1FREE MAGAZINE

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Editor’s letter

Welcome to Artefact, produced by students on the BA Journalism course at the London College of Communication. We've set ourselves the goal of making a magazine that, even though it is free, stands comparison with anything that you'll find on the newstands. It is written by students at LCC but it is not an introspective take on university life. We're looking outwards at the cultural and social issues that matter, not just to students but to people generally, in London and beyond.

When we first came up with the idea for Artefact we agreed that it should have a London metropolitan focus, and an international feel, that our target audience is 18-30 year-olds who want to learn but don’t want to be taught. This magazine, we decided, should be: positively disruptive, raw, radical; the other side of London, with different angles and real sources; educational, without teaching, pub chat repartee, with sharp English wit and humble, conversational journalism, clean lines, strong visuals and clear ideas.

In this issue you'll find an investigation into the world of the sugar daddy, in which wealthy older men form ‘mutually rewarding relationships’ with young female students. There’s a reassessment of the life and career of Isabella Blow, the late fashion muse who is back in the spotlight following major retrospective exhibitions in Britain and America. We look at the world of the young Brits who spend their summers working hard and playing harder in the clubs bars and restaurants of Ibiza. There’s an investigation into the real cost of ketamine, and the physical toll it takes on users and a feature on making travel affordable through the growing couchsurfing movement. There are reviews of music, games and films and our regular Freeness section tells you about cultural events in London, where you can have a beer or a glass of wine without splashing the cash.

We've been fortunate enough to have the co-operation of a number of well-known artists and photographers, whose work you will see accompanying some of the features, among them Juergen Teller, Linder Sterling, Jeremy Deller, Gareth McConnell, Jason Evans, Casey Orr, Luke Stephenson and Tyrone Lebon, who supplied our cover image. Huge thanks to them.

Artefact will appear four to five times per year and we won't be charging for it. It will be available in the LCC and the other colleges of the University of the Arts London and we'd like to see it in as many other locations as possible. So if you have a shop, cafe or bar and would like to make Artefact available to your customers, drop us a line on artefactlcc@gmail.com. Use the same email to tell us what you think about Artefact - we'd love to hear your views.

Contents

04 IN BRIEF

08 HARDER THAN YOU THINK Sean Coppack

09 THE TRUE COST OF KETAMINE Ed Oliver

10 SATURDAY GIRL Bianca Pascall

16 COME TO DADDY Emily Segameglio

20 FUCK IT, WE'RE IN IBIZA Dominic Brown

26 WHY I HATE MUSIC FESTIVALS

Isabella Smith

30 COUCH POTATO INTERNATIONALE Damielle Agtani

32 A POTTED HISTORY OF PARANOIA Zeus Simcoe

38 FASHION WAS HER REASON Diana Tleuliyeva

42 DJ FOOD'S TOP TRACKS Ed Oliver

43 SAINT, SINNER OR BOTH? Ivo Aleixo

44 SEEING THE LIGHT Luke O'Driscoll

45 THE MILLION-POUND POP-UP Corie Schwabenland

46 REVIEWS

48 SEEN ON CAMPUS Isabella Smith

49 FREENESS Alastair Brennan

50 LAST WORD Ebi Osuobeni

Contributors

Writers:Danielle Agtani, Yasaman Ahmadzai, Ivo Aleixo, Beatrice Bosotti, Dominic Brown,

Sean Coppack, Luke O’Driscoll, Ed Oliver, Ebi Osuobeni, Bianca Pascall, Corie Schwabenland,

Emily Segameglio, Zeus Simcoe, Storm Simpson, Isabella Smith, Fraser Thorne,

Diana Tleuliyeva, James Wood

Images:Charles Avery, Jeremy Deller, Pete Donaldson, Jason Evans, Will Henry, Tyrone Lebon,

Gareth McConnell, Casey Orr, Mathew Sawyer, Corie Schwabenland, Isabella Smith,

John Spinks, Luke Stephenson, Linder Sterling, Juergen Teller

Art Director:Scott King

Designer:Oswin Tickler, Smallfury Designs

Publishing information:Published by the London College of Communication, London SE1 6SB

#1. October 2014

Cover imagePhotography by

Tyrone Lebon,

styling by Max

Pearmain, hair

by Tina Outen,

makeup by

Isamaya Ffrench,

makeup for Lily

Cole by Niamh

Quinn, nails by

Grace Humphries,

set design by

Poppy Bartlett.

Model: Lily Cole

at Storm.

Cover graphic:Mark James Works

4

Art in a sacred space

Grace Adam, LCC’s lead design tutor on the Access to Higher Education Diploma, is art-ist in residence at St Giles-in-the-Fields Church in central London. During October she has an exhibition in the church called The Act and Art of Remembering. It takes the form of a series of sculptural inter-ventions which form an investigation and response into monuments and memorials in St Giles-in-the-Fields, and their relation-ships with the space itself. Through her work, Grace hopes “to make interventions that enliven, inform and question; that awaken us to parts of our city that we no longer see clearly or perhaps even notice.”

Grace said: “Through this Residency and Exhibition I am seeking to explore and re-search rigorously these architectural addi-tions: their meanings and place in an inner city for twenty-first-century users. Some are to religious thinkers, in-ventors, to famous or forgotten artists and writers, to ordinary people. The church is used everyday by local workers as a place to pray, lunch, relax, contemplate. I am re-engaging people with this space, and making interventions that enliven, inform and question; that awaken us to parts of our city that we no longer see clearly or perhaps even notice”.

Alan Carr, Associate Rector, The Parish Church of St Giles-in-the-Fields, com-mented: “We are greatly looking forward

to Grace Adam’s creative and innovative response to the history that has gathered itself around the fabric and place of St Giles through many centuries. We hope that Grace’s work, so closely tailored to the specific properties of the Church, will help us to see and remember better, and to realise the voices of the past in the lives of the present.” The exhibition runs at St-Giles-in-the-Fields, close to High Holborn, until the end of October.

Words: Justine Thompson

IN BRIEF

The art of design

The London Design Festival has come to to the London College of Communica-tion in the shape of three exhibitions, covering illustration, posters and graphic art.

Stereohype celebrated ten years of the London-based graphic art label and online art boutique of that name and its popular button badge collection, which reached 1,000 badges this year. All the badges were on show at LCC, together with an anniversary poster and badge project specially commissioned for the occasion.

Alan Kitching and Monotype: Celebrating the Centenary of Five Pioneers of the Poster presented a set of prints created to celebrate the 100th anni-versary of five giants of graphic design: Tom Eckersley, Abram Games, FHK Henrion, Joseph Müller-Brockmann and Paul Rand. The exhibition was curated by LCC alumnus Daniel Chehade, who is also responsible for the branding of the LCC Graduate School.

The 50 Years of Illustration exhibition, which runs until the end of October at the LCC in the Elephant & Castle, examines the influence of contemporary illustration on design. It includes familiar and iconic works from popular culture, including the cover of Armed Forces by Elvis Costello, Revolver by the Beatles, Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and the poster for Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange.

Words: Alastair Brennan

Louise Wilson 1962 – 2014

Louise Wilson, director of the Fashion MA

course at Central Saint Martins, died unex-

pectedly in May at the age of 52. Regarded

as fashion’s greatest talent spotter, she

discovered leading fashion designers such

as Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane and

John Rocha.

She was one of the most influential fig-

ures in the fashion industry. Designer

Alber Elbaz said about her: “She could be

a millionaire million times over but she’s

always backstage pushing the industry for-

ward.” During her 22 years as course di-

rector, she has taught some of the world’s

best designers: McQueen, Kane, Roksanda

Ilincic, Jonathan Saunders and Mary Ka-

trantzou to mention a few.

She was known for her demanding and uncom-

promising style but also for her complete

commitment to her students and the support

that she gave them, not just during their

time at university but afterwards and long

into their careers. As Christopher Kane

said: ““She supported me all through the MA

and didn’t stop when I left Central Saint

Martins - we did a talk together last Mon-

day evening and she looked so well... Peo-

ple think Louise was a tyrant - to some she

was - but with me she was very mothering:

we were like family.”

Her advice was a mixture of blunt good

sense and nurturing advice.

Key to her philosophy was the importance

of developing a personal style and ally-

ing that with practical ability. “We like

portfolios with an individualism but mainly

with a skill. A skill can be from colour to

3D work, from drawing to sketching.”

She emphasized the importance of working

hard to improve. It is, she insisted, cru-

cial to have at least one skill and develop

it. Louise also pointed out how important

it is to have ambition, too, saying that

students should “find a way to work with

their skills or a skill so that they could

become best in what they do in the indus-

try.” It is clearly advice that many of her

students took to heart as they began their

journeys to senior and influential roles in

the fashion world.

Her advice to anybody considering

post-graduate study was to ‘think long-

term, not short term’. Studying at a post-

graduate level is like “going on a jour-

ney” – you have the opportunity to engage

with tutors, take risks and make mistakes.

“Failure is OK, you can learn from it.”

Finally, she came back to the importance of

hard work and preparation, even for in-

terviews. It is vital, she said, to know

about your subject and the world that you

are trying to break into. “It’s a lack of

work when people have appeared not to know

what has happened in fashion in the last 10

years.”

5Button Badges, Stereohype

Surrender, The Chemical Brothers, Virgin, 1999, Kate Gibb

Dylan, Milton Glaser, 1966

Untitled, Eric Gill, 1928

Revolver, The Beatles, Apple Records, 1966, Klaus Voorman

A, Paul Rand, 1965 Minute man, Paul Rand, 1975

6

Good news for London cyclists

London is not always a welcoming city for

cyclists. The roads are busy, the motorists

often aggressive and the cycling infra-

structure leaves a lot to be desired.

Despite that, the numbers taking to their

bikes increases year after year. The number

of commuters cycling to work has more than

doubled in a decade, from 77,000 in 2001 to

156,000 in 2011.

Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, likes to be

photographed on his bike and has had a lot

to say about improving conditions for cy-

clists. He introduced the cycle hire scheme

that continues to grow in popularity but he

has done a great deal less to make London

safe for those on two wheels.

In contrast to other European cities, the

typical London cyclist is male, Lycra-clad,

strong and confident. However, less expe-

rienced cyclists tend to avoid the city’s

streets and children cycling to school are

a rarity.

There seemed some hope when Johnson intro-

duced with great fanfare a set of ‘cycle

superhighways’ that criss-crossed the city.

Yet these turned out to be no more than

blue paint at the edge of busy roads,

regularly encroached into by cars, buses

and motorbikes.

The ‘superhighways’ may even have made cy-

cling more dangerous in places by creating

a false sense of security, which was said

to have been a factor in the death of a cy-

clist at the Bow roundabout in East London.

The call for segregated cycling routes,

which are common elsewhere in Europe has

long been resisted by the Mayor and by

Transport for London, to the frustration of

campaign groups who point to the capital’s

grim total of cycling deaths.

Now, however, there are signs the Mayor has

heard the protests. In September he an-

nounced two brand-new London cycling routes

– one south to north, one west to east –

the majority of which will be segregated.

The south to north route is particularly

significant for UAL students, as it begins

at the Elephant and Castle, home of the LCC

and ends at King’s Cross, near our sister

college Central St Martin’s. It’s not yet

guaranteed that the routes will be built,

as there is opposition from business so cy-

clists should take the opportunity to voice

their support for the scheme on Transport

for London’s website - tfl.gov.uk/campaign/

cycle-superhighway-consultations.

Words: Alistair Brennan

Image: Transport for London

Is YouTube the future for film-makers?

Today, the emphasis in securing a job with big media corporations to be successful is not as strong as it used to be. Instead, there are opportunities to use platforms like Youtube to launch your career.

Some Youtubers are raking in thousands of pounds from their videos, and are being cast in movies, releasing their own prod-ucts and even publishing novels.

Despite this success, though, there are questions about the quality of the work. Although it’s shot on video, is it real-ly film-making that could compete with the best of TV, cinema and advertising? Big-name Youtubers Jenna Marbles, Ray Wil-liam Johnson and PewdiePie have around 51 million subscribers between them. Although they film and edit their own videos, they would not consider themselves film-makers and instead em-brace the ‘Youtubers’ name.

There are channels on Youtube pushing the boundaries of film though. For instance, Ben Brown’s channel has almost 200,000 subscribers, and gaining subscribers every day. Ben films videos he calls ‘Visual Vibes’ and this is where we see his inter-est in film-making emerge. His most recent ‘Visual Vibes’ video shot on a Sony FS700 features plenty of su-per slow motion shots and creative thinking that ould happily sit alongside advertisements on national tele-vision. For instance, he is hanging out of his friend’s car along Westminster Bridge while capturing footage of fellow Youtuber Louis Cole and Steve Brooks, skate-boarding whilst clinging onto two Boris Bikes.

His followers were shocked when he an-nounced he had spent £7,000 on the Sony FS700, but he said: “I’m hoping it’s going to bring cool content to the channel and I’m pretty confi-dent that it’s going to improve the quality of my shooting and the super slow motion should give an edge to my edits as well.”

Jack and Finn Harris both run a Youtube channel named Jack’s Gap which has ap-proxi-mately 3.6 million subscribers. Jack’s Gap created a project they named ‘the Rickshaw Run’, which features sev-en friends trekking across India for three weeks on rickshaws rais-ing money for the Teenage Cancer Trust. The effort put into filming throughout the three weeks on point and shoot cameras and a Canon D5, as well as the long process spent ed-iting the footage is evident in the four part se-ries. It could pass as a travel documentary filmed for the Discovery channel or BBC.

While the most popular channels on Youtube, are still fairly basic in their film-making tech-niques, it is clear that some You-tubers are beginning to push things further and embrace the art of film making.

Words: Danielle Agtani

IN BRIEF

7

BEWARE MINI-CAB CRIMINALS

With thousands of new students arriving in London, the police and transport authorities are uniting to warn of the risks posed by un-licensed minicabs.

Police officers and Transport for London's Taxi and Private Hire compliance officers will vis-it Freshers’ events to deliver the key message that travelling in minicabs that are not booked through a licensed operator, by phone or by going into the office, is potentially dangerous. Even if a minicab has a licence sticker, it isn’t safe unless it’s booked, warn the police.

The reality of life in London is that late at night, licensed black cabs (which can be hailed on the street) are thin on the ground and expensive and the Underground stops running fairly early. There are night buses, of course, but these can be slow (as well as be-ing noisy and unpleasant at times) and they may not go particularly close to where you live.

Unlicensed minicab drivers take advantage of this situation and, especially outside clubs, bars and other popular venues, it’s common to see touts, sometimes operat-ing in shop doorways, and drivers looking for fares.

Epecially late at night, it can be tempting to get into a convenient minicab or to approach a tout on the street, but, warn the police, this can place you at risk of at-tack, including sexual assault or robbery. Furthermore, it’s highly doubtful that an unlicensed driver will have the appropriate insur-ance to carry passengers, which will cause problems if you are un-lucky enough to be involved in an road accident.

The police say that there will also be hundreds of police out and about in London looking for unli-censed cab operators and seeking to shut them down.

Chief Superintendent Matt Bell, Roads and Transport Policing Com-mand, said: “The Roads and Trans-port Policing Command is commit-ted to reducing the number of cab-related sexual offences. Our officers will be on the streets during this year's Freshers period to give students safe travel in-formation to ensure they have safe and secure journeys home.”

Words: Justine Thompson

Story of a singing student

Katy Pickles is a guitar playing singer songwriter from a small town in the North West of England. She recently moved to Lon-don in 2013 to pursue a degree in songwrit-ing at Tech Music School.

When did you first start playing the gui-tar? I actually started out on drums! I just felt like I couldn’t express myself

fully behind a kit – so one summer, I

picked up my Dad’s guitar and started play-

ing (the guitar I now currently gig with!).

The songwriting just came hand in hand with

the progression of my guitar playing. I

slowly started playing gigs in and around

my hometown from the age of 13 – I haven’t

stopped since! When did you realize music is what you want to spend your life perus-ing? There was never a point when I decid-ed music was what I wanted to do – it just

happened that way! I went through phases

of wanting to be a painter, photographer,

interior designer, writer, all sorts! But

music was the only thing that I actual-

ly felt I actually needed – it’s an outlet

for my emotions and my way of coping with

life. Why did you choose London, and was it the right move for you musically? My hometown, Lancaster, is so small. I really

had exhausted the music scene and I need-

ed to move away to challenge myself and

grow. London was and is the perfect place

to do this! It was hard adapting at first

– especially considering I had to develop

a fan base from scratch – but I’m getting

there! What are your plans for after your graduation? After pressing my nose against a cake shop aged 10, my Mum told me that

when it came to me getting married, she’d

pay for the most fabulous cake imaginable.

