RITA SKEETER, 2020 OIL ON CANVAS
R E B E C C A S A N G S T E R NOW YOU’RE A BOSS TOO, 2020 OIL ON CANVAS
Sylvia Plath was a basic troll account, prior kind of personality that could be faked, it was A to trolling becoming a commonplace and authentic. With the image in hand we created N theoretically justifiable endeavour that could a Facebook profile. The profile was filled with N critically comment upon the quotidian and slight random tidbits, such as Sylvia Plath’s E be used as a means to promote theories of birthday, which were added in for no real T exclusion and elitism. She started out simple reason other than Facebook required the T enough. We found an image, at the time one information in order to allow the profile to go E of us had become accustomed to exploiting live. Because Facebook is rather psychotic, A Google’s image search settings, and this was or in the least is generative and supportive V before the fuckers rolled out the most recent of psychotic states of mind, one of us had to A AI that has wrecked any potential the search give up an email address so that it could use L software used to hold—nowadays you’re it to set the algorithm and begin its O dealing with some algorithm that thinks it infiltration of a targeted social circle. N knows what you want better than you do—as However, we discovered that you could opposed to the “simpler” times when one change the email address of an account quite could enter in a few Boolean search terms easily at this time. We entered in an email with some date limitations and voila, literally address that had a Facebook history, and everything was in front of you: a cornucopia of then once it gave us some profiles that we early 21st century access to the sum total of could connect with, we immediately said yes the archive. They’ve done their best to erase and connected with those profiles. When the this brief moment and these days we’re at the initial invitations of friendship were sent, this mercy of a personalized shopping mall that’ll logged us into the Facebook algorithm that repeat the same tired advertisement to you opened us up to the whole network of their because it’s drawing from the only evidence friends, and the dominos began to fall. This the algorithm has of your existence—that one rudimentary process allowed us the ability to time you popped up long enough to be quickly switch out the original email address noticed. Online data targeting is serious with a new one: [email protected]. whack-a-mole. It was more information than We’ve never been certain if those first few anybody knew what to do with or even “friends” that were made were aware of our organize, save for dumping it into a server, identity, but if they were they never and making it accessible to search terms. So, mentioned it and the secret remained safe, one of us found this image and it was perfect. however out in the open. A black and white, smoking chimp, rendered in a stoic pose in typical upright portraiture style. The image screamed personality. The
V I K T O R B R I E S T E N S K Y MARCH 2019, HONG KONG, 2020 C-PRINT
IN THE ATRIUM (HSBC MAIN BUILDING HONG KONG), MARCH 0219 (I) , 2020 C-PRINT IN THE ATRIUM (HSBC MAIN BUILDING HONG KONG), MARCH 0219 (II) , 2020 C-PRINT
Z O Ë M A R D E N BLUE TETACLES, 2020 MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE
CONFINEMENT, 2020 MIXED MEDIA SEPARATION GROWS INTO UNION, 2020 MIXED MEDIA
M E R V E I Ş E R I BOAT, 2020 MIXED MEDIA
DESK TOYS, 2020
H A R R I E T M I D D L E T O N B A K E R
Dear Kate, Unfortunately I’m not much of a maker; although I work in the arts I have pretty much zero creative skills myself. During quarantine however I got really into sending postcards, of which we have an impressive collection in the flat, collected over the years from exhibitions and travels. Every now and then I would just pick one, write a short note and doodle something on the back of it and send it off to someone I missed. The art of writing postcards has become more and more obsolete in the Internet era, when we’re all constantly connected to the rest of the world through social media, the news cycle and Google. But at a time when digital exchanges are all we have, the gesture of send- ing and receiving something handwritten and physical from a loved one takes on a whole new significance. It becomes a collective practice of care, generosity and creativity. Much love, Justine
J U S T I N E D O E S P I R I T O S A N T O 18 APRIL, 2020
C H I Y A N A N D M I C H A E L H O
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LUCY SPARKS JULIE, 2020 C-PRINT
A FLOW OF VISIONS L E the materialistic dream A has a penalty H and I hope you pay G for your artificial paradises U in the cosmic frame D on the astral plane M the loss of psychic power U Becomes N D S O N
DANIEL TAYLOR I LEAVE THE RADIO ON FOR THE CAT WHEN I GO, 2020 PENCIL CRAYON ON PAPER
ALL IS GOOD! C OUR BABY U WILL BE AN R ABSOLUTELY T AVERAGE I CITIZEN! S ON THE TALL T SIDE! A APPROX L 24CM W 2020 S IPAD T DRAWING S A N T I A G O
N I C C H E V E L D A V E UNTITLED, 2020 PHOTO- LAMINATE AND MIXED MEDIA ON DIBOND
UNTITLED, 2020 PHOTO- LAMINATE AND MIXED MEDIA ON DIBOND
DANIEL THOMAS WILLIAMS
These pillars, like any, once carried upwards, now set down upon the ground. Though others remain nearby, we cannot go to them. The silent beauty of the humble many in perennial time. Woven in amongst each other, drawing back towards the light, may those who right themselves lift those who fell upon them. Mind the ground where we now lay, it is the same from which we came. Remember the thorns ‘neath the roses as we look into the past. Let us tend to our resolve for those yet to come. As the sun returns to greet us, so too will the rain. And the roots still drink. Many stages running cycles.
