Dirk Diggler reportage-d their mega cafe oto gighere. Pregnancy are going to lead the roaring 20's, as Chloée says, the evil warlocks and the supernatural are dragging away the world, so we must scream and make a new one! Lfg!
Is life what you expected when you were a kid?
G: yes. I was aware that i’d have more responsibilities and life would get more stressful as i aged and that happened. i think that’s a neutral thing and somehow i still feel like the summer of my life has yet to begin.
C: As a child, I was immersed in playing with Barbies, creating stories and entire worlds. I also grew up with a lot of ghosts in my house, so there was this supernatural element that seemed to participate in the world around me—an invisible layer of the unknown. It gave me the sense that anything is possible, even if we can’t see it but can still feel it.
My first day of secondary school was cruel and bizarre. The world I had created in make-believe—once colorful and beautiful—shifted into a dark folklore, painted with nightmares and warlocks. Even then, I knew there had to be more to life than this and there certainly is. But again, it is a world that I have created through the act of making art and music - it's definitely a form of resistance to it all.
However, I didn’t think that, when I grew up, the world presented to me would resemble the one we’re living in now. I dreamed that after hardship, there would be a light at the end of the tunnel for everyone—a future filled with peace, warmth, and sunlight. But instead, it feels as though the evil folklore of warlocks and the underworld that I had feared has become our reality.
Still, I hold on to hope that the world will eventually heal.. as the sky falls and the day breaks.
Did the mix of the driven hyper pop sound and punk/hardcore vocals happen immediately when you started working together, or did it evolve over time?
C: I sort of had this sense of knowing beforehand... I don't know. I just knew it would be a good idea when Governor Vomit and I joined forces... we live not too far from eachother so it was an organic partnership.. we would listen to music all the time and show one another a lot of different things.
I used to perform a lot more, but I focused behind the scene as a director over the last five years.. which i love with all my heart. But I returned to it when working with Nkisi in 2024 unlocked performing again - felt more urgent somehow, that it has been important to create a direct response to the world we are currently living in in a live way alongside film-making. its been a cathatric experience.
G : At first Chloée was just gonna do guest vocals for one of my shows - so it was mostly a sound i was already doing- as i’ve gotten to know her more and we’ve shared musical influences it’s really expanded what i felt like i could do with the beats. i feel like a lot of the production is me trying to impress chloée and make beats that are worth her vocals.
C: Reject All latest mix on NTS & Katie Shannon NTS shows <3
What do you wear when you want to be comfortable onstage?
G: A belt
C: Barefoot
Exhibition curation with anyone, dead or alive.
G: I don’t like art
C: Ruth Angel Edwards, Adam Gallangher, Solomon Garçon , Dan Mitchell, Abella D'adoro , Keira Fox, Derek Ridgers, Chelsea Young, David Hoyle, Mike Kelly, Andy Warhol, Sylive Flury, Valie Export, Liz johnson Arthur, Steven Cuffie, Eric Kroll, Ivana Vladislava and myself - would be a pychedllic exlopsion.
Why should people come to your gigs?
G: I'm fun, and the music is good.
C: If you're in the mood for love... and some unadulterated, hard hitting yet beautiful production...
Worst to fave artwork?
G: I don’t like art
C: I wish I could find a picture of the worst painting, it is, in fact, my own painting. Truly diabolical...I dont think I can find a picture but I have it imprinted in my mind... forever. It is shocking artwork I made at art school that I presented to a crit and it was soooo shit... I was kidding myself... I remember I made after this comment by a tutor - 'not everything has to be epic' and tried to do something minimal... it was rotten... truly rotten. Imagine pigs flying but shit.
I can only do artists I love not really ones i don't lol
Barbra Kruger; Jenny Holzer; Stephen Cuffie Portraits, Matt Gess, Ruth Angel Edwards, Alice Fraser
A historical figure you’d dom?
C: King Henry the 8th
G: Ulysees S. Grant
Did you have Tumblr? If so, what kind of image would you reblog? Did u use it to watch porn or not?
C: Yes, I did - probs some unknown from the 80's with a lot of make-up on and cool hair, smoking
G: Yes, mostly Simon Pegg
We gotta ask the question....... I mean, we don't have to, but we are going to.... How did you name your band?
G: Chloée was doing guest vocals for my show. We got really merry, i really had to take a piss, and while taking a piss i thought we should keep doing stuff after that show, and pregnancy would be a really good name for us.
C: We usually rehearse and make our music in Governor's studio in the basement... and we always have a good time... I remember Governer Vomit returning from the loo and, in pure ecstasy saying PREGNANCY!!! pregnancy is the name... it was genius and totally made sense. i think he fell pregnant in the loo or something... we were both pregnant that day... the rest is history.
Is there much of a difference between the NYC audience and how things go down in London?
G: Not really. It was really fun.
C: I would say its not fully different but its more how nyc is different to london in terms of the art music scene... in london its merged in nyc its seperated with a few cross over.. but the feeling is very similar in both... <3
Did u have to give Governor Vomit a do's and don't's guide to London?
C: I wanted re write the urban myth that London and the Uk has bad food...I know it's not true but it has a bad rep in NYC and governer also was believing it... the food in london is wicked. and yum!!! So gave a lot of recommendations to him and we had some delicious food from greggs to french house lol...
G: Chloée guided me really well with where to eat. Turns out black pudding is amazing.
What's next in your pregnancy?
