PULP
USU Creative Awards
Estelle Yoon “쎄쎄쎄 (sse-sse-sse)” 16mm video (still), 2023. Art Category Winner, 2023. Learn more
Curated by Beatrice Waller
PULP is published on the sovereign land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, as well as Indigenous members of our creative community. We respect the knowledge and customs that traditional Elders and Aboriginal people have passed down from generation to generation. We acknowledge the historical and continued violence and dispossession against First Nations peoples. Australia’s many institutions, including the University itself, are founded on this very same violence and dispossession. As editors, we will always stand in solidarity with First Nations efforts towards decolonisation and that solidarity will be reflected in the substance and practice of this magazine.
Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Senior Editor
Hugo Anthony Hay
Editors
Kelly Caviedi
Bipasha Chakraborty
Joan de la Kagsawa
Ashray Kumar
China Meldrum
Estelle Vigouroux
Design
Kelly Caviedi
Bipasha Chakraborty
Ashray Kumar
Estelle Vigouroux
The views in this publication are not necessarily the views of USU. The information contained within this edition of PULP was correct at the time of printing. This publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union.
Issue 17, 2024
Dear PULP reader,
A warm welcome to PULP 17 and that period of the semester in between week one bliss and week six terror. To distract you from your impending midsemester exams, the PULP team have once again prepared a cracker of a publication for your reading pleasure. Sit back with a mandarin negroni and crispy spam over rice, and enjoy.
The atmosphere on campus has been terrific since the return for semester two. Welcome Fest was attending by thousands of students, and I am pleased to report that the USU has hit a new milestone of 50,000 members, the most we have ever achieved! It is a testament to our fantastic clubs and societies programs, events schedule, and wonderful staff. On top of that, many exciting initiatives have restarted, and we are well on our way to hitting the 24,000 free meals, 126,000 FoodHub items, and 1,343 club events milestones we achieved last semester.
President’s Foreword
Much has already occurred this semester by way of programs, and I would particularly like to shout out Darling Street for winning the illustrious Battle of the Bands competition for 2024. They were closely followed by The After Thoughts in second and Lemonise in third, which incorporated an innovative didgeridoo drone! Truly a pleasure to see the music scene at the USU alive and well. We have also had a market day, Party at Manning, and a variety of other gatherings and tours in August, with many more events such as USU Trivia Night and the Wear it Purple Party coming in the next few weeks. A special shoutout must go to the immense work put into the revue program for semester two, with Law Revue, Science Revue, and Med Revue all occurring over the following two months. I encourage everyone to attend and to be ready for some hard-hitting choreography and comedy.
September will be an mammoth month for the USU. Aside from the regular events at Manning and Wentworth, another market day, and a number of day trips and G’day Gatherings, the USU is hosting International Fair, coinciding with the Someday Soon festival. For new students, Someday Soon is the biggest music festival offered on campus and will feature DMA’s, Rum Jungle, Hannah Brewer, and of course many more names including our Battle of the Bands winner (ICYMI). All this whilst coinciding with the 50 th anniversary of Manning Bar, the home of the former Sydney University Women’s Union before it was amalgamated with Sydney University Union to form what we now know as the USU.
International fair will also be a significant three days on the calendar, with performances from external groups and our clubs on full display. This along with new food offerings and even some bonuses for USU members will make for an exciting week.
Meanwhile, the USU is continuing to reshape the campus experience, and has embarked on the biggest review of campus strategy in our organisation’s history to ensure that we are providing you, the students, with a world-class service. I am sure that this, along with the significant amount of governance and program development we are undertaking, will put the Union in a terrific state for the end of this year and for years to come. In wishing the Union a happy 150th birthday, I commend this edition of PULP to you and look ahead to the next 150 years!
Bryson
Constable
S enior
Editor ’ s N o t e
I hold Issue 16 i n my ha nds T he sweet , woody, a nd st ick y smel l of Paceset ter 10 0 shrouds my nost r i ls a nd I mu mble a loud:
“ lfg”
I have not seen my best f r iend i n mont hs, I miss hi m dea rly. We ca l l as often as we ca n, but ou r lives a re beg i nni ng to become t u rbu lent . Across t i me zones, busy schedu les, a nd compou nd i ng sleep debt I don’t get to ca l l hi m as often as I li ke. I hold his words a nd his a r t i n my ha nds. It feels a lmost as good as hug g i ng hi m. Eig ht met res of paper, late nig hts, staples, message excha nges, ten engaged cont r ibutors, a nd seven ed itors broug ht t his before me I a m so proud of t hem. Wit h t he box st i l l open Bip daps me cr isply, A shray needs a second t r y Issue 16 feels heav y my face is flush, my breat hi ng excited but t he a ir rest f u l. I wonder if t hey w i l l a l l feel li ke t his.
I fi rst met my f r iend i n t he Ma nni ng PU LP office over a yea r ago, t he on ly ot her person I k new i n t he office was Bonnie Ma rlow was r ushi ng i n a nd out w it h Gera ld i n tow ma k i ng su re to say hel lo each fou r out of t he five t i mes he entered whi le I was t here T hree met res of porous, chipped, yel low-gold sa ndstone; a n a rchipelago of composite wood desk s, a nd a cor ner w i ndow w it h g lass t hi nner t ha n I was comfor table w it h. In a ver y si mi la r vest to mi ne, a nd w it h a ver y si mi la r ha ircut I fou nd hi m, awk wa rd ly steppi ng i n t he cent re of t he room, sa me as I. We hit it off.
T ha n k you to Bonnie, Ha r r y, Ma rlow, Na nd i ni, A r ia na , Pat r ick , a nd R hea for g iv i ng us ou r fi rst memor ies of PU LP. It ’ s solid colou red paper, t r ips to Badde Ma nors, a n a lways open door, a nd ha ndba l l sk i mmers. A nd to K ate, Li zz y, Huw, Si mon, Just i ne, La mea h, a nd Sona l for Ti mes New Roma n, t he psyops, a nd miss i nfor mat ion We feel you r PU LPs i n ever y spread, i n ever y cover, ever y ora nge ju ice. We’ l l reca l l, woodchips a nd a l l
My f r iend tel ls me how he is liv i ng life more deliberately, he ma kes t i me to go outside, to ta ke pic t u res of his cat Chôm Chôm, to see how paper is made
I t u r n my phone off si lent to hea r t he clack of t he i Message keyboa rd, I leave five mi nutes ea rly a nd I bend w it h my k nees. Somet i mes, I a m su r pr ised what pa r ts of hi m I st i l l see i n me. but I a m a lways g ratef u l for t hem. My i ntent iona lit y has broug ht me closer to t hose who were just nea rby, a nd ensu red t hat I see what is r ig ht i n f ront of me.
Issue 17 is about remember i ng , hopi ng , a nd nosta lig isi ng. K now i ng t hat what feels so specia l about t he past mig ht be helpi ng to ma ke now feel so good . It mig ht be over, but what made it specia l is, li kely, st i l l r ig ht i n f ront of you I hope you don’t hold onto it but ta ke it w it h you i nstead .
Now you hold Issue 17. W hat does it smel l li ke to you? How heav y does it feel i n you r ha nds? W hat w i l l it remi nd you of ? W hat w i l l you remember? W hat w i l l you ta ke w it h you?
Hugo
Editorial
Dearest reader,
We often find it a sad error of life to see our friends having to split their lives into unchanging and unchallenged halves. Of work-life and home-life, the professional and the personal, online and offline. Of how hours, alarms, and deadlines slice our lives into something wholly unrecognisable. Or, even scarier, to assume that life is one big whole: to think that there is only one reality, that this is it, that this is the only thing ever possible.
But when we leaf through Issue 17, we can’t help but find comfort in how our contributors have managed to find shelter amidst this binary. Be it within the spaces we have made for ourselves within the cruel beauty of the world. Your lover’s garden, the many expressways and highways, your clitchen, or in the fluorescent streets of Burwood.
Or in worlds of the self and the unreal: to toil in Roblox bakeries, to relish in Paul Mescal’s thighs, to lose one’s lover in the bowels of Wikipedia, or to ponder the convergences of brat summer, motherhood, and the Art world. With each page turned, we are awed by each other’s capacity to not only create and inhabit so many worlds, but to also find joy in sharing them with the ones we love.
By the time this issue finds you, many weeks will have elapsed from Issue 16’s release. We have all since suffered under the big lights of our auditoriums, lecture halls, and seminar rooms; we have once again become a friend to a campus full of strangers, and once again (or, for the very first time) settled into the tiresome weariness of the semester. After weeks of early morning lectures, expensive campus lunches, and painful tutorial silences, it is easy to fall back into that cruel tendency to think that life is once and for all “Joever.” But we hope that Issue 17 - an issue that we have all shared in painstakingly creating, editing, and designing - can not only give you repose, but also impart to every reader the maxim that “we are so back.”
Always know that we are grateful to all of those who read PULP. A thousand thank you’s to all the long-time readers, to all contributors both old and new, to all the beautiful and wonderful previous editorial teams, to all the new friends who we enjoyed drinks and chats with at the PULPxHONIxSURG party, and to all of those who have just picked up their first ever copy of PULP. You are all friends of PULP, and we all hold you close and dear to our hearts.
Enjoy Issue 17.
Lots of love, and stay hydrated,
Joan, Ashray, Bipasha, China, Estelle, and Kelly
Two studies of fate: updated archetypes for our time Ava Broinowski
Song of the Weaver’s Hands
Zahra Saffar
Lace Monster Estelle Vigouroux
Rest in pieces Bin Weevils China Meldrum
Running out of time: Charli
Children & the Environment Sasha Blackman
The Children Yearn For the Bakery Clive Meldrum
Ruins of Eternity
Joan de la Kagsawa
This is my iphone.
There are many like it but this one is mine.
My iphone is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my iphone is useless. Without my iphone, I am useless.
Through my point five lens I see true.
I must take more trill photos than my enemy who is trying to cloutbomb me.
My iphone and I know that what counts in photo review is not the quality, the exposure or the artificial shutter sound it makes.
We know that it’s the piccies that count.
My iphone is human, even as I am human, because it is my life.
Thus, I will learn it as a j-chiller, I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its case, its lens, its ringtone, and its screen cracks.
I will keep my iphone charged and ready, even as I am sleepy and late.
We will become a part of each other.
My iphone will become the extension of me
And I will become the extension of its terms and conditions.
I will, before God, swear on this creed.
My iphone and myself are curators of the vibe.
We are the masters of the moment.
We are the survivors of my life.
So be it, until all photos are reviewed, And there is no enemy but iphone storage!
PHOTO REVIEWER’S CREED
A the with Night
Burwood Literary Institute
Nicholas Osiowy
It was five and sun-sizzle in Burwood when Frederick was deposited on the station step. Dressed in faded jeans and a mouse-brown leather jacket, with hair the same colour, he was tall and very pale. Graduated the previous summer from The Uni, he was a reporter for a fashionable multimedia magazine in Sydney’s eastern half called Step Back and host of a small salon in Darlinghurst. Buoyed by his monthly desire to test his spice tolerance, he accepted a story on the nightlife of Burwood Road. Taking out his earbuds, the sound beamed in.
“Give generously” sang the sign and its holder in the ashy gully between himself and the road. The Salvos lady wore a fisherman’s faded wool on her head and shoulders and a red apron around the rest. Beside her was another woman, hunched with a seal’s mane over a bulging forehead, purple eyes, and a small line of whitened teeth. She was enveloped in a dirty black puffer and as she begged stretched her fins, so it seemed she was lying directly on the fag ends.