E S H A A N D H R I N G A
UPS AND DOWNS, 2020 CERAMIC
ALLISON E. SMITH
WOOLLY THYME, WILD THYME, CREEPING TIME, 2020
F I O N T Á N M O R A N THESE HANDS, 2020
THE FUTURE the ones we owned or rented or found at random. Many of us had chosen to sequester ourselves We didn’t pay much attention to it at first. It was long ago, and so we gleefully offered guidance happening in a distant, vaguely ethnic place, a as some of us struggled to press buttons alone, place where cities had names with long, taking comfort in the fact that everyone was now unfamiliar vowels, and where strange things were as isolated as we were. Some among us dutifully always surfacing—a place that was marginal to followed the rules seeping through the airwaves, us, even though a quarter of the world resided staying inside or, if outside, deterring others with there. Most of us assumed it wouldn’t breach our six-foot poles, though others among us grandly lives, although some of us did use the opportunity flouted the rules, dragging our hands across all to indulge our revulsion toward people from that available surfaces, hosting banquets in saunas, place, declaring them dispensable, eyeing them kissing the mouths of passers-by. with extra suspicion as they passed through our Some of us were angry with the flouters, but most airports, our museums, our hills. of us were amused, because we were fine, and we assumed we were going to be fine. Many of When it did arrive, like a faint, erratic breeze, us knew, factually, that others among us—those grazing some of us who many of us deemed of us who did things many of us didn’t do, like inconsequential—one in the North, two in the clean and deliver and repair—were starting to die, West, one who didn’t belong here, anyway—some though we didn’t actually know anyone who had of us feared it, though most of us laughed at died, and so our main issues were what do to in those of us who feared it, because most of us our respective rooms: what beans to soak, what had stopped fearing anything long ago. Some of blouses to mend, what cupboards to organize, us would die, we understood, but only those of what seminal films to watch, what difficult books us who were already going to die soon. The rest to tackle. All of us were supposed to continue to of us—those of us who polished our health like press buttons, although most of us were silver, of course, but also those of us who simply distracted, so instead we began to call each considered ourselves young—would be fine, so we other—first those with whom we already spoke, continued to go about our lives, which, for many and then those with whom we had previously only of us, consisted of pressing buttons in variously texted, and then our relatives far away, and then sized rooms with various people at varying de- our friends far away, and then our acquaintances grees of proximity, and, not occasionally, flying near and far away, and then our around the world for similar purposes. estranged siblings, and then our exes. Soon, we were talking with every person we had ever As more among us died—still, those of us who known. were going to die soon, anyway—some of us, Everyone asked each other if they had it, and though not all of us, began to worry. We were told then reminded each other what it meant to have we should remove ourselves from the rooms we shared with others, and retreat to our own rooms,
it, and then asked each other again if they had more of us, and then many more us, and the rest it, until everyone felt like they had it, which also of us began to understand why. made it seem like no one had it. After a while, When it became clear that everything we thought most of us—even those of us who knew we had we knew about it—everything we had been told, it—didn’t want to talk about it anymore. We tried and everything we had duly repeated to ourselves, to do other things—press buttons simultaneously, was wrong—all of us, including those of us who imbibe simultaneously, dance simultaneously— had been good all along, stopped following the but really, we longed for those rooms we had rules. We flung open the doors of our houses. We previously shared, where we had sipped from broke the windows of our restaurants, our each others’ glasses, where we had rubbed our theaters, our parliaments. We set fire to our faces against each others’ stomachs, and so libraries. We folded our wills into paper planes some among us, after dark, began to ride our and catapulted them across the lines that divided bicycles to the