G: actually release music.
C: We are going to make some wicked music videos... to go alongside those releases...
So far on my 3 day vagabondage of Paris, I have reunited with old friends and cousins that have accompanied me on wanders around the lovely and bait spots of the city’s centre; but on this rainy Sunday, I embark on a solitary expedition to the musical underworld of the city - which on this occasion, assembles in a garden.
It’s 4 when I arrive (ticket unchecked) and B2E are playing with an ipad for their soundcheck.
It feels like I’m intruding on a family function as the early-comers politely and quietly lounge in the veranda outside the main hall. This is a foreign, initially awkward dynamic to a London night-concertgoer like myself, that I will soon reconsider to be a charm to Atomiser’s afternoon.
Considering Italian designer Branzi’s writing on “Contemporary Music and Space”, Le Sample can be seen as an example of musical territory rather than specialized space; an ex-industrial ground, claimed and repurposed by artists, that is void of acoustic function and impositions- granting musicians and curators like Atomiser the artistic freedom today’s music entails. The roles and standards on how to act and engage with the music of a conventional venue are not so present.
A Chinese-whisper goes round warning the music will begin shortly and so we enter the main room where B2E stand on a carpet, ready to perform. You can tell the back2egg shell is just starting to crack as their presence gradually shifts from shy to sly. Persevering through a streak of technical difficulties, the band perform cloud-rock ballads over chops of speech and field-recordings that seem to marry the loud rainfall, acting as a convenient low end. Boy-girl two pieces are the most beloved acts right now and B2E is a cool French variant.
Around 6, Daisy Ray opens her set by larping as a bee; does some impressive looping; raps over her guitar (used as percussion) and then camouflages back into the crowd. Occasionally silly, sometimes very fun - as outsider music tends to be- the performance felt warm and clearly stated the unrestrained nature of the afternoon.
The flux of tension, comic relief and awe makes the sequence of acts into a circus. Atomiser’s project to conceive seemingly implausible conglomerates of artists is the reason I always feel an urge to buy a ticket - it has atmosphere, regardless of the execution.
Interrupting Lucia Kagramanyan’s clubby remixes of Armenian music, we applaud as Valentin Clastrier climbs onto a stool and - with chivalric prowess - arms himself with his ridiculous weapon of choice: an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy. The French luminary used to kick it with the likes of Jacques Brel as a guitarist in the 60’s, before getting bored and deciding to become one of “the great masters of the hurdy gurdy”: title of his 1987 album.
Within the first minute of music, it sounds like a whole orchestra is evoked by the single instrument. Using his right hand to generate either a ceaseless groove or drone, his virtuosic melodies played by the left, blaze through, achieving that real Dionysian effect. Valentin’s resurrection of a medieval folk instrument with his own electronic amendments is magical to witness live, as the success of a life long mission.
I am sitting on the Eurostar back to London as I finish writing this souvenir for my trip. Somewhere along the English channel I ask myself: What has the weekend taught me?
I note:
It’s nice that venues like Le Sample are still kicking (bittersweet as it is being forced to close)
Valentin Clastrier does not play. He is the best.
Blog
/ 18 May 2026 / By: Hollywood Superstar Review
For those who say we only write about Reena Spaulings, here is another stick with which to beat us with, and then yourself. What would you rather hear about, Marcel? Josef? Bloody, Jordan Wolfson? Charles Ray? Semi-abstract figurative painting by slade graduates?!?!? No, you're right. We're naughty. This is the last one, promise x sorry reena.
No, in all seriousness, please point to our floors. We are all ears to the подполья.
No, just kidding - this review was pitched and it was really good - sometimes exhibitions, by virtue of their strength, actually enclose into a worthy review. Equally true of bad shows, harder to say for mid shows.
Anyway, with Jeremy, we have taken an unprecedented leap and allowed him to employ footnotes.
FOOTNOTES:
- The pretends of NYC group shows to install gallery backbenchers alongside new, trendy consignments.
- The identification of Post aspiration and post-professionalisation artists in older figures such as Seiji Inagaki kind of reflects what it is to be just any unrecognised artist. Just graduation is post-aspirational, a non-act.
- People always have, and always will, love Jean Genet.
Sydney
“By linking my production to your production, the curator also disconnects us both”: I kept returning to that old, half-remembered line – drawn from an old, half-remembered John Kelsey essay – while viewing On the Never-Never, a group show at Reena Spaulings, curated by Tenko Presents. (1) Exhuming shopworn pieces from the depths of Reena’s storage (Stephan Dillemuth, Danny McDonald, Josephine Pryde) and suturing them to works representative of the roving Tenko program (Thomas Cap de Ville, Seiji Inagaki, Sabina Maria van der Linden), On the Never-Never positions the group show format as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, an experiment toying with spare or dead parts. Can they all be brought together and restaged, and ultimately imbued with new life? If the show indeed comes alive, it does so by way of devices intrinsic to the artworks themselves: through shoddy assemblage, tasteless juxtaposition, and rough-hewn montage, through forced combinations redolent of a bad skin graft or a rejected organ transplant.
