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
Design
Kelly Caviedi
Bipasha Chakraborty
Ashray Kumar
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 and printed by SEED Printing Group.
Issue 20, 2025
Welcome to PULP Magazine
This is Issue 20 of PULP, a student-run and funded arts and culture magazine. We publish the work of young writers, artists, and creatives. PULP is vulnerable, raw, and experimental. We cover everything from culture and art, opinion and analysis, fashion and photography, comedy and creative pieces. No holds are barred in the pages of PULP.
PULP contains content that explores mature themes and is intended for mature audiences.
Welcome to PULP.
Senior Editor's Note
I love gambling and I intend to make it a habit — you should too.
I have made plans for a hypothetical date far in the future with my friend from Issue 17’s note. Him, another friend, and I are going to put on our best and only suits, catch the courtesy bus from Canterbury to The Star with the old men that frequent it, enter the casino, and spend the evening smoking repulsively cheap cigars and betting the smallest amounts of money we can on the games with the best odds. When this was first proposed to me, the idea was unsettling. Gambling had never interested me, and I usually try to be risk averse. There are a few things that have changed my mind:
Reuniting with my best friend after not seeing each other for 248 days?
Epic.
Clubbing in Hong Kong?
Epic.
Making up a recipe as you go?
Epic.
Trying mystery milk? Not so epic.
#Irl rizz?
Epic.
New romance?
Epic.
Pro Wrestling?
Epic.
Waking up early?
Epic.
Now I know what it feels like to take a gamble and win. I’ve been pushing myself to take more risks and be more comfortable with things maybe not working out — knowing that I could flop as hard as I try. Luckily for me, they have.
PULP 20 is about that rush.
I am going to go to The Star with my closest friends. And I’m going to put it all on PULP.
Editorial
Like the Hawk Tuah girl, malicious Minecraft Twitch streamers, and TikTok mediums before us, PULP has gotten into a bit of a colourful, gaudy, texture-filled, crazytown scheme. We aren’t tanking the stock market with GameStop, but this is only 1/6th of Issue 20. Fate has led you to pick up one of six unique copies of PULP Issue 20, each with their own unique cover design. Don’t worry. You still get 100% of its esoteric content, and it is still 100% not your favourite Filipino music magazine. But it is definitely our brightest, wackiest, craziest, funkiest PULP. Things got wilder. Images got stretched, distorted, and outer glow-ed. Text is squished, colours are brighter. QR codes are waiting for you to scan them, and we’re ready to read your palms and test your grammar. The things we do for you, dear reader...
This issue of PULP is bright, bold, and sometimes fuggers, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts right?
Awaiting you inside these beautiful Pacesetter pages is Youtube Poop, cross-cultural communication, the great jump, childhood, aging, whipping boys, blood-filled theatres, and the art of improv. Our contributors have concentrated a snapshot of life, from childhood to death, and placed it into this issue. We thank them endlessly for their trust and their ideas.
Collect all the Issue 20 covers, display their full pattern proudly, tell your close friends story, or just cherish the one that fate led you to, keeping it all for yourself. Whatever you choose, we hope you enjoy our lovable gaudy monstrosity. We definitely do.
Lots of love, and stay hydrated, China, Ashray, Bip, Joan, and Kelly
PhotoReview
Track ID? Bro Track ID?
Track ID? Track ID?
Track ID?
Track ID?
Track ID?
Track ID?
On a deeply instinctual level, the improviser seems like a creature worthy of our immense loathing. In the same way that one might correct a child for blurting out whatever is on their mind, that very ire appears to be just as readily levied at the improviser. The improviser, that loafing, cocky, impulsive thing, who shamelessly indulges in one of the purest modes of creative play — of total absorption in the present. How magical! How disgusting.
This is an incomplete series of observations considering improvisation as a kind of loose aesthetic sensibility. A kind of electric tummy-feeling that you just know when you feel it. A kind of tummy feeling that seeps into your ears, eyes and mind. A kind of style, an artistic process, which I think, is becoming more and more noticeable.
1. Improvisation is (generally) best described as the production of text through an immediate, and unmeditated performance. It is (ideally) not recorded or transcribed in any way. This is not to say that it cannot be recorded, but rather, that the improvisational mode is something that is more purely experienced in the moment of its immanent production, neither its re-production.
2. Currently, improvisation is best known for its presence in music, comedy, poetry, and oral storytelling. This is because improvisation is firmly rooted within the oral tradition, in arts of rhythm. Anticipation. Which as unplanned texts, improvisation naturally plays within. To drive a little deeper, the pattern-seeking brain can
(very reductively) be thought of as a kind of anticipation
“This space – memory – combined with our continuous process of anticipation, is the source of our sensing time as
Genial conversation with strangers
Catherine O’Hara
Tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons or Call of Cthulhu
Children playing pretend
John Coltrane
Ancient historical graffiti
The films of Joel Haver
Youtube shorts of 2000’s sitcoms
The English Renaissance Clowns: Richard Tarlton and William Kempe
Whoopi Goldberg
The Grateful Dead
Justin Kuritzkes’ Youtube video Potion Seller
1For further reading, see PULP 19 ‘When did I become bound by the shackles of my iPhone?’ by Kate Saap.
Combat sports
Church Organists
Fighting Games like Street Fighter, Smash Bros. and Tekken
Whatever Generative AI presents itself as attempting to be doing
Middle Ages troubadours
Shaggy-dog stories
Tickle fights
4. One of the most valuable and desirable mental states is the flow state. A kind of thoughtlessness where selfreferential thought quietly recedes and total absorption in the present task takes priority. This is one of the reasons why orgasm is so enjoyable. It is something completely of its own moment. Improvisation, not too dissimilarly, encourages flow through practice, presence, and attentive listening to the needs of its participants — like good sex.
5. Improvisation is a kind of serious spontaneous play, a state of creative experimentation where no mistakes can really be made — for to have failed at playing is to not have played in the first place. This is the same serious play that you most likely experienced as a child, fully believing that something like the stick straddled between your legs was anything but a stick, maybe a horse, and then refusing to admit otherwise.
6. Every rule of improvisation is a tool. Essentially a guideline, or equally, an insistence of certain techniques. At a cursory glance this might seem antithetical to thinking of improvisation as a kind of free play. Rules might imply a failure state, a way of playing incorrectly, or even badly. Rather, thought differently, improvisational rules can be seen as being loaded with different intentions, and in this light a preference for certain rules becomes the foundations of different improvisational styles.
7. Bad improvisation is one of the worst things that can ever be inflicted upon someone, both as a performer and audience member. To the performer, it appears (and feels like) an entirely personal failing. To the audience member, there is an instinctual recoil from an imagined shame. It seems to give improvising a bad name, and more importantly, it doesn’t matter at all. Bad improvisation disappears just as fast as good improvisation arrives. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There must be risk. In this spirit, the improviser is bravery, for improvisation is anathema to fear — that is, inaction.
8. Improvisational thinking relies upon Improvisational memory. Whilst improvisation appears to be an utterly fleeting ephemera — disappearing as soon as it emerges. The improviser’s work still exists in continuum within the
improviser through memory, in recognition of movements that have come before so as to avoid recreating them in future.
9. With the ever-increasing deluge of information assaulting our nervous systems at all turns in this charmed modern life1, it comes to be that Attention (with a Capitalistic ‘A’) is becoming as increasingly commodified as it is becoming harder to retain. In order to survive this information overload, the ability to instinctually categorise (and hence, reduce in complexity) information presented with minimal context becomes necessary. In this climate, the aesthetic of improvisation is more easily able to break through the noise:
a. Because it seems spontaneously produced, improvisation immediately appears candid, ‘truthful’, and the truth is always interesting.
b. The work is more easily parsed; improvisation is (generally) generative of its own internal-context that is then easily discarded by the viewer.
c. If received as a transcribed product, it becomes immediately, and infinitely, reproducible. Combined with improvisation’s low cost of preparation, this widens the margin of profitability.
10. Conversely, more earnest improvisation resists commodification because it does not result in a tangible product that can be sold. Watching an improvised performance is as compellingly about paying attention, as it is about paying attention to performers who are themselves able to pay complete, and masterful, attention to their craft. The “product” of improvisation is sustained, creative attention, an allure that is lost in digital transcription.
11. A great pleasure of improvisation comes from the awareness that the work is (or has been) completely made up — an awareness of the individual who is creating. Improvisational work creates some of the most intimate relationships with audiences this way, even more so when the work appears comparably indistinguishable from rotely rehearsed pieces. A famous (tropey) example is the satisfaction that comes from knowing that Viggo Mortensen broke his toe kicking an orcish helm in The Two Towers, and used that pain to inform the grief of the take that was then used in the film. Improvisation is quite metatextual in this sense, deeply (unignorably?) aware of the audience’s relationship with the work and the artist. There may lie a larger point about the history of improvisation being intricately tied with changing levels of textual awareness’ (i.e: meta-theatre, meta-cinema, meta-poetry).2
2A special thanks to Jim Fishwick for all of their generous help with this piece.
THE ART OF POOPING
When I was younger, I was obsessed with YouTube Poop. Every evening I would sit transfixed in front of one of two computers I shared with my family, and let the images flow over me. No doubt my parents were concerned, or at least confused, by the cacophony of discordant and loud noises that emanated from the dining room or the bedroom I shared with my brother. I imagine that they would not have approved of the foul language that was emanating from classic cartoon characters like Spongebob, made to say words like ‘fuck’ or ‘shit,’ or how the sudden elevations in volume may affect my eardrums. Or better yet, how these flashing colours and strobe-like visuals would dry out my eyeballs.