“Any spare change?” Puffer asked, switching from Mandarin to English and sometimes awkward Korean.
Above came the rumble-tumble of trains, whines of whistles, the frantic blaring of approaching horns. From below the roars of old buses and the pop of a Porsche or broken-down
Ford. A man in a green down jacket, young with spiky black hair, hurried through the soup of neon and sunset.
“Any spare change?”
“Don’t carry cash, sorry.” He seemed almost afraid.
“Can I have a light then?” retorted Puffer.
The man chucked her a Bic and ran.
Now Frederick had not visited Burwood before, though he had seen development ads. Burwood Road, spine of the suburb, primely located, halfway from gallant Sydney to Parramatta, and a short trip to the ascendant estates of the far west!
Up the street he knew was Chinatown, wrapped in light and the romance of cooking smells, and from there down the hill to the park came restaurants, pubs, and cafes in their own variations on the best of first impressions. One place was all glam, its awning an echo of the New Year’s explosion, and another was Wooden or Bricked, and its interiors shielded from the street-eyes.
Desiring to mix with the true inhabitants of the place, he selected Glam at random and with a small smile to the grumpy bouncers, went inside.
Slightly pink stairs led up to a corridor-like bar, black, with tables and carpet the same. A chandelier covered the centre table, and at it ‘The Group’ – there’s always one – hunched in their work-jackets over their beers, rolling themselves forward like so many cats about to cough a hairball. Jimmy, the chief, sat with his chin in his hand, a showy emerald ring tucked into the corner of his mouth, and a long beard with a trace of beer on it. As the regulars passed in and out he greeted and farewelled each of them with a joke, or a stony silence where his patience had run out.
Now Frederick was quite a hit at his local in Surry Hills, and right across the east, and he had walked in expecting
a full harvest of quotes about the local area. The beers were unfamiliar, so he took a dark ale and as he sat down realised he was totally out of his depth. The men, plus two women with short haircuts and large coats who he, correctly, guessed were the wives of some of the guys, glanced at him sidelong, some of them then making eye contact again.
Eventually, Frederick worked up the courage to approach the chief, offering an empty comment on the beers.
The initial rebuff was expected.
“Well, it’s pretty standard, isn’t it mate?”
But Frederick persevered, knowing asking for advice will always get men talking. And he had the benefit of having started on their special interest.
“What’s the best pub here in Burwood? Or the oldest?”
This was not as privileged as Frederick imagined. The bartenders had documented the whole court life of Glam; the newcomers are brought in for interview, and with a laugh sit by or, dejected, scuttle down to another pokies palace. Now Jimmy had lived in Burwood longer than anyone else in Glam and probably Bricked or even Wooden too, and he instructed the young fellas in the importance and work of his position.
“That Wooden used to be a bank.”
“ – nah mate was a whorehouse! – “
“Dickhead, I mean before, this is before when MY pop used to drone on about trams and Burwood Literary societies –
“What’s that?”
“Anyway, I was telling youse about this old bloke Paul –loved his trains he did, came down here one night - had a few y’know - had a chick hit on him, and he blurts out he likes trains - she’s being flirty, and he idiot starts doing the kids stuff – chugga choo choo - never seen a woman move so fast.”
He hurried back on the road again, staring very intently at the red and gold hot pot he had ostensibly been sent to Burwood for and not at all bothered by Puffer, purse jingling, entering the pokies parlour.
The soup was perfectly spicy. Replacing a family with a spiderman son, an old man with no teeth, and a woman with a long red coat were ushered into the seats beside him. Despite his evident tiredness, they chose to benevolently reanimate him. The man was called James Kerensky – no relation – and wore a purple scarf above his minimal neck. The woman’s grey coat opened to a purple shirt; her name was Yong.
“Do you read, son?”
Poor Frederick was flustered, still half in Glam.
“Oh yes, a bit.”
“Like what?”
“Whitman?”
“No! You must read Dickens, and after him an amazing book called Genji.”
“Absolutely not James, you, do you like going outside?
“Yeah sure! It’s –“
“Then you must begin with Du Fu, and after him Bai Juyi.”
Their awkward conversation continued, and with it his exhaustion. Eventually the suburb came up, and the old Institute.
“Colonial – there’s a scene in a Christina Stead novel exactly like it – men fussing and watching funny lights.”
“It is a shame though we don’t have a literary society here anymore son,” came back Kerensky, looking embarrassed.
He left the hot pot and walked to the park. By now the silvereye Moon flitted between the buildings.
The park was unkempt; long grass blew and joining it was the fluttering of ibis in the treetops. The shabby wings gleamed and with the wind disturbed the pond. Along the waterline Puffer limped, eyes glinting, a green shopping bag by her side.
“Spare change? It’s an auspicious night tonight.”
The lights never went out.
Falling-star Disease
Jesse Carpenter
I am not sure when I started talking to the moon. Last week, I went into the garden, and the weeds have grown in. I don’t know why I went out there. I think I grew tired of watching the magnolias wither. I stood out there for a while, in between the rot and what’s left of you, and I stood there shaking until I grew tired of that too. It was me, the garden, and the pearl-eyed moon. I felt totally alone. I think at that moment you died a second time. When I slept that night, I didn’t dream of you, just roots and stars. The day after I decided it was time to garden, to trim the weeds, to clip the branches, and to fertilise or whatever. I didn’t have the strength to get up until three, and I spent the hollow remainder of the day trying to escape the nausea, looking at clouds, and reading Lispector. The stars shine brighter ever since you left, but still I cannot see even your shadow.
That night I saw the loving sickle moon through the window, and as I brushed dust off the window frame, I flaked the green paint. I went into the garden, and there I spoke to the moon. It can’t have been the first time, because we spoke like old friends. Or truly, I spoke. The gentle moon was silent. I asked which weeds to trim, if the birds of paradise would ever grow, if I needed to water the orange sapling, how to fix the creeping mould, what a trellis is, where to put the trellis, and so on. There were no answers but birdsong and the garden remained in disrepair, but I felt a bit better.
The next morning, I came back to the garden. I watched pearls of dew slide from the leaves and the sun send cascading shadows across the dirt. I thought of you. I don’t think the garden will ever be like it was before you left, but I don’t want it to be. It’s beautiful in this state of half alive. Everything grows, the moss and the flowers, and it is so different to how it looked with you here, but it is warm and smells like you and so all the things that matter are the same. Besides, this isn’t why I write to you, if you can call it that. My letters to you are nothing more than the rattles of the dying or the snot that bubbles as I cry. It is for me, that is all. Anyway, I write to you because I must articulate what has happened to me the last few days, and convince myself it has happened as it has.
Two days ago, as always, I was talking to the moon. Everything was normal. I’ve fallen in love with nostalgia. I remember being as tall as my dads’ waist, standing out in the bush, and looking at the stars. It was so clear, there were no clouds. He showed me the constellations, some of them, the ones easiest to spot, the ones he remembered. It was so clear, the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, the Southern Cross and Ursa Major. It was so clear, and I miss it desperately.
I stood beneath the moon, and I was small, a child again. I asked it about the constellations, asked it to show me
the patterns of the stars. The moon was silent, so instead I used that fading memory. I was back in the bush, my shoes in the mud. I heard the crackling of the oven, the scraping of leaves against each other in the night wind, the faint calls of lyres and whip birds. I smelt apple crumble and earth, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. I clung to these impressions so desperately, attached myself to them like they were rope and then I pulled as hard as I could, dragging the memory forward through time until I felt it warm and soft in my chest.
That night I saw the constellations; the bear and the dog, the hunter and the hunted. Those ephemeral figures danced together, and I was stuck beneath the moon. I was staring at a distant star, watching it shimmer and dance. It disappeared. I was disturbed briefly, I blinked twice, no more. Then, it reappeared. It was bigger. Not by much, but it was. I watched it grow from a pinprick to a pin, I watched it glow and shine, and I realised it was coming towards me. It was dropping or falling, it had become lost. In the great tapestry of night, one single star had become unstuck, the loose thread tying it to the others had broken, and now it fell towards me. I stared at the star as it grew, the light was so bright that it blotted out the garden, the moon, and the constellations. I closed my eyes even as the star seared itself into them, and then it hit me.
The star washed over me and I fractured under its light. Images broke upon me like waves and I drowned. In a single moment I was born a thousand times, and then, nothing. There was no pain, only light, and I opened my eyes and the magnolia tree looked beautiful in the moonlight. Everything was the same; the garden and moon remained in place. I looked to the sky, and even though it was missing a star, it was more or less the same. It is only when I squinted my eyes at the stars and looked for constellations, when I tried to sink back into nostalgia, that I noticed something. The constellations had vanished. Gone, plain and simple. I tried to look for familiar figures, sharp Orion and the dippers, but I found myself unable. The stars were still there, but the shapes were vague and unfamiliar. I found myself unable to perceive their coherence, the stars were there, but no longer in groups.
This is how my strange disease began, with a star dropped on my head and the death of constellations. I tried again to look for the patterns, to drag back that memory. I found nothing. The sky was bare. That night I slept uneasily and my dreams were labyrinthine. I was lost in a series of cascading vignettes, pulled between nameless worlds, stars, and gardens.
I awoke yesterday and dragged myself to the mirror. It was here I knew that this falling-star disease had progressed. Last night I saw a sea of stars, and it was completely still. No waves. No ripples. No patterns. I couldn’t distinguish anything. I stood in the mirror, and I saw my eyes, eyebrows, and pores. I saw silent tears — but I couldn’t see my face. It was there, all of it was there but I couldn’t recognise it. This is the best way I can describe my condition to you. Things ceased to be as they were, groups decayed into elements, wholes dissolved into parts, and unity was unreachable. I was left without cohesion, my face was no longer a face, it was a heap of objects. Yesterday, I would have recognised it as a face, as my face. Today it is an echo, and it is fading.
Everything is there, but it is not in its place. The very concept of a place is so far beyond me. I turned to look at my hands and I saw fingernails and lines, creases and wrinkles, jutting veins, and peeling skin, but I couldn’t see the hand.
I stood in the agony of the falling-star disease for a while, until the notion of I decayed, until the I that was standing and the I that was thinking were unstuck from each other. I ceased to be someone who is thinking and doing, and instead became two components — a body and a mind. If I wished to speak, the thinking self would need to create a message that was deliberately and consciously communicated to the doing self. Again, my condition worsened, the self became infinitesimal, in which each body part, each organ, each cell, had their own independent consciousnesses, its own thinking and doing components. A single breath was monumental labour, and every process was agonisingly conscious. The I that is the brain starts, it negotiates with each individual neuron to demand an electrical impulse from the neurotransmitters, communicating to the diaphragm and the left and right lung, which pushes against the ribcage. My heartbeat was subdivided, first into the four chambers, and then fractally into minute organelles. Soon even the cell loses its cohesion, and decays into scattered lysosomes and nucleotides.
The disease reached its final stage. All was indistinguishable. Everything is in some sense a group; objects decay into atoms, into quarks, into electrons. Things cease to be in any meaningful sense of the word. I existed in a sea, a desert, of thousands and thousands of discrete individual grains, and I was this same sea. All structures decayed; the stars and gardens disintegrated into particles. I was lost in the illness, time itself decayed and vanished. Hours broke into minutes, then seconds, and so on until history and future ceased to be. There was only the unbearable present; an ever-still sea of blurred forms.
But today, only a day later, I write to you. I cured myself of the falling-star disease. It all happened in reverse. Dust coalesced into minutiae, atoms and cells, then recognisable forms, eventually bodies and figures.