Poor things – “unproductive, wasted meaningless, excluded from historical narratives, endangered by the prospect of complete erasure,” as Sabina Maria van der Linden’s undated poster states – these works remake Frankenstein as a kind of kitchen sink drama, a no-budget Mike Leigh film. The storyboard is provided by Thomas Cap de Ville’s Book 1 and Book 2, both 2017, a pair of oversized scrapbooks arranged on a clothed card table. With the tactile feel of a duct-tape wallet, Cap de Ville’s books document a gritty, heroin-shaped life we were promised by the exhibition’s title (an alternate title, playing on both US and UK definitions, might have been On the Nod.) They are composed of disposable camera prints and digital images printed on copy paper, print-outs of aughts-era horoscopes and dating webpages, sometimes framed by tacky patterned craft papers; chronicling a misspent youth at the advent of social media, but also comment upon it humorously in retrospect. The noon-until-noon binges, the stupid pranks and long-forgotten acquaintances, compiled years later, in a form evoking the mild-mannered family album. At least one page, featuring an image of a dreadlocked Cap de Ville, is completed by a cigarette burn. Yet in prizing unruly formal experimentation over careerist common sense – folding terrific standalone photographs, for example, into a far less saleable form – these scrapbooks also supply the exhibition with its overarching ethos of poignant anti-ambition.
If we’re still in mind of the monstrous mash-up, there’s Danny McDonald’s Midnight Snack Encounter, 2014, which reads as a counter to the current vogue for conceptual sculpture. An Emperor Palpatine figurine leers at another of Twinkie the Kid, ensconced in a distressed sofa reminiscent of the after-after party. But the Twinkie figure carries a secret – he holds an actual Twinkie, by now possibly twelve years old.
Like any good artist right now, McDonald lists every material in the work’s details, including the long inventory of ingredients deployed in the Twinkie’s production and (maybe eternal) preservation. (2) There are also two assemblages from 2015 by Stephan Dillemuth, who once ran the storied Cologne space Friesenwall 120 with artist Josef Strau. Both sculptures are grounded by plaster cogwheels, and both are interrupted by a number of self- or scene-referential objects – the cast of a forearm, a burner phone affixed to a “bad” golf-leafed painting, the 2014 Gallerists issue of Texte Zur Kunst.
All of these things are embedded in the middle of the cogwheels, rather than between the gears, indicating that they aren’t really disrupting anything, not least in the present. Like the mostly reclusive, mostly middle-aged artists of On the Never-Never, these objects are closer to vestiges of an evaporated discursive zone, haunting the system once again through reappearance. Likewise, in a suite of exhibited photographs, taken from Josephine Pryde’s series Just What is Aura Anyway? (2006) a young girl is presented as a Victorian maid on Boxing Day, if the yuletide setting is to be believed. As in Jean Genet’s play The Maids (1947), Pryde’s role-playing maid serves here as an ambivalent figure, even a stand-in for a certain type of identity-fluid (young/old, rich/poor, now/then) artist LARPing faintly at systemic upheaval.
Although most of the artists included here have by now settled into a post-aspirational, post-professionalised groove of artistic production, one outlier might be the illustrator Seiji Inagaki, whose pervy, noncey, Pierre Klossowski-summoning drawings from the 1980s and 90s, for early Japanese gay magazines like Barazoku, have been tastefully framed and effectively upcycled, recirculated within a quainter, more “bohemistic” – to borrow a phrase from Dillemuth – economy of objects and images. We might spend some time thumbing through the original magazines, too, and lament, as with Cap de Ville’s books, a rich visual culture lost to the flattening effects of social media, a culture taken from us, in this instance, by Grindr. Variously presaging the more recent practices of Julien Ceccaldi, David Rappeneau, and Shogo Shimizu, Inagaki’s illustrations, and the queer culture they emerge from, derail us from the show’s predominant concerns while proposing yet another clever detour.
All of this, of course, runs counter to the reigning paradigm of the New York group show, which seeks to elevate the staid offerings of gallery backbenchers by smuggling in a few elder or late statesmen on consignment (a different, more optimistic type of never-never). A Harun Farocki video here, a Karen Kilimnik painting there, maybe a minor piece by Andrea Fraser or even Peter Hujar, and suddenly the inherent vacuity of the commercial group show is absolved, or at least optimised for dissemination online.
Such conditions seem ripe for a moment to reconsider Josef Strau’s essay “The Non-productive Attitude,” 2006, exemplified to some degree by many of the artists on view, alongside other models of artistic “badness” more broadly. (3) What could it be like, conceivably, to revisit these strategies today, for the Tenko generation? “So embarrassing,” Strau preemptively concludes, although this show gently suggests otherwise.
1. The pretends of NYC group shows to install gallery backbenchers alongside new, trendy consignments.
2. The identification of Post aspiration and post-professionalisation artists in older figures such as Seiji Inagaki kind of reflects what it is to be just any unrecognised artist. Just graduation is post-aspirational, a non-act.
3. People always have, and always will, love Jean Genet
1. John Kelsey, “Unclaimed Bags Will Be Destroyed,” in Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010), 221–234.
3. Josef Strau, “The Non-productive Attitude,” in Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 1–4.
Review
/ 20 March 2026 / By: Dirk Diggler
/
★
★
★
★
½
Dirk Diggler is a man about town. He was #there with Laura Les. Crimes. Etc. A time when Hollywood Sups were still watching nickelodeon. But he's back now - for the return - and he says it's angry. Pregnancy is pissed, not abortive. Chloe is wearing a tam o' shanter with ultra maximalist yelling piercing screaming barely breathing takes. Governor vomit is sat on the ground with a pedal as she chest bumps the crowd.