You may not know YouTube Poop, but you can certainly recognise it. It’s around us all the time. The above description could have come from any era of Gen Z internet, whether from staying up late consuming brainrot Instagram reels, or sharing dank memes on Facebook in 2016 from some account called ‘viva la memeolution 2: electric boogaloo.’ YouTube Poop is the pre-eminent definer of our visual language in the Age of the Internet. Fast-paced content, rapidity of images, an eternal flowing out of recognisable memes and iconography. It all began with an edit.
YouTube Poop (YTP) sprung from internet forums in the mid-2000s, but found a place on the video streaming platform YouTube (hence the name). An edit of The Super Mario Bros Super Show inspired other anonymous users to share their edits, made possible thanks to the concomitant emergence of cheaper at-home video editing software. Soon YouTube was flooded with similar edits, and no doubt you would have seen some of these in your time, or recommended to you by the almighty algorithm. Youtubepoop: Toy Story Poop1 , Youtube Poop - What is Spaghetti?2 , Youtube Poop: Everybody Loves MAMA LUIGI for dinner3 . Rudimentary in nature, these edits carved out a signature style and were recognisable to anyone trawling through the net.
Besides the moniker of YTP and recognisable memes and phrases such as ‘spadinner,’ ‘mama luigi,’ and ‘spingebill,’
1 MrW00fers. Youtubepoop: Toy Story Poop. YouTube.com, 2008.
2 Lindblom, Jeff. Youtube Poop - What is Spaghetti?. YouTube.com, 2007.
many videos would feature sporadic cuts and edits to repeat a single word or syllable, reversing clips, changing around the letters and words to make a character say something they didn’t, and the sudden elevation of noise to unbearable levels. These techniques had names in their community: stuttering, sentence mixing, and ear r*pe (it should be noted that, as a relic from the early 2010s, a lot of terminology is insensitive). As YTP became more prolific, and editors flexed their skills, it became more complex, the edits more sporadic, and the connection between the original source text more abstract. Users such as IMAPERSON, MycroProcessor, OrpheusFTW, MountainDewMaNN, and madanonymous pushed the form and turned what was a weird internet meme into something resembling an artistic genre of the video medium.
I remember upon discovering these videos I immediately set about making my own. Using rudimentary editing software such as Windows Movie Maker, and editing the only source of videos I had on hand (home movies shot by my brother and I on our family camcorder), I began to remix, rejig, and edit these videos. Over time, I learnt how to use softwares such as Sony Vegas Pro and eventually Adobe Premiere. I downloaded episodes of SpongeBob and laid them down on the track. I knew the list of plug-in effects available on Sony Vegas like the back of my hand. I could shift the axis of the frame, splice together incongruous footage, make Patrick say ‘cum’. Reality could be bent to my will. I became a pooper.
Poopers, the term used for creators of YouTube Poops, forged a community forum to engage in discussions of all things Poop. No longer available, YouChew.net hosted a hub of threads and forums. Poopers had codes of ethics. They supported piracy, they refrained from bullying newer members and instead welcomed them as they were learning the ropes. Within YTP there were various sub-genres. Some poopers stuck with their particular niche while others branched out.
YTP Music Videos (YTPMVs) would edit clips to sync up with a song, or they would pitch the sounds of the clips and remix in a way to make a new song entirely. YTPMVs were so
3 Thumbsy. Youtube Poop: Everybody Loves MAMA LUIGI for dinner. YouTube.com, 2007.
IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REMEDIATION Harry
popular they even branched off into their own community with prominent users, inside jokes and recurring songs. Some classic YTPMVs include Ronald McDonald insanity4 , Robotniktrousle5 , Soldier Vs. Masked Spy6 , THE JOJ7, and PATRICK USED TO AVAST ASSES, THEN HE TOOK AN ARROW IN THE KNEE LOLOLOL IM FUNY AINT I XDDD!8. YTPMVs never fail to inspire awe in me at the level of time, skill, and dedication it would take to find the perfect sounds, clips, and audio to create something that sounds melodically perfect.
Tennis Poopers would often go back and forth editing each other’s videos in what were called ‘rounds,’ the number of which would be agreed upon by the users. The rounds could go on for as long as they wanted, and the number of users involved could be just as large. I remember being a part of a 20 round match between 5 different poopers. The videos would be edited beyond comprehension. There was so much joy in seeing the original source video turned into a kaleidoscopic collage of loud sounds, bright colours, and amorphous shapes with each passing round. There would be no winners in these matches, it was all in the name of friendly competition.
Of course, these techniques and styles are nothing new. Remix cinema has been around as long as cinema has existed. As soon as George Melies realised he could allude audiences by splicing his footage of a simple magic trick, his subject
could be manipulated behind an editing desk. At the same time, it proved that with cinema, the final re–write occurs at the last stages of production. Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is an early remix film, superimposing street scenes to have cities folding in on itself, speeding up and slowing down footage, cross cutting to create associations between contrasting images. Despite crediting Vertov as director, one could argue that it was his wife, the editor of the film, who could be the real authorial voice of the film. Karen Pearlman’s short After the Facts (2018), highlights that the editors of a lot of early cinema were women. At the same time, sampling has long been used in hip-hop, a technique that YTPMV finds its basis in, and points to the ways in which a lot of innovative genres often build on the innovations made by women, African Americans, and other marginalized groups.
The remix film as we know it today emerged in the 1950s with Bruce Conner’s A Movie (1958), which combines various incongruous clips together to stitch together a humorous narrative. Other remix films often use the viewers’ awareness that these clips have been taken out of their contextual milieu, to elicit humorous or shocked reactions. This is not too dissimilar to Dadaism, and the ways in which artists of this movement would use collage techniques and deliberately avoid any explicit meaning in order to speak to a particular time and place in post-WW1 Europe.
So too, does YTP draw on pre-existing material to elicit responses from the viewer, oftentimes using nostalgic TV shows and remixing them for comedic purposes, humour arising from the knowledge that these clips have been altered since their last memory of them. Meanwhile, poopers often dismiss any attempts at intellectualising the genre. Academics such as David Bailey9 attempting to find a message to the madness ended up finding their own videos remixed10. The snake eats its own tail.
What YTP offers us that earlier forms of art do not is the way its aesthetics can speak to our particular milieu in the Internet Age and the proliferation and over-consumption of information. At the same time, in a period of corporate oligarchies, and capitalist control over images and content — be it via streaming services or video sharing apps — embracing the remix means taking back control over our content. Before I explain this, however, I need to explain the current media space we find ourselves in.
4 mrhorseshoe. Ronald McDonald insanity. YouTube.com, 2008.
6 Wazgul. Soldier Vs. Masked Spy. YouTube.com, 2010.
7 Cs188. THE JOJ. YouTube.com, 2010.
8 Alex Tristan. PATRICK USED TO AVAST ASSES, THEN HE TOOK AN ARROW IN THE KNEE LOLOLOL IM FUNY AINT I XDDD!. YouTube.com, 2014.
9 David Bailey. Youtube Poop Manifesto. YouTube.com, 2010.
10 chemistryguy. David Bailey Talks to his Hand. YouTube.com, 2010
Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin attempt to describe our changing relationship with media over time in their book Remediation: Understanding New Media9, by using the terms immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Immediacy is a direct relationship with the world of an image. You have a painting of a landscape and it is rendered in a realistic way to bring you closer in proximity to that landscape. They act as ‘windows’ to another world. According to Bolter and Grusin, however, “[i]t is important to note that the logic of transparent immediacy does not necessarily commit the viewer to an utterly naive or magical conviction that the representation is the same thing as what it represents,” but rather a “contact point between the medium and what it represents.” (p. 30) When thinking about YTPs we can consider an unedited piece of source material as offering us, generally, a sense of immediacy. A typical cartoon show will not undercut its own sense of reality or the viewer’s connection to its world like a YouTube Poop might.
Hypermediacy on the other hand undercuts this transparency. Bolter and Grusin use the example of a desktop, wherein right clicking on something might produce a text box. In this instance, you have a visual field of icons interrupted by the literary world of drop down menus and text boxes. “In current interfaces, windows multiply on the screen: it is not unusual [...] to have ten or more overlapping or nested windows open at one time.” This “heterogeneous space” of “[i]cons, menus, and toolbars [...] Unlike a perspective painting or three-dimensional computer graphic, [...] does not attempt to unify the space [...]. Instead, each text window defines its own verbal, each graphic window its own visual, point of view.” (p. 32, 33) Representation is thus, “conceived of not as a window on to the world, but rather as ‘windowed’ itself”. (p. 33) In this way, this is what happens in a YTP when text appears or multiple source videos appear in one. Here, our visual relationship with the source material is being interrupted by not only multiple other visual sources but also auditory and written sources too.
At the same time, however, “the logic of hypermediacy” is to “express itself both as a fracturing of the space of the picture and as a hyperconscious recognition or acknowledgment of the medium.” (p. 38) In this way, when watching a Poop, not only are you aware of the various media interacting within the video, but you are also conscious of the construction of the work by the user in the editing of these clips.