I replied with ‘Marriage? I’m not thinking

much past lunch right now!’ – and that’s

still the case. Who knows what I’ll be

doing after uni? As long as I’m constantly

creating then I’m sure I’ll be happy. Who would you say are your biggest influences? My influences musically include Joni Mitch-

ell, Nanci Griffith, Carole King, Paul Si-

mon, Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse…I could go

on. But what really influences me are the

things that happen from day to day – lives

experiences are what make me want to pick

up my guitar and write. And finally, what are the best-and worst parts in what you do? The best part of what I do…well…I guess it’s knowing that you’re creating music

that people enjoy. It’s great when people

relate to what you’re saying – even if it’s

not in the way you intended – it’s knowing

that they connected with the music in the

way I do when I perform that’s rewarding.

Performing is great too – connecting with

audiences is a really special thing. The

worst thing has to be dragging my guitar

everywhere – I’m only little and my gui-

tar weighs a tonne. When I think about it

though – if this is the worst thing I’ve

got it pretty good.

If you want to buy Katy’s EP it is for sale

at katypickles.bandcamp.com for £3.

Words: Storm Simpson

Image: John Spinks

8

This week as I went down to Dance

Works studios in central London with

an enormous sense of trepidation, not

quite sure what I’d let myself in for.

As someone who’s more accustomed to

the rugby or football pitch, this

class in classical ballet was certain-

ly going to be a step outside of my

comfort zone.

I decided to take on this challenge a

week into the Winter Olympics as it’s

about this point in every major games

when many of us, especially myself,

have developed an encyclopedic knowl-

edge of sports to which we will not

devote a second thought during the in-

tervening four years.

When I was 14 I saw Billy Elliot for

the first time, the film tells the

tale of a miner’s son growing up in

the industrial north east during the

miners strikes of the 1980s.

After a slight mishap Billy Elliot

winds up as the only boy in a ballet

class, hosted in the same venue as

the boxing club he’s supposed to be

attending. Before long, Elliot finds

himself auditioning for the Royal Bal-

let school and moving away from his

family in Durham.

The film struck a chord with me. I’d

never danced, I’d never been inter-

ested in dance but I was suddenly now

convinced that I could have been a

ballet dancer had I not reached the

point of no return with football and

rugby. So here I am at university with

the opportunity to find my inner Wayne

Sleep or Fred Astaire.

Located just off Oxford Street, Dance

Works is one of the top dancing estab-

lishments in London, with its eleven

studios hosting classes ranging from

contemporary jazz and classical ballet

to Argentine tango and lyrical contem-

porary (still not entirely sure what

that is.)

After arriving and paying the entrance

fee (£10) for the class, it soon be-

came apparent that my plan of mak-

ing it through the ninety minutes in-

conspicuously tucked into one corner

would not be possible.

I was the only male in the class of

25, I stood out like a sore thumb and

was instructed to line up on the bar

in the centre of the studio… ‘this is

going to be a long hour and a half’ I

thought.

The teacher, Hannah Frost, who has

been teaching beginner and elemen-

tary classes in classical ballet at

Dance Works for the last four years

explained that her classes are usually

made up of a really mixed bunch.

“We get a lot of different people in

the beginners class, a lot of people

who take part in ballet will give up in

their childhood and then reach a stage

where they want to take it up again,

this class is perfect for them.

“We do get a lot of complete first tim-

ers and some guys as well, there’s a

truck driver who’s been taking classes

for a while now.”

I suspect the presence of this truck

driver would’ve gone a long way to eas-

ing my first-timer nerves and made me

feel inordinately less self-conscious.

Alas, he was nowhere to be seen (prob-

ably off driving his truck somewhere).

The class begins with some stretches.

Now, limbering up the joints for the

ensuing activity is not something I’m

completely unfamiliar with, we do it

every week before our games in fact.

**

This would surely be an area in which

I’d excel. However, phrases such as

‘elevate from first’ and ‘demi-plié’

made even the warm-up a baffling ex-

perience. My best hope was to copy the

girl in front. ‘She seems to know what

One thing that struck me throughout

the experience was the physicality and

strength required, even for the most

basic steps. We had only reached the

half-way point and my legs were al-

ready burning.

“It’s incredibly physical, some people

have a very natural turn out and it

makes it easier to begin with… as you

get up to the professional level you

see the guys who can pick the girl up

from a standing start and hold them

above their head. It takes a lot of

strength,” explains Frost.

After a successful first half, it was

time to move on without the safety of

the bar. During rugby training ses-

sions there also comes a point when

you stop going through handling drills

and playing touch rugby; the tackling

bags are introduced and it’s time to

start hitting things.

This is generally greeted with a bit

of a groan as it represents the start

of the real hard work where you train

your body for an 80-minute rugby match.

The similarities between this ballet

class and rugby training were becoming

more apparent and this class was about

to get harder.

**

The next 25 minutes were spent repeat-

ing the exercises we’d already been

through without the bar for assis-

tance, it’s fair to say that balance

is not my strong point and I took to

this section of the class like a duck

to ballet.

Frost’s abilities as a teacher, how-

ever, seemed only to be matched by

her unwavering patience, she talked me

through where I was going wrong and I

was soon back on the horse.

The class concluded with some basic

jumping exercises. And much as in the

warm up I felt as if this was an area

that I was suitably prepared for and

one in which I would excel, ‘I’ve

been jumping for 20 years at least’ I

thought. This time I was right and I

jumped like the expert jumper I con-

sider myself to be.

“You’re a natural,” exclaimed Frost,

capitalizing on this opportunity to

heap praise on the struggling newbie.

In the blink of an eye my first bal-

let experience was over, I’d love to

tell you how it was too easy and too

‘girlie’ and I won't be going back,

but that would be a lie. I loved it.

So if you’re thinking of taking up

something new in 2014 get down to Dance

Works and try one of their classes. I

promise you won’t regret it.

A rugby player takes a ballet class and discovers that the world of dance is not as gentle as it looks

Harder than you think

Words: Sean Coppack

Image: Will Henry

she’s doing’ I thought: this would

serve me well throughout the class.

With the warm-up over it was time

to get down to some ‘proper ballet’.

“For all the first-timers, this is go-

ing to hurt. It’s supposed to hurt -

ballet is hard but just try and keep

up.” says Hannah Frost in a unique

tone of voice that was somehow both

reassuring and foreboding, in equal

measure.

The first half of the beginners class

comprises some basic ballet positions

and movements with the aid of a bar

for balance.

**

Forty minutes into the class and

things were going swimmingly, my de-

cision to copy the girl in front was

paying dividends and I had even estab-

lished the meaning of first position

(baby steps).

I was, however, thrown slightly by

the introduction of the phrase ‘a la

seconde’, I managed to establish that

this was just a movement of one foot to

the side before anyone had clocked my

incompetence. Crisis averted.

9

Jamie lifts his shirt to reveal a

9-inch scar stretching the length of

his abdomen. At just 19-years old the

trainee joiner from Bristol had a blad-

der smaller than most pensioners and a

urinary system ravaged beyond repair,

leaving him the choice of wearing a

colostomy bag for the rest of his life

or having the bladder removed entire-

ly. He opted for the latter: “Before

the operation I was incontinent. Piss-

ing myself at parties. At my worst I

was pissing blood - thick, red, gooey

stuff. I was in constant pain and the

only thing that seemed to ease it was

the thing that caused it.”

As unusual as it sounds, Jamie’s sto-

ry is increasingly common. The cause?

Ketamine. The dissociative anaesthet-

ic formerly used in human and veteri-

nary surgery has been getting people

off their tits since the 60’s, but

in recent years a worrying trend has

emerged amongst K-heads. Escalating

numbers of cases are being reported of

irreparable physical damage caused by

heavy, sustained use. Dr Daniel Wood,

a consultant urologist at University

College London, outlines the issue:

“Ketamine appears to cause direct

damage to the lining of the urinary

tract, and the bladder, ureters and

kidneys may all be damaged. It’s grow-

ing popularity as a recreational drug

has shown a correlation with the in-

crease in cases of urological prob-

lems amongst users. We’re mainly see-

ing these cases in young adults, but

I’m aware of school children using the

drug and developing symptoms. I also

know of patients aged up to 50 years.”

There are an estimated 100,000 Ket-

amine users in the UK, though most

will never experience health problems.

Acting as a warm, wonky dissociative

in small doses and a full-blown psy-

chedelic in greater quantities, K’s

appeal is far-reaching, from teenage

novices and hardened psychonauts to

corporate suits and Catholic minis-

ters. Jamie explains what initially

attracted him:

**

“It’s cheap, and unlike most other

drugs, was nearly always decent qual-

ity. I started out smoking weed and

doing MDMA and coke, but K is a big

part of the party scene in Bristol and

kind of hard to avoid. I was 17 when

I started. I’d buy a gram for £20 and

be fucked up all night. That was much

more appealing than spending £60 on

coke or some shit pills.”

Within a year Jamie had progressed from

snorting a gram a weekend at parties,

to up to seven grams a day at home,

Ketamine users can develop psychologi-

cal, if not physical, dependency:

“My tolerance built up really quickly.

I was doing half-gram lines, snorting

at least five grams a day, sometimes

more. It stopped being a party thing.

I dropped out of college and spent

most of my time getting messed up at

home or in squats around Bristol.”

It wasn’t long before Jamie’s life-

style began affecting his health,

starting with abdominal pain and lead-

ing to far more disturbing symptoms:

“I had K cramps all the time, but that

seemed pretty standard. Most of the

people around me would get them too so

I wasn’t that worried. I got concerned

when I needed the toilet every 10 min-

utes. When I started pissing blood I

knew I had to see a doctor.”

**

The ‘K cramps’ are often the first

signs of physical damage in Ket us-

ers, caused by an intense spasm in the

abdominal muscles. Prolonged use can

also lead to ulceration of the bladder

lining, cystitis and incontinence, and

the capacity of the bladder can shrink

by up to 95%.

Jamie was referred to a specialist who

told him that his urinary system would

no longer function unless he wore a

colostomy bag or the bladder was sur-

gically removed and replaced:

“I couldn’t get my head round it at

first. The thought of wearing a bag

full of piss was too much. I was em-

barrassed and scared. After discussing

the options with the doctor I decided

to go ahead with surgery. They removed

my bladder and built a new one from

part of my bowel.”

Whilst K is commonly branded a ‘club

drug’, cases such as Jamie’s are ex-

treme examples of the relatively new

phenomenon of sustained, antisocial

consumption of the drug, whose sur-

gical and recreational use dates back

some six decades.

Ketamine’s history is a colourful one,

beginning in the USA in the 1960s when

it was used as an anaesthetic in the

Vietnam War. First sold illegally on

the West Coast as ‘mean green’ and

‘rockmesc’, it was championed in the

70s by US psychonauts Marcia Moore and

Dr John C. Lilly, and its popularity

spread amongst New Age spiritualists

and mind explorers.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that

the drug found favour in the UK, first

appearing on the underground rave

scene. Techno DJ Jerome Hill remembers

its impact:

“It had a really negative effect on

parties in the 90’s - less fun, less

communication between people, and the

music began reflecting that. Some Lon-

don squat parties were downright sin-

ister actually, with people injecting

K in full view.”

By the turn of the millennium K had

permeated mainstream UK drug cul-

ture, becoming increasingly popular in

nightclubs.

In 2005 K users began reporting blad-

der problems, and it was classified as

a Class C drug in 2006. By 2007 the

first recorded case of serious urinary

tract damage from Ketamine use was re-

ported in Hong Kong and in 2008 the

first cases were recorded in the UK.

Jules, 32, from London, has been tak-

ing Ketamine recreationally since 2002

and cites a change in the drug market

and increase in availability as one of

the reasons for the shift:

“From about 2006 onwards there was a

big MDMA drought which created the de-

mand for all the legal highs and de-

signer drugs that are everywhere now.

The laboratories in Asia that produce

them were also manufacturing lots of

K, so the availability increased as a

result and the price dropped. That’s

when people started getting stuck in

heavily, doing it away from clubs, on

weekdays. I saw friends turning into

proper junkies.”

**

By 2011, a gram of K could be picked

up for as little as £10. As Jules ex-

plains though, it was no longer just

The true cost of Ketamine

Our investigation uncovers the horrifying damage suffered by regular users of a party drug.

Words: Ed Oliver

Image: 123RF.com

the ‘party drug’ the media was label-

ling it:

“It became very antisocial. You’d go

to people’s houses and it would be

a room full of zombies with K snot

running out of their noses. No chat

whatsoever. You’d see it in a lot of

the clubs as well, nobody dancing or

smiling. It created a dark vibe.”

While most drug enthusiasts previously

looked to Ketamine for the pleasura-

ble, trippy properties it offers in

small doses, many are now driven by

the intense dissociative effects de-

rived from sustained and heavy use,

something Jamie can relate to:

“I didn’t get a buzz from it towards

the end. I was just trying to constant-

ly keep myself as fucked as possible,

as far from reality as possible. The

only way to maintain that was to sniff

more and more, and that’s what did the

harm. It’s a vicious circle.”

Jamie no longer takes K, but the phys-

ical damage is permanent. His restruc-

tured bladder will have to be replaced

by the time he is 50, and he makes

fortnightly visits to hospital to sy-

ringe out the mucus from his bowel.

“I feel lucky that I can still lead a

relatively normal life, but it’s hard.

I’m much less able physically than I

was, and my lifestyle has changed a

lot. I can’t socialise with most of my

mates, because they still take drugs.

I just hope they see what happened to

me and make the right decisions.”

10

11

Throughout the history of love and attraction between women and men, distinction has been the main currency; even before conventional beauty. The way women style their hair has less to do with how they feel about men than it does with how it makes them feel about themselves. Urgency over style is sparked by reactions to our own images as we are caught in the reflections of others. Industry pundits know this too; this is why it takes little more than exposure to glossy images to ignite the kind of raging impulse which results in a lopsided pixie crop and a dodgy amber quiff. That’s right, the red crop that looked great on Rihanna; but you wished you never had.

Saturday Girl is a series of portraits of young women as seen through their hair-styles, who portraitist, Casey Orr, identifies as having reached an age when they want to become visible in society. People are often tempted to think that young women experimenting with dyes and styling products is a phenomenon of modernity and the culture industry. The sociology of women’s hair is a popular topic for fem-

Casey Orr’s pictures present young women’s hair as a symbol of vitality and power

Words: Bianca Pascall / Images: Casey Orr

>>

12

inist social commentators, inclined to interpret radical hairstyles as a backlash against the drudgery of femininity in a patriarchal society.

Orr declines to imply these hairstyles are derivatives of some ‘free-floating sig-nifier’ of which the girls are unaware; neither does she detect there is a ‘po-litical or intellectual undercurrent’ guiding their choices. Instead she suggests that, for young women, creative ways of expressing identity imply only a ‘tacit awareness of the culture industry,’ and the bent for distinctive hair is ‘passed down’ through history.

In the twenty-first century, I too am reluctant to conflate hair with politics. The human need for change has no origin; moreover, it is subject to a rhythm in time. When pop culture embraces politics is when particular hairstyles make polit-ical statements. Historically, a woman’s disdain for the ordinary has been a force behind hairstyling; which is not necessarily a reaction to patriarchal oppression or capitalism.

As far back as classical antiquity women have resisted being told how to style their hair, particularly by men. Ovid chided the ladies of ancient Rome for ruin-ing their natural hair with chemical dyes, curling tongs and straightening irons." ‘A crime’, I cried, ‘ a crime to burn those tresses! Spare them, iron girl, they’re as lovely as they are... Stop dyeing your hair. How many times I told you. Now you’ve none to dye, and you’re disgraced.” wrote the exasperated poet.

Saturday Girl’s young women also draw attention to this dichotomy between the concepts of beauty and Bourdieusian distinction. Their boyfriends, they told Orr,

>>

13

14

15

prefer their natural beauty and disapprove of their big hair and make-up; while the girls relish creating wild and distinctive looks for themselves.