Jesse Carpenter
The answer is you and I, it always is. In that sea of dust, there was nothing. Quiet, not a wave, not a sound. In that flat endless world, a soft and gentle breeze started to blow. It stirred faint eddies and spirals through me. In the nothingness I was struck by you. In the endless now, I thought of you. You, not a ghost or a memory, shook me awake. You arose from this nothingness and showed me what is love. You and I were starlight, magnolia petals, moss and wet soil. We were everywhere. You are gone, so deeply and truly gone. I miss you so deeply it burns in my heart. I love you through the seasons, to the moon and back, through all the stars. And like that, things began to appear. I thought of you, of me, and then we were. Things took their places and that fractal discordant self became I. The moon and stars took their old roles, appearing out of thin ripples. Cells clustered together to form atria and ventricles, and then my heart. The magnolia tree grew back petals first, and my love would never bring you back but it was beautiful.
longing,
Only in am
I whole.
This is why I write to you, why I talk to the moon, because without it I would unravel. My desire, my self, is for you. You are a beautiful binding thing. You are every constellation, every pattern. You give the stars their meaning. I am writing to you to say that the magnolia tree is blooming.
A pixel – the smallest element of visual information, has a paradoxical function, to join and to separate at the same time. With enough resolution and detail, it creates an image by accumulation. Yet when the pixel becomes distinct, and elementary, it distorts the image, breaking it down to its most rudimentary composition of shapes and colors. When an image lacks clarity, we say that it is pixelated, forgetting that they are all pixelated.
Each photo’s description highlights what Roland Barthes termed as the ‘punctum’ — a specific visual detail in the image that holds personal meaning. However, when the images are viewed collectively, it shifts viewers’ gaze to the thematic coherence that emerges from the seemingly arbitrary arrangement of pixels. The punctum for the viewer, therefore becomes the composition itself.
In this series, I explore how pixelation serves as a metaphor for describing someone you’ve never met. Just as attempting to capture a person’s essence through second-hand description often falls short of truly understanding their identity, pixelated images strip away the clarity and fidelity of the original scene. These denatured family photos serve as a visual manifestation of the impersonalisation inherent in sharing these intimate moments. Whether you can discern specific visual details of my family in the photos is inconsequential when I describe the scene myself. The clarity of the photos becomes irrelevant.
Where my grandmother sang to me on her lap
Shimmers off the sliding glass cabinet
My mothers’ eyes
The hand on my chest
The ornate wooden door at my grandparents home
My gaze
The place on the wall where I marked my height
Mo Sturgess Giddy
Article Talk
From Wikipedia, the free love encyclopedia
Insensato Coração (Irrational Heart) is a Brazilian telenovela produced and broadcast by Globo that first premiered 17 January 2011, replacing Passione. It is a hard thing to replace, passion, but apparently Mike can find it with every early twenties, eyebrow-pierced jazz listener. You don’t have to replace Passione, it’s so much easier to replace Me. I have been so nonchalant and sexy and really super casual so genuinely what does he want? Irrational heart in the flesh I say. Irrational Heart the telenovela is created and written by Gilberto Braga and Ricardo Linhares. It revolves around unreasonable attitudes and the consequences generated that threaten to change the course of many lives. This action-filled, thrilling telenovela follows the fierce relationship of brothers Pedro and Leo Brandão. But what it really is all about is that all you have to do to replace Passione is stop fucking me.
Cast [edit]
1. Mo as Shunned Woman[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
2. Mike as Villain[8][11][12][13]
3. Lily as Anti-hero[14][15]
4. Gabriel Braga Nunes as Leonardo Alencar Brandão (Léo / Armando / Fred / Wilson)[8][16][17]
5. Deborah Secco as Natalie Lamour (Natalie Batista Cortez) [8][18][19][20]
Laurie Ann (L. A.) Paul is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University.[1] She is best known for her research on the counterfactual analysis of causation and the concept of “transformative experience.”[3][4] Mike. Mike is the causation of my transformative experience, trust me on that one. Even when I had to find out from LILY’S HINGE THAT HE TRIED TO MATCH WITH. A bottle of Jacob’s Creek and I can present more counterfactual analysis
Coordinates: -33.889438, 151.190852
on how Mike’s inability to feel contentment leads to a constant sense of wanting something better2 Should I cite my sources? [ME][ME][ME] Hey LILY, wanna deal with all that cause he’ll get bored soon, I’m bored he’s bored you’re bored match with him don’t match with him delete Hinge and then download it on Saturday I’m so bored of all of it. Can someone tell me she’s not pretty, that all the girls arenrt pretty. No tht’s so bad I’m not mad ather I’m not a bitch I promise I’m so not she’s like stunning and so sweet and a bit boring but omg love her. Maybe Mike wants his own Wiki Page. I’ll be totally factual, maybe more than your hinge Mr. 6’0 “scared of women,” “loves french new wave”,.! I’m doing a great job with these ones, hooever said that journaling is good to let shit out was so right. Dear Diary, I’m throwing away the key to this baby. Who’s hearrr in the obsciure little Wikiii pages. Hi Laurie Ann, stay away from my man Laurie Ann (L. A.) Paul.
Nicola Jane “Nikki” Groarke (born 2 June 1962)[1] is a British Anglican priest. Since 2014, she has served as the Archdeacon of Dudley. She trained for ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and was literally ordained in 2000 Blah blasbhdbfgkjrmfds ugh boring. She was a curate at Balham, South London and had been Vicar of St Stephen’s Canonbury forrr five years. You know what esle lasted five years? Well, three months seeing each other and then like two weeks actually dating to be precisely exactingly right, but same timeframe basically. Mike. Yep. Oh, should I throw in some more facts, is that what this article needs? Wil that appease the wikepedia gods? I hate Mike, Fact. I have lost ht eability to be Grammarly correct, Fact. I amon my fourth glass of wine, False. HAHahahaha I don’t own a glass yet. Got youuu. What are you gonna do, flag it as a non-truth? Retorcicle question bitchhh I’m not talking to you actually you are just reading this after I’ve layed on the floor for a bitandgone to Lilys room to jake myself a Hingr profile. He better see it. Makes me sad. This is why people keep telling me to get over it it literally didn’t matter and I know that, I’ll shut up soon I promise ed maybe we hdould talk anout politics or something. I promise I’m more interesting than this.
Mo Sturgess Giddy
Article Talk
From Wikipedia, the free love encyclopedia
[edit] Hi Mo you gorgeous idiot a house full of people that are loving this think that Mike should go fuck himself but also that maybe you should consider therapy or finding a hobby. Personally, I’m into crocheting at the moment, https:// headspace.org.au/ please update us. [edit] I sent Mike a link to this, we’re back together. I promise he shouldn’t go fuck himself, he’s actually quite lovely. [edit] I don’t know who added that edit but it definitely wasn’t me, no fucking way would I be back together with that boy, I did finish my degree though so I’m in debt and jobless currently. Is that the update y’all wanted? [edit] These updates are fake, don’t trust them. People found the girl on tiktok and she said that she hasn’t left an update here and that you should go watch her storytime. [edit] Update: I’ll take Mike if she doesn’t want him.
Mike’s References [edit]
1. ^ Coppola, Sofia. (2000) The Virgin Suicides, Paramount Pictures.
2. ^ His Ex, Long-term. (2023) “Things She Did” Crazy, vol. 1.
3. ^ Mike (2024) A Joke That Was Made on His Own Hinge Account: Explaining Why It Was Funny and Subsequently My Lack of Understanding of It. 364: 560. [Retrieved on the first date].
4. ^ His Ex, Long-term. (2023) “Things She Said” Crazy, vol. 2.
5. ^ Camus, Albert. (1942) L’Étranger (The Outsider)
Mike (Mr 6’0, “scared of women,” “loves french new wave”)
Coordinates: -33.889438, 151.190852
Mucha, so confusing
Aden Zaki
At the Art Gallery of NSW, ‘Alphonse Mucha: Spirit of Art Nouveau’ exhibit, there is marketing on the walls. Not in the Campbell’s soup, art–is–anything–we–say–it–is kind of way; in sincere works that were originally intended, not for the walls of a museum, but for packaging and posters promoting biscuits, plays, and cigarettes too. Of all the women, the smoker ensnares my eye. Her lips part softly, teeth peek into the light, head twitched back, drooling smoke, hair curling like toes under nicotine-stained sheets.
The commercials certainly don’t lack affect. They aren’t dead — except maybe the Nestlé mural. There’s something about a tribute from a corporation to a monarch that’s undeniably dystopian, unintentionally parodic, the Queen flanked on her left by factories and right by colonial ships. Despite its size, it is much less popular than every other work. The only discourse I overhear is a man in Nike tech wondering ‘who the two chicks next to the queen are.’ No one asks who all the other women are, lounging across countless other canvases.
My first thought walking out is, how much for a postcard? The souvenir shop is conveniently crammed between the exit and escalators, so I don’t have to venture far to find out. Beautiful prints on pillows, towels, bookmarks, postcards (only $2.99), posters, and an art book. Mucha seems timid about his work, “My art, if I may call it that...” I understand his hesitancy. Even though it’s masterful, it’s easy to sum up. To say, “this is a cigarette ad”, in the same way I can say, “this is a pillow”, or “this is a bookmark”. But isn’t summing it up reductive? Art isn’t for anything, I don’t think. And we interact with a cigarette ad differently to an artwork; keeping a polite distance, like talking to a stranger. I teetered on the border of surrender, of engaging without reserve. I told myself, it was no longer ‘marketing’ since it was decontextualized. But, is an advertisement ever removed from context? I suppose I wasn’t in a store, but in a gallery; the posters couldn’t hurt me from behind glass.
The tour guide promoted Mucha as a democratic artist, said his posters brought art to the proletariat. I appreciated that narrative. A rebellion to get art out of institutions and into the home. A democratic space, snubbed from snobbery, primed for personal engagement. A friend of mine’s grandfather, an art collector, told me that before making a purchase he asks himself not if the work is beautiful, but whether he could
live with it.
The postcard is blu–tacked to my wall right now. Maybe when someone’s over they will see it, sit with it, and it’ll become their art too, free of context. ***
I didn’t experience the rise of Charli xcx’s Brat firsthand, but I imagine those that did like Napoleonic troops, selves evaporating into an omniscience, content with the knowledge that history was being made.
Charli’s burner Instagram @brat 360 was an ultimate transgression of the artist–audience power structure. She only let people follow in small batches at random times. Her most loyal fans were prithee to daily introspections, a DJ set, an impromptu street concert — recordings are available online, but stripped of their immediacy, their magic. Our second-hand consumption only amplifies the prestige of real engagement.
For us, the proletariat, she gifted the Brat Wall. A huge mural printed Brat Green. Through a slowly morphing ecology of letters, words, and teasers, she aroused hype to watch canvas, livestreaming the whole ordeal.
And of course there’s the album art. Provocation distilled precisely, I debated with a friend for half an hour after they said it lacked an aesthetic. Charli replaced the Crash cover, visceral, violent and sexy — in fact, all her album covers — with flat colours and low-res text. Homogenising her discography’s aesthetic. An artistic stroke, a political act; a marketing move.
The covers, account, meme generator, and concerts are artistic moments in and of themselves. It’s like we are all backstage and in the audience; empowered with double–vision; enraptured by spectacle as disconnected observers, and yet intimately acquainted with her. Brat is a monolith to marvel at, and a culture to participate in.