While hypermediacy may borrow mere images or sources,
remediation aims to represent a medium in its entirety. At the same time, these windowed worlds often remain separated, there is a clear border separating the cut-out piece of a collage or a desktop window, whereas in YTPs these borders dissolve and the distinction between one medium and the next is blurred. “This tearing out of context,” Bolter and Grusin suggest, “makes us aware of the artificiality of both the digital version and the original clip. The work becomes a mosaic in which we are simultaneously aware of the individual pieces and their new, in-appropriate setting. In this kind of remediation, the older media are presented in a space whose discontinuities, like those of collage and photomontage, are clearly visible.” (p. 46-47) Remediation is all about feedback and user interaction, the rendering of something old through digital processes, with YouTube Poop existing as an essentially digital version of this process. Digital remediation takes the old, swallows it, and ‘poops’ it back out. It is, as Bolter and Grusin suggest, the “defining characteristic of the new digital media.” (p. 45)
This description could easily apply to a YTP, wherein the medium of film, audio, video, etc. are run through digital programs and edited, divorced from their contexts, made to shift, stretch and interact, their discontinuities made apparent.
Just as YouTube Poopers attempt to remediate older mediums such as film and television, film and television can seek to remediate YouTube Poops: “remediation operates in both directions.” Luiz Eduardo Kogut’s Videotape10 (2018), for instance, is a montage film overlaying various videos captured both on computer screens and out in the real world. The not quite opaque image gives the illusion of staring through a window, with the film directly drawing attention to this at various points, such as the reflective surface of the computer or the laundromat dryer. The film trips viewers up with its meta-textual framing. Several times when the cursor on the screen or the YouTube timeline popped up, I had to check I wasn’t interacting with my laptop at all. Kogut’s short utilises the remediative techniques of YTP to create a beautiful and emotive piece that blurs the lines between different media and digital spaces. Windows inside windows, and it all collapses into something that touches the soul, but I can’t quite explain why. Jon Rafman’s SHADOWBANNED11 (2018) more closely resembles the random combination of sights and sounds we’re familiar with. But here, we go behind the walls of the digital archives, rendered through 3D modelling as both an ancient ruin and an endless series of hallways, full of wires draped across the floor ready to be tripped on, and sparks flying out everywhere. Rafman’s short embodies the chaotic nature of being ‘plugged in’, and evokes the scrawl of conspiracy laden posts that flood our social media feeds, with a constant cutting of images drawn from various sources, too much information for one person to fully comprehend. Here, the techniques of YTP are made to embody a different psychological state, not one of tranquility, but of horror. This idea of entire
11 Bolter, Jay David, and Grusin, Richard. Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, 2000.
worlds within the video recalls Yabujin’s AZEROY14 series, which speaks of the eponymous Azeroy as some mystical land locked behind gates. There, “everyone is happy in Azeroy,” there are “no broken bones in Azeroy,” and “all of my wishes” are in Azeroy. The series becomes a pilgrimage of sorts to an Edenic paradise, or perhaps we are already there. Again, images and videos weave in and out, creating associative ideas, at times comforting and other times unnerving. Despite YTP no longer being as prevalent as it once was, you can still find its traces in meme videos while scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, the random, excessive miscellany of abrupt sounds, images, and text reminding us of its predecessors. “No medium, it seems, can now function independently and establish its own separate and purified space of cultural meaning.”
In our era of seeming infinite possibilities, source material is increasingly cut off. Films are cut from release schedules and pulled from streaming services. Remediation is important as it relates to remix culture and the fight against copyright law. Remediation, as the defining characteristic of our modern media culture, is useful to understand in relation to the terms RO and RW culture that Lawrence Lessig introduces in his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy15
Here, Lessig is borrowing from the computer terms ‘Read Only’ and ‘Read/Write.’ He is suggesting culture is defined as either ‘RO’ or ‘RW’. In an RO culture, artistic objects are created by a few specialised people and handed down to the masses for consumption. In a RW culture, artistic objects are created in the same manner, but the consumer goes away having absorbed that and then creates something new from it. The best example would be hearing a song, then singing it yourself. In this process of singing — this amateur creativity — you are learning how to sing, how to produce music, so that the world may gain more musicians, and more creatives.
RO culture dominated the twentieth century due to the limits of technology. Creating music was limited to the elites because to create your own professional remix of a song required massive amounts of money unavailable to the average consumer, and the same applied with remixing cinema. Copyright law was also in place to protect the lenders of these cultural products, and to regulate consumers. Lessig traces a history, then, where technology and the elites come out of lockstep. Soon, technology becomes cheaper and easier to access and use. Nowadays, anyone can edit an episode of Spongebob on their
computer as long as they have an Adobe subscription (or if they pirated it). The Internet lends itself to a democratised RW culture that copyright law is falling behind in working with.
Remediation is the perfect exemplification of RW culture rendered digitally, with YTP as the zenith of this history of remixes that have been going on seemingly forever. A lot of poopers would be hit with copyright strikes on their videos despite the obviously transformative nature of their work. In a way, their garishness and abrasiveness could be seen as the ultimate rebellion against copyright law. What they are attempting to create is not another product that can be so easily consumed as something like sampling in mainstream hip-hop. The aim is to transform, to destroy, to play, to put the product in the hands of the creator, and mix it like silly putty. To stretch, to bend, to dissolve the boundaries. This is exemplified in the poopers’ deliberate attempts to eschew meaning.
YTPs are what’s left when an increasingly RW culture must fit within the restraints of an outdated RO culture, in which elites hold on to the power and money that limits creative freedom: it is shit, it is poop, it is YouTube Poop, it is the detritus of our internet, and RO culture that has festered and risen to the surface. Through remediation we can fight against the RO world that copyright creates — remediation is exactly this process of taking things, creating something new and feeding it back into culture that Laurence Lessig argues for.
Regardless of whether you are fighting the oligarchies of copyright ownership with piracy or you are burning your retinas right before bed with a healthy dose of brain rot, YTP speaks to our current moment as a culture dominated by internet aesthetics. Past media have been consumed and regurgitated and consumed again in this massive digital soup of ones and zeroes. Our visual field is constantly bombarded by screens, and those screens are divided within windows upon windows of content. Despite emerging as a genre in the early 2010s, and dying a slow death, these aesthetics have not died, and mainstream media is slowly catching up, and as more filmmakers who have grown up on these videos start to make their mark on the industry, we may see more and more of the YTP aesthetic in these coming years. While my pooping days are over, I can’t say these videos haven’t affected me profoundly, and made me look upon the world with newer, more fragmented eyes. 14
TOP TEXT BOTTOM TEXT
There’s an intersection between Los Angeles and San Francisco that I think about a lot. It’s next to Blackwell’s Corner — the very last place James Dean visited before he died. There is a giant cut-out of him beside the road; his blasé impression remains a constant image in my mind. The image has been stuck there since the beginning of 2018 during a family trip to the USA. We had flown into San Francisco and spent five days there before driving down to Los Angeles. It was on this road trip that we came across the intersection in Lost Hills, California — completely by coincidence.
I remember standing by the huge cut-out of James Dean with my sister, living in a moment of immortal jelly as Mum snapped a picture of us beside him. I remember looking up. Feeling a bit funny. I remember the faded red ‘TEXACO’ sign, the slowly scooping sun, and the way the clouds smiled back at me. The winter breeze was sweet, and streetlights were sparse in the fading sunlight. The air turned cool as the soft roll of car tyres crinkled with each passed-over pebble. My little red boots were dusty in the gravel, kicking up smoke as I walked through the carpark, trailing after Dad.
It felt exciting in that place; like more. A more that drifted down from the stars in the sky and tickled my heart: a cold warmth. The feeling was fond, even in its disconnection. It was soft and it was quiet. I couldn’t always place that moment in time, or restrict it to the past or the present. It felt like a moment removed from time entirely. It was too plural, too arbitrarily connected, for me to reduce to a point in time or space. I miss that place now, and wonder whether it would be the same if I went back. I miss that moment, miss myself. I miss people, but maybe I don’t. I don’t miss anyone, I think. Maybe I just miss
James Dean’s shadow shook softly in the wind. Trees and tufts of grass bordered the petrol station; the plains surrounding were void. I felt as though my brain was gone and my heart had taken its place. I thought only through feeling and the feeling hurt. But it was a good hurt that made me think; a hurt that made me wonder past the sky.
I wondered if it was just me feeling all these things as I walked into the gas station with my sister, our parents in front of us. Inside, there was silence and flickering lights; statues of elderly women with wide eyes and aquiline noses offered us their palms. I went quiet, took my little sister’s hand. Pickled eggs lined plastic shelves and red-topped metal barstools stood tucked under the diner counter. Flickering fluorescent light emanated from above; 17191
Zara Ishka
I remember feeling a need to label that physical intensity. This intensity that morphed into a sense of overwhelm so consuming I felt that nothing could be funnelled into a singular actuality. I let that feeling — whatever it was, consume me. And in the jumbled throws of it, I caught a depth in the sky. A depth that came from the amounting of seemingly meaningless moments to that of a whole. I watched the intersection become that whole in the front of my mind; those mundane fragments amounting to a complete.
my eyes pulsated beneath my glasses in specks of purple and green. It was all unfamiliar as our new sneakers squeaked against the patterned linoleum.
We washed our pale hands in the powder blue sinks of the gas station bathroom. Country music crackled through the speakers. My sister’s giggles echoed through my brain, tugging at memories of us talking about how much we despise that genre. The memories felt too distant to grasp as she stood there right beside me — I couldn’t hold them; they fell through my hands like purple soap. The music never left the bathroom: it paused in time and space with her and me. The feeling was intense then. I shivered as I made eye contact with myself in the mirror, lowered my gaze as I watched the final soapy suds slip down the drain.