Hair is beyond the physical nature of the body; it feels no pain, or comfort. It is a thing. For women, hair exists solely to be objectified, expressed in form, and brought to life with ornamentation. The intention behind big hair of unnat-ural colours has always been to turn heads, and the more shockingly the better. Amy Winehouse’s beehive had nothing on the barnet worn by Marie Antoinette in the eighteenth century, who celebrated big hair by teasing hers up to a height of three feet, powdering it white and loading it with ships, fruit and budgerigars.

A young woman’s affiliation with her hair is determined by the capacity of creative styling to change her very being, and transform her in the eyes of her onlookers. As a woman, I am unwilling to accept that my hairstyle is a reflection of my per-sonality. It is more a sum of our imaginations, and how we perform our femininity in relation to our places in society.

Saturday Girl represents hair as a symbol of vitality and power; its appeal is mystical. Hair has the power of hiding who she is while, at the same time, adver-tising how she wants to be seen. The time-perfected hairstyles of icons such as Anna Wintour, Louise Brooks, Pam Greer and Susan Sontag are examples of how style becomes inseparable from the woman. A woman’s ostentatiousness for hairstyling is a true source of power. Once consummated, her style personifies her life’s accom-plishments; a part of herself which she leaves behind to be celebrated, and passed down to her unwitting successors.

16

The idea of a ‘sugar daddy’ seems like a hangover

from a less enlightened age: something from the era

of Hugh Hefner, Playboy or Soho in the 1970s. Yet

in modern Britain, it seems to have come back into

fashion, according to SeekingArrangement.com, a

website which links cash-strapped students with so-

called “sugar daddies”.

Maybe we should start by defining our terms. The

dictionary describes a sugar daddy as “a rich older

man who lavishes gifts on a young woman in return

for her company or sexual favours”. The phrase

seems to go back at least a century and its use has

always been, to say the least, uncomplimentary. The

sugar daddy is a sap or a mug, cynically used by a

younger woman, as in the 1927 Laurel and Hardy film

Female students are flocking to a website that promises to hook them up with wealthy older men. Is this a mutually beneficial arrangement, a typical sign of austerity Britain or simple prostititution?

Sugar Daddies, in which an oli tycoon is black-

mailed by a gold digger. Or he is a sad, inadequate

figure, unable to attract women through personal-

ity or looks, too emotionally immature to form a

relationship with a woman his own age, who relies

instead on his wealth.

Either way, a sugar daddy is a figure to be pit-

ied at best: not a term, you’d imagine, that men

would choose to apply to themselves. Yet, type

‘sugar daddy’ into Google and you discover a host

of websites on which seemingly unembarrassed older

men look for ‘arrangements’ with younger women.

To judge by the sites, there seems no shortage of

women – styling themselves ‘sugar babies’ - who are

prepared to take them up.

>>

Words: Emily Segameglio

Images: Linder Sterling

17

Girls of the World X, 2012, collage, 25.2 x 18.3 cm.

Copyright the Artist. Courtesy Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London.

18

SeekingArrangement,com is one of these and it is

trying to stand out in the crowded sugar daddy mar-

ket by courting UK students offering them free mem-

bership.The site claims to have thousands of mem-

bers throughout the country, including 89 students

at UAL. UAL is now ranked as the UK’s 12th biggest

‘sugar baby’ university, with the Universities of

Kent and Nottingham at the top of the table.

This data has been used to rank the top 20 UK uni-

versities with the highest number of students using

the site, according to new sign-ups for 2013. The

list includes Cambridge University in fourth place.

The female students are seeking ‘arrangements’ with

wealthy men, who are usually much older than them

and are prepared, not just to pay for nights out,

weekends away and other treats, but to offer them

an allowance, potentially of thousands of pounds a

month. In return the men expect companionship and,

naturally, sex.

The cold logic of the situation is that the typical

student leaves university with debts of £53,000.

OK, you could get a job in a shop or a bar but that

is barely going to make a dent in it. So why not

look for something more lucrative?

And, on the face of it, there does seem to be money

to be made. According to SeekingArrangement.com

(who, remember, are trying to promote their site…)

You can see the logic, perhaps, but it all seems a

long, long way from true romance – and not terribly

far from prostitution, albeit an upmarket, monoga-

mous version.

I spoke to a 23-year-old UAL student who recently

joined the site, and who exchanged messages with

one potential sugar daddy.

“He was quite insistent and asked me a few times

‘what I was ready to do’ to make his money worth-

while. We hadn’t even met yet and I already felt

that I had to comply with his desires”

After receiving an average of six emails per day

from prospective sugar daddies, the student, who

wished to be known only as Chanel, decided to reply

to the ones who looked ‘genuine’. She spoke to Arts

London News about meeting a middle-aged man through

a Skype conversation: “I must say I felt pretty un-

comfortable speaking about money on my first Skype

date with a sugar daddy. However, it is part of the

deal and let’s face it, it’s the main reason why us

sugar babies are on the site in the first place. My

potential sugar daddy and I concluded that if after

the first meeting we decided to carry on, he would

pay me around £3,000 a month – plus extras. That

would mean meeting him a couple of times a week.”

Of course, you can take a liberal view of this sort

of thing: that people are free to get together with

SUGAR DADDIES DEBATE: A student and a wealthy busi-nessman go head to head on the pros and cons of the sugar daddy lifestyle.

MEGAN, 22, STUDENT: “To me, the whole idea of young women looking for sugar daddies is repugnant. Es-sentially they are offering sex for cash, which is prostitution, pure and simple. If you look through these sites, most of the men are frankly pretty unattractive: overweight, flabby, grey-haired. The women who hang out with them and go to bed with them are only doing it for one reason: cash.

Relationships are supposed to be about love, affec-tion, shared interests, mutual respect and actually fancying the person you’re going to bed with. What do these girls have in common with the men they’re hooking up with? Very little.

And what about the men? I suppose they get some sort of thrill out of being seen about with a young, attractive woman but, really, what does it say about them? If she’s only with you for your money, where’s your self-respect?

And if a relationship is built so nakedly on money, then is it really going to last - or is the woman going to move on to someone her own age?

It also says something pretty sad about our soci-ety that students and other young women feel that they have to demean themselves like this. For some, I’m sure it is simply shortage of cash, because of the high costs of living in London and the whole student loan system. For others it’s probably something about the desire to buy nice things and go nice places and aspire to the kind of lifestyle that they read about in glossy magazines.

Either way, it seems pretty shallow to me. There’s nothing more depressing than seeing some young girl out and about with an old bloke. Fundamentally, if you put money at the heart of your relationship, it’s going nowhere.”

ANTHONY, 55, BUSINESSMAN: “I don’t particularly like the term ‘sugar daddy’ but I suppose that’s what I am. I enjoy the company of younger women and I am happy to provide the kind of lifestyle that they are looking for: clothes, trips abroad, nights out, a financial allowance.

I suppose I’m a bit of a traditionalist and I be-lieve that a man should look after the woman in his life and treat her well. If some people think that makes me sound old-fashioned, well, I’m not ashamed about that. Throughout history, women have looked for men who can provide for them.

The girls I’ve met through these sites aren’t gold-diggers. They’re nice, normal young women and our relationships are genuine, fulfilling and, I hope, mutually rewarding. I know the girls that I’ve been out with have had a good time. Even if the relationships haven’t always lasted that long, we’ve always parted on the best of terms.

It’s tough being young nowadays, what with the cost of living, uncertainty in the job market and stu-dent loans. I’ve got plenty of money and I’m happy to help out, where I can.

And, yes, people will point to the age difference, but throughout history, men have gone out with younger women. If women are seeking the kind of stability that an older man can bring, what's so terrible about that?

You can call it shallow if you like and I’m sure that there will be people who make remarks, when they see me out and about with a younger girl-friend but really, it’s water off a duck’s back to me. People can say what they like I know people are going to sneer but it really doesn’t bother me.”

the average woman at university who forms a rela-

tionship through the site gets an ‘allowance’ of

£5,000 a month. For context, that’s more than twice

the average wage. For further context, a sugar

daddy who could afford £5,000 a month out of taxed

income, would have to earn around £100,000 just to

keep his ‘sugar baby’ in the manner to which she

is accustomed. Are there really that many rich yet

inadequate men out there?

Equally, the site claims to have more than one

million students on its books. Given that there are

2.5 million students (male and female) at British

universities, that figure seems hard to believe

(even if you include private colleges, further edu-

cation institutions etc).

NUS Welfare Officer Colum McGuire said: “These

statistics seem to be based on registration fig-

ures rather than active membership. For instance,

the site states that they offer free membership to

students who register with their school address,

thereby providing detailed statistics upon regis-

tration of interest, but it’s not showing those who

actually participate in the service.”

But still, whatever scepticism we might feel about

the specific claims made by websites, there are

sugar daddies out there and there do seem to be

women prepared to sign up for the deal.

One such is Francesca, a King’s College student,

who signed up to the site after a recommendation

from her friend, and in the past two years has had

two sugar daddies. Now she just has one who gives

her an average of £2,000 a month, enabling her to

pay her rent, save money and pay off loans.

She says: “If you are looking for someone to take

care of you and help, why not? It’s the same as

dating any man except there’s more to be had from a

sugar daddy. I’ve never done anything I wasn’t com-

fortable doing. If I don’t want to, I say so. You

need to be honest when you get into these things.”

each other on whatever basis they like and that

money is factor in many relationships, even if it

isn’t discussed quite so openly. And that’s proba-

bly true, but even if you don’t believe that sugar

daddy/sugar baby relationships are just “prostitu-

tion 2.0”, it’s hard to deny that there is some-

thing depressingly cold and calculating about old

men and young women bargaining over monthly allow-

ances for regular ‘intimacy’.

There may be more serious consequences, too. In

February 2011 Marcelo Augusto Alves, from Flori-

da, was sentenced to life in prison for violently

raping a woman he met on SugarDaddyForMe.com while

in January 2013, New York sugar daddy Lakhinder

Vohra, 47, was also accused of rape after meeting a

26-year-old student on SeekingArrangement.com, but

the case was thrown out for lack of evidence.

Angela Bermudo, Public Relations Manager for

SeekingArrangement.com, said: “SeekingArrangement

is just as safe as any other dating website. In

fact, we may even be safer, as we are one of the

only dating websites that offer background checks

and regularly monitor messages for quality. Seekin-

gArrangementis a dating community, not a service

where women are hired to perform a job. The sugar

lifestyle is about mutually beneficial arrange-

ments. This means that each party gets exactly the

same amount of benefits as they provide. Men are

exchanging financial stability and mentorship for

companionship with an ideal partner,” she added.

While some UAL students appear to have signed up

for these sites, others have expressed their disap-

proval. Arianna Luparia, a third year fashion de-

sign student at LCF said: “I think the rise of the

fees will create situations like this which are not

safe for students. For some, it might be the only

way to have the money to pay back their loan or to

live in London, which is really sad. The government

is partly responsible and they should find a solu-

tion for it or there will be more and more websites

like this one.”

19

Escort Series XI, 2012, collage, 27.7 x 21.4 cm.

Copyright the Artist. Courtesy Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London.

20

Words: Dominic Brown

Images: Gareth McConnell

Untitled (OG), 2011

21

Sun, fun, drugs, parties … A work-hard-play-harder season in Ibiza is a holiday from the real world. But there’s a dark side.

Untitled (JW), 2003/13

22

“I came to Ibiza to work and party without limits” said Tam-

my, 25, as she took a break from dragging the eager holiday

makers into Itaca bar on the San Antonio sea front. “The best

thing about working in Ibiza was being able to meet some amaz-

ing people and share some amazing experiences with them. The

worst thing about working in Ibiza was seeing people take too

many drugs and in some cases die from that!”

Ibiza has an international reputation as a party island yet,

death is a very real threat. Any pill, any bag of powder, any

crowded room could be potentially fatal. “It’s the best thing

I’ve done. It has completely opened me up to so many oppor-

tunities and has freed me from the rut I had gotten myself

into living in London.” Tammy explained that the fear of going

home is something that had gripped hold of her and some of her

fellow workers. “The hardest thing about doing a summer sea-

son is trying to remember reality because you tend to lose a

sense of normality while being in this Ibiza bubble!.” If you

have nothing to look forward to back in England the concept

of returning home can seem bleak and often daunting.

Standing on the roof terrace of Itaca bar on San Antonio

beach I take a look around me at the array of bronzed young

clubbers as a warm Mediterranean breeze flutters through the

crowd. “Are you a worker or are you on holiday?” I ask one

girl at Departure; a workers party. “A worker” she replies.

“Oh that’s so cool, what do you do?” I reply. “Well, I don’t

really have a job right now. I tried ticket selling, but

couldn’t be bothered with it so I sacked it off.” These sorts

of exchanges can frequently be heard amongst young people in

Ibiza. Ibiza’s tourism industry relies on non-Spanish workers

to occupy the job roles in bars, clubs and restaurants. People

work tirelessly to support themselves for the summer and are

rewarded with certain privileges as workers. These include

access to sought after guest lists, cheap drinks and reduced

ticket prices.

The life of a worker relies on a work hard-play-harder ethos.

And that is what makes it so rewarding. Ibiza workers are

afforded discounts which allow them to enjoy club nights and

drinks deals for discounted prices. Viva bar located on Ibi-

za’s infamous West End strip is home to workers, and offers

cheap drinks deals to those with a ‘workers’ band. The tell

tale signs of a worker are clear not only from the exhaustion

written all over their faces but also the grubby ‘workers

wristbands’ up and down their forearms.

**

For those who have the time and the financial freedom to do

so, a season in Ibiza is the ultimate escape from the real

world. Whether it be escaping from a broken heart, over-

bearing parents or sheer boredom; Ibiza is the place to go.

Although, Ibiza is only a short flight away from London the

lifestyle could not be more different. It means waking up in

the sun everyday. It means not having to wear a suit to work.

It means seizing the opportunity to escape the everyday con-

fines of life in the UK. It is truly freeing and so long as

you know how to party and work hard to earn your keep it can

be a really rewarding experience.

Ibiza workers are able to live the dream that holiday makers

can only hope to enjoy for maybe two weeks. Holiday makers

might spend a whole year saving the money they need to enjoy

a sun, sex and party fuelled holiday whereas a worker can

support themselves with a job throughout the whole summer.

However, when speaking to workers it is clear that some people

are reaping the rewards of being a ‘worker’ without actually

working at all.

Speaking to members of staff at Ibiza Rocks in San Antonio,

one of the busiest and most profitable venues on the island

I seek to find out how they survive exhausting hours of work

combined with endless clubbing. In recent years the Ibiza

Rocks brand has established itself as one of Ibiza’s biggest

attractions. The staff work tirelessly all season to cater to

the needs of holiday makers and workers alike.

Bob Brown, an Ibiza Rocks chef, has devoted his summers to

slaving away in the restaurant kitchen in 40-degree heat. He

showed me how much work people are prepared to put in just to

stay on the island for the summer. “Its a joke that because

I’m stuck in the kitchen 14 hours a day I’m not able to hang

around outside Viva getting wristbands and guest lists for

nights, whereas the ‘workers’ who contribute nothing to the

ibiza experience, or to the island, are able to reap the un-

deserved rewards.”

Many people go to Ibiza to visit the Ibiza Rocks hotel for

their celebrated live music events. “I’d like to think that

people go away from their holidays and take fond memories of

the time they spend in the bar. I hope that is partly down

to the food I serve.” It is frustrating for these workers to

see other people spending their summer on the island barely

lifting a finger. “There’s nothing rewarding about spending

days lying on the beach then getting off your head at night

and then having to ring up your mum for another hand out when

the cash flow runs dry.”

Freddy, age 24, a ‘worker’ of three years admitted to me he

had never worked more than a week at a time while in Ibiza

but insisted he worked hard in the winter to fund his summer

antics. He spends his days lying on Kanya beach and spends his

nights gaining free entry to all his favourite house nights.

“Ibiza can be quite a lonely and depressing place to be when

you don’t have any money. People say this all the time about

Ibiza but I guess it really is all about who you know. It is

an expensive place to live so you need to get yourself on any

guest list you can.” The problem for the actual workers is

that for people like Freddy it easy to get on to workers guest

lists because they have their days free to find club reps to

put their names down. While people who are stuck in work do

not have the opportunities to do so.

**

The dangerous thing about these ‘workers’ is that a lot of

them will opt to sell drugs as an easy way of making money

on the island. After all Ibiza has a huge party drug culture.