Reminiscing in a few years, I’ll say, ‘Brat was iconic’, and I won’t be referring to a collection of audio files uploaded to Spotify, but to all of this... this is Brat. The artwork is ‘a world’ she ‘builds through persona’. The art doesn’t begin with ‘360’ and end with ‘365’. The spectacle is not subordinate to the record, they are equal citizens of a Brat world,
populated not just with music, but marketing too.
Yet I can still sum it up, say, “this is marketing.” And it’s tempting, because the signature of effective marketing is subliminality. However this would not merely subordinate the marketing, but the artwork too, the two irrevocably intertwined. By negating the marketing’s value, we surrender the possibility of aesthetic engagement. What makes Brat great art is also what makes it effective marketing. And while we celebrate the former end, we are dubious at best of the latter. The collision of these two projects is a dissonance; I want to party freely, but critical thinking won’t allow me to surrender.
I am unwilling to retreat into a world where price tags are more essential to the conception of an artwork than its beauty.
A second coming of the author is due, for it is against an artist that we measure the aesthetic sincerity of a work. In the case of Brat however, Charli’s nuanced party-girl persona is the nucleus; the artist is an element of the artwork. She adopts a superposition simultaneously within the world, and beyond it. We might collapse this contradiction by identifying Party-Girl-Charli as persona, and Artist-Charli as the real Charli, the subject of sincerity we can turn to and judge. But this abstraction fails to grasp that our interaction with Charli is parasocial. Just as Party-Girl-Charli is constructed through concerts, raves, and music videos, Artist-Charli is constructed through interviews, podcasts, and tweets. It is deceptive not to grasp both Charlis as moments in a single Brat persona.
And even if we could dissolve the persona, Charli isn’t the only artist of Brat. She sets it into motion, but beyond her marketing team — who might still be considered extensions of her artistic will — fans of Brat have actualised it as distinct wills. We erected Brat Walls worldwide, a dance trend to ‘Apple’, and adopted an entire vernacular of Brat slang. Each of us create Brat, make it, do it – on fait Brat.
Art seems also to possess a transcendent quality when its aesthetic value is superior enough to intrinsically subordinate its market value; when something is inexplicably beautiful we label it ‘priceless’. The historical influence of Mucha’s aesthetic and its technical excellence are seemingly enough to overshadow its use as advertisement, so we permit it into our galleries.
But to make this judgement about Brat we must define the merits of its medium. Good music is moving, good books insightful, good paintings evocative. Reductive examples, but they serve for me to ask — since we have agreed that Brat is more than music — what merits must we judge it by?
What medium is my Mucha postcard? My purchase was not motivated by a desire for the purpose it would serve, but simply a desire to own it. The functional value -– as something to write on, stamp, mail to a friend — is negated by the value I attribute to having it. It became a commodity with a null function. I chose to use it as a decorative poster but could have used it as a bookmark, an origami sheet, or a symbol of my commitment to democratising art. The form suggests a purpose, but it doesn’t necessitate function.
And isn’t this what art pursues? Arbitrariness. A playground for minds to run free, to find pleasure in discovering how things might be, beyond how we immediately box them in, conceptualise them. And if consumption in consumer-culture is aesthetic not functional, could marketing be an artistic innovation? One born from economics but not tethered to it. A medium with social-life itself as its canvas.
The enterprise of marketing itself is a signifier; I can’t help but associate it with manipulation and predation. These normative properties alter not just how I perceive marketing abstractly, but how I consume real instances of it, whether artistic or capitalistic. Concepts are aesthetic categorisations. Relations between concepts influence our engagements with Mucha, with Brat, with all art, especially music, where marketing is emergently pervasive.
And although the categories of ‘good’ or ‘marketing’ might be aesthetic, our interactions with them are anything but. We might understand these things through manufactured concepts, but our relations in the world are not arbitrary nor playful. It doesn’t matter if you conceive of them as dangerous while I conceive of them as sexy — cigarettes cause cancer all the same. No matter if these concepts are solidified through introspection, reasoning, or seductive marketing. Art is at the club and in our homes, the eternal written into our world like Jesus Christ on a plastic sign – a contingently sinister thought. Maybe Charli is right; Everything is romantic.
Please, Please, Please Father:
Catholic Repression and Irish Boy Obsession
Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott, Barry Keoghan, Cillian Murphy, Niall Horan, Ayo Edibiri… the list goes on. In August of 2023, ELLE Magazine declared it was ‘Hot Irish Guy Summer’. Raw sex appeal was never our strong point, so how have these pale, lanky men become heartthrobs and Oscar darlings? The answer lies in Ireland’s deeply religious history and how Catholicism has traditionally demonised sexuality. This has resulted in a repressed, guilt-ridden people, who truly have no idea how to act under the spotlight.
The myriad of media which sparked the thirst for these Hibernian Heartthrobs, I believe can be traced to the April 2019 release of Season Two of Fleabag, by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Co-starring Andrew Scott as the cool, sweary, g-and-t drinking, incredibly hot Hot Priest — the character is only credited as ‘Priest’, the internet added the ‘Hot’ — the popularity of the show peaked during lockdown. This was followed by the TV adaptation of Normal People, Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel; the epitome of the sad-girl-lit-fic genre, imbued with observations of Irish struggles with intimacy and communication. Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones bring electrifying, tender chemistry to the screen, and Mescal
Alice Heffernan
embodied Connell Waldron perfectly (melancholy, anxious and repressed). And, in June of 2020, Paul Mescal was photographed on the streets of Dublin carrying a beer, a packet of chips, wearing the shortest GAA shorts ever seen.
Irish creatives have enjoyed numerous global accolades more recently, with a record-breaking 14 Academy Award nominations for Irish stories and talent in 2023. An Cailín Ciúin or The Quiet Girl made history as the first nomination for an Irish-language Best International Film. Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, and Cillian Murphy enjoyed accolades in the 2024 awards season, and everyone is still talking about dirty bathwater and dad dancing.
To the rest of the world, Irish people have a somewhat spotty reputation, littered with stereotypes about drinking, stupidity, and violence, as well as harmful beliefs about terrorist or mafia associations. Ireland has an expansive diaspora. Every Irish person I know has a similar story of ignorance, microaggressions, and the same questions over and over again. However, Irish culture has exploded into the zeitgeist, and it’s only getting bigger.
Ireland is a historically marginalised country. Catholicism, brought over by St Patrick, was initially used to order the Pagan Irish society, with local monasteries holding political and fiscal power. After the Tudor invasion, the English Monarchy attempted to inject Protestantism into Ireland and it… didn’t go well. Now, Catholicism is an important part of Irish national identity, and Irish Catholicism is referred to as an ethnoreligion; many people identify with this shared culture whether they are religious or not. It’s a distinct branch of Catholicism that’s extra big on the guilt, deeply entrenched in tradition, and hugely concerned with outward appearances.
Some Markers of the Irish Catholic
• A deep, pervasive sense of guilt. Irish Catholic guilt is not just guilt necessarily about actual sins, religious or moral, but rather a general guilt and shame at even just being alive. Irish people are experts at apologising, practised in taking up as little space as possible. This need for selfflagellation can only be bred in a pew.
• A general affinity for misery and sadness. With a history as battered as ours, it’s no surprise most Irish media is bleak, bleak, and more bleak. When I visit
home, my family’s favourite way to catch up is by listing the neighbours who have died since I was last there. The Irish obsession with misery is certainly a product of the hardships the nation has endured, emphasised by the above Catholic need for humility. Recently, Paul Mescal has been spearheading the hot ‘sadboy’ movement, but let’s not forget “Ah, there goes that dream.”
• An excellent grasp of shame and bashfulness. This is certainly close to guilt, but more acutely presents as a nearpermanent state of embarrassment. The unwillingness to take a compliment, the hatred of the spotlight.
• ‘Notions’. This is an intensely Irish concept that is difficult to explain. It’s close to being pretentious, or getting too big for your boots, like delusions of grandeur but more like delusions of upper-middleclass. Think Tall Poppy Syndrome compounded with hundreds of years of religious social norm enforcement. The excessive embarrassment of Irish celebrities, the horror at being praised, is certainly to avoid appearing as someone who ‘has notions’.
Like the well-loved Australian pastime of ribbing your loved ones, Irish affection is expressed similarly. When an Irish person loves you, they will air your dirtiest laundry and prey on your deepest insecurities to procure a laugh. Why do you think people keep bringing up that sausage advertisement Paul Mescal did? Even our own Irish Times recently said “…looking at the Irish artists who have been bothering the shortlists for Oscars, Bookers, Emmys, and Brit awards and seeing some of the innovation happening at home, there are reasons to remain hopeful.” Even in a national paper, in an article which discusses the need for funding in the arts and the richness of Irish talent, we can’t help but feel like a bother!
So, what’s the connection to the recent explosion of Irish culture? Hollywood — Americans — love Irish people. As they cling to whatever tentative Irish heritage they possess, the appreciation/appropriation of Irish culture by Americans is oh-so common. Ayo Edebiri joked in an interview about playing the donkey in The Banshees of Inisherin, which led to the internet backing her up and ‘confirming’ her Irishness. The joke has spiralled, and the actress regularly discusses her “Irish heritage”, even shouting out various counties on the red carpet of the Emmys. I believe these bashful, sarcastic, socially awkward, painfully shy celebrities are a refreshing alternative to the overly sincere Americans or traditional, stiff, and polite British who dominate silver screens. They’ve still got a cute accent, but without the colonial baggage an English sweetheart would carry. The vulnerability, the lack of fake tan, the gappy teeth; these actors
are even more attractive for how ‘not Hollywood’ they are.
The rise of the ultra-private, introverted celebrity has coincided with this Hibernophilic phenomenon. Cillian Murphy epitomises this; we saw him being dragged around during the Awards Season/ Barbenheimer press mania, and it is clear that he despises it. His Oppenheimer co-star, Emily Blunt, said “He is the world’s best actor and the world’s worst celebrity”. The girlies’ online delight over footage of him zoning out in interviews, stuttering at journalists, and asking what a meme is. He has no social media presence and lives a very private life in Dublin City. It seems his offline life, his introversion, only further incenses his admirers. Celebrities are retreating from social media for their own wellbeing, yet fans continue to lust after them in spite of this.
In contrast, there is no observed equivalent hysteria for Irish actresses. Saoirse Ronan has been internationally successful for a very young age, and Jessie Buckley and Kerry Condon have received significant accolades in recent years. After gaining popularity on Derry Girls, Galway native Nicola Coughlan starred in Season Three of Bridgerton, the 6th most-watched Netflix season ever. Coughlan was subject to a significant amount of both scrutiny and objectification, however the reporting around her sex scenes focussed on how empowered she was; she thanked the audience at the Season Three premiere for their support of “women with my body type…that is, with perfect breasts.” Conversely, Cillian Murphy said of the sex scenes in Oppenheimer, “no one likes doing them, they’re the most awkward possible part of our job.”Why is the reaction to Coughlan’s naked body so different to Murphy’s, Mescal’s, or Keoghan’s? She is certainly admired, but the internet isn’t as brazenly horny about it. Is it her appealing charm and humour in the face of the body-shaming she has faced? Maybe we have finally concluded that objectifying women is bad?
Why are we so obsessed with these men who are clearly so uncomfortable? Nothing is more attractive than something you can’t have; that’s what makes the Hot Priest so hot! That’s why private or non-existent Instagram accounts are so desirable. These men are vulnerable, honest, and embarrassed. Hot, hot, and hot. We want them to be a little nervous, a little objectified. They don’t want us looking at them! It’s fun, right?
And really, after all the money for acting school or the Trinity College drama course, surely, they should’ve expected this?