I remain unable to properly articulate this feeling. This feeling of more that hints at a beyond in some weird way. A way that feels collective, but also not at all. I still feel that feeling. When I’m sitting in the shower; mid-way through a ballet class; sitting on a park bench, drunk with my friends — it eats at me all the time. It hasn’t stopped since I visited that intersection seven years ago. I do new things, acquire new hobbies, make new friends, yet constant it remains. And I still can’t tell if I like it.
As the four of us walked out of the gas station, I remember the LED sign next to James Dean’s cut-out: ‘FRESH FUDGE.’ It was flickering over and over through soft clouds of dust; bright yellow as it snapped like glow sticks. I remember watching as pale sunlight fell on the gas pumps and the sky turned a deeper blue. I remember the frost in the air as I stood by the car, and how I paused for a moment before I got back in.
The soft crackle of the radio fell into the moment. Traffic
lights glowed red in the square of the intersection. Each road expanded out to nothing. Only mountains were visible far to the right. Big green street signs went dull as we passed them: the speed was at sixty-five. Wires stretched over top, above and across the broken white lines. There was a grit to the highway; dust settled across the car window under rays of cool violet light. I remember glancing at my sister beside me, tapping her hand. She took my palm and squeezed it while our parents chatted in the front seat. She told me she loved me while her head faced toward the window, hair messy with unbrushed kinks. I asked her if she felt any different there, but she just turned and looked at me funny, her face ivory in the early moonlight.
I wondered then why it was only me stuck with that feeling. She was there too, just as I was. And though I’ve asked her about it many times since, she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember the feeling that stayed for the rest of the car trip. She doesn’t remember how it took up the seat between her and me.
The stars were milky white in the darkness, baby teeth all shined up. Headlights were bright, streetlights sporadic and dim. Darkness enveloped plains of mottled grass and ‘NO TRESPASSING’ signs with tipping letters we kept passing by. The road invited me into a warm calm that lusted over the intricacies of my mindscape as we sped along the empty roads of California. I remember the feeling coming and going, fading in and out with each slight hill. Remnants of the feeling travelled with me to Big Sur, but they faded on the Golden State Freeway into Los Angeles. I wonder, now, if the feeling is embedded in that place: the place before Los Angeles where everything empties out the side of the mind, and you become filled with a different feeling. A feeling that is perhaps easier to categorise.
Cross-Cultural ural Conversations
Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art
In Kyoto, visitors are prompted to reflect quietly amongst the twisting branches of ancient trees, perfectly raked zen gardens, and reverent temples. With an abundance of onigiri, matcha, udon and tempura, full-bellied tourists visit this city and celebrate the gardens, architecture, and ongoing Buddhist traditions. It is often assumed that this distinct cultural landscape is ‘pure’ — untouched by globalisation and influenced by nothing but Japan itself. These suppositions pour into our understanding of Japanese artistic practice, isolating Japanese works from global influences. Equally, the West often pushes a narrative that privileges Western ‘genius’ in art history and overlooks influences from other cultures, as though Western artists have been the only generators of new artistic styles. However, during my visit to Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art, I fell delightedly into a realm of colourful works that blended Japanese and Western artistic practices. In a world where we categorise, divide, and place value on ‘pure’ forms of art, Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art (MoMAK) re-enlightened my understanding of fluidity in artistic practice.
‘Traditional’ Japanese art is ornamental and planar. This means that emphasis is placed on the decorative features of the artwork, as well as its two-dimensionality. For instance, in Kano Einō’s One Hundred Boys (17th century), figures and natural imagery are depicted in colour, yet there is an absence of shading, creating a two-dimensional feel. This contrasts with the realism often valued in Western artworks, which generally employ shading and orthogonal lines to render figures and objects with depth. In Japanese works, repeated patterns are more commonly used, in line with the emphasis on decorative style, which emulates the Shinto and Buddhist valuing of harmony within the natural world and the expression of beauty in everyday objects. Western art was also forged through a religious lens, but because of its roots in religious storytelling Western artists have often depicted figures to tell a narrative or express morals. Thus, they have tended to avoid repeated and geometric patterns, focusing less on ornamentation and more on subject and narrative.
my attention as colourful patterns were mixed with poised figures, and botanicals were used to adorn advertisement posters. These modern artworks employed various artistic techniques from both Japanese and Western aesthetics. In art history, this notion is described as a ‘cross-cultural conversation’, shattering the idea that cultural artistic practices exist in isolated chambers. Professors Margaret S. Graves and Alexa Dika Seggerman describe that throughout history, “artists have continued to produce, adapt and respond to the changing material conditions in which they found themselves.” Through travel, trade, and the sharing of cultural practices, artists are in constant dialogue with one another, sharing and adopting new styles.
This was evident in MoMAK’s collection. As I walked through the space, I noticed a poster that featured a vase of flowers rendered in soft pinks and greens in the centre of a simple black background. Titled Poster of an Exhibition of Lyrical Pictures (1918), Yumeji Takehisa’s work was evidently rooted in Japanese aesthetics, as the lack of shading rendered the flower vase in a planar fashion. The naturalistic imagery nodded to the works of the Tokugawa period (1603 to 1867), where the Shogunate embraced Buddhist symbolism and botanical imagery in line with their use of China as a model of good
government, intellectualism, and aesthetic pursuit. A cross-cultural conversation with the West was revealed as the flower vase stood alone on the plain background. The absence of pattern and use of negative space was reminiscent of Western still life painting. Through this crosscultural conversation, Takehisa’s work is reflective of its time period. From 1868 onwards in Japan’s Meiji period, the Japanese government sought political relationships with the West and invited experts, including military strategists, architects, philosophers, and artists, to teach at Japanese universities. Takehisa’s work celebrates how global artistic styles bleed into one another, facilitating these cross-cultural conversations.
Within the museum, each room flowed into the next, emulating the fluidity that underpins the notion of cross-cultural exchange. Without boundaries that divided the artworks into ‘traditional Japanese art’ or ‘Modern era,’ I could appreciate each work as a jumble of global aesthetic styles. This aligned interestingly with Japan’s position at
the forefront of curatorial innovation throughout the later twentieth century, as groups such as the Gutai art group developed creative ways to showcase art, most notably in open air exhibition, which abandoned the confines of the museum, embracing how art can be positioned in the natural world. Positioned in the centre of one of the rooms and on the surrounding walls, artworks from the Austrian group ‘The Vienna Secession’ were displayed, which embraced Japanese aesthetic style. Formed by Gustav Klimt in the spirit of internationalism, the painter wanted to forge a “new direction of artistic expression”.
Amongst the works on show, the “Pod” Vignette designed for Book Decoration and Surface Pattern (1901) by Max Benirshcke featured four round motifs arranged in a grid-like formation. Black, red, and blue were employed to render intricate patterns within each circular figure. The neat grid of symbols alluded strongly to Japanese artistic practice, and the circular shapes were reminiscent of Japanese Daruma dolls, which are Zen Buddhist talismans of good luck. The beauty of the clean linework and simplified use of colour washed over me, prompting the contemplation of artistic technique over subject. This aligned deeply with the Japanese focus on ornamentation rather than narrative which was refreshing as the West constantly searches for a ‘deeper meaning’ within an artwork, unsatisfied by the beauty itself. This display of European works challenged the notion of Western ‘genius’ as the Vienna Secessions’ works continued to blend cultural aesthetics, highlighting prominent cross-cultural conversations that European artists benefited from through the adoption of Japanese artistic style. In Koloman Moser’s Ver Sacrum (1898), a figure was positioned side-on, wearing a black gown and golden crown. The crown indicated a Western figure, and the absence of pattern on their dark gown further reinforced this. Yet the silhouette highlighted an aesthetic conversation between Japanese and Western culture as the garment’s shape was not particularly
reminiscent of either culture. The repeated curved pattern of royal blue and botanical imagery surrounding the figure alluded to the patterns and geometric forms of Japanese artistic practice, whilst the use of text situated the artwork within the throes of a Western audience. Moser’s mixing of artistic techniques highlighted the fluidity of practice within art. It was wonderful to witness the way that cultures are constantly conversing with one another to exchange ideas and methods of expression through visual language.
By displaying artworks that employed both Japanese and Western artistic styles in MoMAK’s permanent collection, I could engage deeply with the works. As the artworks were not categorised into Japanese or European art, I felt a shared sense of humanity and by looking closely at each
element depicted within the works, geographical and cultural boundaries dissolved to reveal the fluid nature of artistic practice. As Kyoto is a city that hosts thousands of tourists each year, MoMAK’s curatorial choice to showcase works with a cross-cultural dialogue allows all audiences to engage more actively with Kyoto’s modern art scene. The various works within MoMAK’s permanent collection crumbled the widely accepted narrative of Japan as a keeper of ‘pure’ artistic culture. The incorporation of Western artworks from the Vienna Secession movement further demonstrated the notion of cross-cultural conversation. The use of pattern, naturalistic imagery, and flattened perspective in these works showed a strong engagement with Japanese aesthetics. This also challenged the privileging of Western ‘genius’, as Western artists were influenced greatly by Japanese culture. Like a washing machine on a hot cycle, the artworks within MoMAK’s collection bled into one another, showcasing a wonderful mixing of artistic practice.
I encourage everyone to look more closely at artworks throughout our world. Whether it’s Japan and Europe, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, or Indonesia and Australia, no art exists within a vacuum. It is beautiful to notice these cross-cultural conversations and remember that all cultures are constantly in dialogue with one another.