With drugs in high demand it is easy to make a living doing

next to nothing. However, there is a fear that without the

stability of a job it is easy to lose yourself in all of the

partying and drug taking. Bob explained “It is important that

you have something to keep you grounded. Drugs are easily

available in Ibiza and San Antonio is a lawless town. I’ve

seen people unravel because they didn’t have a purpose. If you

don’t have a reason to go to bed or sober up it is easy to let

the drugs take over.” The phrase ‘fuck it we’re in Ibiza’ has

been thrown around a lot to justify drug habits.

The use of ketamine amongst workers is something that has

exploded in recent years and it has become a daily habit for

many of them and helps keep them out of it for hours at a

time. For workers who really are working, almost every night

of partying involves having to tear themselves away from a

club or a party early to make sure they have time to catch

some sleep before their next shift. For the ‘workers’ it can

mean going for days without stopping. Which is why it is so

easy to lose yourself. With no boundaries the effects can be

damaging on young people. These ‘workers’, however, are fa-

mous for not lasting the whole season. Either their means of

finding money runs out or they end up too mentally and phys-

ically exhausted to carry on.

Faye, an Ibiza Rocks waitress explained “I used to believe

that Ibiza had a way of spitting those type of people out. un-

fortunately some survived this summer. Everywhere you go has

these types of people I guess. As long as they don’t bother

me then live and let live. Although if I’m honest- Ibiza is

my paradise, these people are what will ruin it in years to

come.” If these people are tainting the experience for those

who are really working hard to enjoy the benefits then is

it really fair? “It doesn’t matter whether it’s fair or not.

We’re all on that island for the same thing to party and have

the best time of our lives!”

>>

23

Above: Untitled (JL), 2009

Below: Untitled (GS), 2002

Above: Untitled (NH), 2009

Below: Untitled (GO), 2006/13

24

FROM ECSTASY TO DISAPPOINTMENT: AN INTERVIEW WITH GARETH McCONNELL

“You’re constantly broke, there’s rejection, no money, you seem to be constantly exploited through our culture. Nobody wants to pay, everybody wants it for free. There’s a lack of creature comforts, psychopathic art dealers, rich cunt hedge fund managers, fashion events funded by Nazi gold….”

Gareth McConnell is explaining why the life of a photographer is ‘such a fucking hard game’. The words come in a torrent down the slightly dodgy mobile phone line, a mixture of bile, frustration, eloquence, hyperbole and humour. He’s such an interesting man to listen to, as he talks about his work, his motivation and the disappointment (a word he uses again and again) when he, or his photographs, fall short of his ideals.

So why does he do it, then? If it’s such a tough business being a photographer, why put yourself through it? There’s no hesitation in his reply.

“It’s a compulsion – a series of disappointments with occa-sional flashes of rightness. It’s such a peculiar thing. I’d always do it: it’s just odd that it’s become my livelihood.”

Gareth took the pictures of young ravers in Ibiza that ac-company this feature. They’re from a series called Nothing Is Ever the Same As They Said It Was that he took between 2001 and 2011 on visits to the island. The image they portray is far different from the intense, hedonistic lifestyle of Balearic legend. The subjects are photographed alone in their rooms, rather than in clubs and bars. They seem blank, rather sombre; the atmosphere is restrained and subdued, there’s an air of sadness and disappointment.

When Gareth first went to Ibiza in 1993, in his early twen-ties, it was an escape from life in Northern Ireland and it seemed to be a natural destination for someone who had grown up in rave culture.

“I started to go to raves in the 80s and 90s and I was exposed to the whole E experience. We were all too skint to afford E so we we took acid – a fucking horror show. E was a complete epiphany, it opened you up to the possibility of the world and your spiritual being. Northern Ireland was shite, with the Troubles and all that and it just seemed that things would be better elsewhere. Ibiza seemed like a mythological place but in the end when we went there it was deeply disappointing. The summer of love was definitely over.”

Gareth began to photograph people that he met, who, like him, had come to the island in search of some ideal, but found that reality had failed to come up to the mark.

The pictures are a kind of documentary archive of the time and place, he says, but one that he has begun to rework in other ways, rephotographing contact sheets, Xeroxing images, effectively remixing them as a DJ or a producer might a tune.

Some of this work appears in two books called Sex, Drugs and Magick: the revisited Ibiza images are grainy, monochrome and dark, creating a sense, even stronger than in the originals, of disappointment and desperation.

Gareth seems content for people to find their own interpreta-tions of his pictures but he offers an anecdote from his youth to illustrate his quest to find more than surface meaning in images and to penetrate what he calls ‘the unknowability of another human being.”

“I went to an after-hours party in Leeds and I was completely off my tits. People were threatening me and it was awful and paranoid. Friends were saying all those guys are going to hurt you and we need to get out of there. So when I got back home, I got a camera and put it on self-timer – I wanted a picture that showed how terrified I was. But when I looked at the pictures I took, there was none of that there.”

Untitled (SB), 2011

25

Untitled (DI), 2005/13

26

27

The Tragedy of Festivals, Jeremy Deller, 2014, Courtesy of the artist

28

I have a confession to make. It’s something I’ve

been struggling to come to terms with for the past

five years; a skeleton that I’ve confined to a

closet. All in the name of, well, being a Proper

Young Person. Social convention, if you like. This

confession is like admitting that you quite like

Chris Brown, or that you think Bashar al-Assad is

misunderstood (and kind of sexy, in a all-of-my-

beaky-features-are-located-in-the-very-centre-of-

my-face way). It’s something you just wouldn’t tell

anyone about.

But I’m sick of this awkward secret, and as we all

know from daytime television, the first step to

recovery is admitting you have a problem. So here

I am, admitting that I have a problem. With, [deep

breath], festivals. Not like, a ‘festiaddiction’,

as Cosmo would probably call it (because it can’t

be written about unless it has a crap portmanteau).

More like, that I don’t like them. I think I might

even hate them.

It’s not that I don’t like music. I like music,

loads. All different kinds of music. It’s not

even that I don’t like camping. I have voluntari-

ly, repeatedly, slept in a field without a tent in

February with the Army Reserve. Festival camping is

veritable luxury compared to that. You don’t have

to poo in a bush. You don’t have to eat cold yellow

soup of an indeterminate flavour out of a foil bag.

**

So in theory, I should actually really like them.

Apparently everyone else does. They collect and

boast about festival experiences like Pokémon

cards. They keep their crummy wristbands on, hoping

that wearing physical evidence that they attended

T in the Park last year with their Vans constitutes

edginess.

And it’s that inescapable whiff of people trying

really bloody hard that gets me feeling all bil-

ious when I’m actually there. Everyone is wearing

An Outfit, instead of just clothes. Everyone is

name dropping bands and DJs. And a lot of people

are feeling delightfully gritty because they just

bought a bag of crushed up ibuprofen from a man who

is probably wearing tracksuit bottoms and may or

may not be called Pete.

Festivals embody everything nauseating and inane

about youth culture. Squads of hair-extensioned,

welly-wearing dunces garnished with crowns of plas-

tic flowers; too-fat girls audibly chafing in too-

tight shorts and crop tops, in blind deference to

Festival Chic. Onesies. Morph suits.

It can’t be the music that people like - it invar-

iably sounds second-rate. Because, a) the band is

even more pissed than usual, b) the sound system

is arse, c) you are two kilometres from the near-

est speaker, or d) all of the above. Even Professor

George McKay, who wrote a book on festival culture,

says so: "People don’t go to festivals for the

music. They go because of the event itself. Some

festivals are simply ‘cool’".

Like a four-day corporate New Year’s Eve, there

is relentless pressure to be having ‘the greatest

time ever, OMG take another picture of me so I can

document my fun-loving persona on social media’.

But waking up in a piss-stained tent pitched in a

Vodafone-sponsored wasteland of sixth-formers’

discarded Stella cans is not my idea of great.

In December, eminently irritating Kiwi extraordi-

naire Zane Lowe announced Blink 182 as the head-

line act for Reading and Leeds. The middle-aged

pop punks will be supported by Jake Bugg (#indie!),

which will surely have been rousing news for scores

of gap-yearers who until then had been slumping

around in Camden pubs, gazing mournfully at their

precious wristbands and wondering if they would

make it through the hollow pain of the winter to

grace the next Festival Season.

**

Personally, I will be boycotting festivals forth-

with. But the season is in full swing and the

weather is set to stay fair. It’s prime time for

those stricken with social anxiety following the

recent onslaught of festival themed Facebook up-

loads to score some tickets before the supply dries

up. In that spirit, behold my non-exhaustive mini

guide to the most repellent music festivals...

1. Boomtown - £156 / Hampshire: Boomtown Fair was six years old this summer, and for the latter half

of its life it’s taken place at the Matterley Bowl

near Winchester. The self styled ‘UK’s Maddest

City’ is a purveyor of mostly ska, reggae, gypsy

punk and electro-swing, and presents itself as a

‘neo-noir’ pseudo-world, whose convoluted fiction-

al history is chronicled in a 2,928 word literary

haemorrhage on its equally nonsensical website.

If this description of the stage Jimmy Cliff and

Shaggy are playing on is anything to go by - "This

bad boy stage is held in the district of Trench-

Town with Town Councillor BOSS MAN there to ensure

a serious high skankin’ time is had from start to

finish." - it’s going to be ‘next-level’, bro.

A new addition last year was the arrival of the

Arcadia Spectacular, which is basically a big hy-

draulic spider with acrobatic cybergoths and bad

dubstep. Think del Toro’s Hellboy, but in a musical

theatre format, and with more pyrotechnics.

Boomtown is otherwise notable for the unparalleled

strength of its weed/incense aroma, exuberant use

of psychoactives, and a heavy steampunk contingent.

Its license has been renewed following a formal re-

view for exceeding noise limits last year, so buy a

ticket if the idea of doing ketamine in a dystopia

appeals to you.

2. Field Day / London: By rights, Field Day should not be on this list. It offers almost unfeasi-

bly good line-ups - Blood Orange and SBTRKT in

2012, Jacques Greene and Solange last summer, and

Warpaint, Ghostpoet and Jamie XX this year. The

tickets are relatively cheap. The sight of a Cath

Kidston tent is a logical impossibility (there’s no

camping). And if you, like nearly a quarter of rest

of the UK, live in London, then its location in

Victoria Park is pretty convenient too.

And yet, when it’s happening, nobody seems to be

having a good time. Perhaps it is the very strength

of the proposition that makes Field Day’s physical

manifestation an almighty let down. Perhaps it’s

the fact that many of the attendees are depressed

Deloitte workers. More likely, it’s because the

festival is plagued with sound and logistical ‘is-

sues’ and suffers from a profound lack of atmos-

phere. Distressing line-up clashes and an unconsid-

ered layout add to the air of deficiency.

Having weathered a rain of complaints in its first

year, 2007, the organisers have since done lit-

tle to shake off its sucky reputation: last week

Drowned in Sound called it ‘the pantomime villain

of the festival circuit’. This year it expanded

from its humble Saturday-only beginnings anyway to

become a proper all weekend event. Snap up a ticket

for next year - they’re already on sale - and pre-

pare to be underwhelmed.

3. Benicàssim - £170.55 / Costa Azahar, Spain: The Festival Internacional de Benicàssim takes place in

the town of the same name about 100km north of Va-

lencia on the east coast of Spain. For a number of

reasons, it is majestically avoidable.

The camping is infernal. Temperatures bob jovially

in the high thirties, meaning that if you’re lucky

enough to be woken up (ie. you have actually been

to sleep for an hour in spite of the incessant euro

techno pumping through the campsite) by the sun as

you inevitably will be when it comes up just after

6am, you get to experience a slow, withering half-

death by heatstroke.

To alleviate this you might queue for one of the

showers, which consist of a scaffolding frame

punctuated by hosepipes. Said showers are open,

outdoor, and unisex, meaning that if you want to

wash your bits properly during the eight days of

camping, you have to do so in front of a patrol of

pubescent Liverpudlians dressed as Where’s Wally.

‘Beni’, as it’s affectionately known, is not

about the music. This year, in a line-up presum-

ably designed to attract the broadest demographic

of non-music-liking dullards, Tinie Tempah, Man-

ic Street Preachers, Ellie Goulding and TRAVIS

are playing. Rather than a music festival in the

traditional sense of the term, it’s an excuse for

young Brits to play an extended game of Embar-

rassing Ourselves in Europe. It is an exercise in

vest-wearing, inebriated inanity. It has no redeem-

ing features. See also: V Festival, Wireless.

Words: Isabella Smith

Isn’t it time we faced facts and admitted that most music festivals are overpriced parades of second-rate talent, attended by irritating show-offs?

29

30

31

A free room for the night, anywhere in the world. How couchsurfing is changing the face of international travel

I arrive at Grenada coach station

in Spain with a complete feeling of

disorientation. I received a text

message from Tom saying he would

probably be 20 minutes late or so to

pick me up so I decide to walk across

the street to a bar. I sit outside

and order a tinto de verano (red wine

with lemonade). Along with my drink I

receive a tapa of albondigas, meat-

balls in a spicy tomato sauce. I sit

mindlessly eating and drinking while

pretending to watch the Euro match on

the television, I am somewhat dis-

tracted. My mind is running wild,

what if he does not come? Where am

I supposed to go if he does not show

up? What if this is dangerous? My

nervous stream of thought is inter-

rupted by a fluid American accent and

a man in a rugged cowboy hat, his

face wrinkled by the sun: “Hey, are

you Dani?” I nod and greet him with a

huge smile on my face, half relieved

that he showed up but still nervous.

I pay for my drink and head off with

Tom. This odd encounter is the begin-

ning of my venture into the world of

couchsurfing.

Couchsurfing is a not-for-profit or-

ganisation created to allow everyone

to travel and share the widest pos-

sible range of cultural experiences.

The aim is to create a revolutionary

type of travelling: “We envision a

world made better by travel and trav-

el made richer by connection. Couch-

surfers share their lives with the

people they encounter, fostering cul-

tural exchange and mutual respect.”

As to how the website works, it is

like most social media offerings. As

soon as you enter the site the first

thing you see is a warm welcome:

“connect with travelers all around

the world”. You set up a profile de-

scribing yourself, your views, taste

in movies and music. Once joined, you

can browse any members’ profiles from

all over the world and contact people

you may like to stay with, meet or

host yourself.

**

The organisation was born in 2004

and now has seven million users in

100,000 cities across the world. It

sounds like a network asking for

disaster, but in practice it appears

to work. Most users adhere to the

five basic values of Couchsurfing.

You are asked to “share your life,

create connection, offer kindness,

stay curious and leave it better than

you found it”. Despite their opti-

mism, the Couchsurfing team are not

so naïve to believe that bad people

do not roam their website. They ad-

vise users to check profiles careful-

ly to ensure a user is verified and

has references from people they have

stayed with or have hosted. The more

information on a user’s profile, the

better it is.

I decided to get the perspective of

couchsurfing from a seasoned profes-

sional so I spoke to Gabriele Gal-

imberti. Gabriele decided to travel

around the world using couchsurfing

as his form of accommodation. His

reasoning for using couchsurfing came

down to more than just budget: he

wanted to discover a young, diverse,

multicultural, multiracial global

community. I asked Gabriele whether

he would have stayed in hotels if he

had the money: “I wouldn’t change the

way I have travelled the world, even

if I was super rich. The warmth and

culture you get from staying with lo-

cal people cannot be matched by hotel

rooms and their staff”.

After nearly ten years couchsurfing

has had its fair of horror stories.

There was the serial rapist travel-

ling through Asia who created and de-

leted several accounts to find hosts

and so no person could leave negative

feedback. Then there was the young

girl from Hong Kong who travelled

through Europe using couchsurfing and

after staying with her host in Leeds,

England was raped.

Other users have less dramatic bad

experiences to report. Lauren Boi-

toult from Manchester stayed with a

host in Barcelona: “He was really

lovely and had a beautiful flat with

beautiful architecture. I even had

a room to myself instead of a couch

so that was a bonus. We both got on

well and I was looking forward to

spending the next few days with him.

On the second day I was there though

another ‘couchsurfer’ named Mikey

arrived to stay. He seemed friendly

enough however at times he became too

friendly and it made me uncomforta-

ble. One night he tried to come into

my room but I managed to get him out.