This year, a BBC reporter asked Andrew Scott about Barry Keoghan’s use of prosthetics for the nude dance scene at Saltburn asking Scott, “How well do you know him?” Scott is visibly uncomfortable, and laughs, waving the reporter off, and the internet went nuts. People were horrified, and rightly so. While many of their works include erotic or nude scenes, the treatment of intimacy in Irish media is incredibly delicate. Even in a camp film like Saltburn, Keoghan’s character’s nakedness at the end of the film is a symbol of Oliver’s freedom. He’s won; he can do whatever he likes in this, his mansion. In Fleabag, when she and the priest finally sleep together, there is a spectacular moment where Phoebe Waller-Bridge looks to the camera, and pushes the lens down — we aren’t allowed to see this moment. It’s too important.
Purity culture in Ireland has made sex an especially secret, dirty thing. When Irish people are sexual on screen, there is a cultural barrier they must cross to access this vulnerability. Cultural insensitivity to this, in the form of this extreme obsession and objectification, compounds this issue. This is why the bawdy jokes about being railed by priests or dangling silver chains leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
the path’s a lone vector as you speed beneath buildings rendered in pixels above a straight blue line.
you saw some straggly gums before you dipped into northconnex where your map swiftly turned earth’s crust to an oily film.
liquid shadow churns, cog-like as you coast through the concrete seaif you’re not careful, you lose your body to the speed which steals your breath and scales your presence nearly infinite.
when the tunnel spits you out you catch a lungful of platinum lightnotice the trees on sat nav are too plump, too spare to be the eucalypt forests humming by the road.
your eyes wander to their new leaves curling at the sky110 emblazoned to the left of the screen, you search for truth in their cycles but
draw instruction from the line. the car fletches your body into a near-perfect arrow, flattens wind’s churning choirs, fuses scattered roofs, and
the highway conducts each exhale like heat until you’re a single current extruding ever into elsewhere.
The plastic woven red-white-blue bag (红白蓝袋子) has become symbolic of resilience and hardship due to its utilitarian durability and working-class associations in Southern China, Hong Kong, and in countries like Ghana and Nigeria. The ubiquitous significance of this patterned material is felt by migrants of displacement and diasporas across the world.
On my recent trips to China, I began photographing how this fabric persists, across different cities– morphing into the city infrastructure, protecting belongings, or simply becoming the backdrop of a heaving scene. At times, it mutates into a behemoth that swallows what lies beneath it and other times it camouflages, barely noticeable, and recedes amongst scattered rubble.
Bonnie Huang
Bonnie Huang
Bonnie Huang
Two studies of fate: updated archetypes for our time
Ava Broinowski
I. Modern prophet
Between each clip a mechanical exhale clicks like a tongue, a brief black screen shifts scene, accompanied by the hospital respirator sound of a super8 film camera. The YouTube video is mildly granular, delicate somehow. Sitting on the bed, her voice is thin s’s, whistled t’s, gradual, gravelly, heavy r’s, like, you know, Like this.
So, there’s my room, naked wooden floorboards, sun: The molten stripe it lathers across the coffee table I have a mattress, makeup bag, I have two mugs, my clothes, these beads I bought them from this old woman who smiled like she knew things about you that you didn’t and The thread joints between the beads, the knots, you know, they were sticky With dust kind of like tree sap yellowy A lot of sun.
I own 28 items.
I used to have more, then less, when I was still squatting, figuring it out. Even then, something was sort of, like, Coming to live through me. I always see the beginning of things backwards, you know, because events don’t exist until they’re named.
You could run from the naming but always the orphan time you leave will find you, always it waits in the wings.
Then there were the million views I woke up to. I realised the posting was the same as praying. It’s like there’s this form and it’s so beautiful, and its content can be almost anything. Because everything is shifting, too fluid to have form, in space - none - or in time - fragile. And people think it’s like a parody or something. The guided meditations. But it’s not. They’re not. I’m just fulfilling my place in things, you know.
The algorithm chose me.
And you can just list things on the internet now:
Lap of pistachio shells
My hairpin on the floor
Cat videos
Happy hour
Missing my ex even once I realised he was quoting True Detective Bar of soap
Paper napkins
Are we luminous?
I think it gives us something to hold on to, the listing, icons to hold up to the party as proof
Proof of my life
That I care what you think
Look at these precious things I surround myself with You can know these things! You can know me!
I have to keep making content to nourish this tender organism and In pursuit of purification of the consciousness and my bachelor’s degree.
In this way I must be both universal and very very intimate.
Affirmations (universal):
[ Milk is more than milk ]
[ You are more than you ]
[ Miss what it was then ]
[ I am the reincarnation ]
[ of Copernicus ]
Diary (intimate):
Diary 10:
Think I swallowed a bruised stormy planet
On the evening walk heav ing towards
Sickening feeling in my tummy
Quick exhale now everything is losing weight
But decide to radically accept this feeling
As proof of love Am a rationalist Yes
Proof! that I care about what you think
Can only walk wrap scarf hold phone close
Red flats lacerating the street
Traffic lights a sheen smeared vaseline in the night
Come to relish this little drama
The pub trip of epic proportions.
Diary 28:
I am a trained analyst categorising your words into most-to-least likely timelines
My memory of our conversations still is audio-perfect
Filed according to date place forecast
The smell of your collars (usually like cake boxes)
Because for a time 100% of my mental faculties were devoted to YOU
It made me physically sick
Proof! That no one could see
Because every relationship to God? private.
Diary 16:
Develop a photographic memory for a more coherent relationship with the object of your devotion. This way you can more efficiently collect data to demonstrate your faith, to your faith.
Diary 30:
Eventually
The grass shone like cordial heav y smell of new mulch
I was being careful to think only pure thoughts
Because I fully believed you capable of reading minds
Then
Mid sentence slowly realising something
About the secret knowledge of how to live brightly, that I believed was in your mind, and that I really needed you
To tell me- Realised
I made it up so
Obviously
Knew it all already
And also you can’t read minds As in I caught you!
And your psychic violence
Although I gave you these powers too Your actual ones are far richer
Diary 23:
What am I supposed to do now?
Consider the data? 1
Just sit there I guess...
Attached because we are always all ignorant. Even though God is in my mind, I’m just a girl.
Posting-prayer of this form functions because everything is more than it is and also less. When you blow up and reduce all of that simultaneously on an infinite plane, like a relative universe, like the internet, everything gets much much much much faster, as the drama of that car speeding up infinitely until it’s just an empty landscape, and, at the same moment, so still, and it happens as
The sound of a flip book
Ladders the world it’s all one long pair of sheer stockings
Flickering
How watches were only ever fine-tuned metaphors
There is this grand purrrrrrrr of dissipation
Now everything is losing weight (again see) and number and it’s all just one. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen all at once. 2
If it turns out that I’m a false prophet? Well, you are only asking for proof.
If that event ends up being named, then it was always going to be just that. I never asked to be able to talk to you like this but here I am. You know? You’re a part of this now. And who told you you have to be the best version of yourself?
Just a vessel experiment in the unified field of consciousness. I too am whatever the algorithm wants.
II. Speculative dream dealer
In the LA studio of an artist who need not necessarily be named for this segment who was recently bailed out of one of those rapidly down-turning ingestion-oriented two-week-long weekends-away somewhere in the south of France.
I hate this. This is awful. No seriously awful - what, what’s that look on your face? Bemusement? Come on, you know this, though, no? I mean what would you call that? Like a febrile spray tan. Is this meant to underscore some superstructure of your psyche? Healing your inner child. Oh you see Angels but can only portray them here. Of course. Yeah I could be a terrorist but I don’t have the resources. Hahahahahaha so lucky. No no it’s good. It’s good. I’ll take it. I see potential in you. These three- bought. Bought! Yes I
meant what I said. But it’s good, yeah, because I know someone who will like it.
‘Good’ means a throbbing but subtle potential for transmutation into a dream.
The ensuing process of selling to collectors
There is always a certain amount of phone callsProfessional poker players, financiers, nightclub promoters, and corned-beef magnates.3 Alongside continental lunch with the heiress to a Malaysian peanut empire, see Art can be whatever I want it to be in this network. Decoration ornamentation accent proof whatever. Trust in me is the basis medium, an underlying currency, And a bit of intimidation. It goes like this: You have to buy one of these [XXXX XXXXXX] paintings wait ten years they’ll all be worth millions
If you don’t you will weep you will be weeping kissing my feet
3 Article by Christopher Glazek in the New York Times, ‘The Art World’s Patron Satan’
Oh whyyyy
Yeah, anyway, come for dinner. And most of the time I’m right. You have no idea what is beautiful. Don’t worry, even that doesn’t make you different. Most of my clients buy from me without looking at the works first. But no one looks at the works the gallerists put up before they’re up except the gallerists. Do they have a special purchase on beautiful?
Is it pathological? Definitely Definitely some sort of disorder An excess of honesty and taste, Maybe some Manichean tendencies - I know what the world needs. Late stages of megalomaniacal paranoia? Whatever you want, want to hear. I’m honest.
Making good on the honesty claim
“I’m trapped by my circumstances to fulfil this role. A dealer-collector. A richman’s son. Can’t like try to say ‘oh I’m not this and I’m not this, I’m actually this, I’m a self-made man’ You can only protest those kinds of myths so far.
You have to accept it , you have to embrace it . This is who I am Had a bit of a rough childhood because his parents sent him to boarding school but at the end of the day nothing tragic . You know bullied a little bit here and there but like at the end of the day : Luck y man
At the basin, the mirror, at the marble island in the k itchen. Glaze faced over a pot of protein yogur t .
The foil wrapper the centre of the room. W ho w ill want the piece about entrepreneurial models in 18th centur y Virginia. Or, which Hollywood interior work s w ith the colours of blood and jute sack s?
Some roles are better played than others. W hat ’ s yours?
My tholog y mounts around any thing v isible enough. A s in, any thing , seen, at all .
i had le dream the other day ... i was paid to lie in a huge princess canopy bed in the middle of a restaurant and people would gather to watch me drink sparkling amaretto sours with candied cherries nd big wobbly towered jellies with peeled grapes nd ringlet peaks of meringue. i giggle their sensible and strong brows poke from behind pearly columns and they whisper “omg shes so cuteee”. i mean i think on the quote “why the fuck cant i have fun all the time??” i forget who said it i think i saw it on tumblr. Anywayz. Le sigh ... it’s all on my dessert spoon and i don’t know how to set the table, fish knife to left and salad fork to the right so miserable!!! What will happen when fun is over and my prankz aren’t so amusant?
✧˖°.YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER BUT YOU CAN’T CLIMB A LADDER ₊˚♡ WITH A RABBIT ˖⁺‧₊⟡₊˚⊹ IN EACH HAND
Dream number 2:
Like I went to a ballet school on the side of a live volcano. i’m jealous everyone looks better in the diamond pattern lycra jumpsuits than me, it’s our uniform. i’m convinced i’m the fattest girl in class. Teenage ballet dancers are prone to stress fractures in the first rib and posterior ankle impingement syndrome from people performing repetitive plantar flexion. We go on a field trip, all polka dotted down the volcanic stone. Off to the Rudnyansky mansion, the girl i least like pronounces it like NYANsky like an anime cat. So stupid. There are true wits and false wit, like hypocritical (false wit) and honest (true wit). I hope to see the Hungarian tied faience stove.