Thanks dirk, another stinger from the diggler.
Pregnancy are fucking sick btw.
Currently sitting in an airport lounge, in many respects the epicentre of western civilisation, waiting to go into the sky, all is wipe-clean, smooth, 100% surveilled. Everyone has been x-rayed, scanned, recorded, photographed and ID'd, so I can be very sure this is me, sitting here, alone, it's utterly peaceful, boredom is total, the apex model of how society is becoming. I have time now to reflect on one of the most urgent, stimulating, hectic, angry, stunning gigs I've been to, well since the last time I saw Pregnancy at Reject All, organised by Ruth Angel Edwards and Adam Gallagher, the week before.
The Cafe Oto gig, hosted by the always brilliant TLC23 (Keira Fox and Katie Shannon) took place on good Friday, we dont need Jesus's suffering to stand as a representation of sacrifice. The current world view of horrific slaughter in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Iran is way more than enough. The murder lovin' billionaires are inflicting their selfish desires for yet more unimaginable wealth, their greed is our suffering.
Anger is the mood, the age of rage is now. Pregnancy boil this fury down into 3 minute bursts of frenzied hyper punk pop. Maugile and Governor Vomit have crafted their sound from what may have been left over from the semi demise of Hyperpop's mini era of the 2010's culminating in the outstanding Haunted by Laura Les in 2021. But Pregnancy take things further, much further. All the recent musical cores get condensed down into unrelenting hammers of rhythm and throbbing synth blasts that don't stop hitting, the feelings of terror and joy combine under this relentless pressure to force the mind to let go and release all concerns. Chloée leaves it all on the floor, so much so that by the final track she is literally glitching like a broken mp3 file, but it's in time with Governor Vomit's industrial strength barrage of ultra mega hyper maximalist total ear storm. The crowd can't help themselves, their willing madness bursts into deranged freedom, almost epileptically rejoicing in the totalpermission to not give a fuck. Not since the days of Sunrise raves or Butthole Surfer gigs have I been forced so urgently out of my own canister to join with the other souls with my sweat, screams, and rapture. Cafe Oto, being the considerate venue, hands out free ear plugs, I thought this was funny, condoms for the ears to avoid pregnancy? I recommend going comando, nothing should ever get in the way of such fucking brillance.
I HATE WAR. Babedrea33's irreverent blog account (DISCLAIMER: nottin irreverent about hating war) I don't know what drives the vibe accounts of today's economy, but this grid is divided through aesthetically lead horizontals. We adapt the questions of Andy's timeless bathmatt3000 interview to get to grips with IhateWarmag.
Babedrea collects images that are attached to greater timelines of timeless violence. An archaeologist by training, maybe, dusting off the patina on tumblr images to feed them shining into our algo. We first met discussing the imperialism of mythic atlantis on a podcast I'd heard, and by met I mean Dm'd. Hollywood prefers the idea of her image discoveries parallel to the era-shaping analysis of lost civilisations - where codexes came to redefine the contemporaneous spirit.
After all, is that not all we crave from a tumblr blog?
What is image archiving for you and how does it different from @ihatewarmag?
I think that the two go hand in hand somewhat, altho image archiving formally takes care to find context, names, dates and attach them to greater timelines, ihatewar is about dusting off tumblr flickr google search deepcuts and unearthing them before a grander singularity collapses the internet on itself and things become impossible to find or leave forever like blingee among others. In this way I do think it’s archival because I think there are images I collect which are attached to these greater timelines of timeless violence.
Trend predictions for 2027 (apocalypse theme).
William Blake off a phone and cocacola gnosticism
If Silent Hill comes out with a new game, where would you want it to be set?
Cortázar-style conflations of reality with echoes of the past. In “La Noche Boca Arriba,” a man is severely injured in a motorcycle accident in Mexico. He’s in the hospital and lucid dreaming about a reality where he’s on the run from a group of Aztec warriors who want to sacrifice him to the sun god. He’s finding it harder and harder to wake up again in the hospital. Was he ever actually in the hospital at all or dreaming hauntologically of surgery? Take Silent Hill to ancient Maine, USA. We want to dream of surgery.
Favourite ancient archaeological site/period/excavation?
Chavín de Huántar. First excavated by Julio C. Tello in 1919. Traces of Chavín’s art style are all across ancient Peru but it isn’t really certain why this art style was so widespread. A religious center for sure, reliefs across the site depict shamans snuffing hallucinogens with jaguars and snuff tube artifacts are found everywhere. But the real crown jewel is the subterranean labyrinth of 35 interconnected tunnels beneath the site. Peaks and pokes of sunlight tickle through the ceilings of the tunnels where we infer that shamans would begin a religious journey to the underground central Lanzón–a monolithic sculpture 15 feet tall depicting the fanged deity of Chavín. The chamber was architecturally built to produce and amplify the sounds of the ground above. Archaeoacoustically, the features of this underground passageway seem to encourage the existence of a hallucinogenic journey to the center where shamans above ground might intentionally play tricks with the lights and sounds above you so you may stare awe-stricken at the Lanzón once you reach it. Perhaps you fall to your knees. Perhaps you were already on your knees.
Insert Favourite Meme ever.
What’s your screen time?
Daily average = 5.5 hours on phone.
Relationship to your schizophrenic device?
I know when it is trying to be my evil twin. That’s how you win. But sometimes me and twin stay locked in.