He never forced himself upon me but

it did ruin the fun time I was having

in Barcelona.”

**

Another common occurrence that many

users complain about on the social

networking website are forgetful

hosts, or hosts cancelling at the

last minute. I can relate to this,

when I was staying in Madrid, my

host had offered to pick me up from

the coach station. I waited for an

hour after arriving when she gave me

a call saying she could not host me

anymore. She gave no reason and I was

then under pressure to find somewhere

to stay for the night as well as find

my way around Madrid to a hostel I

could afford.

After all this context, I think the

best way to demonstrate what couch-

surfing is like, is to share my first

experience of couchsurfing in Spain.

After staying in a hostel in Madrid,

I travelled down to Granada where I

stayed with Tom. Me being 19 and him

being 55 I was slightly nervous and

a little sceptical. However as soon

as we met To. After looking at his

profile, it was clear that he was

an experienced host and knew how to

make you feel welcome and at ease. He

lived in a small village just out-

side of Granada, right by the Sierra

Nevada. The first evening he cooked

traditional Spanish tortilla and we

chatted about philosophy and books.

Over the next few days I enjoyed the

quiet of the village after the hustle

and bustle of Madrid and long chats

with Tom about his music, more phi-

losophy, his work and literature.

He showed me around Granada and took

me tapas bar hopping. On my final day

we went on a hike up to the top of

the Sierra Nevada. This is my most

memorable experience of Spain, for

both good and bad reasons. The first

concern is that this was a bad idea

was that it was 30 degrees outside,

the second was that I was not expect-

ing to be hiking during my stay in

Spain so I was not well equipped. As

a result I was forced to hike up the

mountain in my Converse trainers and

my longest shorts!

As we cut through the dried up

fields, the dry crops slashed against

my legs leaving me with several cuts

and rashes. When we finally made it

to the top, the worst was not over,

we had to walk along the ridge to the

‘Buddha’ (a rock shaped like a Buddha

which you sit on top and apparently

holds the best views of the Sierra

Nevada). The side of the mountain we

climbed up did not seem that high,

the other side of the mountain though

was at least four times as high as

the other and walking along this

slippery ridge in Converse trainers

seemed like a death wish, so I decid-

ed to crawl.

**

After crawling along the ridge on my

scratched and bleeding knees, we fi-

nally reached the Buddha. I was hot,

itchy and in pain, but as soon as I

sat on top of the Buddha, all of that

became irrelevant. The view was like

no other, I could see right across

the Sierra Nevada. It was breathtak-

ing. It was in this moment that I ap-

preciated the uniqueness of a network

like Couch Surfing. I would not have

had this experience or the chance to

see this view unless I had met Tom.

The positives of Couchsurfing over

hostels and hotels are home cooked

and traditional food, being guided by

someone who can show the lesser known

local gems and of course, it is free.

Couchsurfing emphasise the fact that

it is a free service; no host should

charge a person to stay with them. It

is social networking in an unusual

form, the friends you make abroad are

people you stay connected with and

can visit again in the future. I know

Couchsurfing is not for everyone but

for those with an adventurous streak

it is worth a try.

Words: Danielle Agtani

Image: Jason Evans

32

In an office where I once worked we discovered a lis-

tening device in a potted plant. Nobody knew why it

was there, though there had been an incident a couple

of years previously in which an ambitious account ex-

ecutive had bugged the head of sales, discovered he

was having an affair and forced him, through black-

mail, to resign from his post. The account executive

took his job and is today extremely senior in his

industry. He remains one of the most unpleasant men

you could have the misfortune to meet.

The listening device that we found had been stuffed

into the soil behind a leafy shrub of some descrip-

tion, rather like the one in Luke Stephenson’s pic-

tures accompanying this piece. Whoever had put it

there had taken very little care in concealing it,

presumably figuring that nobody cares about or looks

at office pot plants, so the device would go unno-

ticed. For our part, we reasoned that our conver-

sation was so dull that any eavesdropper would be

driven to distracted frustration by having to listen

to it. So we left it there. We were bored half to

death, why shouldn’t the bugger be too?

It turns out that this is not a unique case. In Feb-

ruary this year, the lingerie entrepreneur (‘bra mil-

lionaire’, in the words of the Daily Mail) Michelle

Mone was sued by an employee who found a listening

device in an office plant: he was awarded £15,000.

A book called “Spy’s Guide: Office Espionage”, a kind

of handbook for paranoid businessmen, gives advice

on holding a confidential marketing meeting (“This

isn’t any old marketing meeting: this is the King

Daddy of marketing meetings”). “Secure the perime-

ter”, it barks. “Limit attendance to key personnel.

Prohibit cell phones”.

Point 7 on the list is “Remove all trash receptacles

and potted plants. These objects are commonly used

to conceal microphones.” Commonly, you see. They’re

all at it.

And maybe they are. Memoirs of ex-spies reveal that

that bugs concealed in potted plants are a standard

piece of tradecraft used by the Stasi, the CIA, the

KGB and MI6, not to mention business rivals, bra mil-

lionaires and vengeful underlings. Potted plants are

everywhere, but nobody ever notices them, somehow:

the perfect hiding place.

Words: Zeus Simcoe

Images: Luke Stephenson

>>

33Pachira, 2012

34Strelitzia Reginae, 2012

35

It actually goes further. Scientists at MIT revealed

this year that they have discovered that by making

a high-speed video of a potted plant in a room where

people are talking, they can monitor the vibrations

on the leaves and convert them back into sound. The

plants really are spying on us.

People have been putting plants in containers and

bringing them indoors since the time of the Pharo-

ahs. A hundred years ago, in most self-respecting

British homes could be found an aspidistra, a hardy

south Asian plant that has a reputation for being

almost indestructible. So commonplace was it in the

Victorian era and the early years of the last cen-

tury that it was used by George Orwell in Keep The

Aspidistra Flying as a symbol of the values that his

hero George Comstock believed had enslaved the bour-

geoisie to money. “This life we live nowadays. It’s

not life, it’s stagnation death-in-life.” declares

George in a representative passage, “Look at all

these bloody houses and the meaningless people in-

side them. Sometimes I think we’re all corpses. Just

rotting upright.”

The popularity of the aspidistra was the result of

its ability to withstand neglect and neglect is some-

thing office plants need to get used to. Look at the

ones in Luke Stephenson’s pictures, from a series

called Foyer Flora. Yes, they are fed and watered

(probably by a contract worker on minimum wage) but

that’s institutional care at best. Nobody’s really

looking after them. Nobody cares if they die.

Scientists and Prince Charles know that plants need

to be spoken to. In 1986 Charles revealed that he

talked to his garden and it responded. He was richly

ridiculed but a decade later, researchers uncovered

evidence that he might be right: plants grow faster

and more healthily if they can hear certain sounds,

including the human voice.

The plants in Luke Stephenson’s pictures are no-

body’s plants. He alone has noticed them, pictured

them, memorialized them – but the rest of us don’t

even see them, even though they are everywhere. They

are neglected, ignored, starved of company. Nobody’s

talking to them (though we should never forget that

they may be listening).

Once upon a time – say forty years ago – a desk

worker would have expected to have an office of his

or her own or, at worst, shared with a one or two

others. If he – probably he – was senior enough,

there would have been a secretary sitting outside,

guarding the lair.

Over time, the worker, the executive, would add per-

sonal touches to the office. A picture of the family

to start with, an industry award or framed certifi-

cate, a sporting trophy. Gradually the office became

a study or a den, an extension of the home in a way.

Sooner or later, a pot plant or two was added.

The purpose was to make an anonymous space personal

(though as with many such gestures of individualism,

it turned out that everybody was doing pretty much

the same thing). People were trying to make their

offices a little bit more like home, to soften the

daily grind with a bit of domestic comfort. Bosses

tolerated it, even encouraged it, as a sop to staff

morale.

Then, came the 1980s, open-plan offices, corporate

culture, the macho glorification of the twelve-hour

>>

36

working day. Workers were ruthlessly decanted from

their lovingly tended offices into vast impersonal

open spaces.

And into the open-plan offices came third-party sup-

pliers that rent you your greenery and look after it

for you. Office plant leasing is very big business:

government departments spend around £50,000 a year

on fauna: private companies are not obliged to dis-

close this information but doubtless spend far more.

There is even some baleful management theory about

this. Research psychologists have concluded that

plants in the office boost workers’ productivity

(their paper was titled “Restorative elements at

the work station: a comparison of live plants and

inanimate objects with and without window view.”).

So potted plants are able to demonstrate a return on

investment, to the undoubted satisfaction of corpo-

rate moneymen.

In open-plan offices there is simply less space for

workers to have their own plants. Some companies op-

erate ‘clean desk’ policies, requiring work surfaces

to be emptied of clutter every night and others ban

employees from bringing their own plants into the of-

fice. Jeremy Paxman, the former Newsnight presenter,

complained the other day that the BBC was patrolled

by ‘goons’ whose job it was to check that nobody had

polluted their workspace with a potted plant.

Just as the individuality of the office has been

supplanted by the impersonality of the vast beige

open space, so the potted plant as employee’s gentle

statement of individuality, has been replaced by a

policy of corporate outsourcing in which foyer flora

is leased in bulk. Is there a better symbol of the

recent history of British corporate life?

Once employees tried used pot plants to make their

offices a little more like home, to make the daily

routine a little more bearable. Now in the giant cor-

porations they work for, perhaps by way of compensa-

tion, it has become usual for offices to have sofas,

TVs, kitchens, showers. At Google there are even beds

(futuristic sleep pods for ‘power naps’, but still).

Offices are now more comfortable than most people’s

houses and flats. And, as a result, people spend more

time at work than they do at home, working far more

hours than they’re paid for, arriving in the dark and

leaving in the dark.

Sometimes a plant is just a plant: but sometimes it

is a symbol, like Orwell’s aspidistra. “There will

be no revolution while there are aspidistras in the

windows,” declares the fiery George Comstock.

Today’s foyer flora seem to tell us something about

the ruthless suppression of individuality, the rise

of a dehumanising corporate culture, the commodifi-

cation of plant life (and human existence), and the

relentless blurring of the boundaries between the

office and the home.

If you view the history of office life as a war

between bosses and employees (and you should be-

cause that is what it is: a generational, attrition-

al, formless war contested by armies for whom the

only certainty is that whatever they're fighting for

isn't worth it) it turns out that plants can some-

times be spies. But they’re more than that: potted

plants are, if not the front line, then a piece of

endlessly disputed territory, bitterly contested for

reasons that nobody fully understands.

37Ficus Benjamina, 2012

38

39

It was nearly five years ago, on

the 11th of February when I was on

holiday in London. I was in my hotel

room, dressing up to leave to meet my

friends. The TV was on, it was prob-

ably BBC News, but I didn’t pay at-

tention to it. Then I heard that they

were talking about Alexander McQueen

and the TV had grabbed my attention

fully. The images of McQueen and his

collections followed one another. I

was paralysed by the news – the King

of British fashion was found dead in

his apartment. Suddenly, the image of

>>

Words: Diana Tleuliyeva

Image: Juergen Teller

Eccentric, dramatic, flamboyant, depressive… The extraordinary Isabella Blow is famous for discovering Alexander McQueen, Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl – but who was she really?

40

a remarkable, flamboyant, eccentric

woman wearing an bizarre hat was on

the screen. As I found out later, it

was Isabella Blow, the fashion icon

who ‘discovered’ Alexander McQueen in

the 1990s. Intrigued by her extraor-

dinary persona and her role in the

life and career of a great designer,

I was curious to know more about her.

Typing ‘Isabella Blow’ into Goog-

le’s search bar, I was presented with

images of her breathtaking, whimsi-

cal hats: a Chinese garden hat, a

ship hat, a jewel-encrusted lobster

hat, a hat with her last name spelled

in feathers. The way Isabella Blow

dressed in unique clothes from up-

and-coming designers was as mesmer-

ising as her headgear. Her daring

style, often accompanied by a gash

of blood-red lipstick and a pair

of Manolo Blahniks, was gothic and

romantic at the same time. Isabel-

la Blow wasn’t a ‘fashion victim’ as

many newspapers described her. She

was a fashion role model, discover-

er of fashion talent, mentor, styl-

ist and editor. She brought McQueen

to prominence and also discovered

the models Stella Tennant and Sophie

Dahl. It seemed there were no bound-

aries to her creativity: her fashion

photoshoots reflected her character

and often were compared with Dali’s

surreal work. She was innovative, un-

conventional - in her personal style

and her ideas – eccentric and huge-

ly influential, loved and admired.

But her life ended in tragedy, with

depression and financial instability

leading to suicide.

**

Isabella Blow died in May 2007 but

her influence lives on. Earlier this

year she was celebrated in a major

retrospective, called Fashion Ga-

lore!, at London’s Somerset House.

Such was its popularity, and Blow’s

worldwide appeal, that this month, it

transfers to Toronto.

I had been anticipating the London

exhibition for months as an opportu-

nity to witness Blow’s dazzling style

in Alexander McQueen’s collections,

Philip Treacy’s hats and Manolo

Blahnik’s shoes. But it isn’t just

an exhibition of iconic clothes and

accessories – it is the life story of

Isabella Blow. As soon as I entered

the first room of the exhibition, I

was invited into Isabella Blow’s fan-

tasy world. The room was dark which

brought mystery to Isabella Blow’s

life that I wanted to discover. An

infamous sculpture and a light pro-

jection by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

grabbed my attention. This unusual

sculpture made of stuffed animals,

wall and fake moss with a heel from

Isabella Blow’s own Manolo Blahnik

shoes and her lipstick was both dis-

turbing and dramatic as it depicted

Issie’s head as if on a stake. Yet

when I looked at the light projec-

tion, I no longer could see a raven,

a rat and a snake – I saw Isabella

Blow’s profile with a feather hat on

the head. It was beautiful and roman-

tic – it showed a different side of

her personality.

Issie Blow was born Isabella Delves

Broughton in 1958 on the grounds of

her family estate, Doddington, in

Cheshire. The family history and Is-

sie’s childhood were imprinted on her

personality, influencing her future

work. Doddington Hall, where Issie

always wanted to live, had been let

to a girls’ school when gambling of

her grandfather, Jock Delves Brought-

on, ended in the family’s bankruptcy.

Jock himself committed suicide with a

morphine overdose after being charged

with the murder of the Earl of Errol,

who had an affair with Jock’s second

wife, Diana Caldwell. Although born

in an aristocratic family, Issie’s

family was still defined by econom-

ic anxiety, which haunted Blow until

the last day of her life. When Issie

was four, her little brother, aged 2,

died in an accident when he fell into

a swimming pool. The family never re-

covered from this tragedy, resulting

in her parents’ separation when Issie

was 14. Isabella’s husband, Detmar

Blow, wrote in Blow by Blow: The sto-

ry of Isabella Blow: “It was literal-

ly a handshake and then she was off.”

Photographs and newspaper cuttings

of the young Issie in the first room

showed that her sense of style was

present even at a young age. Even

when she was little, she used to wear

hats, and Issie’s love for lipsticks

was inherited from her mother, Helen

Broughton. She often recalled the day

when Johnny died: “My mother went up-

stairs to put her lipstick on...that

explains my obsession with lipstick.”

Issie’s fashion sense secured her

work for the designer Guy Laroche and

at American Vogue, where she was Anna

Wintour’s assistant. In 1986, she re-

turned to London to work for Tatler.

My journey continued to the next room

where the clothes that were a central

part of Isabella Blow’s life were on

show. Her eye for talent was remark-

able. She was always on the look-

out for something new and exciting.

She understood fashion like no one

else. I was excited to see Alexander

McQueen’s first collection from the

St Martins graduate show, “Jack the

Ripper Stalks His Victims”: a pink

frock coat and tailored black silk

jackets with blood-red linings. It

was in 1992 when Isabella Blow dis-

covered McQueen and introduced him to

the fashion world. She bought the en-

tire collection for £5,000 (paying in

instalments over the year) and wore

his pieces for a self-styled fash-

ion shoot that appeared in Vogue in

November 1992.

Walking into another room, I felt I

had seen it before. Looking closely

at the garments presented, I rec-

ognised McQueen’s 1996 Dante col-

lection: absolutely beautiful and

romantic in comparison to previous

collections. The room was referencing

the place where the show took place

– Christ Church in Spitalfields.

