Part family drama, part psychological thriller, Stephen Karam’s The Humans traps the Blake family in a dilapidated New York apartment for an uneasy Thanksgiving dinner. The play peels back the horror of modern American middle-class life; debt, illness, ageing parents, and unaccomplished dreams.

I’m being fed this creator’s short form videos where he turns his New York apartment into a makeshift cafe, baking sweet and savoury treats once a month for his friends and neighbours.

The noodles themselves bear marks of the careful, hand-made process; each strand varying in length and thickness, some tinted with a soft green from being steamed over banana leaves.

I envy those who can just close their eyes and swim. 

It’s blue and wriggling. Why is it wriggling? Turn it off, I pray, please let it die. 

“Is it freaking you out that this goes in my butt?”

“No,” a little, “that’s awesome, I’ve just never seen one for real… before.”

He presses it to my leg and I feel a trembling in my bones. 

But first, I’m here,
In the free air, free and clean-ish,
Which gives me some time,
A few seconds more,
To piss over their heads,
With real feeling.

Did someone ask you who your favourite philosopher was? Did you get stuck thinking of a name equally pretentious and performative? Answer these questions to find out what your Subway order can reveal. Instant ostentation, no thinking needed! 

My first memory of ‘body swapping’ media was in 2009, sitting across from my pink PlayStation 2, gleefully watching the first live-action Scooby Doo (2002) movie on an archaic Panasonic TV.

Police State necessitates a reciprocal exchange between the viewer and the performer, which Walter Benjamin defined as “aura”: the integral essence of an original work that fades in reproduction.

Slow craft challenges obsession with productivity targets and overconsumption. The work does not begin with the embroidering of the fabric but instead the preparation of a range of vegetables which are slowly processed into homemade fabric dyes.

I am drowning under the river red gum, slipping between mud and silt—who can tell the difference?

I grip my mothers hand tightly, not wanting to let go.

The constraints of tangibility truly plague my waking days. Holding hands is not enough, being in the same bed is not enough, lying on top of me with your full weight is nice, but not enough.

We can only run as a hobby because modern society has no need for our bodies. Effort loses its productive value and now belongs to the domain of recreation.

It is both hollow and alive, a refuge and a trap. For better or worse, this is the public square of Southeast Asia.

The collages can be read as love letters to the Adriatic, the sole force shielding the central Dalmatian archipelago from immediate destruction for centuries. In the ocean one finds freedom and eternity, a feeling I hope to encapsulate.

1. Find a stimulus, or rather let it find you.

2. Be transported through space and time, find yourself in that moment again.

3. Linger in it for a minute more.

He pictured the half-chewed bread inside her mouth, pulp dissolving with saliva. He thought of her body as porous, dissolving, leaking: the reminder that borders between inside and outside were never clean.

Monopolistic enterprises are not just concerned with selling their product. They also want to impose their culture and values on other countries to establish themselves as the true north of the industry and dictate the distribution of resources like water.

spark that inspiration in me again, yeah?

wherever you are, read this letter

and come home to me.

I am on an edge, and if I tip, tip off this edge, then I will go all the way to the ground.

Our thirst for subculture has not been quenched, but finds new pathways to flow, as liquid as ever.

The event carves out a rare space where presence precedes performance, and where the gaze becomes a means of mutual recognition.

But words are futile.

So I am left with these scorch marks.