Memento
This one in particular was painted with 3 different colours of high-pressure acrylic gloss spray paint on a concrete wall under an hour, eight storeys off the ground in a famous urbex location just out from Newcastle, the only real preplanning was deciding colours and “wow, I’m going to paint it up there!” The tail, claws, and extra eyes are improvised. And if I’m lucky it’ll be a couple weeks before someone else comes and paints over it. Hopefully someone else thinks it’s cool and snaps a picture before then.
I bought myself a whipping boy
Mo Sturgess Giddy
On a particularly rough Tuesday 9-5 I bought myself a whipping boy. You said –‘That isn’t how it works these days.’
My whipping boy was sad because he felt he wasn’t properly fulfilling the role he had been hired to complete also he had been five minutes late because of bus strikes so he was already on thin ice seeing as it was his first day on the job.
But the whipping boy I bought was sad. So I said –‘Look. It’s working, I feel fine.’
And sent him on his unpaid coffee break.
the carpet is grey ugh grey i lie on the carpet it doesn’t make it
grey
grey
less
great
carpet
fate
carpet.
i am
i am
the
is
is
◊ Three fake tampons — actually plastic vials wrapped in plastic that say TAMPON TAMPON TAMPON on it, used to sneak an accumulative single shot of vodka into year ten formal
◊ one box of hair rollers
◊ one set of The Wiggles bedding for a twin single
One empty bottle of cranberry juice — beating both water and coffee in yearly consumption rates thus far
Two screws/nails/bolts? — unknown origin, unknown home, unknown usage
One hair tie — snapped, then knotted together, snapped again in a new breaking point but not in the bin
Three used tissues — not in the bin
One receipt — Chemist Warehouse $14.99 Norlevo 1 1.5mg Tablet 1 - Levonorgestrel (S3), in the bin
One 2024 journal — orange glitter pen scrawl. Dear Dumb Diary, this year I am going to start running really I actually promise this time I’m going to be a whole new fit person and people will see me and think who is that she’s fit I bet she doesn’t even exercise and that’s her natural body but they will be wrong and it will be a lot of effort. p.s. we don’t like Jess anymore, I can’t remember why but it was serious.
A mosaic of record covers — curated perfectly to draw in an earring toting boy, leading in an arrow to an awaiting bed, pulling him by his belt loops with promises of J. J. Cale and Jonathon Richman, yet blu-tacked to the wall in such a manner that a single knock will send them careening down on whoever dares to sleep below them
One spray can of Hello Kitty deodorant — almost empty, mildly dented, used as bug spray
Three bottles of expensive perfume — from three separate birthdays, but the same Aunt, full to the brim, standing in a popular girl thruple. You’ll have to buy more of the Hello Kitty stuff for bug spray, this stuff will only mean that you can smell when the cockroaches are approaching, it won’t kill them
One glass bottle of musty perfume with a swirl lid — gifted to grandma for her birthday then subsequently left to me a few months later. It doesn’t smell like her, I don’t think she ended up wearing it more than once
One bottle of cinnamon extract — much smaller than the others, for baking, smells like me
One cardboard box filled with objects that smell, feel or look like a certain day, in order from earliest to latest
◊ One sparkly pink translucent lego block
◊ One small toy of Winnie the Pooh dressed as a zebra
◊ One drawing of a love heart that looks like a pear. Maybe it’s a drawing of a pear,
◊ One letter written on origami paper with a signed BBFL contract
◊ One pressed lavender flower
◊ One EOS lip balm
◊ One sticker from the wheel of a BMW
◊ One note on lined paper, water stained, that might say “pass to Mo” or “that’s a no”
◊ One empty mint Tic Tac packet
◊ One crushed silver ring, no longer a ring, now the letter B
◊ One coaster
◊ One student discount flyer for buy one, get one free Gillette razors
◊ Another coaster
◊ Seven bus tickets in Italian
◊ One letter in good condition, always folded along the same lines, signed “I love you”
Best before date
Throughout history, humanity has obsessed over the fruitless pursuit of holding onto youth. Partly due to vanity and partly in fear of our own mortality. This series of street portraits explores that fixation through a dialogue of young and old.
A fisheye lens was chosen to recontextualise imagery of seniors with an aesthetic typically reserved for skaters, rappers, and extreme athletes — marrying old age and the inner youth I found in the people I came across on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Shot across Newtown and Sydney CBD, thxe series captures subjects in their everyday environments. Initiating with a smile and then a chat, each participant opened up to me about their life story and reflections of youth.
Sylvestre Lattao
“Don’t worry about it until you get to about 50.”
“Earlier in my life I was a sailor. all I ever think about is ships and the sea. So I would probably get breakfast and go sailing.”
-Philip
by
Photos
Sylvestre Lattao
“I’d travel to America in Upstate New York. That’s where we met.”
Photos by Sylvestre Lattao
BYS TAN DER
Ellie Robertson
It is wine red.
The velvet on the walls. It is wine red with a tinge of purple and a hue of wealth.
The women are dressed in their finest attire; cocktail dresses, with pearls and diamonds that shimmer in the lights of the theatre chandeliers. The men ensured that they match their suit ties to the colour their prospective partner is wearing. The buzz of chitter-chatter below us is loud, and the clinking of champagne glasses fills the vast spacious opera house. The intricacies of the architecture exude the hundreds of years of artistic beauty, while also making sure we understand that we no longer have it in the way we once did. It feels depressingly nostalgic. I’m lucky enough to be sitting in one of the boxes. One of those balcony-type things.
The hum of pleasantries die down as the lights dim. Darkness blankets silent faces looking to the stage with anticipation. The band in their pit makes a scutter of movement as string players raise their bows, wind and brass instrumentalists take
their first breaths, and the conductor lowers his hand to notify the players of their first note. The curtains on the stage pull apart. There are a couple of women in majestic costumes. Skirts, with five layers of fabric, drown the women stuck in them. Their dresses are beige, but the details are incredibly delicate that the lack of colour doesn’t even matter. Their silhouettes are alluring, with their hair in half-up, half-down braids. They take a breath and begin singing in harmony.
After fifteen minutes of the show, the women are still spinning and singing beautifully. I turn to Atticus. His eyes are glued on the stage. I love the show, but I’m starting to get bored. I turn my eyes back to the stage. A man has appeared suddenly in pantaloons, dancing in circles while he sings. His voice sounds deeper, but there is no real difference between his words. I take a sip of my champagne and listen intently. I’m trying to understand what’s happening, but I wasn’t brought up in an opera-loving house. I’m only really here for Atticus. I flick through the programme to find the brief summary of the play. Allegedly, it’s a comedic drama that reflects the ‘love of life.’ I don’t know, it sounds cliché to me. I’m trying to focus, but the seats are really uncomfortable. I lay my hands over the barrier and wait for the show to interest me.
I feel a drip of liquid on my skin. It falls from above me. I wipe it off passively, with my eyes still on on the stage. A little giggle falls from my mouth as the actors pretend to punch each other and bicker like brothers. The show continues. I feel another drip of liquid. I wipe it off again — it is beginning to become tedious. It happens again. This time around, it’s a bigger drip. I take a look at my hand. It’s not water. It’s thicker than water. I wipe it with my other hand to take a deeper look, but it leaves a smear of sheer colour. It looks almost brown. I can feel my eyebrows knit. I pull my hand to my nose to smell it. It is sweet and metallic. Atticus isn’t even looking at me while I wave my hand around trying to figure out where the drips are coming from. There’s a small, wet, dark red patch on the ceiling.
“Atticus,” I hiss at him, as I gently tap his shoulder. He leans into me and pushes his ear closer to my mouth.
“There’s blood falling from the ceiling,” I show him my hand and point to the blotch of crimson on the cream painted roof above us.
He limply throws the back of hand in my vague direction and rolls his eyes, “Just watch the show.”
I do as I’m told.
I turn back to the show. I’m trying my best to put it at the back of my mind. The dripping speeds up. I can no longer ignore it. I tried to, but it’s splashing on me. It infests my nostrils and nests there. It is now falling at the same beat of the song. I look up once again to see the stain on the ceiling is spreading and spreading rather quickly. I turn to Atticus, he is stonefaced. I poke at him, trying to get his attention, but he is engrossed in the show. A little bit too much. He doesn’t even acknowledge me this time. I look at my pale blue dress. It has splatters of blood, which is not exactly a civilised look. I need some air.
“I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be back soon,” I informed Atticus, thinking he’d respond.
He sits there, staring at the stage with no movement in his expression.
“Okay then,” I mumble annoyedly as I open the door at the back of the box.
I make my way to the bathroom. My breathing is getting heavier, and quicker. My heart is pounding. There’s a thudding in my ears. Hands are shaky. Eyes are wide. Vision is blurry. Breathe. Just breathe. I take a few deep breaths. I focus on my reflection. I think this is a bad dream. Or maybe a hallucination. I’m unsure what I am thinking. But the red on my blue dress is still there. It’s still there. I throw cold water on my wrists, I’ve heard it helps regulate the nervous system. Does it? Has it? I close my eyes and list what I can hear, what I feel, and where I am. It’s okay… I’m okay.
I lean into the mirror, ensuring that my makeup still looks fresh through the sweating. A drop of wet blood is perched on
my cheek bone. I’d wipe it off, but I don’t have my makeup bag to touch it up. I dab it in, melting it into my foundation. I definitely need to buy blush in this shade. I pat down my dress, tilt my head to make sure I look put together and make my way through the hallway. The roofs are rounded, with yellow lights perched on the marble gargoyles in the corners of the stairwells. I get back to the door of the box and let myself in. I give Atticus a quick over-the-shoulder hug… again, no reaction. The show is now building up to, what I assume is, the climax. The music is becoming more ominous. It’s transferred into a minor key — I am filled with dread?