The headmistress who bears a striking resemblance to British model Alex Chung is tapping her bingo night heels along to the UVB76 radio which vibrates at 4625 KHz. It’s 2010 and the internet tells me that in September the buzzer portions replaced with excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. It’s November though. Intermittent phone call conversations were transmitted for a period of approximately 30 minutes at UTC 14:00. The phone call mentions the ‘brigade operative officer on duty,” the communication codes “debut,” “Nadezhada” (Russian for “Hope”, both a noun and a feminine name), “Sudak” (a name for the Zander fish and also a town in Crimea) and “Vulkan” (Volcano). Mistress Chung smiles patiently as she moves some beads on her miniature abacus.
поняла. (English: “Officer of the duty station ‘Debut’, ensign Uspenskaya. Received a test call from Nadezhda... understood.”)
Feeling so wistful im starting forget something ughh >-< The bells keep me in time ... I pull up my sock thats falling down. Was that a bell? I tell u a story that happened to moi:
I walked one time with a boy in Montparnasse, I wanted to take a photo of me flashing Serge Gainsbourg’s grave. I reckon if I picked flowers the star power sucked from the ground like a naughty talisman — maybe the PH of the soil is altered by the amount of celebritydom decomposing, would my hydrangeas blush prudent pink? What we were basically saying was that I wish I could get a boner for you, the boy says maybe it’s a feeling inside but decided that this phenomenon is called the ‘Heart-on’. In the Swiss embassy he says I play the role of the ‘titular girl fag’, and he’s the compulsive accessosier, smoke operatorrr, some awkward scarecrow in flat shoes. You understand? U get it? That’s Good.
And you must remember things that are great importance liek:
Ringlett hairstylz, like hair hanging like festoons around perfect egg faces, And like so many petticoats endlessly rolling in frills, endlessly tumbling tumbling tumbling Kiss big roses achoo achoo achoo we all fall over!!!
DODO L’ENFANT DO
Stepping on a dress pin with my big toe and activating my pineal gland ... Sometimes I think the government is watching me, like Pfizer roleplay simulation opps think my outfit is bad, she’s soooo ita , polyester lace and her roots are showing and she always wears those shoes OMG do you think she doesn’t own another pair!!!
It’s operation paperclip shit it’s midnight driving, Margaret Howe Lovatt in the Dolphinarium in a shein bikini. Melty chocolate magical étoile Normie LOVE
Dream 3, another effort:
I’m at a party at Patty’s house. I like Patty. She has big anime eyes that sparkle sparkle sparkle. She doesn’t like my friends. She says they are false wits. I’m trying to walk around the party and I’m embarrassed. I wikiHow(ed) ‘how to cast an easy love spell’, I printed out screenshots from my crushes instagram and stuffed them in my underwear band, they are crinkling when i walk and her cousin offers me a ride home, she hasn’t been drinking that night. She wears big spectacles like Isabelle Adjani in The Tenant. She says her name is Rachel but I don’t believe her. I met her last month at Patty’s organ recital and she was Bessie. On the camping trip she was Maria. At graduation she was Margot. In her car I tell her about a movie I saw that day, I tell her she would find the floor work elements really great as a physical performer and I imitate some vocal percussion. She smiles patiently, one of her front teeth is missing, it leaves a weepy cut on her bottom lip. I am becoming acutely aware of her foot pressing down on the accelerator, the street lights becoming comets as the engine growls like a lion.
Can we go slower / relax im a good driver / can we stop at maccas / you seriously want me to stop there what about the boycott also like i saw on twitter this thread about how all the meat they use is fake and like is made of bug protein you seriously dont want to eat zionist burger / bruh sorry im just really hungry right now i didnt eat before i came ok / bella hadid / no like my ritalin makes me forget to eat sometimes and then like i get super light headed / yeah true / i feel like i only take ritalin to study but i end up scrolling tiktok for hours instead yeah i guess im trying to stop using my phone so much like focus on the moment like i really want to focus on the art this year
since im on a gap year / oh yeah what kind of stuff do you do / well i usually just do dancing like i did a residency in [redacted] and it was chill but like i really want to change mediums like i just am so sick of like dance people and like yeah i dont really know yet but i have been thinking about like starting a band idk / yeah thats cool like i have a mate thats in this like really cool noise band and like i saw them play last month and i was like woah i never seen anything like this before like this designer we both went to uni with made all the costumes of like pelts of like road kill they found yeah it was so dope if they have another gig like i will let you know we can go with patty and like other people that were there tonight / yeah that would be nice like after coming back to sydney from [redacted] im trying to find out whats cool here i feel like im so out of the loop / yeah true
Rachel/Bessie/Maria/Margot turns the car down a street that ends at a redbrick apartment complex, the light is still on in the foyer. She revs the engine.
Please stop I think you enjoy this too much please let me get out / but we’re having fun / no this joke isn’t funny anymore / no why can’t we have fun / we’re going to crash
Her Toyota Corolla smashed through the window. I remember glass étoiles and thinking how much I hated the abstract paintings they put in lobbies. I hope my art doesn’t end up there and just focusing on RBMM’s smile, and that chipped tooth, how her tongue stuck out inviting shrapnel like tasting snowflakes. i’m upset because i wore my favourite sexy outfit tonight to impress [redacted] but he didn’t look at me. Im like a freaking derpina and he’s like a jock in his like chad energy. It feels like a console shattering your ribs, it’s like punctured lungs ugh. i’d prefer to die here than survive and be ugly. I can’t afford doe eye surgery or to go to Turkey. And I’m mad at RBMM, I THINK she’s a lesbian for wanting to die with me. We’re not fucking Thelma and Louise. I’m not Yuri. I don’t even know her. She’s so random. FIN.
In the hushed sanctum of the workshop’s embrace, Where threads of sunlight weave through the dust of ages, The weaver’s hands are poised, a testament to mastery, Each movement bearing the weight of centuries.
With a reverence born of generations past, Fingers, weathered by time yet nimble with purpose, Pluck strands of wool and silk, dyed in hues That echo the landscapes of Persia’s storied lands.
In the rhythm of their labour, stories unfold— Tales of empires risen and fallen, Of caravans threading through mountain passes, And cities adorned with rich pigmented mosaics.
Each knot tied is a homage to the ancestors, Whose echoes resonate through the loom’s wooden frame, Guiding the weaver’s hands to conjure patterns That swirl with the graceful rhythm of a silken stream.
The tapestry grows, Geometric precision meets organic flow, Each motif a language spoken by tradition, Each stitch a dialogue between past and present.
These hands cradle both hardship and hope, The soul of craftsmanship unyielding, Resilience in the face of time’s march, And defiance against the erasure of memory.
With each pass of the shuttle, a pulse resounds, A heartbeat of culture entwined with creativity, As the loom sings softly beneath their touch, Bearing witness to the enduring human spirit.
And in the quiet of creation’s embrace, The weaver’s hands, like poets of bygone eras, Spin tales not of battle or glory alone, But of the quiet strength found in creation itself.
Zahra Saffar
At the heart of the carpet, a medallion gleams like a crown, Radiating memories of imperial courts and thrones, Where diplomats negotiated beneath azure skies, And poets penned verses of love and longing.
Across the field, motifs dance in symmetrical grace, Testaments to trade routes spanning continents, Of silk and spices carried on caravans of camels, Where wealth flowed through the corridors of time.
Yet within these intricate threads, a narrative unfolds, Of empires risen to primacy and their inevitable decline, Etched in the fading hues and worn paths of ancient roads, Marking the passage to memory’s embrace.
Like knots in the fabric, ambitions twisted and tangled, Straining against the loom of time’s unyielding warp, Each conflict a thread pulled tight, distorting the pattern, Until the daunting design of empires began to unravel.
Though amidst waning splendour, cords softly persist, Odes to innovation, legacy in the mist, Artisans, as deft as the weaver’s sure hand, Craft remnants of opulence in memory’s strand.
Their eyes, etched with the weight of wisdom and time, See more than threads—they discern the very essence Of a civilisation woven into each elaborate design, Their legacy enshrined in all composition and hue.
In the weaver’s final stroke, the carpet becomes a vibrant chronicle, Each thread a relic of Persian heritage, each knot a silent ode To artistry’s timeless essence, where every intricate motif and vivid hue Reverberates with the soul of civilisation.
Thoughts on fermentation.
Holly Gerrard
I have the munchies.
I’d hoped there might be some dinner leftovers tucked away, perhaps in the crisper, but it seemed my housemates had already got to it (I’d heard footsteps shuffling in a blue lily haze toward the kitchen about 40 minutes earlier).
While my ‘ingredients-only’ household is enviable during daylight-infused hours of sobriety, the rogue vegetables and multiple raw blocks of tofu are frankly, devastating right now.
Let’s run through my options:
1. Old tofu (raw),
2. An entire jar of dijon mustard with a single spoonful taken out of it because I had got really, really desperate and tried that once,
3. Almost empty yoghurt container,
4. Wobbly carrot,
5. Unclaimed beer bottle,
6. Back-of-the-fridge container, unsure of contents.
I reach for the yoghurt, grab a bowl from the drying rack and pour a couple of globs in with a splash of soy milk. I hazily remember seeing this recipe online 2-maybe-3 months ago. I scoop out the mixture with two fingers, using the dim window reflection to guide this rare moment of self care.
I feel like Nara Smith.
Except, we’re the same age and I am high in my kitchen on a Tuesday night and the mixture is too runny and soy-dairy tears are dripping down over my eyes, dribbling down my nose and into my mouth.
I need to have a shower.
I return to the fridge and take the now-claimed beer bottle out.
Our hot water takes too long to warm up so now I am standing naked in my bathroom cupping my hands to my face to stop the mask from trailing its way down my neck and chest, but it still oozes through the gaps in my crooked fingers and plops onto the floor.
I will probably forget to clean it up.
I reach a hesitant elbow out under the water (it’s not worth the risk to move my hands), and am greeted by a comfortable temperature – albeit, slightly lukewarm.
The water pushes the silky yoghurt mixture down my shoulders and trails down my arms to swirl down the drain. The soy milk has sort of clotted now, and I have to step back to avoid it getting stuck between my toes.
My beer is sitting on the toilet seat, so I reach over and crack it open.
Freud says that the id is the unconscious and irrational part of the personality, driven by our unconscious bodily needs, impulses and desires. As Freud does, he also says the id is especially linked to aggression and sex.
I wonder if Freud would be concerned about the unconscious impulses I seem to find myself having, but then I remember that Freud probably never had a shower beer so, honestly, what would he know?
While I’d hoped the food-adjacent facemask would help with the munchies, it seems my hunger was beginning to rapidly ferment (Freud would say this is the preconscious mind).
I push the remaining soy clots down the drain with my big toe and try not to gag, before heading to my room to put my slippers and pyjama shirt on and return to the kitchen, hoping something in the fridge will be more appealing than my last visit.
So here I am, pussy out in the kitchen at 11:47pm, my
left knee aching (I’d squat down too fast), and I am trying my luck with the back-of the fridge container.
The smell of gochujang hits my nose immediately. I wonder to myself whether kimchi ever really goes off, but I’ve left my phone in my room and the thought of walking back, googling ‘can kimchi go off’ and then returning to squat half-naked in front of the fridge was overwhelming.
I decide to apply some deductive reasoning instead (read: justify my laziness):
(If kimchi is made through a process of fermentation then surely this 2-maybe-3-month-old container of kimchi will actually be a deeper, more complex culinary experience.)
I put my entire hand in the container, but only use my thumb, index, and middle finger to pick it up, mentally justifying this action with “two fingers to close the fridge with”,
Like I couldn’t have just used my other hand.
I take a bit of the kimchi.
“fuck, that’s good.”
I take another bite of kimchi, not realising I’d needed this until now. I make a mental note to thank my friend for leaving her kimchi here after a potluck some months ago the minute I get back to my bed.
