.

In 1984, three warring zones, Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania are constantly in battle, with perpetually switching alliances that seem meaningless. War is happening for the sake of war, directing citizens’ hatred in one direction to create unification in each singular state towards another, and creating direction for industry, producing materials for war. War creates a united, motivated society, with little in-fighting and a clear state of social order; in war, a society must act in a particular way, always preparing for battle. War, therefore, creates peace through order.

This can be seen in America’s constant determination to be at war with another entity. Trump’s war against Islam ignores the fact that between 82 and 97% of terrorist attacks have been targeted against Muslims in the past 5 years. This is because America needs an enemy to fight to retain its stability.

So argues the ruling government of Oceania: any person who is independent is doomed to fail, and when subjected to the collective will through slavery, one is free from danger and want.

BOOKS Thursday, 23 February 2017

LIES

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...Or maybe it wasn’t?

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Freedom for... or freedom from?

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ollowing the annus horribilis that was 2016, George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four has returned to the best seller lists. Over 67 years after it was first published it seems more relevant than ever, from the rise of Ministry of Truth-esque ‘alternative facts’ to fears of increased government surveillance infringing our right to privacy. However, the most pronounced parallels between Nineteen Eighty-Four and the society in which we live reveal themselves if we read ‘the Party’ and ‘Big Brother’ as a metaphor for the media rather than the government. Thanks to technology, and the fact that our ‘screens’ are so embedded into our lives (as the screens in Nineteen Eighty-Four are), the media has an unprecedented ability to control every aspect of our lives. It controls our language, with the universally understood emojis taking the place of the ‘newspeak’ of Orwell’s world. It controls what we find out about current affairs and the world around us, and our opinions on these things, and when it changes its mind we are somehow meant to forget that the opposite view was ever espoused, such as the change in attitude to-

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By Anna Ley Are we living in an Orwelian Oceania?

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rump’s ascendance to presidency appears to have driven dystopian literature to new heights, from Huxley to Burgess to Zamyatin, whose glass encased one–state society captures the transparency of just how futile the Communist regime was, consolidating an increasing public realisation of the hollow hyperbole of current political language, such as Trump’s declaration as the ‘greatest creator of jobs since God’.

But it was the again-bestseller, Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour, that specifically skyrocketed in sales.

Trump’s own adviser, Kellyanne Conway’s description of ‘alternative facts’ resonates, with frightful familiarity, with the vacuum of knowledge that is the ‘memory hole’ of Orwell’s Oceania in which inconvenient news is strained from our memories with a state controlled suction exerted by the ‘ministry of thought’. Trump’s speeches carry the rhythms of Orwellian Newspeak, ‘Black is White, 2+2=5, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength’ which is defined as ‘ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda’. Its very adoption into our language as a homophone for Kellyanne’s notion of ‘alternative fact’ suggests an increasing awareness of the dangers Orwell posed.

At the core of Orwell’s narrative is the notion of

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wards refugees in the Mediterranean in the Daily Mail – very reminiscent of Oceania’s shifting alliances in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The media even dictates which political parties get into power and the policies they run, blurring the line between politics and the media to the point where a TV personality can be voted President of the United States. Most worryingly of all, it dictates what we think of ourselves, and who we think we should be, making ‘thoughtcrime’ an all too recognisable phenomenon.

But perhaps Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is equally pertinent, in terms of the parallels that can be drawn with current events. The novel is set in a dystopian future in which America has become a totalitarian theocracy, where the only role of women is procreation and housework, and any non-conformists are publicly executed. As with Nineteen EightyFour, although the world created in The Handmaid’s Tale is still a long way removed from present-day America, the issues that it discusses are at least as relevant today as when it was first published in 1985. The institutional oppression and complete objectification of women in the novel, while clearly inspired by our not-so-distant past, could also be read as a terrifying warning of the potential conse-

quences of electing a president who appears to view women as sexual objects at his personal disposal, and who mere weeks into his presidency sits in an office of men signing away women’s rights to autonomy over their reproductive organs. And while noone would argue that America is a theocracy quite yet, the recent persecution and scapegoating of Muslims, and presidential support for waterboarding does set those alarm bells ringing. Most alarmingly, The Handmaid’s Tale is an exploration of what happens when a society decides to prioritise attaining ‘freedom from’ anything perceived as a threat over ‘freedom to’ live life as you like. Fundamentally, The Handmaid’s Tale is a story about a government system exploiting xenophobia and fear of change to increase its control over people’s lives in the name of defence and protection, and as such, sickeningly familiar to anyone following American politics.