How would you describe your iG page? Curation? Moodboard? Dump?
Posting feel like eyes roll back into head and tongue loll out and you start speaking a prophecy and then the post becomes a multipart globule of brain chunkage enfilade reliant upon a Markov chain of network understanding.
I would say you are a niche Tumblr type source - what page did you grow up on?
I used to love these 2 blogs of this couple that lived in Antwerp I can’t remember their usernames but they broke up at some point and I stopped watching. I also really loved @sandsvendor100 but you have to remember I joined Tumblr when I was 12.
Dream Blunt Rotation?
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sue de Beer, Ana Mendieta
What do you do for $?
Frost Children creative director + nightlife photographer + social media intern + freelance graphic design = my current lifestyle
Looking for more work tho hmu
What do you spend most $ ?
Looking for more work tho hmu
What Foot Tattoo would you get?
Tattoo from @cheaptruth9891999 of the staff god at Chavín on the sole of my right foot that takes up the whole foot. Or Anna Opperman drawing.
Who are you currently listening to?
The Tear Garden, Strawberry Switchblade, Kino, Mice Parade, Country Teasers,Frost Children, Momus, Air, Malcolm McLaren, Lolina, Hail the Sun, Pulp, The Legendary Pink Dots, Suicide, Sparks, Corridos Ketamina, Morrissey, DJ Hoes Mad, Hanin Elias, John Maus, Strictly Ballroom, NEW YORK, Psychic TV, Cranes, Silver Jews, Television Personalities, Orange Juice, iwrotehaikusaboutcannibalisminyouryearbook, Lento Violento, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin
By: Sydney Sweeney and Timothée Chalamet ft. Eileen Slightly
Here is a long-overdue essay that, at its outset, is driven by the founding principle of Hollywood Superstar Review, that being, biting the hand that feeds it. Going straight for our own magazinical jugular. Staring the gift horse in its publishing mouth. Inspecting the soft hands of the London art ecosystem, one encounters thousands of pieces of metaphysical debris: in our editor's inbox, unread digital PDFs of art shows we don't want to see, will never see, and are likely never, ever going to write about. It's a good thing that I, Sydney Sweeney, have a fantastic grasp of my own personal public relations — and that I, Timothée Chalamet, have made quite clear of late the fact that I have none.
Part one of "Art and Magazine Irrelevancy"
This is an article that investigates the proliferation of PR firms employed by galleries in London that specialise in promoting art, artists, and exhibitions...
...The outsourcing of PR takes away any of its sexiness. If galleries did their own PR again things could be different, and the promotion could emerge alongside da oeuvre of concern. Instead its just this rabid thing jack rabbit fucking a fleshlight of fake (bitch-goddess of) success. It's confusing the youth, it's not relevant.
The relentless emailing is, we guess, necessary because you must sort through the continuous fatberg of art, and there must be discernment, right? Someone tell me that's right! Contemporary Art Library can’t be the ONLY thing. So, if you ever look at the internet, the media or broadsheets (god forbid) and wonder why the only content there is that produced by the same nine “emerging” galleries, “groundbreaking” institutions and “brave” artists, then you may find your answer in these jaded dulcet tones:
“We thought you might find this interesting”
“This one's right up your street!”
“I hope your week’s off to an amazing start!”
“Feature Idea: Solo Exhibition at the Intersection of Conceptual Art and Luxury Finance”
For us two, the collective press-hallucination started with George Rouy. Abstract-figurative painter. Easily marketable, kind of sexy (?) bad boy of art who was an obvious homage to iterations of artists from bygone generations whose suit-wearing was not anachronistic, and whose studios were actually unheated (thinking of that famous NG postcard of Freud and Bacon looking drunk and angry).
Rouy’s canvases and public-facing image form the nexus, nay, the blueprint for a generation of press releases and artist portraits where, much like how an owner resembles its dog, the artist resembles the art, which is, of course, a thing to sell – Rouy knows this; look at his paintings.
Today, we have such wonderful, complicated b2b systems for selling things. Whole companies, with their 4-word job titles and AI-integrated workflows. Our special guest for today, that has so far gone pretty unsurveilled by the general public, are the ART PR FIRMS. You’ve heard of crisis management (for arms dealers, technocrats, boob jobs etc) — the art PR firm is the climbing vine exerting a crumbling stranglehold on the faded edifice of art criticism and editorial structure.
Public Relations is a term that, on the outside, feels innocuous. Starting out in journalism, you are approached by ‘PR Teams’ who offer you exclusive access to galleries, programming, exhibitions and artists. The same PR teams will be emailing the editors of each and every art publication in an attempt to have their show covered. By the time you pitch, an editor will likely know of the show. An editor will, in fact, have been alerted to the show on regular intervals and already have decided whether to cover it. When you dip your toe in for the first time, none of this is obvious to you.
Here’s the principle of the system, put simply: editors and writers need things to cover; galleries need coverage to plump their gram and quote to collectors; institutions need evidence of impact to return to funding bodies and jurors; and PR are here to help grist the mill, hold your hand, and see you through to completion.
It feels the desired result among all this is for a show to have so many angles, so many pressure points applied, that a collective Mandela syndrome will emerge whereby its relevance (and merit) will materialise from deep within the subconscious. (Much like the entire ‘London Scene’, a term coined in 2023.)