McQueen was already under Isabel-

la Blow’s wing after his graduate

show but his early collections like

Highland Rape were receiving negative

responses from fashion press. Despite

the criticism Isabella Blow never

stopped supporting Alexander: she

knew that he would be the next great

fashion designer.

**

As I walked through the upper gal-

leries, incredibly beautiful Philip

Treacy hats were on display – Isa-

bella Blow’s iconic symbol of style.

Three years before Blow discovered

McQueen, she discovered Treacy at

Tatler magazine, carrying a green hat

he made. He eventually made her a hat

for her wedding and the friendship

between two was born. Isabella Blow

used to say that she used to wear

hats as armour to protect her from

the world.

Isabella Blow wasn’t just about

clothes and hats. Under fancy dress,

there was a romantic and sensitive

persona. Video footage of Isabella

Blow and editorial work from maga-

zines are scattered throughout the

exhibition. Although many used to say

that Isabella Blow was quite dramatic

and depressive, these videos show the

opposite: she was fun and exuberant.

Isabella Blow was working in dif-

ferent fashion publications but one

of the most remarkable examples is

Sunday Times. She brought “drama” to

a conservative newspaper: she styled

the photo-shoots in a way no one had

done before.

Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy

were not the only designers Blow dis-

covered. She is credited for spotting

the talents of Hussein Chalayan and

Julien Macdonald as well as the mod-

els Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl.

Before I finally tore myself away

from the exhibition, I stopped to

watch Nick Knight’s short movie fea-

turing Isabella Blow’s wardrobe worn

by new fashion models, which was shot

in Doddington Hall. The movie was ac-

companied by Bryan Ferry’s song When

She Walks In The Room.

At the end of her life, Isabella

Blow thought she didn’t matter in the

fashion world and felt underappre-

ciated but this beautiful tribute to

her proves it wrong. She was passion-

ate about fashion and she is a huge

inspiration for anyone who wants to

be in the fashion industry.

42

Camberwell College of Arts alum-

nus, world-renowned DJ, producer

and designer extraordinaire Kevin

Foakes, aka Strictly Kev, aka Open-

mind, aka DJ Food. has gone deep into

the crates to select 10 tracks that

were influential and important to him

during his student days.It’s a mix of

classic early 90s material he put to-

gether for a Camberwell reunion party

back in 2012 but has yet to see the

light of day online.

Kev has been a hugely influential

figure in the fields of music and de-

sign since graduating from Camberwell

in 1993. Having booked Coldcut’s Matt

Black to VJ at the ‘Telepathic Fish’

ambient parties he hosted in the

early 90s, Kev found himself working

closely with the Ninja Tune label,

designing and art directing for them

from 1994 onwards before becoming

involved in the ‘DJ Food’ project.

Initially conceived in 1990 as a

Coldcut side project, DJ Food expand-

ed to include a loose collaborative

team of PC (Patrick Carpenter), Paul

Brook, Paul Rabiger and Issac Ellis-

ton. However it was PC and Strictly

Kev who became the DJ manifestation

of the outfit before PC quit, leaving

Kev in full control.

From his early involvement in the in-

fluential ‘Jazz Brakes’ releases, via

the cut-and-paste magnum opus mix/

documentary ‘Raiding the 20th Centu-

ry’, through to the 2012 artist album

‘The Search Engine’, Kev has contin-

ued to hold his place at the cutting

edge of electronic music in the UK.

That’s enough of our chat, over to

Kev with his ‘Rewind’ selections…

Deee-Lite – Groove Is In the Heart (1990) “I moved to London in 1990 to

do my three year BA in Illustration

at Camberwell College of Art and this

was just everywhere, a monster, mon-

ster hit and, justifiably, a clas-

sic still to this day. Coming off

the back of the whole Native Tongues

movement with De La Soul, Jungles

Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest

they took it that bit further with a

retro Pop image.”

The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds (1990)“The Orb were the stoner soundtrack

of choice in the early 90’s along-

side the The KLF’s ‘Chill Out’ LP and

Primal Scream’s ‘Screamadelica’.. I

saw the Orb a number of times whilst

at college and even took inspiration

from this song for a design based on

the words to ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’

by printing in letterpress on layers

of tissue paper.

Another reason to buy Orb releases

was for the gorgeous sleeves designed

by The Designers Republic – proba-

bly the biggest design superstars in

the music world at the time with Warp

records, Pop Will Eat Itself and The

Orb under their watch.”

Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealin’ (1990) “I was never a Jane’s fan but some of my best friends at

college were and I couldn’t resist

the funk of this, later putting it

on a mix CD, ‘Now, Listen’ for Ninja

Tune. This was usually listened to

with the likes of Rage Against The

Machine’s first LP and the first two

Nirvana albums, the second of which

went stratospheric, of course, whilst

I was in my 2nd year. A big design

influence around this time was David

Carson’s Ray Gun magazine with his

rough, distressed, anything-goes

style that brought texture to ty-

pography after the cleanness of 80s

design heroes like Neville Brody and

Malcolm Garrett.”

808 State - Cubik (1990) “Proper heavy metal rave – ‘Pacific’ was a

huge student record, but this first

turned up on the B side of the ‘Ex-

tended Pleasure of Dance’ EP that

followed the LP. It was such a hit

that they remixed it and put it out

as a single in its own right. I would

hoover up any 12" I could, equally

enamoured with the design aesthetic

of the ZTT label that released them

as the music.

The KLF – What Time Is Love (1990)“I was (and still am) a huge KLF

fan and 1991 was their year. This

DJ Food’s top tracks

Words: Ed Oliver

Image: Will Cooper Mitchell

The renowned South London beatsmith and designer reveals the tracks that really matter to him

Beastie Boys – So What ‘Cha Want? (1992) “Regrouping after the commer-

cial failure of their ‘Paul’s Bou-

tique’ LP, the Beasties came back

with the rawer, more band-based and

less sample-orientated ‘Check Your

Head’ album. By melding rock and

rap in a less obvious way than just

nicking AC/DC riffs this was anoth-

er of those records that united the

Metallers with the B-Boys at gigs and

parties and I remember seeing them

with the Rollins Band at the Town &

Country Club during this tour. This

was during the heyday of DJ Muggs’

career peak with Cypress Hill, House

of Pain and Funkdoobiest and he pro-

vides a remix on this single too.”

Aphex Twin – Digeridoo (1992)“This knocked me sideways when I

first heard it as it was at least

10 bpm faster than everything else

at that time and it sounded like

nothing else. I immediately hunted

down everything I could find by him,

which was about three 12"s as ‘Se-

lected Ambient Works vol.1. hadn’t

been released yet and he was about

a year away from signing a deal with

Warp. I met Richard at a Shamen gig

at Brixton Academy and later he came

and DJed at an ambient party I was

hosting at a squat in Brixton. I also

used his ‘Xylem Tube’ EP as the basis

for a sleeve design brief, printing

mutated type onto tracing paper for

a CD and cassette inlay that showed

parts of the design through when

folded up.”

Galliano – Skunk Funk (Weatherall remixes) (1992)“The Acid Jazz move-ment was a big part of things when

I was at Camberwell, with one of the

tutors DJing with bands like Galli-

ano and The Brand New Heavies. The

Talkin’ Loud label was in its heyday

and Swifty’s graphics were a big fa-

vourite with a lot of people. Search

out the Thames & Hudson book, ‘De-

sign After Dark’ as that was a kind

of bible to me. By this time, I had

swapped illustration for graphics and

wanted to design in the music indus-

try. I had always done music and art

side by side but it took the course

to make me realise that design for

music was the direction that I wanted

to pursue.

The second reason for including this

in my list is for Andy Weatherall’s

remixes – I could have included

so many different tracks of his as

they were all long, lush and legend-

ary. Future Sound of London’s ‘Papa

New Guinea’, My Bloody Valentine’s

‘Glider’, Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’

(not to forget the LP), Flowered Up’s

‘Weekender’, Fini Tribe’s ‘101’ and

‘Forevergreen’, The Orb’s ‘Perpetual

Dawn’ – it was just a seal of quality

if his name was on the sleeve.”

was the one that kicked it all off

for them chart-wise (discounting

the Timelords’ novelty No.1). Their

‘Chill Out’ LP is still one of my

favourites but ‘What Time Is Love’

was the summer rave anthem of 1990.

Jimmy Cauty’s bold typography on the

artwork was always recogniseable and,

despite finishing KLF activities in

1992, they still remain legendary to

this day.”

Primal Scream – Don’t Fight It, Feel It (1991) “‘Screamadelica’ was the LP of 1991 for a lot of

people, a big post-gig/rave come-

down record with that all important

Andy Weatherall touch and the Orb

connection on ‘Higher Than The Sun’

– a huge crossover record between

the indie and dance scenes. I always

loved this more club-friendly track

most (specifically the remix by 808

State’s Graham Massey). Again the

sleeves of the Primals led me to

Factory Records, Peter Saville,

Central Station Design and, later,

Julian House.”

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy – Television, The Drug of the Nation (1991) “The Disposables only made one

album but it was a killer. I remember

buying it on the day of release and

it’s sadly not too well remembered

but its day will come. ‘Television…’

was the lead single and its message

still rings true today. I saw them

play in Camden and they were using

angle grinders on metal and showering

the place with sparks.”

43

A candid conversation about the wit-

ty, funny films of Woody Allen will

inevitably turn into an uncomfortable

discussion about his personal life;

more so than most other filmmakers,

Woody’s private life seems to over-

shadow his half-a-century old, criti-

cally acclaimed career.

You could argue that, like a lot

of notable artists in their later

years, Allen's best work is now well

in the past – Annie Hall and Manhat-

tan, arguably his most famous films,

both came out in the late 1970s. Yet,

with his two most recent films, the

consensus that Woody, now in his late

70s, has returned to form has begun

to crystallise.

**

First Midnight in Paris in 2011,

which won him an Academy Award for

Best Original Screenplay, was a

box-office hit and remains his big-

gest financial success ever. Now

there is Blue Jasmine, his latest

film, which has received wide praise

from critics and is up for three

Academy Awards.

It might be worth pointing out that

no one is less impressed by awards

ceremonies than Woody himself; he

doesn’t show up for any of them;

while Annie Hall was winning him four

Oscars, he wasn’t there to give an

acceptance speech because he was busy

playing the clarinet in a New York

club (Allen is an accomplished musi-

cian with his own jazz band).

More importantly, this wave of praise

for his recent films is coinciding

with the renewal of damaging allega-

tions about his private life – wor-

thy of being an uncomfortable film in

itself. Isn’t this the guy who left

his wife and married their daughter?

Well...not really.

For what it is worth, some miscon-

ceptions should be clarified: Woody

Allen and Mia Farrow were never mar-

ried; Soon Yi wasn’t their adopted

daughter, just Mia’s; nor was Soon

Yi underage when she and Woody began

their relationship.

Still, it’s all pretty messed up;

if you’re creeped out by the idea of

an old man sleeping with his girl-

friend’s 19-year-old adopted daugh-

ter, welcome to the club.

On top of that, now we have Woody Al-

len and Mia Farrow’s adopted daugh-

ter, Dylan Farrow, accusing him of

sexually abusing her in 1992, when

she was seven years old.

Allen denies it and says it is a

strategy conjured up by Farrow; he

claims she is nothing more than a

vengeful ex-lover holding a twen-

ty-year-old grudge and that she has

exploited Dylan into making the alle-

gations by somehow brainwashing her

into believing he did it.

So how should moviegoers view the

allegations? Is the artist indis-

tinguishable from his or her art or

should we, as the audience, place

some distance between the two and

view them as totally different en-

tities? Is an artist's private life

even any of our business?

So how do you digest the allegation

(which is hotly denied) that Woody

Allen may have sexually abused a

child? Perhaps you will stress that

Woody Allen may be one of the greatest film makers of the last few decades but his life has been dogged by controversy. Is it ever possible to separate the art from the artist?

Saint, sinner or both?

Words: Ivo Aleixo

Image: Corbis

ion of someone who was not there.The

very phrasing of a question like “Is

it possible to separate the art from

the artist?” seems to imply that the

artist has done something terrible

and that we, as the audience, have to

make a decision about how much we let

it bother us.

Such a messy conundrum invites the

question of whether you should – or

even can – separate the art from

the artist. Should our interest in

Allen begin and end with his films

or should we take a view about his

private life? Put simply, does a bad

life invalidate good art?

And if you are wondering whether

despicable people can go on to create

great art, the answer is – however

uncomfortable it might be – an une-

quivocal yes.

Salvador Dali supported fascism,

Richard Wagner was a raging anti-Sem-

ite, and of the seven main women in

Picasso’s life, two went mad and two

committed suicide; Norman Mailer once

stabbed one of his wives, and William

S. Burroughs killed his wife by ac-

cidentally shooting her in the head.

Yet, to a greater or lesser extent,

all the artists are regarded (in some

circles, at least) as having created

important, even great, work.

It might take a bit of getting used

to the idea that the history of great

artists is sometimes also an index of

extreme nastiness and, in some cases,

even criminal behaviour.

The question is also misleading for

another reason – when it comes to

judging a piece of art, words such

as good or bad refer to its aesthet-

ic merits, which morality doesn’t

always play a part in. Great art can

use horrible and awful things as its

subject matter. Depicting something

horrific – for instance, slavery in

12 Years a Slave – is by no means en-

dorsing it. The more important point

here, though, is that the whole sep-

arating-art-from-the-artist issue is

not just complex – it is also some-

thing we find uncomfortable.

**

In the case of Woody Allen, our per-

sonal decision of whether or not he

is guilty of committing a crime of

the most deplorable nature is ulti-

mately based on what we make of him

as an artist. The sad truth is that

because we elevate artists to god-

like heights, their work can function

as a protective screen around their

reputation that will stand even the

most damaging allegations, and ulti-

mately coax us into glossing over a

catalogue of heinous sins.

Is a filmgoer who buys a ticket for a Woody Allen film indirectly supporting a paedophile and discrediting an abuse victim?

the allegations may be false and

point to the fact there has not been

a trial or conviction, and that he

may be wrongly accused.

Legally, Allen has been cleared of

everything – but a cloud of suspicion

remains, in some quarters at least.

On the other hand, if the allegations

are true, the filmgoer who buys a

ticket for Blue Jasmine is technical-

ly, albeit indirectly, supporting a

paedophile and discrediting a poten-

tial abuse victim. The fact of the

matter is we don’t know if he did it

or not, so it all adds up to a vexing

she-said, he-said dilemma; with-

out knowing what actually happened,

whichever side we take to be true

won’t be anything more than an opin-

44

To look at Jim, you wouldn’t know he

had just served three years in one

Britain’s toughest prisons. But then

again you wouldn’t know Jim was a

devout Muslim either. In 2009 he was

sentenced to six years, three with-

out parole, for a particularly nasty

assault after a boozed-up night out.

He was 22 and in his own words was

“out of control, just looking for

trouble all the time… drunk, lost I

guess you could say.” He’s short and

stocky with a tightly shaved haircut

and comes from a predominantly white,

working class background.

He had little to no contact with oth-

er races and cultures prior to being

sent down, “apart from in the kebab

shop and stuff like that,” he notes,

candidly. It was within his first

six months in Armley jail that he

tells me he became aware of Muslims

as “more than just terrorists off TV.

They were a big presence inside be-

cause of the amount of ‘em always to-

gether. It’s a lonely place inside a

prison, even if you’re surrounded by

people, you’re always alone in your

head. So seeing this big group look-

ing after each other’s appealing. At

first you see ‘em getting more breaks

than everyone else and eating dif-

ferent food and you think to yourself

‘that’s what I should be getting.’”

**

After a year inside Her Majesty’s

Prison Leeds Jim was a Muslim. I ask

him if he ever thought about becom-

ing a Muslim before he got sent down?

“Never. It wasn’t because I wouldn’t

of, it was because I didn’t know an-

ything about Islam. I didn’t really

know ‘owt about religion full stop,

let alone Islam. I thought it was

something Asians did.”

When I question how he ended up con-

verting he tells me a story about

his cellmate: “We were playing pool,

like everyone does, Muslims, everyone

on the wing, it’s something to keep

you occupied. Then my cellmate starts

kicking off with one of the Asian

lads about whose go it was on the

table. He called the lad a ‘paki’ and

imitated hitting him with the cue.

And it was funny at the time, all the

lads round were laughing.”

Did he think of Asians as ‘pakis’?