Although perhaps what gives us greatest cause for concern when reading both of these novels is not how accurately they represent the societies in which we live, but the comparative ease with which our nations could reach that state. After all, the Conservative Party’s attacks on the Human Rights Act, or Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’ would make for excellent foreshadowing in a dystopian novel.

an engineered English language, a vocabulary that is manipulated to ‘not extend but to diminish the range of thought,’ as Orwell himself states.

Through the concept of Newspeak, Oceania’s language, the state is able to strip back the terms of the dictionary deemed undesirable to Big Brother and consequently to the nation of Oceania, allowing unwanted and potentially threatening notions to be literally unthinkable. The monolithic vocabulary that emerges from this telescoped dictionary of dictatorship was common to the Totalitarianism of Orwell’s time in which the lexicon was contracted to the smallest number of syllables to ensure words are uttered without taking almost any thought, from the simple ‘gestapo’ of the Nazi regime to Commintem of Communist International, both akin to ‘Ingsoc’ - Oceania’s name for English Socialism.

As Orwell feverishly states in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, ‘If thoughts can corrupt language, language can corrupt thought’. If an objection to the language, as depicted through Winston’s keeping of a diary, is a signal of rebellion, then the forced adoption of an alien language may be seen as the suppression of identity and individual expression.

In which case we are forced to consider the current situation of English as a global language, that as more and more native languages become extinct and political discussion is engulfed by the English language are we not endangering the identity of

thousands?

Though Big Brother has transcended into the comic consumption of other people’s thoughts and behaviours, darker currents of surveillance today swell beneath the surface. As the most watched country in the world, are we within the omniscient observance of Oceania even today? Surveillance sweeps the UK and the Investigatory Powers Act passed only last November, that legalised numerous hacking possibilities from the security services, was dubbed by Edward Snowden on Twitter, ‘the most extreme surveillance in the history of Western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies’. This kind of law is unparalleled by any other Western nation and in its enforcement, people can hear the eerie echoes of Himmler’s Gestapo’s footsteps on every corner, they can see the two-way screens that litter the streets of Orwell’s’ Oceania, omnisciently watching and listening.

Orwell’s novel is a readable reminder of the threat that ‘alternative facts’ place on democracy to those living in an age that just presumes ‘democracy’ will prevail. Living in the technological era, Orwell’s fears of a fluctuating language have transpired in our ability to write, rewrite and delete language for our benefit. And so almost 70 years after its publication, the watchful eye of the Thought Police still looms over our heads, behind the pictures that hang above our beds.

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Thursday, 23 February 2017

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Lucy Sara-Kelly Deputy Visual Arts Editor deputy.visualarts@palatinate.org.uk

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VISUAL ARTS 11

Thursday, 23 February 2017

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Art in Action: Capturing the Humans Behind the Crises

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he Art world has never shied away from dealing with disaster. For centuries, artists have been documenting humanitarian crises and digging deep into the traumatic responses evoked by these events. In recent years, as migrant and refugee numbers have swelled, and wars have crippled copious countries, there is now more need than ever for the Art world to represent the people whose voices are lost in corrupt governments, and buried in refugee camps.

Particularly in 2017, artists and galleries are embracing the role they play in documenting and illuminating the issues migrants and refugees are facing. Governments are failing – for example the UK Dubs amendment is ending and therefore abandoning child migrants. Travel bans are materialising – most notoriously Donald Trump’s recent attack on Muslin migrants – and people are being outcast and deserted. However, as a result of many different initiatives, migrant art is crossing boundaries that even the artists themselves have not crossed. Through increased communications and modern technology, the impediments of geographical distance are gradually being alleviated. This year, migrant and refugee art is at the forefront of exhibitions across the UK, highlighting the Visual Arts’ commitment to a variety of cultural perspectives and to the creative value of all of humanity.

It is the sea – the hope of escape, the fear it poses as a barrier, and the paradox of life and death it insinuates – that lies at the core of migrant art. The Baltic Art Gallery’s exhibition in Newcastle, Disappearance at Sea – Mare Nostrum, is on display from the 27th January to the 14th May 2017.