It’s much more likely this thought will be just another one lost to the smoke.
I take another bite and wish I could choose which thought would curl into the air and evaporate as I exhale, burning away with each flick of my lighter.
I wonder whether the brine puddling behind my eyes is salty enough.
I wonder if it tastes like gochujang and fish sauce.
I take another bite and try to squeeze it from my mind,
Think about this instead:
Whoever decided to invent fermentation was a fucking genius, as per below:
1.
2.
3.
These are as many as I can think of because, as it tends to, the smoke has clambered its way out of the whimpering joint I left in my clogshaped ashtray, crawling into my ear and stealing my ability to focus on any one topic for longer than six listable points.
I take another bite.
There’s gochujang under my nails and in the small cuts where I’ve torn at the skin with my teeth.
I’d like to shake the hand of the person who figured out what yeast was capable of, and hope they didn’t notice the gochujang-stained cuticles and the hangnails that smell vaguely like fermented garlic.
It’s unfortunate though, because as soon as the word enters my mind I regret it. Now I’m just thinking about yeast infections and that is a highly unappetising thing to think about when I’m squatting half naked in front of the fridge scooping kimchi out of the container with my bare hands.
A thought begins to pickle: start wearing pants to bed.
Probably won’t.
I think that ‘probably’ holds almost too much certaintainty. It lounges across the grooves of the first three letters and taps its fingers against my tongue and teeth.
If I’d known what was in this back-of-the-fridge container
Kombucha
Miso
Pickles
4. Yoghur t
5. Sour cream
6. Beer
I would have probably thrown it out during my daylight-infused hours of sobriety. Freud would say that’s my preconcious mind, but I think it was my id –unconsciously I knew I’d probably desire this kimchi at some point.
‘Probably’ has a sometimes unfortunate habit of brewing until it becomes certain; until I reach into my briney eyes and pluck out those sour, acidic thoughts that have been fermenting for 2-maybe-3-years with my thumb, middle and index finger.
Those thoughts will probably never taste as good as backof-the-fridge kimchi.
I close the container with my two clean fingers and watch my thoughts curl up inside, tucking themselves under their blankets of wilted cabbage. I stand and close the door with my dirty fingers.
The gochujang will have crusted over, leaving flaky handprints to greet me, when I return to squat in front of the fridge the next morning–
Holly Gerrard
Rest in Bin Weevils pieces
China Meldrum
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. It torments me. I see them everywhere. The Weevils. I’m losing happiness points over this. Is my nest cool? Mulch. Dosh. The ‘Nerf Nitro®’. Bin Weevils is haunting me, and I fear that as a society we haven’t properly unpacked the emotional toll that it placed on us. Bin Weevil’s won a fucking BAFTA for Best Website, not once, but four times.
In. A. Row.
How on earth are we claiming to be well adapted human beings, when this flash game from hell lurks beneath us? Bin Weevils has injected itself into every part of my life, and we need to talk about it. Move over Club Penguin, there’s a new horrifically laggy, slightly problematic, bug riddled, deeply iconic flash game to crash your parents’ 2012 HP Spectre on.
Whilst it is often (wrongly) called a Club Penguin knockoff, Bin Weevils is the originator of vaguely anthropomorphic societyreplica flash games coming out in 2004 from the minds of the supreme council of Weevils at 55 Pixels, Nickelodeon, Prism Entertainment, and Creative Entertainment Group - truly the founding fathers of a flash game generation. Bin Weevils followed anatomically incorrect depictions of Weevils who lived in the ‘bin’. As a Weevil, you could live life carefree, assuming you contribute to the Weevil economy in its many work-based games to earn in-game currency of ‘Mulch’ and ‘Dosh’. It was known for its wildly inconsistent animation quality, horrendous sound design that can be summed up as ‘squelchy,’ and all in all, being a slightly unhinged but very fun flash game. Dedicated Weevils flocked to the Bin to play, and an army of nine year olds created an aggressively devout Bin Weevil fanbase. It became a cartoon, a movie, an app, was plastered on merchandise of every kind, and made into two (much less successful) spin off games.
A flash game goliath like Bin Weevils wouldn’t have gotten to where it is without some help though - the game was well known to partner with a slew of big brands to get the graphics department some dosh. Most notably and arguably by far the most unhinged, was their collab with the ‘Nerf Nitro®’ - a nerf gun that shot cars instead of foam ‘bullets’. For months, players were inundated with ads for the ‘Nerf Nitro®’ which eventually seeped into ‘Dirt Valley’, the aptly named Weevil themed Mario Kart knockoff game. ‘Nerf Nitro®’ graphics
and cars were plastered in the game, frustrating dedicated Weevils and running many computers into the ground. ‘Nerf Nitro®’ eventually got rid of in-game graphics and returned to gargantuan pixelated billboards, but anti-Nerf sentiment plagued the Bin.
Sadly not all Bin Weevils scandals were this wholesome. In 2017, it was revealed that a group of hackers released the data of 1 million Weevils to the public claiming that they had hacked the unhackable (read: the Bin Weevils user database) and had the IP addresses of 20 million Weevils. 20 million isn’t a number they plucked out of nowhere by the way. In 2013, at the height of the terrifying reign of the Weevils, there were 20 million active users reported on the site. I’ll just say that again. 20 million reallife human people played Bin Weevils. And even more hilariously (and very grimly), 20 million dedicated Weevils got their IP addresses and emails datamined. Bin Weevils didn’t dignify the violation of 20 million people’s privacy with anything more than an automated email response. The statement, ‘I got doxxed on Bin Weevils’ — while categorically insane — became a brief reality for some people.
The death of Bin Weevils was swift and grim. 55Pixels, the parent company behind Bin Weevils’ creative direction, aptly described by ‘binweevilrantcentral.weebly.com’ as “incompetent, ignorant and unprofessional” and “even worse than EA”. The company was liquidated in 2021 due to bankruptcy. Sadly no megacorp thought it was worthy of a buyout. On the last day of Bin Weevils’ reign, the Weevils gathered in Flem’s Fountain, donning some now very questionable headpieces, jumping, dancing, and crying out “Weevil On!”. It seemed like a peaceful yet saddening end to a much loved childhood classic.
55Pixels got their comeuppance for selling out, and the karmic scales of the universe rebalanced as their evils died out. We moved on. Or so we thought. Much like how other famous flash games got remade after the tragic death of Adobe Flash Games (hi Club Penguin), Bin Weevils Rewritten was reborn just months after the original game got shut down. Just as one Weevil dies, the blood, sweat, tears, and mulch of dedicated fans bring it back to life.
I fear that I will never know peace.
tHe chilDrEn YeaRn fOr thE baKery.
Clive Meldrum
The following are all facts I thought I would divulge to nobody, that I would take with me to the grave. I had a surprising level of dedication as a member of the senior management of a now defunct Roblox café, Bakiez. For those not yet familiar with the genre, it was basically a café, with real (unpaid) employees (children), taking orders, making (pixelated) food and drinks, and a system of training and interviewing employees (again, children). These games used to dominate the platform, and within them, the managers were king. Having that little ‘10 | Management’ badge below my stupid username gave me the most power I had and will ever have in my life.
I first started playing these games whilst scrolling through the platform and clicking on a questionable name, because what the fuck is a Bakiez. I approach the long line of cashiers, staring into the cashier’s empty black eyes as they spew out a, frankly, intimidating speech bubble to me.
“Salutations! Welcome to Bakiez Bakery ����, I hope you are having a splendid day. My name is XxRebecca, and I will be your cashier today. What may I get you started with? The order limit is
Nothing could have prepared me for those grammatically perfect sentences being spat out at me. Safe to say, at that moment I opened up the Bakiez Trello (Yes, they used Trello to plan business activities) and attended the next training shift.
Words can’t explain how a Bakiez training session feels,
you simply had to be there. Racing to get into the server before it locks. Seeing the others in my group get kicked out for the most menial reasons, like not using correct grammar (which we were EXPECTED to use at all times, without exception. To the point of putting full stops after a smiley face or emoji), or cracking a joke, gave my little underdeveloped prefrontal cortex a new goal in life. I must become one of them.
To rank up to a staff assistant, you must first sink an ungodly amount of time into the game to gain enough bakery points, in which you can then attend the staff assistant interviews. They had me up at 5:30 AM to hopefully make it into the server in time, grab a chair, and have a chance to join the management team. I had set about 5 alarms, silently praying my shitty Australian Wi-Fi wouldn’t fail me now. I was eventually pulled into probably the most stressful job interview of my life.I got out of the interview, quite literally, shaking. If I didn’t get this role, my Bakiez career would be over. I remember being on a school camping trip, when I saw the Discord announcement. I was officially on my come-up,a calibre above. I was no longer a mere cashier, I was a damn ‘8 | Staff Assistant’ at Bakiez Bakery. And nobody knew it.
Naturally, I developed a monumental superiority complex in the period of time I was a staff assistant. I was eventually picked to be a supervisor, which only exacerbated the problem. I now sported my shiny new Bakiez management badge, and became the perfect power-tripping 12 year old, telling off all the other 12 year olds. I was no longer the trainee, I was the trainer.
I attended many, many training sessions in my time, which I still remember fondly. I have vivid memories of doing these trainings ON HOLIDAY overseas, and one time I left a sleepover early in order to attend an 11:30 PM training session. I sunk hours and hours into Bakiez, and I’ll say it, I made that pixelated bakery my bitch.
However, the interactions with the lower ranks was not what made the experience so uncanny.The inner circle of Bakiez management might be the most cult-like organisation I had ever found myself in. Everybody was acting far more mature than they were, and no less abusing thesaurus.com. It was no longer ‘Hi,’ it was ‘Salutations.’ If you said ‘sorry’ instead
of insane. If you thought this was a silly Roblox game then you were sorely mistaken. Bakiez had a Trello, an expansive code of conduct for management, a leave application system, and scandals of admin abuse to name a few. Some resignation letters I read during my time made me realise that these kids did not play games despite the fact we were literally playing games. If you slipped up with grammar, went AFK for too long during training, or even stood in the wrong place, it was over for you.
I would love to share with you a few snippets from a management address from the Chief Staff Officer to give a small glimpse into the world I was living in circa 2019.
‘Our next reforms are in 4 months and we will be terminating those who have been acting up regardless of your activity. We really couldn’t care if you have 200 sessions. You need to step up your maturity, otherwise, you will immediately be removed from your position regardless of whether you’re a leader, an active management member, or not. Look to your higher authorities or successful management leaders if you want examples on how to remain professional while also having fun; control yourselves and control your boundaries. If you act up, you will be terminated.’Eventually, life caught up to me. I was unable to deal with lockdown mental illness (don’t lie, we all had it), learning about parabolas, and my, frankly, very taxing unpaid Roblox management position. I sent in my required resignation 2 weeks in advance, with frankly guilttripping-required questions such as: ‘Why am I resigning?’, ‘Is it a personal problem or one that can be easily fixed?’ Or my personal favourite, ‘How can I avoid thinking about resignation in the future?’
Bakiez is now defunct. I have no idea why, or how, but I think it has something to do with the fact the owner went to college. The bakery is now locked, a relic of the past – my past. Café games on Roblox have now fallen into obscurity and frankly, I mourn their loss. That was a core experience of my late childhood, and I would love to pay it forward (with maybe less corruption and child labour). I can only hope that the new Ikea Roblox work scheme is not met with the same problems, and if they need a helping hand, I will gladly put that management badge back on with pride.