“I did at the time, I use to use that

word all time for any Asian looking

person, before I got to know some.”

The contradictions of peace and vio-

lence that define Islam today are ap-

parent in what happens next for Jim.

“I didn’t think more of it until the

next day when six of ‘em [Muslims]

set upon him by the tables. They beat

him pretty bad and I remember one of

‘em looking at me and telling me to

watch myself. I’ve always been able

to handle my self in fights but I

didn’t wanna mess with this lot, so I

started to get to know ‘em, see what

they were about. And a lot of what

they were saying made sense, it was

a life I didn’t know existed, you

know one that seemed almost peaceful?

They gave me a translated Quran, it

was the first book I read in there

and it gave me a different outlook on

my life so I started going to prayer

sessions and within two or three

months I was calling myself a Muslim

and I’d changed my classification to

one by the prison.”

**

Statistically Jim’s story is more

common than you might think. The

rate of increase of Muslim inmates

in British prisons is growing eight

times faster than that of the over-

all prison population. That equates

to 11,200 Muslim prisoners currently

behind bars or 13.1% of the English

and Welsh prison population compared

to only 6% in 1997. The general Mus-

lim population of Britain only ac-

counts for 4%. Varying reasons can be

accounted for these figures such as

the higher stop-and-search rate for

Asians and mixed races, who are twice

as likely to be stopped than their

white counterparts. The large number

of young people in the Muslim popula-

tion can be seen as another factor,

70% are below the age of 40, compared

to 50.6% of the general population,

with the under 40s making up 69% of

the British prison population. Add

to this a myriad of other socio-eco-

nomic factors that mean Muslims are

increasingly being put behind bars

and the statistics start to make more

sense, but this still leaves a gap

between Muslim conviction rates and

registered Muslim prisoner rates.

And whilst these figures don’t cate-

gorically mean there has been an in-

crease in Muslim prison converts they

are being perceived by some as such.

Steve Gillan, the Prison Officers’

Association general secretary, re-

cently issued a statement saying:

“there’s been clear evidence from a

variety of different incidents [that]

young men are being targeted and then

coerced into converting to Islam.”

Seeing the light

Angry young white men are being sent to prison and emerging as Muslims. What’s behind the wave of conversions?

Words: Luke O'Driscoll

reinforcing the idea that UK pris-

ons are akin to what one imagines a

terrorist training camp in eastern

Pakistan or Somalia is like.

However, despite the right-wing rhet-

oric, there is not an unprecedented

rise in Muslim terrorists in British

prisons. Home Office figures show

that there were only 121 prisoners

convicted of terrorist related charg-

es currently serving time in UK pris-

ons in March of this year, and out of

those only 46% were Muslim.

What is the relationship like for

a jailed Muslim between prison and

Islam? I spoke to Sheikh Tayeb Ali, a

chaplain for various London prisons.

“Life locked up is obviously very

tough for anyone but Islam offers

peace, it offers redemption for those

that have done wrong in their lives.”

Are we seeing a disproportionate rise

in Muslim prisoners due to forced

conversions and peer pressure? “We

are seeing a rise in Muslim prison-

ers I believe not due to the pressure

of conversion but because the West

as a whole is becoming more aware of

Islam. Of all the negative press it

receives it is having the adverse ef-

fect of enlightening people who would

otherwise have little understanding

of our faith.”

What Sheikh Ali tells me echoes Jim’s

thoughts on his conversion. I tell

the Sheikh about the violence Jim’s

friend witnessed at the hands of Mus-

lims and the anecdotes Steve Gillan

had been told by fellow officers.

“This [gang violence] may well be the

case, but we must not mistake gang

mentality with our faith. If these

so called ‘Muslim prison gangs’ were

as strong and powerful as many would

have us believe then surely the whole

prison system would be forced into

conversion. People are converting

because they choose to, not because

they are forced to.”

I meet Jim two weeks after out first

interview. He looks happy, not as

weary as when we first met. He’s

found a job through an agency.

“I’m chuffed. Thought I’d be on the

dole for ages. I think it helped that

I’m a Muslim.” How so? “Well the lady

in the agency called me back the next

day after I’d been into fill out the

form and said I’d accidentally ticked

my ethnicity as ‘Muslim’. I said that

wasn’t accident, I am one. She said

they rarely received applications

from white British Muslims for la-

bouring jobs and it might improve my

chances. The next day I get another

call to say I’ve got a start Monday.

It’s a confusing world we live in.”

Did Jim feel forced into convert-

ing? “I never felt forced but I did

feel put on edge by their strength

at first. But it was me that made the

decision to convert and only me. No

one made that decision for me.”

Did he feel safer inside once he’d

converted? “I did. But at the same

time I felt more content in who I

was. I’d chosen to accept Islam and

there’s so much positive that comes

with that.”

When I ask Gillan if he has any fig-

ures to reinforce his association’s

statement he draws a blank. He is,

however, full of fellow officers' an-

ecdotes about the rise of Muslim gang

culture in prisons. And whilst these

can’t be entirely discredited I tell

him the necessity of more than hear-

say to promote such a claim.

He doesn’t take very kindly to this

and tells me a story that took place

in Long Lartin prison last year in

which a prisoner was purportedly

threatened at knifepoint for cooking

pork in the Category A jail’s commu-

nal kitchen.

“The prisoner was terrified for his

life. But what can we do in way of

protection other than put him in sol-

itary or advise him against cooking

pork? There are no other feasible

options without causing unrest, with

potentially catastrophic results, as

the current prison system stands.”

**

Long Lartin Prison is one of seven

like it that house what are deemed as

the UK’s most dangerous prisoners,

including those sent down for of-

fences connected with terrorism. Does

Gillan view extremism relating to

prisoners sent down for these charges

as an issue within the UK system?

“Obviously Islam in the wrong hands

has the power to inflict idea’s of

extremism onto others and I think

that within our prisons, where these

men spend weeks, months and sometimes

years in close proximity with each

other, it has the power to be a very

serious burgeoning issue.”

A quick search on Google brings up

tens of results from daily nationals

“I started going to prayer sessions in prison and within two or three months I was describing myself as a Muslim”

45

In the art world, there’s a fine

line between innovative and flatly

ridiculous-- and artists have been

toeing it with gleeful abandon for

centuries. Historically, there was

Duchamp’s Fountain - the glorified

urinal we admittedly all snickered at

at least once during basic history

courses. In recent history, there’s

been UAL’s own Clayton Pettet and

his symbol-laden, albeit (SPOILER!)

sexless “Art School Stole My Virgini-

ty” performance piece. Other frequent

examples of questionable artistic

merit: 1) abstract art, oft-mocked as

empty/ugly canvases, and by-far the

#1 stereotype for “are you sure this

is really art?” 2) basically anything

Lady Gaga ever does, ever.

See, art is so lovable because it’s

so violently subjective. There’s

lots of room to create, to express,

to expose meaning. Yet therein lies

the downfall - if there’s no real

right or wrong way to make art, how

does one determine the values, both

monetary and creative, of art itself?

Fittingly, students from London’s

famed Central Saint Martins chose to

explore this question via their exhi-

bition - Worth.

**

Billed as “The world’s most expensive

pop-up shop,” Worth wasn’t exactly

what comes to mind from a Year 2 uni

design project. Described as “a 4 day

long pop-up shop that questions what

value really is and brings meaning to

the marketplace by turning the world

of commerce on its head” - it’s cer-

tainly set the artistic press ablaze.

The gimmick lay in what started out

as a £1,000,000 price tag for every

single item in the store. Worth ad-

vertised said prices via social me-

dia, and invited users to share their

site via Facebook or Twitter. For

each share, the price dropped incre-

mentally. For the intentionally auda-

cious price tag to become more uni-

budget manageable, users were tasked

with inviting their friends to share

the link as well, and it all sort of

snowballed ...as is the nature of so-

cial media these days.

It’s worth noting that for most of

Worth’s PR process, there wasn’t any

art available to view. Unlike a mul-

ti-million pound auction at, say, So-

theby’s, there was only the abstract

concept of pricey, exotic art. Then

came occasional Instagram snippets of

Worth’s products ...and the sneaking

confirmation that the hefty price tag

was every bit as exorbitant as one

could have imagined.

Worth went live to the public at ex-

actly 10:00 A.M. on 6th June, having

commandeered an unassuming storefront

Words: Corie Schwabenland

Image: Mark James Works

Students at Central Saint Martins opened ‘the world’s most expensive pop-up shop’ as they try to find out what art is really worth.

The million-pound pop up

minimalist white frames. Cool, right?

There were items as intellectual-

ly stimulating as “Temporary Tattoos

for Designers” posing great artistic

questions, or board games designed to

make you rethink the excessive usage

of social media ingrained in society.

There were also some simple delights

like those upside-down glass bottles

fashioned into cups that you see on

Pinterest. And yes, there were some

questionably priced items for you to

pass judgment on-- namely an CD with

one song on it, a beautifully de-

signed cover… and a £10 pricetag.

With all of Worth’s products re-

vealed to be, well, things you could

see yourself buying at Urban Outfit-

ters, the initial £1,000,000 price

tag seemed all the more jarring. To

be fair, social media sharing knocked

£999,949.88 total off of the initial

figure. With the most expensive item

in the shop priced at exactly £50.12

and most items priced around £10-20,

anything you buy at Worth is prob-

ably quite a steal. Especially when

you consider that all proceeds earned

will be financing the Graphic Design

course’s 2015 Degree showcase, rather

than being funneled into a faceless

corporation’s pockets.

The point of Worth was never really

to make a million pounds. The design

students behind Worth “just wanted

to raise some money for the degree

show and make sure that we could do

it again the following year,” all the

while making some thoughtful points

about worth and value judgments with-

in the art world. Explained student

Tatiana Aspinwall: “The original

theme for the brief was ‘responsibil-

ity’, and the idea of worth fits in

with that perfectly.”

**

Overall, Worth cleverly executed a

playful and nuanced take on an age-

old art debate, perhaps at a scope

beyond what they had intended. The

Spitalfields location? While this

was chosen by the Worth team because

it was a busy area that would allow

them to engage passersby, it had an

additional advantage. The gentrified

East London location provided the

pop-up with a potent juxtaposition

with the very overpriced and over-

sold (albeit aesthetically pleasing)

art-as-a-function-of-capitalism that

their project riffed on. The Urban

Outfitters I mentioned earlier that

was merely a few doors down? It pro-

vided a pricing anchor that made the

£1,000,000 price tag seem even more

ridiculous than you had previously

thought possible.

If CSM students are carrying out such

creative exhibitions largely of their

own accord, and only two years into

their program, then the design world

has much to expect from BA Graphic

Design: Design and Interaction. After

a few hours spent at Worth, I’ll be

watching their activities and hoping

that they go out with an even bigger

bang at next year’s degree show.

in Spitalfields. At approximately

14:30, I walked completely past it,

expecting a flashy front more in kind

with the punchy green posters pasted

up around East London to advertise

the pop-up.

Location, here, is important. East

London is often stereotyped, not

entirely inappropriately, as hipster

central. Spitalfields is peripher-

al to Shoreditch. It contains Brick

Lane. It, as an area, is the very

manifestation of innovation versus

borderline, ridiculous excess. It

is “too cool to care,” paying high

street prices to dress intentionally

lowbrow, hard-earned pounds on wa-

tered down cocktails, etc. etc. Also

present, mere doors down from Worth,

is an Urban Outfitters - a.k.a. cool

tchotchkes that you have no room to

pencil into your budget but no doubt

ultimately will.

The products at Worth were pains-

takingly hand-crafted, the kind of

fresh and lovely designs that one

would expect from budding BA Design

and Interaction students (a Graph-

ic Design subset) from a prestigious

art school. There were teabags with

inspirational quotes knitted on to

them, USB drives adorned with 3-D

printouts of your very own face, kits

to teach you how to hand-knit famous

fonts (Helvetica, anyone?), notebooks

fashioned from pieces of unwant-

ed artworks, “Phone/iPod autopsies”

bearing outdated electronics disas-

sembled and carefully arranged inside

46

Amour

Austrian director Michael Haneke’s powerful

groundbreaking tale Amour, which won 2012’s

Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, is a

moving and unwavering drama of great love

and intelligence.

The French film begs the eternal ques-

tion: does love last as we approach the

end of our lives? The movie begins with a

flash-forward sequence, which attempts to

engrave on our minds a devastating memen-

to mori, controlling how we, the audience

respond to everything.

Georges and Anne are an elderly couple,

played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Em-

manuelle Riva. They are educated, retired

music teachers with a musician daughter

(Isabelle Huppert) who lives abroad.

They live in an old neighbourhood in Paris,

with Anne’s grand piano that is now left

untouched. However, old age clearly does

not stop them from being happy together and

loving each other.

One day, while having breakfast, Anne suf-

fers a stroke that left one side of her

body paralysed. With courage, good humour

and gentleness, Georges and Anne confront

their destiny, and in the shadow of death,

their relationship is deeply moving. As

the situation progresses, Haneke shows how

the outside world begins to fade away. Time

passes, and their home becomes a sort of

prison, the solitude interrupted by visits

from Anne’s former pupil and their daughter

and son-in-law Geoff (William Shimell).

The acting from these two legends of French

cinema is raw and highly provoking, invit-

ing tears and laughter from the audience.

Trintignant’s performance as a dutiful and

yet irritated caretaker of his beloved wife

is thought-provoking: he successfully over-

comes losing his temper and while keeping

his cool. It is almost like a mission to

safeguard all his patience and energy.

Amour is a film aimed at couples that goes

into rapture about the virtue of commitment

through thick and thin. There’s a valuable

lesson there.

Words: Yasaman Ahmadzai

Oculus

I admit to not being a huge fan of horror films, but I made an exception for this particular one. Truth to be told, I ac-tually made an exception because of the presence of Karen Gillan– aka Amy Pond from Doctor Who– in the cast.

So, my friends and I sat all on the couch to watch Oculus by Mike Flanagan. The film is set on two different timelines. The first is in 2002 : 13-year-old Kaylie and her younger brother Tim have just moved with their parents, Alan and Marie, into a new home. After their father buys a mirror to decorate his studio, strange events be-gin to happen to all members of the family.

The second line is set in 2013 instead. Tim (Brenton Thwaites) has just been released from a psychiatric hospital where he spent the last 11 years for killing his father.

Waiting for him outside the institution is his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan). The first thing she says to him is that she has finally found their father’s mirror and now they can finally keep the promise they had made years before: they can destroy it.

Yet, after a decade spent in therapy, Tim is convinced that he invented a story in-volving a paranormal evil mirror to try to justify the murder he actually committed. However Kaylie is convinced that a dark and malevolent force resides in the mirror and that it is responsible for a series of par-anormal events.

Horror fans have called Oculus ‘a pearl of Series B horror movie’ and director Mike Flanagan has managed to build a good overall structure. The transition from one timeline to another, which might have caused problems or even slowed down the pace of the film, is fluid.

The two parallel lines seem to flow without friction, and perhaps this comes from the experience of the director in film edit-ing. However, what many have described as a surprising and captivating storyline, has not convinced me at all. Have I become com-pletely numb?

Words: Beatrice Bosotti

Transcendence

Will Caster (Johnny Depp), a famous Arti-

ficial Intelligence researcher, is working

to create a computer able to combine the

intelligence of everything ever known with

the complete set of human emotions. The ex-

periment, which has brought him renown, has

also made him the target of anti-technology

extremists, who would do anything to try to

stop his project.

Unfortunately their attempts to destroy the

computer becomes the very reason Dr. Caster

succeeds in his own transcendence. After

the experiment is completed, Caster’s wife

Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and his best friend

Dr. Waters (Paul Bettany), both research-

ers, have to decide whether they should

help him to move the project forward.

Their worst fear is soon materialised as

Will’s thirst for knowledge evolves into

a quest for power: the only thing that at

this point is absolutely clear is there may

be no way to stop him.

Wally Pfister, former cinematographer for

Christopher Nolan, makes his directorial

debut with a film that portrays an ideo-

logical as well as physical battle between

technology supporters and its critics. The

initial purpose of Dr. Caster is to create

an artificial intelligence able to experi-

ence the feelings of the human soul which

can then– through nanotechnology– perform

breakthroughs in science and medicine. But

it is the “human” aspect that worries the

saboteurs: if man can be easy prey of his

own instinct to control everything, what

about a computer with a human soul? And

then, can an AI have a soul?