This group exhibition focuses on migrant and refugee journeys across the Mediterranean, with contributions from a variety of artists including work from Syria, Greece, Kenya, and the UK. The Baltic is adamant on educating its visitors and has therefore partnered with Amnesty International to ensure their staff are wellequipped with information and resources to discuss the issues the exhibition explores. Disappearance at Sea uses a wide range of visual mediums to evoke the experience of crossing the Mediterranean and the land borders surrounding it. Some of the highlights of the exhibition include numerous canvas drawings, which were created in the Asylum Centre of Bogovadja, Serbia, and which map individual journeys undertaken by refugees. There is also a room covered in marine video footage and a virtual reality experience.

Like the Baltic’s exhibition, John Akomfrah, a video artist born in Ghana, now living in London, is primarily concerned with this contemporary crisis. Akomfrah presents this modern experience alongside the vast number of previous faces of the displaced which have haunted world history. Akomfrah has recently been awarded the Artes Mundi prize for his video installations focusing on the persecutions

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of migrants and refugees which have occurred in the past four centuries. Condemning the way in which European countries have received migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA countries), Akomfrah uses his art as a platform to highlight the shameful treatment of the displaced. The Artes Mundi Award praises international artists who explore contemporary social issues across the world.

Akomfrah’s video installation winning first prize encapsulates the importance the Visual Art community are placing on the promotion of artwork which tackles migrant and refugee crises.

Akomfrah has earned the resources, financial support, and stability that others unfortunately do not have access to and thus their creativity can often be crushed. With no home, no studio, and no stable income, it is nearly impossible for migrants and refugees to continue making and exhibiting their art. To help alleviate this issue, and to promote migrant artwork, which in any other circumstance would remain hidden in the depths of Za’atari or the crumbling remnants of Aleppo, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) have initiated an ‘art by email’ scheme.

Beyond Boundaries: Art by Email strives to give artists from MENA countries the opportunity to display their work at the gallery, even if their ability to travel is restricted by social or economic circumstances. YSP’s mission highlights that physical distance does not always have to be a barrier for creativity in the modern world; cultural divisions and political unrest should not prevent the celebration of artistic talent.

After an open call to MENA countries, YSP’s pioneering project selected sixteen artists to send their

displays (or the instructions on how to create their displays) via email to the gallery. Through this project, YSP emphasised the need for MENA artists to share the reality of their experiences and to stress the power of creativity which still manages to flourish in these countries despite the current crises.

Ex-Durham student Hannah Rose Thomas is also working to give refugees a medium through which they can express themselves. Hannah has travelled to Jordan and Syria with the aim of bringing Art to refugees and using its cathartic effects as a creative therapy. Hannah, with the help of refugee children, is transforming old refugee tents into canvases of creativity and artistic expression. Although this project may seem small, to the children who are finally given independence and a way to express their emotions, Art can be liberating.

These are, of course, just a few brief examples of the variety of ways Art is exploring the modern migrant and refugee crisis. Art may not be an immediate solution to the wars, the inhumane governments, and the natural disasters which are forcing people out of their homes. Art gives people a voice and a medium through which they can express themselves. Art allows the displaced to photograph and paint their own stories, and in this sense, take back their independence and individuality which is often lost in sweeping news reports that turn people into statistics. Art captures the humanity behind the crises, and paints the people, and 2017 is the year artists and galleries are fully fulfilling their responsibility to tackle and expose modern humanitarian crises.

Photograph: @CreativecommonFlikr@Jaredeberhardt

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FASHION 12

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Women of the Hour

In an exclusive interview with Palatinate Fashion, President and Vice-President of the Durham Univeristy Charity Fashion Show 2017 give an insight into the extensive work resulting in a staggering £75,000-£80,000 raised.

By: Emma Denison Deputy Fashion Editor deputy.fashion@palatinate.org.uk

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hen thinking about an event as successful and extensive as this year’s Durham University Charity Fashion Show, it may be easy to forget that the event was organised by students. Under the leadership of President Rowena Soons and VicePresident Georgia Gogarty the executive team’s hard work had already begun ten months ago.

Both fourth year students, Soons (Theology) and Gogarty (French & Italian), credit their year abroad last year as having “massively” impacted their roles in making the fashion show what it became.

Although they recognise last year as providing a drive to keep busy upon their return to Durham, it was the break from the academic rigmarole that Soons credits as giving her the time to “realise what I wanted to do.”