We experienced this recently with the infamous Rose Easton show “O…to have a mouth”. I started having dreams about an exhibition whose presence on Instagram was so divorced from its relative merits, ideas or wider cultural relevance that I began to feel like Cary Grant in Spellbound: noticing patterns, scared of forks, uncertain about life outside of the sanatorium.
This is not to say that editorials are not biased; editors are often in bed with (or, at least for now, on PINT terms) with artists they cover. The art world is small; it's inevitable. A more pressing issue is the lack of discernment. If every programme on this gallery's 3-month-long rotation is groundbreaking, or brave, or even just cool to look at visually, what’s the expected output? I want to know their endgame. A fully stacked artist's dossier that just lists the same outlets on a three-month rotation?
It would be better if PRs started their own publications where they could regurgitate desired sentiments.These could be made by AI – and probably read by AI, summarized by Gemini, then used to train AI; how’s that for a dildo-fleshlite theorem, which, for you infidels, is an analogy for a substanceless interaction, a penetration simulation? – and circumvent the need for legacy magazines (defined here as, let’s say, those that have been around for ten years or longer). A great example of this is found in the Press Release Sus Instagram account, that points out when PR texts are AI generated.
In a supreme effort to ensure that the right shows get the right kind of press and exposure is maximised, ### the sites would run a rotation of two or three Bethnal Green-based galleries each season. These ### publications could be called things like:
HOT YOUNG MAGAZINE
ART FOR THE PEOPLE
PLASTER MAGAZINE
The recourse toward ease (and there’s little that’s nastier) is PR’s its greatest weapon. But at what cost? It’s not groundbreaking to say that taste is dictated by money – but if even the more emerging names are the product of a well-oiled machination of bulk emails, it makes you wonder where genuine talent begins and public promotion ends. And all the while, the curious workaday everyperson – that’s who art is for, right? – sees the art world through a stage-managed pinhole.
Hollywood Superstar’s question of who art is for is one we seek to address over a longer course of investigation. Right now, art is just the one of the few third spaces where young people can hang out, drink for free and feel relatively wanted.
Another thing at stake: the artists – because it’s supposed to be about them, right?– are unwittingly getting fucked by the very PRs promoting them. If an editor's inbox is flooded with bad copy describing an artist’s practice, how is their work meant to be received with anything more than a heavy dose of indifference? It requires the kind of strength and X-ray bullshit-vision which many just aren’t paid enough for.
For emerging artists, the desire to rely solely on their gallery and PR to “make their name” is understandable, but shouldn’t be necessary. They may look at the art world and wonder how certain people have got to where they are. The answer, most of the time, is that taste as it stands is corrupted by galleries paying public relations agencies to promote their programme to the Nth degree. Usually, or in the not so distant past, this kind of system was reserved for Blue Chips. Today, as smaller galleries come to the fore in terms of sale to overhead costs (scaling down in order to reach a broker market, reducing the cost of running a large scale operation) a significant budget can instead be allocated toward promotion.
A few case studies for this can be found in smaller galleries whose scale allows them to opt into the emerging stand in fairs, but whose overhead costs allow for well-timed “deals” from PR companies.
What’s more, in London today, what is publicly accepted (as it has been for some time) by newsletters and mid-sized outlets as ‘emerging’ is actually highly stratified and engineered. It occludes real artist-led initiatives and the underground. This is not necessarily a problem. The frustration we felt when setting out to write this piece was the effect of an out-and-out flattening: walls slowly closing in on a narrowing stream of artists, writers, editors. ### PR means the underground stays underground, but it also acts as a kind of bulwark of shit. The upside is that, maybe, what is real is that which just doesn’t get covered.
This overreliance on crappy unconvincing PR harms the artist. Pay attention to the bigger picture, though, and the injurious pattern for these companies, like most things under the monied sun, trends upwards. Emerging gallery first; small, chic-peopled openings; notionally conceptual foundations; press coverage; first fairs; first missed energy bill; pivot to paintings – and then comes the next step (and something we can get into next time): PR for a public institution. This is where the real fun is. Everyone knows that PR firms are a key arm in State-image massaging, and everyone also knows the best image-massager is contemporary art (and maybe football, but superstars don’t care for it). PR handshake state institutions, all drinking from the same teapot that tips for various armed forces. Feature Idea: The First Institutional Show in Region for Hot Young!
Here’s an analogy for you: the AI influencer, run by a bot, created from male fantasies, is the perfect form of labour. It requires no impetus but can fulfill every fantasy. Sometimes, I wonder if the PR’s dream writer is Claude?
Fuck it, we recently ran an article on our page just so a friend of ours could be considered for a VISA. We’re definitely not not complicit.
FYI - If PR decides they need some run of the mill reviews our pockets are pretty empty right now and we love Vietnamese food (JK).
Here’s a list of small galleries in London that employ the preceding PR firms.
Strobel Lall Communications
Rose Easton
Ginny on Frederick
Arcadia Missa
The Perimeter
Champ Lacombe
Incubator
Sam Talbot
Soft Opening
Alison Jacques
Sadie Coles (sometimes…)
Sutton Comms
Josh Lilley
Hauser & Wirth
Sprüth Magers
Elizabeth Xi Bauer
I asked a clanker to collate all the emails I've received from PR in the last year and tell me which galleries have been pushed the most. This is what it said:
Strobel Lall's website has no public client list, so I've built this from what I could confirm:
Rose Easton is their most pushed client by far — 6 emails, three of which were the Beatriz Olabarrieta follow-up chain that you never replied to. They're clearly working hard on that relationship. The Manon Wertenbroek pitch in January was separate and also unanswered.