forest, until many of us—even our towns, our cities, our nations. We restarted those of us who knew we had it—were going to our wars. We reopened our prisons. We held each the forest every night. other hostage and demanded ransoms. We In the forest, we played all of the games that had stopped telling each other who had died, because been forbidden. We filled cauldrons with wine and we were all dying, and the crease between this bobbed for apples. We sat shoulder to shoulder world and the next was blurring, and time was around bonfires, passing instruments from mouth collapsing into an instant, and the only thing that to mouth, hand to hand. We found all of the sustained us was rage—and so we raged and people of whom we had previously only dreamed. raged until we had nothing left, except for our We tied our hands behind our backs and kissed children, who we had been ignoring, and who, in the air around each others’ bodies, until we fact, were not dying. couldn’t take it anymore, at which point we A few of us—those among us who had secret always gave in. We used our fingers for reserves of strength—began to teach our children everything: cooking, eating, defecating, tracing useful things, like how to hold a baby’s head, or each others’ faces. We knew that eventually, we how to boil water, or how to plant seeds. Many of were all going to get it, but we also knew that we us couldn’t think of anything useful, so we taught would be fine, more than fine, especially now, our children how to draw roses, or fold fitted because we were all in it together. Each night, sheets, or make hats, or count to ten in various those of us who had been coming to the forest languages. Most of us ran out of things to teach brought someone new—someone who was sick very quickly, so we drank all the wine we had of following the rules—and these newcomers, like been saving and sprawled out on the floor, wailing those of us before, always had something special and making snow angels and flinging memories to give, something distinct. We cherished what we into the air as our children practiced cooking us were creating, held its sacredness aloft, like a pasta, and beans. We didn’t know what to do with rippling sheet of gold silk—until a few of us stopped coming to the forest, and then some
our children and their vitality—we had forgotten scammers, murderers, bystanders, destroyers, what vitality was—and so we let them take over, laborers, conspiracists, protectors, creators, until the question of letting them do anything was thieves, givers, jokers, bosses, war criminals, irrelevant, because we were all gone, and the dancers, cooks, carers, repairers, takers, thinkers, world was theirs. tinkerers, criers, singers, sex workers, dreamers, On the night everyone else was gone—every last optimists, depressives, stoics, adventurers, her- one of them—those of us who remained found mits, hosts, psychics, rationalists, piano-players, each other outside. We filled every street, every inventors, disruptors, conformists, cowards. If footpath, every mountaintop, and together began those of us who had died were able to return, we to run—ran, ran, ran, until we couldn’t remember would find that everything was only a little bit who we had been before, until the word “before” different from what it had been before. sounded alien in our mouths, until there was no such thing as before, at all. Eventually, we fell asleep in towering piles, piles so huge they could be seen from outer space. When we woke, we simply found what we needed, and helped others among us find what they needed, and cared for those among us who did not yet know what they needed, and left all of the doors open until the vines came inside, until the trees knocked over the buildings, until there was no such thing as inside. We lived without rules for a very long time, until MEARA SHARMA we began to invent them, which we found thrill- ing, and so we began to invent more. We discov- ered that the invention of rules stirred within us new depths of feeling. Whereas before we had been a kind of mercurial mass, slipping and melting into one another, now we were delineating ourselves, taking shape. We were becoming solid, and we liked the taste of it, even though the more solid we became, the harder it was to recall why we existed at all. Once we started, however, we couldn’t stop, andsoon, we became the people we were always meant to be, every kind of person there ever had been: healers,
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