Appointed in May, Soons and Gogarty shortly after selected their team and set out the planning for what was to become the most successful student charity event in history. They both highlight the diligent work over last summer as crucial; the sponsorship team reached out to supporters in novel ways and managed to raise an impressive £20,000; the creatives worked closely with the PR-team to develop the aesthetic of the show; the venue coordinators secured a site to hold more guests than ever before. Without this drive and passion it certainly seems doubtful that the show

would have been anywhere near as successful as it became.

The choice of supporting the International Rescue Committee – a charity noted for their global Vision not Victim project – was a clear and unanimous decision from the start. As shrewdly noted by both girls, it could appear bad taste to be hosting a black tie event - something of a juxtaposition to the lives that the event is raising money to help - where the money raised is simply given in to those in need in a “patronising” hand off.

Not only is the IRC big enough to be ‘financially transparent’ and to have their own PR campaign that DUCFS could utilise, but its work is more focused towards a sustainable avenue. As seen in the prior noted Vision not Victim project that consists of raising awareness through photos of young girls from around the world dressed as what they wanted to be when they were older, IRC concentrates on helping the communities become self-sufficient and building sustainable futures. In a reflective moment, Soons also commented that the amazing response to the charity and cause is especially “heartening in [a time] where Donald Trump is signing executive orders banning refugees’.

The desire to keep the charity at the forefront can also be seen in the way it tied into the theme of the event. Although ‘Mavericks to Movements’ had started as “Rowena’s brain child”, the idea of movement and change in fashion became fully fledged with the contribution of Gogarty and the rest of the DUCFS team.

Rarely touched upon in a university fashion show setting, it was an inspired choice to reflect “on fashion [...] as a creative outlet which you can trace the contours of social and political change.” The theme in this manner went “hand in hand with the charity” allowing the show to “celebrate the idea of change, disruption, followers and movement” without being patronising. Furthermore, allowing the theme of the show to be prominent through having each walk represent a new movement and period of change, the show managed to place a firm grasp on both the past and the present.

Each walk represented “how a single fashion icon can transpire into a [phenomenon]” and this notion is undoubtedly just as prominent in fashion in the past as it is today, in a generation infiltrated by social media superstardom. The eminence and successful impact of the social media campaign for this year’s fashion show cleverly took advantage of this with their effective “#whodoyoufollow” tagline.

With tickets selling out in record time and the active reaction to the prominent social media campaign – credited by the pair to the tireless and inspired work of Luciana Di Mascio and the PR-team - Soons and Gogarty were touched that “the student community [wanted] to get involved’’ in “the dialogue” of helping” in such a prominent period of political change.

In acknowledgement of what could be a source of controversy that would take away from the theme and charity, both Soons and Gogarty were “very vocal about casting from the beginning”. With a charity and theme that focused on inclusivity and acceptance, the aim to be representative was at the forefront their minds. Instead of it being a “popularity contest” the team were passionate about simply looking for striking people “who make the clothes shine.”

A section that often comes under fire for ascribing to a fixed body image is the underwear walk. However, with Soons and Gogarty also determined to “represent different body shapes”, the walk, in line with the theme again, was instead a celebration of a variety of body shapes, thus ensuring the show celebrated our differences as well as our similarities.

As an endnote both girls cannot acknowledge enough that the event would not be what it was without the support and hard work of the team around them, as well as the co-operation of the DSU. It was in this moment as well that Soons and Gogarty reflected rather insightfully on the Durham University ethos that your degree and time at university should be more than your academic commitments; they expressed that the success of the show and the jobs awaiting them after graduation can not only be accredited to the hard work of the team who they would now consider “friends for life” but to being fortunate enough to attend a university where the involvement in these scale of events is not only encouraged, but also fully supported.

Photograph: Mike Dennison

TRAVEL Thursday, 23 February 2017

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Photograph: Sally Lanora Svenlén

Voyages of self-discovery

By Lucy Spoliar travel@palatinate.org.uk

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remember, in my late teens, deriding the stereotypical “gap yah” vision of jetting off to some far-flung country and coming back months later with a tan, a lot of edgy photos, maybe even a cheeky little tattoo. When these people also talked of having ‘found themselves’ on their travels, it seemed to me to be smug, self-indulgent, and not a little pretentious.

But now, as a twenty-two-year-old adjusting to rainy old England after thirteen months on the other side of the world, I feel compelled to admit that there’s more to the notion of ‘self-discovery’ in travel than meets the eye.