I sit in my seat and the blood has become a stream. It’s splashing on me heavier now, my arms are covered in red. The songs continue. I look around the theatre, skimming every face I see. No heads have turned to the flow of blood falling heavily down to the first floor.
In the background of the play, I can hear a scream. I get out of my seat and look down. I can’t see anyone screaming. No one else is hearing it. Do they hear it? Do they see the blood? Am I going crazy? There are multiple screams and cries now. My breathing is getting heavier again. I’m panicking. Panicking. Spiralling. I bend over the parapet, frantically looking back and forth at the stalls to see if there’s something going on.
The heads below me, somehow still stuck looking in the direction of the stage, are painted with a thick, dark red. Some are wiping their eyes clean, while others are shading their face as though the sun is blinding them. The once beautiful hairstyles are no longer pretty and done up. They’re doused with it. I feel a drip on my head. I touch it with my trembling hand, and look in horror. It’s on me. Not just a splash anymore, a whole spill of blood is on me. My eyes are shielded by a film of salty water. I take a gulp and slowly tilt my head to see the ceiling. What was once only a patch of crimson has now seeped to cover half the roof of the theatre. The screams get louder as I look. Squinting my eyes to see through the darkness of the dim lighting in the seating area, I can see faces.
I see faces. So many of them.
I see faces. Screaming.
I see faces. Crying.
I see faces.
Pleading for mercy.
The more I stare with my eyes wide and jaw open, the more faces I see. The blood continues to spread at a concerningly rapid pace. There are faces of men. There are faces of women. There are faces of children. It doesn’t take long for the halls to begin flooding. One by one, the people in the stalls stand up as it reaches knee level.
“Atticus! Aren’t you seeing this?”
He isn’t hearing me. Maybe he does, but he isn’t responding to me. His clothes are sopping.
I grab his shoulders and shake him.
Why
He hits my hands off his shoulders, his eyebrows furrowing. He reaches for his opera glasses, zooming back into the show.
The actors slip around the stage while continuing their performance. The violins are muted by the wood growing fuller with the liquid, the wind instruments have to open their spit valves every minute, and the clean percussion sound is disrupted by the splashing. I try to focus back on the show. The screams are louder than ever. It drowns out the band. It drowns out the voices. No one is helping. I scream into the crowds for help.
Everyone turns their heads towards me in unison, apart from one woman in the box across from us. She’s hitting her partner the way I’m hitting Atticus. God, she kind of does look a bit hysterical. Is that how they’re all looking at me? Atticus finally looked at me as well. He looked as emotionless as before, but I grabbed his shoulders again and dagger my eyes into his.
“Atticus, please, we need to help them! Atticus, can you… hear… m…” My voice trails off as I scan his face, petrified. His eyes are completely blank. I’ve never seen him like this before.
I stumble back, my lips trembling in disbelief. My back hits the wall and I turn my head to the crowd, hesitating to move my eyes from the man in front of me. I focus on some of the faces that are staring. Blank eyes everywhere. Blank eyes staring at me. I yell into the abyss of cold glares.
“Do any of you see this? The blood is filling this place up! There’s blood all over you. How can you sit here and not see this?” I cry, with a mix of tears and watered down blood covering my cheeks, lips and neck.
As I am crying to the crowds, the music is still going, but the cries and screams are louder than ever. My face relaxes and I spit out a mix of saliva and blood. Now that I’m silent, everyone turns their head back to the show. The actor and actress are now singing to each other. One slips and her eyes go stiff. The other cries while he wraps his arms around her in embrace. The screams have become quiet and the blood has simmered down to just dripping once again. The actor’s song comes to an end and the curtains close.
Everyone in the stalls are praising the show. They are all standing, flooded up to their stomach in blood. Those in the booths are sitting clapping, except for myself and the woman across from me. We give each other a knowing look. Their hands are red. As they clap, splatters of red fill the air.
I am slouching in my chair. And I stare past everything.
It is wine red.
The velvet on the walls. Looks as it did before, just wet.
Ellie Robertson
There’s a game called Wall Kickers. You’re a little pixel monkey and you have to jump from wall to wall to move upwards — hence the name. Along the way up, you encounter holes in the walls which you fall through — leading to your death, spikes on the walls, impaling you — leading to your death, electrifying panels, electrocuting you — leading to your death; and so on and so forth.
KickOnOnGirl
Clara Medanić
Sometimes while jumping, you land on a surface moving incredibly fast, like a treadmill — you don’t have enough time to react, you’re falling. The fall leads to your death. It’s quite tragic. Sometimes the realisation that the ground is moving comes as such a shock that you flip the other way out of sheer terror. You realise once you’re falling, that you did it to yourself. If you were only calm and rational, it would have been okay. Your heart drops and your muscles seize and you go on kicking your way from wall to wall without inhaling a single breath — you are tense.
Before leaving the ground, the grass is neon and two millimetres deep. The earth underfoot stays solid and stern while above ground, blue birds hover on the timber staircase, overgrown with thick summer grass. Nature doesn’t demand anything of you, it tickles your back with a silk scarf.
There is always the debilitating awareness however, of an impending reality that you’re destined to meet, unable to prevent, and so burdened by the approaching of. You will die in this safe haven. You are standing on the earth on which you will die. Here is your killer. Some would call you a silly monkey, knowing only of your end yet jumping forever. But you can enjoy the garden and know that you will fall. Other than this small grievance, the grassy woodlands of Jungle Jumps are bliss. Anyway, you have a job. You — Jumpy Monkey — are Chief banana dispenser tester for NASA and you cannot stay on the ground forever. Before commencing The Great Jump, you relish in the warmth of the orange sky, and watch the pale blue clouds passing through one another like moving cars.
As soon as you leave the ground, you cannot return to that ideal. You begin to question if you’d even truly been there — if it ever truly existed. You never think about it again. From then on, you jump.
The higher you jump, the stranger things become. Your world is morphing and deforming, but you hardly notice. You don’t stop once to wonder how you look. You never try to catch your reflection. There are no mirrors here. It is quiet and empty, and you only have one motive; one purpose; one goal; one joy. Jumping.
And so you jump. But where are you jumping? You got so caught up on locating a clear space on which you could land; with kicking and kicking from wall to wall, calculating your jump’s brevity and depth, noting your airtime, controlling the length at which you drop before flipping and jumping the opposite direction with the pure force of gravity and your sheer physiological excellence, you got so caught up in all this; you never stopped to wonder why you jump: what is up there? What are you so desperately trying to reach? No one told the silly monkey that a rainbow has no end.
is no finish line. You’ll never stop and feel accomplished. It never stops. The difficulty of one stage becomes suddenly laughable when compared to the next. As you jump, your expectations that you have of yourself, they jump alongside you. Silly monkey does not know that there is a mean trick being played on him; the rope he’s trying to catch is being pulled by the human hand.
Sometimes you intentionally jump into open air until a split second before it’s too late. You like feeling the veins in your neck pop, the sudden absence of a heartbeat. For that split second, you are not yourself at all, you are nothing more than fear. You’re an animal, and you’re playing with fire.
Clara Medanić
Sometimes you do too well for too long. You get cocky. You kick back. You deserve a break. You jump willy-nilly. You’re barely kicking, it’s more like swimming. Your silhouette radiates all the colours of the rainbow. You’re invincible, barely landing anymore. Blindly tapping walls with gentle caresses you shoot upwards and upwards until you’re impaled.
The play symbol bulges stupidly before the sub-saharan beauty of your jungle. Is heaven nothing but a blank slate? THE END. Play again? What’s wrong? Why are you crying? Here is a gift, do not dwell. Here, a new environment. Let me lead you to a new life. You can always begin again.
You’ve moved on to the mystical world of Celestial Skip. With this new life, you are a new person. You are a cat in space. The mobile game would excel by having the option to acquire a space helmet for the cat skin but one cannot have everything I suppose.
dotted by sporadic beeps. Gravity works differently in space. Your heart does not race, and neither do you. Your muscles do not tense. You really are swimming now. The beeps echo your heartbeat, as if in a labour induced coma. You’re floating. Perhaps, this is heaven.
As you float, you never truly leave that garden. No matter how fast or high or mindlessly you jump, you are calm. You drift past colossal planets patterned with deep shades of stone and metal. They hover behind you as great statues do. You have time to admire them as you move. They exist beautifully. No one expects them to be, but they are. Isn’t it enough just to be beautiful?
Considering all this, you jump And jump
Since October 7th, 2023, the Palestine movement has grown across the globe. The staunch resistance and bravery of Palestinians facing invasion and occupation should be an inspiration to us in our fight here in Australia.
We must draw inspiration from anti-war movements throughout history. In the 1960s and 70s, the slogan ‘stop work to stop the war’ was used in protests against the Vietnam War; students joined workers on strike to rally in the streets. More recently, we saw CFMEU members walk off their work site to support Australian National
recognise the right to resist. This is one of a number of wins at USYD. After a sit-in outside Tel Aviv University’s stall at the exchange fair, representatives from Israel sent an email to management saying they would not return to our campus. More recently, after student and staff campaigning at Sydney College of the Arts, the first tie with an Israeli university has been cut. USYD no longer has an exchange program with Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.