Running out of time: Charli XCX, Children & the Environment
Sasha Blackman
On the 7th June, rave diva turned pop star, Charli xcx, released her album Brat.
Sea levels are rising. Charli has turned up the heat with the album of the summer/winter. Her confessional song ‘I think about it all the time’ captures the inner conflict and uncertainty she faces surrounding having kids. The pressure is real. She thinks about it all the time
Currently, we are all united by the fact that the climate crisis is threatening our ability to get “bad tattoos” and cruise down “winding roads doing manual drive”. Whether or not to have kids has been highly debated in recent years, with philosophers like Chad Vance frankly stating that it is “eco-gluttonous” to do so. However, philosophers Anca Gheaus and Luara Ferracioli insist that prospective parents have a duty to ensure the next generation has access to “adequate life prospects”. How can we look children in the eye if we are passing on a limited world to them? But is it enough for Charli to be ‘mother’ of one Brat album? Or does she need a real-life, kicking, screaming one of her own?
After many years of producing ‘Club classics’, Charli sees her life branching out before her. Should she succumb to the age-old narrative of settling down? Or continue living her party girl lifestyle? Charli explores the duplicity of choice between becoming a mother and living her life. The reality is that women can’t have it all. But we’ve usually run out of time before this is realised. For women, the societal expectation to have children makes this even more confusing. It’s unlikely that Charli’s getting “early nights in white sheets with lace curtains” when all this is on her mind! Understood as nurturing caregivers at best, and reproductive vessels at worst, motherhood has been the assumed role. We also know that generally, their old lives are abandoned after having kids - impossible to live because of a lack of time. Time after time after time, women are told that they need to have kids before it’s too late. Everything from Bridget Jones to Sakaya Murata’s Earthlings hammers this home.
The opening minor chords of ‘I think about it all the time’ create a bittersweet atmosphere that set the stage for Charli’s heartfelt confessions. She’s pensieve and unsure. Her frankness creates the feeling that you’re lying on Charli’s bed with her, and she’s sharing her innermost thoughts, leaving you waiting on her every word.
I think about it all the time
That I might run out of time
But I finally met my baby
And a baby might be mine
‘Cause maybe one day I might If I don’t run out of time
As a confused girl in the world, the inner conflict is easy to resonate with. How can anyone choose between living the life that they love without kids or having children and letting go of so much? In verse one, Charli fleshes out a charming scene where she meets her friend’s baby.
How sublime
What a joy, oh my, oh my
Standing there
Same old clothes she wore before, holding her child, yeah
She’s a radiant mother and he’s a bеautiful father
And now they both know thesе things that I don’t
She captures the awe, love, and excitement that she feels. Wouldn’t it be lovely to become a radiant mother? Listening to this verse conjures images of two parents, totally in love, cradling their newborn in a park as the sun covers them in a golden blanket.
But that beautiful park won’t last much longer at the rate the icebergs are melting. Unbearably hot nights listening to our K-mart fans whir and once-recognisable beaches eroded by furious winds. It doesn’t all exactly scream “perfect time to have kids!” Charli might run out of time. Maybe she already has. Vance notes that because each person contributes to excess resource consumption and carbon emissions, the harm that a child will bring to the environment outweighs any other good.
Charli has a point when she says:
‘Cause my career feels so small In the existential scheme of it all
With the amount of discourse online, in schools, and in everyday conversations surrounding the climate crisis, it’s hard to know if your daily disposable coffee cup should be replaced with a reusable one, let alone whether or not it’s inherently evil to birth a child. But maybe Charli’s career feels small because she hasn’t had kids. Clearly there is more to this puzzle.
Gheaus provides us with an alternative perspective, noting that prospective parents have a moral duty to ensure that the next generation are also in positions where they can maintain a stable population.
Charli confesses, And I’m so scared I’m missin’ out on something
What about becoming a radiant mother? Sonny Angels just aren’t enough! Charli believes that having kids provides incredible value to society.
But Vance insists that no one has the right to parenthood. Particularly in cases where children could be harmed, this seems fair. No child should have to grow up in extreme weather conditions, eating dystopian meals. Muscle Chef style, shrivelled chicken with slimy greens is too far.
Yet Charli asks, Would it give my life a new purpose? And having kids would. There’s certainly more of an incentive to be more sustainable if someone you care about will outlive you.
But isn’t the love Charli has for her friends’ baby enough of a reason to minimise harm to the environment? Surely we don’t all need to have brats of our own just to care. Interestingly, philosophers believe that the deepness and robustness of parental love, particularly procreative-parenting, is established simply because the parents have brought this child into the world (from literally nothing (ew)). Charli may love her friends’ baby, but wouldn’t make the same sacrifices for that child. Whereas, she knows she’d sacrifice her freedom for her own child.
Would it make me miss all my freedom?
Sorry girl, it’s unlikely you’ll be performing another Boiler Room set with an infant. So likely yes. Charli sees her life branching out before her, ripe with opportunity. If she waits too long to choose one, they will drop and rot at her feet (right to the core). There’s a sickly stench oozing from the macerated fruit that the climate crisis has rotted. Our freedoms are being inhibited anyway. Gheaus would remind Charli that the deep and robust love parents have for their children, plus the duty we have to provide “adequate life prospects” for future generations justifies her having kids. She’d also acknowledge Charli’s uncertainties—more children does mean more carbon.
Nothing lasts forever. Whether it’s relationships, our ability to have children, or our society as we know it. This is neither comforting, nor helpful, but Charli’s openness and vulnerability in ‘I think about it all the time’ provide us with an insightful dissection of gendered expectations, existential uncertainty, and tender desires. After snottily sobbing in full starfish position on the floor of my mouldy sharehouse, I too, think about it all the time. Looking back at captured moments of my family and I from my infanthood, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to recreate that. I’m paralysed, unsure whether to maintain hope that the world might magically be fixed, or if I should get on with the grieving of potential futures. For now, let’s listen to Brat and be comforted by the fact that Lorde and Charli finally worked it out on the remix. Xxx
Ruins of
Eternity
We are beasts of no wilderness. Each footstep of ours searching For some unknown silence Greater than this body to worship, For some unknown holiness That will find immortality In all things forgotten. As we walk and climb Like ants to the magnifying glass, We see that our procession Of pilgrim, peddler, and peasant Is no different to the frolic Of sheep, hen, and carabao, Beasts of burden and sin Who have forgotten the earth like the earth has forgotten them. We, last of the old believers, Free from our masters, Free from our flesh.
And all the plains and jungles Remember the length of our shadows Dancing upon their bodies, As we limp like lepers From each barrio and barangay, From one field of rice to another, Bare feet treading the mud Of all Bicolandia: through all Her uncaring hills and Her ghostly canopies, All her teeming plazas, All her forlorn churches, And their weeping bells.
And we tremble Under the gaze of the Mayon, Whose volcanic beauty Is the birthplace of all That is dying yet divine, Whose lava once Baptised ancient gods, And whose mighty peak Is the sarcophagus of heaven.
Joan de la Kagsawa
And in the spectral shroud Of night, we cease and rest, And when we awake, We find spears of sunlight Impaling our object of pilgrimage: The ageless ruins of that Bell tower, all solemn in its solitude,
Standing like a hand reaching For some unknown heaven, Or like some unfinished god, Forever forsaken in stony sleep, Moss chewing upon a body More ancient than the cannons And rifles of any empire, Upon stones that quietly sob, As they gaze upon their destroyer With the same eyes shared by Every pilgrim beneath its shadow, And listen, as the wind wails With the whispers of ghosts. As the whole world worships Without breath.
And here, an elegy For the ruins of Kagsawa: I would rather perish In the claws of memory Than let fate deny me My immortality.
When I place my ear To these stony remnants, It is not my ancestors That can be heard. It is not their screams, Their cries, their farewells, That have been absorbed By these uncaring rocks. I hear the tolling Of the bells.
I hear them weep For their creator. Let these stones bury me, Skull to skull Skin to skin
With my ancestors. Let me sleep forever In the company of these ruins, Eternity is
To live with freedom Is to live in darkness
In this illuminated Imperium
I am putting Each and every one Of my bones in your Glove compartment
Dew still wets the blades of grass, mornings feel like mornings again...
Oh light rail! Oh bedroom Led lights! Oh throbbing Street crossing bell! Oh 5 O’clock iPhone alarm!
A rabbit dies; A fox lives another day;, There is one less streetlight in the sky
A rabbit dies; A fox lives another day; There is one less streetlight in the sky
Is not starvation The daughter Of the loneliest God?
I am grasping every Stone in my hand. The final flesh of This numb necropolis
Great white fangs Opera house, All the world a Theatre of nothing
Childbirth In the toilets
A corpse In the pokies
That brazen Harbour bridge
Keeping all Worldwide welcome
The morning bell
A voice crying in the wilderness:
“The tower has left her”
Give me my name
Tell me where I’m born. Where you from where you from
Copper wire cobwebs
Power lines in bodies
My hand is a comb For a stranger’s hair
My breathing body
Caressing each highway
Will all I drive past Remember me?
The remains of another World are washing up On the beach.
I love a sunburnt country
My body is here
But my ghost Is ringing a bell In some campanile
Joan de la Kagsawa
No. That’s not true.
I am not alone in this city, This city is alone in me. We must be food for someone too.
No fossil keeps Its shadow
Oh opal card!!!
Oh facebook bible verse !!!
Tax File Number
There is nothing Holier than witnessing The final day. The flag lowering itself.
And to think, truly, That language was born in the ruins of the Tower of Babel. In the ruins of humanity’s first unified gesture toward God. In the ruins of God. Aren’t these rocks that lie about – all ageless and nameless –Are they not the remnants, the entrails, the bones of God?
Yet here is the parliament, the pandemonium, the panopticon: A sheep with the thickest, oldest armour of wool, A hen whose claws are sharp as chipped arrowheads, A carabao whose hooves remember the birth of the world, And caring for them is some old, bumbling bardess, Who gropes the stones of this bell tower
As she chases her shadow, Wearing the tatters of some moth-eaten dress that Has embroidered all unuttered memory, and Pants and sighs and mumbles the last syllables of her kind.
There is no death more pathetic than this. Our children devouring the universe, Reducing cathedrals into quarries
To build monuments of their own boredom. For the only thing that follows hunger Is the truest starvation of the soul:
The absence of memory
The absence of immortality
The absence of eternity
The absence of ruins.
The bardess cradles handfuls of stones and mumbles her final words: “Even this eternity will meet its end, and the world shall wait For another, and another, and another. The end is forever. Let me give my body to the volcano’s sacrificial fire. Never shall the universe forget my column of smoke.”
And to think, truly, That eternity was found In the ruins of humankind.
And to think, truly, That humankind was born In the ruins of eternity.
In prayer Is the death Of all language.
Joan de la Kagsawa
CONTRIBUTORS
Holly Gerrard @hollygerrard
Bonnie Huang @localbonbon
Ava Broinowski @rossshhhka
Jem Rice @jemmyfee
Aden Zaki @adeb zaki
Clive Meldrum
Zahra Saffar @_zzahras
Nicholas Osiowy @nick osowhy
Alice Heffernan @alicehxff
Mo Sturgess Giddy @mo.giddy
Sasha Blackman @sasha.blackman
Jesse Carpenter @rainbowspoon1
Meldrum @china.thecountry
@joan.dlk
EDITORS
China
Bipasha Chakraborty @bipasha.c
Ashray Kumar @ ashrayyy
Joan de la Kagsawa
Hugo Anthony Hay @hugosux
Kelly Caviedi @kellycaviedi
Estelle Vigouroux @goodfleaforvogueitalia