I flew to Australia fairly shy, insecure and naïve – and somehow came back with a new energy, confidence and sense of interest in the world.

When I came back to England, everything felt foreign. It’s a very disorientating feeling, having become so acculturated elsewhere that you see the streets you grew up in with ‘new eyes’ – you really notice how the different parts of your city fit together, what kind of cars people drive, how people act on public transport, how people interact in general.

As soon as you return, to everyone else, you’re just an ordinary local; you have the accent, you know your way around, you have friends here. But you got so used to being ‘that English girl’ in a range of incredibly international groups of friends and travellers, you can’t quite remember how to

configure your identity as just bog-standard, status quo. I think that’s where the idea of ‘finding yourself’ when travelling initially comes from: it lies in a sense of fear that maybe you didn’t find anything at all and you’re just the same person as before.

That isn’t something I thought as soon as I got back, of course. I was too busy showing everyone the photos, telling the stories, flaunting a modest tan and pondering whether I should have got that bamboo tattoo in Thailand.

All of these, on some level, an attempt to make the people around me understand the experiences I’d had, to validate the new sense of confidence and identity they represented to me.

Of course, it was partly simply for the joy of talking about those experiences that I had loved so much. But I was away from England, overall, for 413 days. Rationally, I knew before I even left Cambodia (the last leg of my travels) that it would be impossible for me to fully describe every moment of 413 days of my life even to one person; not even a best friend or a parent lending a willing ear. It didn’t stop me drifting into reminiscences at any opportunity for the first month or so after my return to England.

What really interests me, though, is how my perspective on what I learnt and how I was ‘shaped as a person’ in those 3 months has gradually, almost imperceptibly changed since my return.

When I think back on my time living in Australia and the two months I spent backpacking around Asia, it is hard to reconcile that with my current life in Durham, completing my undergraduate degree. The places, the people around me, everything

is so incomparably different.

And what I’m gradually realising, to my surprise, is that the one source of continuity between these two lives is that they are both my experiences. In a sense, my life here and my life abroad were both dictated by an arbitrary mixture of who I happened to meet, what opportunities I was aware of and what the places I’ve lived in happened to be like. But I have a growing conviction that that’s only half of it.

Because equally important is the way in which I choose to live those two lives; the people I choose to know, what opportunities I take, who I talk to.

And that’s the same with travelling too – the half hour rambles about my two months in Asia, in which my friends here have indulged me, all revolve around the people I met and what they made me understand about their lives. Not other tourists whose experiences of the world are more or less the same as mine, but local people who understand the cities they live in better than anyone.

If there are two things to be drawn from what I’ve discussed, the first is that in order to let a place ‘change’ you as a person, you have to understand what it means to live there.

And ultimately, when travellers talking about ‘finding themselves,’ what it seems to me that they really mean is that they have begun to find out about the world and other people in it. They just haven’t yet managed to accept that they can’t construct a unique identity around the (admittedly very cool) experiences that they’ve had – and haven’t realised that there’s a whole lot more to life than being ‘ahead of the trend.’

STAGE 14

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Stages Ahead Two recent London plays, The Young Vic’s Yerma and The Vault’s Trainspotting Live, broke away from tradition and pathed the way for new types of staging.

By Florianne Humphrey stage@palatinate.org.uk

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f you asked someone to draw a theatre, they’d probably create a proscenium stage which, to the lay person, is the traditional layout where the audience sits on only one side facing the actors. However, two recent London plays, The Young Vic’s Yerma and The Vault’s Trainspotting Live, broke away from tradition and paved the way for new types of staging.

The Young Vic’s Yerma, played by Billie Piper, is a modern day childless woman whose relentless blogging about trying for a baby leads to the eventual break down of her marriage. Communication, or a lack of it, is key to this play. As Yerma broadcasts her private life to her online followers, her own communication with her family disintegrates. In breaking down barriers between her and the public, she builds them between her and her husband.

But Yerma doesn’t just emotionally block out the other actors on stage. From the very beginning, she is separated from the audience by four glass walls.

When I first walked into the theatre, I thought I was staring at a reflection of the audience in a mirror. After a while, I realised the actors were performing in a glass box in the round, and what I mistook for a ‘reflection’ was actually the other side of the auditorium.

The box was also a prop. Yerma threw herself against it in rage; water, vomit and even blood trickled down the glass at times; or actors simply sat against it to talk to one another. In fact, there were very few props on stage, so the box was the focal point of the action.