High school students across a number of schools have organised walkouts with support from Teachers for Palestine. Recently, Sheik Wesam, a student support officer who had been forced to work from home after challenging the selective moral outrage over the recent video of two nurses, was reinstated after student protests.
At the ports, members of the Maritime Union of Australia were on the frontlines blocking cargo from Israeli shipping company ZIM, joined by other unionists, students, and community members. This kind of direct action costs the company money, but also builds strength amongst unions to fight for Palestine.
We have also seen members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association staunchly speaking out at the picket outside Albanese’s office, condemning his support for genocide. The same money going towards building weapons parts for F35 fighter jets that drop bombs on Gaza could be going towards healthcare and education.
We must look to all these examples to know there is hope, and together we can win. The fight for Palestine is a fight that everyone must be involved in — the fight against war and imperialism is a fight for a better world for all of us.
Vieve Carnsew
PULP Grammar Test
The Sound of Sydney: AN ORAL HISTORY HISTORY OF FBI’S LIBRARYCD
Your Idols (2003) a compilation of 21 songs (many of which were only demos), that encapsulated the Sydney scene at the time.
Dan Zilber Music Director 2003-14
The Kill Your Idols one, was I think right at that peak kind of indie dance. The artwork was all done by Levens, who was a long-term announcer, DJ, at fbi. He went through multiple different shows and was here from, like, literally day one. He was on air as an 18-year-old as the drive announcer. It was him and Linda Mariano who would go on to host mornings on Triple J for years. You know, he did the artwork and, it was very much a representation of that sort of indie-dance era.
I mean you look back through the track list and some of these bands or many of them, like, don’t exist. Some of them only existed kind of in that moment, and then there’s others here that kind of had long term careers, you know, over years. It’s kind of confronting, like the bands that were successful and could thrive for five, maybe even ten years, just don’t exist anymore.
I think that’s increasingly the case. Like, we have a very short shelf life in Australia for music, and that’s not always the case everywhere in the world. A lot of other places have much bigger populations, but they also cater to older listeners. But you know, something that we got to really revel in was like youth culture and youth music.
Kill Your Idols is not an isolated artefact of Sydney music history. In the back of fbi radio headquarters, lies a treasure trove of Australian music that cannot be found elsewhere. fbi has accrued an inimitable collection of over 20,000 CDs.
Next to the top dance release of 2014 is a demo by an office worker in a pub rock band that only ever recorded one single. Next to that is a collection of ambient beats made by a student in their bedroom, beside the blues singer that has been gracing Sydney stages for decades. Some of the CDs were donated by record labels, others from presenters’ personal collections, or even gifted by taxi drivers and strangers off the street. Each CD has been carefully archived with often handwritten descriptions
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve thought about, well, what are the pathways for, you know, for music, to exist beyond turning 30? But I would say that one of the, one of the sort of most significant moments, maybe on any of these compilations, but certainly on the Kill Your Idols one was the, the fbi Idols. But yeah, like, I mean, that, fbi Idol song that turn up your radio, that was just, that kind of became an anthem for me.
I don’t know if it’s still really used at the station, like this is the first thing ever broadcast. But you know, that’s what happens over time. But I do think, you know, projects like this, where we’re talking about the history, I think nostalgia is also a really useful tool for the station. Like we know that it’s an 18 to 25-year-old youth station, but we also know that there are significant numbers of older listeners because they want something different or they, you know, the programming appeals to them for whatever reason.
for presenters. On each spine is a red, yellow or green sticker signifying whether an act is international, Australian, or a Sydneysider.
Having played full-time on air for over twenty years, fbi is the barometer of Sydney music. Located on Botany Road, Redfern, fbi sits on the borders of the CBD, connected to the diverse communities of the inner city, the inner west, and beyond. In a town trammelled by lock-out laws and continuous crackdowns, its sustenance on donations and fundraising drives is a testament to fbi’s vitality.
Take fbi’s mixtape: Stolen Records (2004). In the 2000s, commercial radio stations frowned upon music they called ‘rap crap’ -
a vague, racially driven term to designate any music that vaguely fit into the genres of Hip Hop or RnB. Yet, with fbi’s mission to pioneer emerging culture, and the subaltern voices that subsequently defined that culture, no genre could be left unplayed. Despite the inevitable changes in fbi’s programming policy, it has always been rooted in the role of radio as a form of resistance; an amplifier of marginalised voices. In light of fbi’s diverse listenership, rap has always been an integral part of this. In 2004, Dan Zilber created the Stolen Records compilation, a key leaf in fbi’s project of antiracism — the title deliberately evoking the political impetus of the tape.
Cassandra Wilkinson President 1997-2021)
You know, actually when you think about most important CDs or most important albums, probably one of the standout records for me was when Dan Zilber did the first Hip Hop compilation. Dan pulled together an album which showcased a whole lot of artists, like Elephant Tracks, Earthboy, and Hilltop Hoods, I mean, I can’t remember exactly who was in it. It was one of those records where it, you know, it’s in, it seems crazy now, but that music was not getting played on the radio.
One of Triple M’s main ads would say that they play “no rap crap,” and Dan Zilber championed that ‘rap crap’ kind of stuff, because fbi is fbi. It meant he was championing local. You know, so I think a big part of the transition from deriding it as Hip Hop through to people. Like it’s really at the centre of music today. I think Dan personally played a really pivotal role in that.
His understanding that he could build an audience for the fbi really led to pushing the culture in that direction. You know, you can never say how big a push that was, but he was there before anybody else, and that record came at a time when no other radio station was doing compilations of local rap music.
I mean, that was a mad idea, right? But yeah, really, really powerful, important thing for fbi to do.
You know, it turned out to be part of a growing role that fbi would play in anti-racism in music and Australian culture. I think that’s something that we very much owe to the more recent generation of volunteers. Yet the roots, the roots of it were there, but the current generation really made that their own mission and I think that’s an incredible contribution that they’ve made.
Despite the formidable role fbi has maintained in Sydney culture, its financial lifeforce as a notfor-profit organisation was always inevitably tenuous.
By the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, fbi’s life support of donations and fundraising — which was already piecemeal and ad hoc — was under serious threat. In the words of Dan Zilber, unlike commercial
stations which relied upon broader corporate entities, fbi ran “on the smell of an oily rag and lots and lots of volunteers putting in hours.” From compilation CDs, art auctions, to the famous Ask Richard Campaign, and many live performances, through to the mass mobilisation of volunteers and supporters — fbi’s survival has been indebted to the creativity of its volunteers and presenters alike. Above, is a compilation made by Lee Tran Lam, presenter of Local Fidelity, featuring songs donated by local artists and a hand-crafted cover by Lee Tran herself. Awarded Album of the Week in May 2009, the compilation sold for ten dollars each with all the proceeds going straight to fbi.
Stephen Goodhew Music Director 2013-2017
I don’t know to me, and I know other people I’ve spoken to who are around at the same time feel the same way and that just might be a bit of bias because we were there during that time, but it felt like a bit of a golden age for fbi. You know, it was just immediately post the ‘save fbi’ campaign, there was a lot of hope and optimism about the future of the station.
It was like pre-COVID, pre-streaming. fbi was a really important way for young emerging artists to break into the music industry, and I just remember it being like, for me personally, really
Despite these neardeath experiences, fbi, with their mission to play 50% Australian music, maintained their commitment to amplifying grassroots talent that may have been otherwise neglected by commercial radio or major labels. Music Open Day saw flocks of artists coming into the station hand-delivering demos on burnt CDs, keen for their first radio play. Some of these CDs had cover art, some were in entirely plain packaging straight from Officeworks.
fun, really exciting. Every day just discovering new bands. You know, bands that were new, bands that were old, or at least, you know, at that point in my life seemed old to me, but now I look back and I’m like, oh, those were still babies.
I guess, the perspective of time. I just, I remember there being a lot of fun and energy. And yeah, everyone there was so happy and enthusiastic, it was just a really fun time.
But it was still a pretty young station, like it was, you know, six, seven years old. But, you know, I think there was this sense that, okay, like, the station almost did disappear. It was like a near-death experience, there was like a renewed appreciation for each day.
I’m just kind of maybe reading between the lines, interpreting, but, yeah, I think there was just an appreciation that this wasn’t something they take for granted, that it was something special, and that it needed a lot of love and care and work to keep the gift to, and which it did.
Others simply wrapped up their demo in the rippedout pages of a medical textbook, or in the case of Rainbow Chan, her demo was dropped off in a hand sewn and embroidered fabric sleeve. From a father with a newborn handing in a demo to the station — who later turned out to be a member of rock band and fbi success-story Wolfmother — or music director Stephen Goodhew being live serenaded in his office, Music Open Day encouraged everyone and anyone to come in and take a
shot. With the commitment of presenters, volunteers, and staff to scour the city for new releases, fbi has been responsible for the first radio plays of some of the biggest Australian exports from The Kid LAROI and Julia Jacklin, to 1300 and Nina Las Vegas, and countless invaluable independent artists. One notable story is of a 15-yearold Flume who handed in his first demo under the name ‘Harley’ to the station in 2007.
Lee Tran Lam Journalist and
When I interviewed Flume for the 10th birthday, he says he remembers being in his car with his dad. He had sent his demo to fbi and they were going to the beach and he heard his song ‘Come’ on fbi. He was 11 when fbi went to air full-time and he said he remembered fbi go to air in 2003, which is pretty cool.