Pfister’s goal was to create a film lead-

ing the viewers to reflect on the potential

of technology and what could/should be its

limits. Pfister shows great skills: the

balance and the elegance of the scenes are

definitely a strength of the film.

Sadly, the plot is not involving and the

characters fail to convince, to the point

that it is hard to understand their moti-

vation and, in the case of Paul Bettany’s

character, even their role in the story.

Words: Beatrice Bosotti

Film

Undying love, a computer with a soul and a supernatural murder mystery

REVIEWS

47

Oxbow Lakes

Hailing from Torquay, the close-knit quar-

tet Oxbow Lakes, three of whom - Dan and

the two Toms - are currently living, stud-

ying (guitarist Tom Morgan studies Sound

Art & Design at LCC), working and chilling

in South London, whilst frontman Hugh is

to-and-froing between London and Brighton.

Having known each other since their teen-

age years, it’s apparent that the chemis-

try between these boys correlates with the

tightness and ease with which they play

together. Characteristics of bands such as

Modest Mouse, Jeniferever, Mogwai and Slint

can be distinguished, but these do not in

any way eclipse Oxbow Lakes' own richness

and originality.

On arrival at the Montague Arms, a recent-

ly re-established boozer on the New Cross/

Peckham border, the unperturbed atmosphere

and lack of punters amongst the taxidermy

and thrift store-acquired board games, I

was close to speculating that I had arrived

at a locals-only steampunk séance. But the

room quickly filled up. Half of Torquay and

their London counterparts arrived in eager

anticipation.

The band opened with their single ‘Redis-

tribution of Wealth’, its charming opening

chords and rolling drums captivating the

room. The vocals set the somewhat som-

bre yet enchanting ambience of the son-

ic journey ahead, snatching the attention

of everyone there. Even a few local cop-

pers rolled in to sway amongst the crowd.

London’s occasional reputation for stat-

ue-like audiences wasn’t fulfilled tonight

– the room was in motion to Oxbow’s amiable

sounds. Their sweeping chords and plucked

melodies, along with the occasional addi-

tion of echoing vocals, don’t fall short

of rousing sentiment. I watched a girl sat,

eyes closed, mouthing her own lyrics into

an imaginary microphone as the quartet

fired their way through the band's anthemic

track ‘Monaco’.

The band are set to play more shows in

London this year, and in rejection of ra-

dio-drivel and the ever-recycled monotony

of London club music I would urge anyone to

check them out.

Words: Fraser Thorne

East India Youth

William Doyle is East India Youth, his name

deriving from the East India Docks area of

London, where he lived during the recording

of Total Strife Forever, his debut solo LP.

It came out in January and has just been

named on the shortlist for the Mercu-

ry Prize. It’s an electronic, synthesizer

driven record, that calls to mind Kraftwerk

and Eno, and Heroes and Low, the Seventies

Berlin albums of David Bowie, that Doyle

cites as an influence.

There’s also, in the vocals especially,

an echo of Doyle’s pre-East India Youth

days as the lead singer of a band on the

indie circuit. It is perhaps that lega-

cy that lends Total Strife Forever some of

the warmth and intimacy that is not always

present in synth-based music.

While there is experimentation on Total

Strife Forever, there are also quite tradi-

tionally structured songs such as Dripping

Down. Other tracks call to mind the poised,

sculpted electronic noise of Tim Hecker or

Harold Budd.

Parts of the album are firmly ambient, like

the cool, arpeggiated opener Glitter Reces-

sion. Other tracks would work well on the

dancefloor, notably Hinterland which, from

a slow, warm start, builds into a pounding

hard techno tune.

You could make a long list of William

Doyle’s influences: occasionally, per-

haps, they are a little too obvious but,

then again, it is a first album. But in an

age when so much music is predictable and

homogenized, eclecticism is a rare quality

and one to be prized.

If you heard the eleven tracks on Total

Strife Forever separately, you could almost

believe they were by two or three differ-

ent artists. Heard together, though, they

somehow seem to form a coherent whole. It

is, as much as anything, an atmosphere that

binds them together, a mood of delicate

introspection. It’s a very good album in

its own right and one that promises great

things for the future.

Words: Alastair Brennan

Awesomenauts

Opting for a 2-D side scrolling style Awe-somenauts is not really what most people would expect from a Dota-style game. The overall movement of a character is consid-erably different, with more of an emphasis on vertical gameplay.

Awesomenauts’ character selection is im-pressive and diverse, with each character bringing something new to the table along with their own lore.

The thing that I found most appealing about the game is the lack of team pressure. Again Dota and league are notorious for their high skill level and quirky commu-nity. In Awesomenauts you don’t feel like your entire team is scrutinizing your per-formance, willing to shout at you for the smallest mistake.

The fact that this genre revolves heavily around objective play does lead to frus-tration and it takes something special to remove or at least reduce it. It may be the general simplicity of the game that dilutes it to less noticeable levels in Awesom-enauts. With less to go wrong there is less to worry about.

Awesomenauts has a map pool of more than 1 map. Variants come with map specif-ic features to add even more freshness to the arguably stale 1 map rotation we have come to expect. Admittedly the maps in the game only consist of 2 pushable lanes which are compensated for, by teams only being composed of 3 champions and overall merged roles in the team, reducing the complexity of the game somewhat.

And this is where the game may turn some people off. The simplification doesn’t stop at team and map size. Awesomenauts' lack of an item build system may be a blessing for some, but for those who already have a grasp of the genre may not find the sub-stance they are used to. The lack of an item system reduces the importance of last hits and champion kills, and it seems that the game is aiming more for the actual ac-tion of gameplay then for the strategy that lies behind it.

Words: James Wood

GamesMusic

Ecstatic post-rock in Peckham and Mercury-nominated electronica

Huge robot armies locked in battle

48

Five students tell us about their lives and their sense of style

Students in black and white

Words and photographs: Isabella Smith

Clockwise from top:

Samuel, Foundation Art and Design, Leeds.“I’m trying to get away from how I dressed last

year. It was all longline t-shirts and tight jeans,

quite skatery, so this year I’m tucking my shirt

in. I like that classic guy look.”

Ronald, Hong Kong, A-levels“Maths is essential”

Amy, Liverpool, Fashion Communication.“This is the proudest day of my life,”

Jae, Tokyo, Foundation in Art and Design.“My mum wanted to be a fashion designer. She’s re-

ally good at drawing and designing, but she end-

ed up being a chef. She helps me with my designs.

She’s actually my best friend.”

Luke, Guildford, Acting.“This look is called comfy chic.”

Angie, Los Angeles, Fashion Communication.“I like colors, fun textures and prints. Sometimes

I’ll be really, really into black -- obviously an-

yone that’s in fashion loves a uniform of black. I

like to juxtapose a lot. Like with today’s outfit,

I don’t like things that are too ladylike. I like

to rough it up a little. I think fashion’s supposed

to be fun, it’s not supposed to be a big, serious

ordeal.”

SEEN ON CAMPUS

49

FREE DRINKS, CHEAP SHOES AND MOREBOXPARK Shoreditch – check Twitter for details. Savvy Shoreditch-types know that the best resource for free

booze BY FAR is @boxpark on Twitter.

The shipping container shopping mall

in East London keeps its edgy rep

by having a ridiculously geometric

building hosting seemingly one event

with some kind of free alc every

week, and that's not to mention free

pizza, shopping discounts and other

tempting offers.

Coming up in the very near future

is an in-store party for Victoria

Plimsolls to promote their Autumn

and Winter collection. Prices start

at £30 and free drinks are promised

along with 20% discounts and a chance

to win a free pair of shoes. The date

has yet to be revealed, though it is

tantalizingly promised to be ‘soon’.

Keep an eye on the @boxpark Twitter

feed for details of this and other

forthcoming events.

Box parks are becoming a symbol of

areas that are seeking to rebrand

themselves and there's one opening up

at the Elephant & Castle, too, on the

site of the old Heygate estate. The

boxes are in place but last time we

looked, there was only a handful of

tenants in situ.

A ‘Shoreditch-style experience’ is

explicitly promised, though, and we

can only hope that that will in-

clude a plethora of discounts, cheap

food and, of course, free drinks… We

can't vouch for the quality of the

plae just yet but you can follow the

progress of South London’s answer to

Shoreditch and watch out for offers

on Twitter @ElephantParkLDN

ROLL THE DICE: WIN YOUR ROUND

Cat & Mutton, Broadway Market – every Tuesday. The Cat & Mutton in Hackney’s Broadway Market is hipster

central with its pub on the ground

floor and speakeasy-style bar and

dining room on the first. It’s invar-

iably packed at weekends with drink-

ers spilling out on to the pavements

on warm evenings. But if you’re in a

gambling mood and in search of free

drinks, then Tuesday nights are the

night’s to head over to Hackney, if

you fancy trying luck with a roll of

the dice.

Tuesday is the night when the Cat &

Mutton runs its Beat the Bar Tender’

promotion. How does it work? You head

to the bar and order your drinks,

then you roll a dice, the bar ten-

der rolls a dice and if you get the

higher score, the drinks are free. On

the other hand, if they get a higher

score then you pay full price.

WHISKEY AND MOVIES

Various venues – Check Facebook for details. The Jameson Irish Whis-key people are falling over them-

selves to give away drinks to filmgo-

ers all over London. Their cult film

club runs free showings of interest-

ing movies in a variety of venues

around London (including the Union

Chapel and a Soho car park) and they

hand out free drinks, too.

Previous showings at Jameson cult

film club nights have included clas-

sics such the science-fiction classic

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Fight

Club, Jaws and Anchorman 2: The Leg-

end Continues.Other cult classics are

sure to follow,

The Jameson people also run a pro-

motion with the Picturehouse cinema

chain to offer free drinks at certain

showings around town – there are Pic-

turehouses in Clapham, Brixton, Hack-

ney, Greenwich, Stratford and Notting

Hill Gate.

Not surprisingly, the Jameson events

are pretty popular and tend to get

booked up well in advance so you need

to move swiftly to get a coveted

ticket. To find out what’s coming up

and when, join the Jameson Cult Film

Club at their Facebook page.

PHOTOGRAPHY, WALKS, TALKS AND MORE

Various venues – check website for details. At the more cultural end of the freeness spectrum is the

acclaimed East London photography

festival, which starts this month and

runs right through until the end of

the year.

There’s a host of free exhibitions,

talks on photography and London-re-

lated matters and guided walks, as

well as a wide variety of launch

parties for books and shows, where

guests might be lucky enough to grab

a free drink or two. For full de-

tails, visit the exhibition’s website

2014.photomonth.org.

FREE FILM

Grant Museum, Bloomsbury – October 28, 6pm. If you’ve ever wondered what happens in a museum when they shut

the doors for the evening, there’s

a chance to find out at the Grant

Museum of Zoology in Bloomsbury where

they are holding a very special party

night amid the specimens and skel-

etons, together with a free showing

of, entirely appropriately, Night at

the Museum with Ben Stiller and

Ricky Gervais. Check www.museum-mile.

org.uk for details.

From Shoreditch to Bloomsbury

London can be expensive so here's our guide to the best of what’s available free of charge.

Words: Alastair Brennan

Image: Untitled, Charles Avery, 2014,

courtesy the artist

FREENESS

50

A host of long, pale limbs glide down

the catwalk, belonging to models of

the moment such as Cara Delevingne,

Edie Campbell, and Sam Rollinson. All

white. In fact, looking at runways

across London Fashion Week, one would

be excused for thinking that they be-

long to a more homogenous society-and

not to a city that claims to be one

of the most multicultural, multi-eth-

nic places in the world. The lack of

racial diversity in fashion is not a

new topic, and tends to rear its hot-

ly contested and divisive head year

after year with little change made.

There are of course a few flashes in

the pan with regards to black mod-

els. Supermodel Jourdan Dunn is a

firm fashion favourite, walking for

labels such as Burberry, Givenchy and

Balenciaga. Leomie Anderson, anoth-

er favourite, has walked for Calvin

Klein, Giorgio Armani, and Tom Ford.

But they are just two in a sea of

white faces. Requests to diversify

the runway often come from outside

the industry; but perhaps what is

needed is a call to action by an in-

dustry giant-this is where a certain

Ms Campbell comes in.

Naomi Campbell, one of the most fa-

mous faces in fashion, has joined

forces with former supermodel Iman,

to support well-respected casting

director, Bethann Hardison in demand-

ing a change to catwalks around the

world. Ms Hardison created the “Bal-

ance Diversity” campaign to bring at-

tention to the absence of black mod-

els at fashion week and has written

an open letter to organizations such

as the British Fashion Council and

CFDA(Council of Fashion Designers of

America) naming and shaming designers

like Marc by Marc Jacobs, Victoria

Beckham, Alexander McQueen and Mul-

berry, that have either only featured

one black model, or none at all. Iman

has noted that there were more black

models working in the 70s.

**

So what exactly is going wrong? Why

is it that the world of fashion seems

to shave such difficulty embracing

diversity and putting more black peo-

ple in shows?

In the fashion industry food chain,

modelling agencies are the first port

of call when attempting to find out

about the lack of Black models. How-

ever, agencies and model bookers dis-

agree that the blame should fall at

their feet, and instead explain that

they can only give what the fashion

houses ask for.

If this is true, it’s worrying that

designers are excluding models be-

cause they feel that their race pre-

vents them from fitting in with an

often abstract “aesthetic”. Or are

the fashion bookers simply passing

the buck?

Another explanation for the lack of

black models is that white women sell

better and have “universal” appeal.

This barely seems credible: do black

consumers really prefer to buy goods

advertised by white people? Indeed,

in 2008, Vogue Italia released the

“Black Issue”, featuring only black

models and it soon became the best

selling issue in the magazine’s his-

tory. One might attribute the success

of the issue to the fact that it was

something that had never been done

before - the statement and excitement

it caused made black women want to be

part of the ‘movement’.

However, it also shows that time and

time again, black consumers will buy

products and spend money if they are

catered to. A common worry among

brands is said to be that they will

lose money creating lines for women

of colour, but that couldn’t be fur-

ther from the truth.

Responsibility for the lack of di-

versity is shifted from sector to

sector, but the reality is modelling

agencies, fashion houses, advertisers

and magazines are inextricably linked

and must share the blame. Change can-

not happen without a concerted effort

from all groups. The conversation is

a continuous one within black cir-

cles (and rightly so) but every time

it hits the headlines, the fashion

industry seems to think that a token

model here and there will make things

better rather than really examining

their attitudes and practices. There

has to be an unremitting endeavour by

the heads of industry (most of whom

are white) to transform things. Valu-

ing black female consumers is vital.

Black women spend millions of pounds

Fashion

We live in a multicultural society - so why is the catwalk still so white?

Words: Ebi Osuobeni

Image: Pete Donaldson

on cosmetic products, so why isn’t

the beauty industry tapping into and

creating goods for that demographic?

Could it be that the reputation of

a company is upheld by the type of

people that buy its products - and in

their minds, black women may harm the

prestige of a business? Sadly, I have

to conclude that the answer is yes.

Discrimination in the beauty industry

does not exist in a vacuum, it is one

sector amongst many that are institu-

tionally and socially racist.

**

Instead of waiting for the tide to

slowly turn, shoppers should let

their money do the talking and those

looking for variety should support

black designers, cosmetic brands and

publications. Black British women

spend six times more on makeup and

hair products than their white coun-

terparts - that is money that could

be going into the development of a

black-owned brand. These products are

not always as easy to find as they

might be – some high-street names

seem shamefully reluctant to stock

them - but the rise in online shop-

ping takes away some of the difficul-

ty in attaining those products.

**

There is no easy solution to the lack

of diversity in the fashion world.

Consumers do hold the power, but

brands and fashion houses are provid-

ing a service. Expecting customers to

cater to themselves is unfair, nev-

ertheless it seems that the only way

Black women will see people who look

like us on the catwalks or in the

magazines is to “lead the charge”,

whether that means starting our own

businesses, supporting pre-existing

one or letting the big brands know

what we think.

LAST WORD

51

© Jason Hawkes

Media Partnermirrorcity.southbankcentre.co.uk@haywardgallery #mirrorcity

14 Oct 2014 – 4 Jan 2015

HAYWARD GALLERY

Artwork of the month: FUCK YOU to the future (without me), Mathew Sawyer, 2014, C-type print, 118 x 77cm. Courtesy of the artist