The Perimeter is a newer addition to their pitching — all three emails came in Feb/March, suggesting it's a recent retainer. Two of those are about Camille Henrot, who is genuinely a significant name, so that pitch has more weight than the others.
Ginny on Frederick is quietly appearing more — two emails in Feb/March, both unanswered. Worth knowing if you have any interest in that gallery.
The big gap: Gathering and Wschód — both confirmed clients, neither has ever been pitched to you. Wschód in particular has a strong programme and is interesting from a European contemporary art perspective. It's a genuine blind spot, or possibly they've decided you're not the right outlet for those.
Want me to pull up any of the specific pitches in full — particularly the Camille Henrot or Beatriz Olabarrieta ones — or draft a response to any of these?
OR
Monthly volume: Sam Talbot runs at 25–37 emails a month consistently, spiking hard in October (Frieze season). Rees & Co were very active Sep–Jan but have gone nearly quiet since February, which might be worth noting — they may have lost clients or shifted strategy. Sutton Comms and Strobel Lall are steady, low-volume but persistent.
Follow-up heat: Sutton Comms is the most aggressive follow-upper by far — 8 follow-ups on a single Sprüth Magers pitch is notable. Rees & Co follow up heavily too, especially on interview pitches (Laura Lima at 5 follow-ups). Sam Talbot, interestingly, almost never follows up — he sends at volume and moves on, which tracks with his broadcast press-release style vs the more relationship-focused approach of Sutton/Rees.
Sam Talbot clients: BALTIC is his most repeated client (4 mentions), with a cluster of institutions at 3 — Goldsmiths CCA, Alison Jacques, Camden Art Centre, Spike Island, Soft Opening, Sainsbury Centre, Henry Moore. These are likely his retainer clients rather than one-off projects.
N.B.
*Getting away from PR cycle boom and busts also means getting away from the capitalist “innovation” narrative of (art) history. Don't get us wrong, we love PR stunt-art of days gone by, but I don't wanna get nostalgic for the tradition of da new: the Brave New World can fuck off.
Although PR firms are globally up to justifying the grandest malfeasance (Why is Bill Gates still alive?), the engine of manufactured consent of the art world is a rubbish one- more like manufactured indifference!!! Instead of another email insisting I’m missing out on this week’s latest product, I’d much rather, idk… consort with an ancient text?*
Taix rhymes with Sex and that's what LA was gathered to Eulogise. Or rather, confess. Hollywood appears to have been copying our Superstar bit: there is anonymous writing celebrities everywhere. Jack Skelley edited the iconic Barney: A Modern Stoneage Magazine in the near '80s, whilst writing The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker (semiotexte, 2023), an editor favourite. Skelley writes an absurd sexual scene report in a style we thank him for: Miley Cyrus is back on shrooms.
As below events occur, empires careen thru history’s stoopidest war.
“Not the CNN/TikTok wars; nor the 2004 Simulacra Wars of Ikea pressboard
rationales, such as WMDs; nor the counterfeit meme wars of 2024 – ‘they’re
eating the cats and dogs.’ Today’s war churns hydra pedogarchy’s smashing
and eating of babies and placentas for Peter EpThiel’s Mars colony. After this –
ha! – abandon hope, all ye of democracy fig-leafs. For now, the striptease of
market cabals gives hard-ons to patriarch missiles. But check it out: Their own AI
foresees the collapse of ugly naked body empires. So Antifa Luke Skywalker
tangles his tow-cables around the ankles of those big, armored snow walkers,
and – boom! – the fuckers fuck themselves. See what I mean?”
This is Miley Cyrus whispering into my ear with her licking and flicking tongue.
We are standing on Sunset Boulevard outside of Taix (pron. “TEX,” rhymes with “sex”)
restaurant, soon to be demolished. I adore Miley more than ever since she’s back on
shrooms. We’re all out here in a sidewalk wake staged by Sammy Loren in eulogy to
Taix, the romantic hang and receptacle of confessions from the naughty ids of Los
Angeles.
Lily Lady is here too. Lily leads the crowd in a cheer: a chance Sunset sidewalk
chanson of:
One by one, the artists and writers recount memories of blowjobs and choke-sex in the
Taix restrooms. Oh, wait. that wasn’t Taix. That was El Prado, down the street. Or was it
Footsies in Highland Park?
It’s funny because, the following week, I run into Miley Cyrus again at the St Patrick’s
Day House Party: This is the lit-reading I throw with Lily Lady at Lily’s vacant Gothy
avocado courtyard apartment in lower Los Feliz. It is there I remember that Lily Lady
and Miley Cyrus both performed in Alejandro Jodorowski’s film Blood Brother, in which
Miley plays Lily. (Blood Brother has since evolved to become Lily’s new book of poems,
launching April 30 at Poetic Research Bureau, where I will QA Lily and get to the bottom
of all this!)
Before our guests arrive, Lily points out the MAKEOUT ROOM. It’s the bedroom, but
instead of a bed, the floor is filled with plushies pillowed 3-feet thick. Mostly white-and-
red Snoopies and Hello Kitties. Also cerulean Blue Smurfs peppered with paisley Labubus.
“If people get horny, they can do it in here!” beams Lily.