Host of Local Fidelity 2007-2023
It was then at the first SMAC (Sydney Music, Arts and Culture) awards, Flume won, maybe one or two awards and I think maybe he was touring, and he did, like, a digital video chat kind of like, thank you speech, and he said, you know, this time last year I was like working at the local newsagent and the Hard Rock Cafe. I think that might’ve been the first award he’d won. And then he won like heaps and heaps.
However, despite a population of over five million people sprawling across over hundreds of kilometres, until the mid2010s Sydney’s music scene was enclosed to the inner city and its adjoining suburbs. This geographic limitation has historically excluded Sydney’s most diverse communities. This couldn’t be more apparent than with the mainstream
And actually, his first gig was at the fbi social in 2011, which was the venue we had at King’s Cross Hotel. It might’ve been the Northern Lights competition and he was one of the finalists. He said it was the first gig he had ever played, and it was his he said it was a day of firsts because someone came up to him and said, “hey I’m a fan of your music”, and he’s like, “oh, that’s the first time that ever happened to me.”
I mean, how many other radio stations will literally play music by someone who’s unsigned, who’s a teenager. There’s so many examples of bands we played when they were teenagers, whether it was Bridezilla or Flume or the Kid LAROI. You know, I went back over the years, I’ve gone back and looked at the music that we played and some of these, you know, we played someone who was 16 and they were really promising and then they went on and did something else. Like it’s, you know what I mean? Like, I’m still glad we played them. Doesn’t make it any less relevant.
conflation (both among the media and governing bodies) of Western Sydney Hip Hop culture and the postcode wars and gang violence — most potently yet uncritically symbolised in the Mount Druitt drill group Onefour (who received their first radio plays on fbi). Yet, despite this blatant prejudiced homogenisation of the city’s most diverse communities,
since 2017, artists across Greater Sydney have carved out a space for a music scene on their own terms through music open days run by fbi in collaboration with Campbelltown Arts Centre and Blacktown Arts Centre. Rebecca Hatch was one of the standout stars from the 2017 ‘Trax’ open day at Blacktown Arts Centre, with her independently released single ‘Leeway.’
John-Ernest Dinamarca Volunteer 2015-2017
Project manager of fbi outreach programs with Campbelltown Arts Centre and Blacktown Arts Centre
So with the kind of the Campbelltown music open day, there wasn’t really I guess like a focus on Hip Hop per se.
I think that there were a lot of artists that were kind of coming up in kind of Southwestern Sydney that attended music open day and similar initiatives, but that particular music open day was more just about opening up the scene and opening up the music industry.
To people in Southwest Sydney, it was about kind of breaking down barriers and breaking down, I guess, the kind of the assumption that in order to, to kind of get your foot in the door, you have to like move into the inner west, or you have to relocate. It was like a recognition that, you know, like Western Sydney had a lot to offer. I, at the time I was beginning to get involved with Blacktown Arts Centre
The fbi music library is an icon of the station. While the age of the CD may be long gone, it is crucial to fbi platforming the diverse sounds of Sydney. In this way, the library is
And I felt like that there was this second and third generation of people of colour, particularly from kind of Southeast Asian and Polynesian backgrounds that were beginning to take up space and kind of occupy cultural spaces in a way that just never happened when I was a kid. They were telling their own stories in a very unique way.
And a lot of them were using the kind of the language and the sounds of Hip Hop in order to tell their kind of unique stories. So, I think that there was, I guess, like a recognition that it was important to tap into Western Sydney and that there were a lot of stories that we’re missing out on by not kind of bridging those gaps between, I guess different parts of different parts of Sydney.
Like growing up in Blacktown, I grew up around Hip Hop. Hip Hop and R&B were like the two big sounds growing up. It was very strange for a Filipino guy in his teens to be listening to things like Sonic Youth or the Dillinger Escape Plan or something. It was such an outlier growing up. I think it’s less of the case now. Cause I feel like it’s a bit more like people, are a lot more eclectic in their tastes now and it’s not so kind of hinged on any particular subcultures. But yeah, I think that there’s always been a love for Hip Hop particularly in Blacktown.
synonymous with fbi, not only aurally, but visually — the backdrop to many a photo op. It may no longer be growing how it once did, as the world of radio continues to transform,
after almost 30 years since the first test broadcast, fbi continues to be a laboratory for the best independent artists to make their mark on so-called Sydney.
Angels Don’t Fly
Joan de la Kagsawa
Snowflakes will fall in the summer.
The leafless trees whiter than skeletons, As stratums of ash bury blades of grass. The sun shines and the flesh of the world Shrinks away from deathlessness.
He takes me by the hand and spends all day Showing me the remnants of the garden. This is where the old stone bridge once was, This is where the river used to bend and flow, This is where the wisterias used to droop, This is where we named all the fish, flesh, and fowl, This is where we departed with our Creator.
In the distance, black clouds of bats are illuminated
Only by the faint curve of the pale moon. We hold each other and weep, Teardrops dappling the earth, Leaving upon the pavement Shadows of a shape Unknown to the eye.
Thrifted blouse, clip-on earrings, Black maxi skirt caressing the asphalt, And too many layers of blush.
I want to look as beautiful as my casket. I want to live forever and be afraid of everything. Life is so good and it’s only going to get worse. And in dreams, I don’t have to tuck my wings inside my dress.
There are angels sitting next to you in the train, Yet to earn their halo, yet to enter heaven.
He tells me to hold the shovel
And follow His instructions:
You must bury each passing day, You must bury every word, You must bury your friends, You must bury your parents, You must bury your body, You must bury your shadow, You must bury your reflection, You must bury your language, You must bury your God, You must bury every God, You must bury every sunbeam, You must bury every drop of rain, You must bury the universe, You must bury your life Even though It’s just Begun.
In some nearby future, We will find each other again. We will wake up in sold-out stadiums, Drowning under flood lights, Huddling together with all the others of our kind.
The emperor guffawing and the audiences roaring with fury, Popcorn and alcohol spilling all over the seats.
The militias in their columns raising their sabres in salute
To a trembling banner of that cruel constellation.
And as our executioners are released from their cages, We look up and see angels circling above us.
All eternity has done is pardon nothing and redeem no one.
As our eyes watch death, all the lions can do is amuse the martyrs: “Are we to always hunger?”
It is all only an apparition to me now: Plastic chairs, paper bags, Ships, chariots, motorcycles, Street signs, radio towers, Minarets, pagodas, steeples, Balloons and passenger planes, Billboards and clothes on sale.
Teardrop begets teardrop
And the apparitions cluster into Islands, icebergs, atolls, Peninsulas and archipelagos, Landmasses and continents, Planets and heavenly bodies. I am but a lone teardrop Baptising this tomb Among the stars.
There is no such thing as a person, You are simply a garbage heap of ancestral spirits, Ash under a pyramid of ash, A body made for souls to pass through Like wind through a chime, As one lifetime whispers to another: “No second is sacred; No hour is holy.”
All around me flickers The immortality of Sacrificial fire. Here, I shall forever wait At the precipice of eternity, And gaze as my Creator Weeps for me.
The tear forgets the eye. Two thousand years Of flesh and fire Are now nothing more Than a single day Of futile fury and Muted sound.
Angels don’t fly. They perish on Power lines, Waiting for Wings.
IN THE ENTRAILS OF THE PRETTY MACHINE
SOPHIE BAGSTER
Dear diary;
Tonight the street reeked of cat piss, and looked pretty similar too. The feline in heat, mewling up and down the street in their y2k vintage jean-jacket coats. Like something sick crawled up inside of you but you’re well dressed so it doesn’t really matter. The ubiquitous fashion show.
I looked up into the sky and saw a million and one lover(s) intertwined. Some ex-boyfriend told me that they don’t actually glitter like that, because our atmosphere distorts it. I find it’s always doing that. Anyway, entanglement, isn’t it? Particles remaining connected however separated. Severed. Dismembered.
Parts spread all over the slick city like a scavenger hunt. Bones, carcass. Something to choke on. Reminds me of the summer when we had to look under the carpet to find our solace.
So I’m there, walking around with L0V3 D0ll and she’s wearing these awfully tight shoes and she tells me it’s so she can always remember her bondage or whatever. Some sexbot thing, I thought. They must know she wants to be a model.
She says, “Have you ever walked on water, Sophie?”
“No,” I tell her.
“Don’t you ever dream of it?”
“No,” I say, “you’d break in the water.”
“Oh”, she says:
As if forgetting she came from The Factory and not the womb. The cold womb of a silicone mould. I don’t think she likes talking about it very much. Anyway, like I was saying —we were walking up the street, the entrails of the very pretty machine. We were looking for some action: she, the warm caress of a programmed embrace and me, discarded bottle caps and glittery things because I decided tonight I would be a magpie. Yes, that’s it. I would be black and white.
2D like a newspaper cartoon. I would be new, reborn and feathered. I will collect and watch everything from my perch on the rooftops. I would curate a museum of treasures inside of myself. I will swoop and peck at the eye sockets of some unsuspecting man in doc martens and a band t-shirt.
But no! She’d say, I wanted to take him home! as if he was a domestic guinea pig and this was all...
A pet store. Yes! That’s exactly what I was trying to say: animals in heat, crawling up the sidewalk. Tonight, I said to her, I’m going to be a magpie.
“Like last night?”
Yeah, like last night. Like every night. What did Oscar Wilde say? Art never expresses anything but itself.
“Sophie, do you suppose the stars twinkle like that because they are made of glitter?”
Yes, I say, they’re made of tiny shards of broken glass all amalgamated. That they actually reflect us, you and I. You in your tight shoes and I in my flesh.