Most of all, the small box represented Yerma’s mental and physical confinement. Barrenness

Whilst in Yerma the actors felt inaccessibly distant, in Trainspotting Live the intimacy levels were turned up high meant she felt separated from the world of her sister and friends who were all having children; it caused her mental decline, and prevented her from leaving the house. But above all, barrenness trapped her in her own body, because she could not have the child she so desperately desired.

Whilst in Yerma the actors felt inaccessibly distant, in Trainspotting Live the intimacy levels were turned up high.

The Vaults is an unusual theatre in itself. Located beneath Waterloo station, the bare brick graffitied walls and the rumble of the trains made it the perfect location for a 75-minute adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s gritty Scottish novel.

Reviews of Trainspotting Live contained a warn-

ing that it was ‘immersive’, whilst a sign outside the venue said it was ill-advised for suffers of claustrophobia.

The whole performance was interactive, to say the least. The audience were the actors too; they were equally pivotal to the narrative.

On arrival, we were handed glow sticks instead of tickets. We w e r e

1980s Edinburgh.

Creative staging is something that should be explored more in theatre. Post-modernism offered an alternative to traditional theatrical narratives; directors can get inventive with modern adaptations of books and plays; and special effects are used more and more to add a cinematic element to traditionally sober performances. However, Yer-

The audience were the actors too; they were equally pivotal to the narrative. then led inside by the actors, who were having a rave, eyes rolling and jaws chewing frantically. Now and then they would fling themselves into an audience member’s lap for a hug, grab someone’s beer and take a chug or even spit the contents back onto them. And the play hadn’t even started yet.

We were fellow passengers when the characters took a train ride to London; we were splattered with gunk during the famous toilet scene; one girl screamed when a towel covered in faeces landed on her head; one man was even offered a bag of ‘drugs’ and, when he rubbed the powder onto his gums, the actor quipped ‘you’ve done this before!’

Trainspotting the novel is intense. The Scottish dialect, the drug abuse, and the enduring sense of hopelessness make it a difficult read. Acting it out in a traditional theatre space would have lost the impact. When an actor is plunging a needle into his skin right in front of you and a tiny audience in a dark, underground space, then the line between fiction and reality is blurred. Because of this intensity, when the lights go up at the end it’s a shock realising you’re in 21st century London rather than

ma and Trainspotting Live prove that, whilst music, films and books have a certain level of constraint, theatre is an ever changing medium whose creative boundaries should be pushed and manipulated even further.

Photography: Florianne Humphrey; Andy Matthews via Flickr

FEATURES Thursday, 23 February 2017

15

“You’re a Postgrad?”

The life of a not-so-mature student

By Emily Castles features@palatinate.org.uk

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y friends can’t believe how much you lot go out.” The words of my disapproving, nineteen-year old fresher brother. Perhaps this is the general consensus on twenty-something postgraduate students. They should be locked away in an old creaky library up a hill, with the occasional snack slipped under the door by a subservient first year. But the truth, for me and my friends anyway, is far from this. None of us completed our undergraduate degrees at Durham. Some of us studied in big cities, others in tiny towns, and a small number in obscure locations that no one has ever heard of. Durham is fresh and new to us. Although we are postgrad students, we are freshers in Durham.

And we live that way.

It is strange being a postgrad fresher, and you can’t ever really understand it until you’ve experienced it. The first week we moved into college inevitably echoed the first week of our undergrads, but with some key striking details.

As the usual awkward introductory conversations began during mealtimes, the answers we

gave to the notorious ‘So what are you studying?’ question, was greeted with terrified eyes and bored and unimpressed faces. You’re a postgrad? Urgh. We were dismissed instantly.

We were immediately marked as outcasts, like victims of the plague. We were lucky because our college had a high percentage of postgraduate livers-in, so we instantly had a

“The first week we moved into college inevitably echoed the first week of our undergrads.” big group of friends regardless of our disagreeable nature. And you know what? We started going out, a lot. Even more, according to my nineteen year old brother, than the notorious freshers themselves.

Postgraduate life is hard. The reading load is off the chart and the essays never stop coming. You feel guilty if you’re not in the library before 9am every day. You constantly worry about funding your tuition and finding a job

for September, which is why we need to go out more than the freshers. We need to escape our little hobbit holes in the Bill Bryson Library.

Why then are we disregarded by younger years? Why is it presumed that we are old, boring and past-it at the age of twenty-one? There are no nights targeted at postgrad students, and anything which is in fact organised is always far more sophisticated than we could ever hope to be: we are still happy with Echo Falls in a plastic cup, thank you. We exist in a strange limbo between the rest of the students, and the academic staff. This limbo is not catered for; some may even argue it’s a taboo within academia. Someone who wants to go out once a week even though they’ve decided to pursue education past undergraduate level?

Good heavens!

As a postgraduate fresher, you make things happen for yourself. This is fine, and we are happy to go out of our way to find the best events even though we started at the same time as the freshers who were, in stark contrast, handed it all on a plate. We have had three years of experience after all. It would just be nice, one time, if we met someone on a night out who said: ‘You’re a postgrad? That’s cool.’

Illustration by Faye Chua.

CREATIVE WRITING 16

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Visions A Word From The Editor

By Anna Gibbs Creative Writing Editor creative.writing@palatinate.org.uk

the

of

I

visualise the future as a charming and startling concoction of the extremes of modernity, with plenty of dove grey open space and silence, combined with the farthest reaches of the retrospective. This, in keeping with the eccentric, twisting patterns of the passage of time, will create a fresh, unique era of its own.

I predict we might reignite a bright obsession with the classical world yet again. Togas on the tube, anyone? Or how about vending machines for olives?

Perhaps it will become trendy to be minimalist with your use of technology, paring your gadgets down to the bare necessity, and having technology tailoring services to fit our needs exactly?

I’m hopeful about the future, seeing as history repeats itself even more than the BBC repeat uses the same actors in its family dramas. Which is a lot (that wasn’t a complaint).

As Pliny the Elder wrote two millennia ago, ‘The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach’. With the human race and its poor memory and incapacity to finally learn an absolute lesson, we will again drop into the inky deep to be able to understand why we so badly need the air and the light.

Illustration: Anna Gibbs

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Future

The Knowledge Pyre

By Matthew Chalmers

T

he sand is not quite yellow but rather sapped-white, like dead skin on a pensioner’s head. It lashes across the plain, thick with obscure smhhells; burning rubber and pyramid dust. The people shuffle onward, entranced like so many cattle prodded into the abattoir. In the distance shudders a black plume of smoke, unperturbed by the furious wind, glowing with ash: a giant obsidian toadstool.

The crowds grow, stumbling across the dunes.

Some hold hands, leaning on each other like drunks; others are loners, with sulphurous and skittish eyes, moving like spiders. Ghostly buildings prod their broken heads out of distant, volcanic hills. They seem very far away, like the end of a rainbow.

The sky grows dark as the people gather round the burning pyre, that dark distant pillar now close, and the stench, so rich and black, brings some to religious tears. An old man with a jaunty gait stalks around the fire, his mouth covered by a colourful rag. He carries chains over his shoulders, he has some gold rings on, and some dried things and some various bones jingling around his neck. His hair is wild and vast, a burst of grimy string.

His voice is very loud and piercing, hoarse but high, like the screech of a tortured nihilist who has no heaven to go to. But listen to what he says: “The only truth is your truth! The only knowl-

edge is what is inside yourself! The letter is profane! The feeling is sacred!”

He heaves up a stack of books from a rusty old trolley, he hurls them into the flames. The smoke surges and blooms as ideas and thoughts, science and medicine all evaporate in its black, hungry maw. The dark clouds are the faces of phantoms, trapped in some cold pit of hell. The shaman keeps yelling and his little helpers, with eyes like young snakes, sacrifice tome after tome to the flames.

But what a strange dichotomy. The people relish at the destruction, smile and laugh and dance.

The truth is theirs. Nobody tells them what to do. Their blessed ignorance is contagious, dazzling, charming. It is freedom, and each opinion is equal. It is a community of mutual aid and respect. It is a festival of individual and collective good. There is hope shining in their boundless confidence.

Yet they cannot stop their children of dying from an infected paper cut. *The moment is frozen. The glee of the people seems spurious now, something forced in their smiles. In the shaman’s eyes there is a glint of something, doubt and greed swill about his mind.

Ash dots the air, each flake as fragile as snow.

The sky is greying into rainclouds. People lock their doors and hush their infants, afraid of the cold and damp.

Above the tower of burning books an eagle is rooted, caught up in the gusts of smoke. Its wings are balding, burned by the flames.