The reader/performers include Clarke E Andros, Ryan Lynch, Molly Larkey, Jo
Stone, Danielle Altman and Diva Corp. Andros’ love sonnets are tight and tender. Diva
Corp manifests as a video of artist Petra Cortright enacting Diva Corp’s poem “Gun” in
fiery arcs and blurs.
Altman reads “Striptease,” a sexy confessional, including:
I try to gather the pieces of myself together
But he pulls me back on the sheets
Reassembles me roughly
Strokes me past language
One can’t help imagining the “I” of the poem as one of Danielle’s Instafit teddy selfies.
After the reading, I find Miley. She’s holding a paper cup of Jameson Irish Whiskey.
“Are you drinking Jameson in honor of Fredric Jameson, the Marxist theorist and
Octopus of Totality?” I ask. “I just wrote a one-act about an encounter between you
and Fredric Jameson. You know: When you were tripping in the Bonaventure Hotel?”
Miley’s response – and it’s a St. Paddy’s miracle! – is to press her tongue again into
my ear! “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Into the plushy MAKEOUT ROOM we leap. Haloed by Hello Kitty cherubs, Miley is
erotodelic goddess. Miley is a radical of insurgent licking, scooping and choking.
Roughly dis- and re-assembling her, I nuzzle Snoopy into Miley’s heart-shaped treasure
wet with warmth. Preverbal and compressed, Miley is small, vowel-shaped, fiercely
obedient. Then, side-by-side, soothed in DDLG growls and whispers, she tongue-fucks
secret grammar. She strokes me past language. Miley shines. Miley murmurs...
“Now, together, we see thru the lizard-brain default mode the System forces upon
lab-grown psyches and bodies toward endless abuse, wars and genocide. The
System being – let’s fucking face it – capitalism and its hydra proxies of morality,
politics, culture and The Kardashians. But, ah, a sexy Sacred Heart alchemies
base Matter into a Flaming Lips dawn. Together, we bestow unity of
consciousness – thru flesh – to our sum inter-experience, including precious
love, and triple star-loads of soulpocalyptic orgasm ripples. Can I get an Amen?”
Introducing Hollywood Superstar's 16 year old rock reporter, Nico. Cameron Crowe fuck off.
We asked him: What you want to write about?
He said: Mitsubishi Suicide and Samba Jean Baptiste.
The editors said: Ok, Go, Nico, Go!
The editors say to you: Keep the Semi-Secular Faith; out in the lonely nights of London.
Atomiser Presents: The London Bulgarian Choir and Mitsubishi Suicide at The Crypt. 13/03/2026.
I embrace a strong sense of faith as I descend, into the crypt below St Martin-in-the-Fields, appeasing my scepticism on the discordance of tonight’s forthcoming performances. Being in the underground hall that is sprawling but airless, makes me notice that the venue’s secularity is suitably emulated by the musicians: Mitsubishi Suicide’s reformulation of the screamo, post-rock, American tradition and the choir’s iterations of folk chants.
Having claimed a spot next to the stage, I feel fooled as a voice announces the choir will begin performing on the other end of the crypt. Tales of esoteric courtship rituals, forbidden love and such -a song was about trapping a wife in the foundations of a house- are enchantingly sung, converting the initially teasing and subtly condescending crowd to hushed meditation. Still, a few heads twitch at the familiarity of a cadence resembling Crystal Castles’ ‘untrust us’.
The polyphony-induced daze I dwindle in and out of is briefly broken by the sweet and sometimes boisterous song introductions courtesy of Dessisalva Stefanova. She is the true star of the night despite her awareness of the anticipation for their successors; she expresses this in introducing a belting chant, “I know you are all here for screamo so now we will screaamm… you can stay here we love you.” By the end of the performance this love is evidently reciprocated as the final applause lasts accordingly.
We turn back to the stage and the band (with two new faces) are testing pedals and tuning without seeming to notice the crowd. They are arranged in a diamond shape, facing each other. A cool jitteriness is emitted by the quartet and audience as we hold our breath, awaiting the terribly impending music. Unannounced, the rapture commences.
The opening songs seem to be a summation of Mitsubishi Suicide’s history, realized through extended epics that morph crawling, sustained phrases into theatrical moments of emo-violence - inspiring half-hearted moshing that is quickly impeded by the immense pillars that (somewhat sardonically) are the foundations of a church.
Older songs like Ilex court are delivered lovingly, with the new guitarist adding tasteful ornamentations. The music’s effect on the crowd is hard to generalise, due to the liminality of the band and its fans between conventional rocking out and something more like wistful reverie.
Perhaps in virtue of the archaic undertone set by the choir, I reflect on the affinities of Mitsubishi’s allure and that of This Heat, a London band which was similarly cherished for its deviance from the sounds the underground of its time (76-82) was promoting. A band that embodied the claustrophobia and murk of London while also evoking the alien and tribal, an effect Mitsubishi echo through their distinct reformulation of midwestern sounds. The quartet’s heady bass tones and capricious arrangements sound sublime in this crypt and I imagine so would This Heat’s- but I don’t know if Thatcher would’ve let that slide.
More explicit and direct influences can be heard in the 4-piece’s music which ended the show with a cataclysmic piece, reprising a riff from “biblical-violence” by (Zach Hill’s) Hella; the bassist tells me he loves that I loved it before I emerge out the crypt.
Outside the church, screamo diplomat Random Guy bestows on me a few words of wisdom; testifying the show was the perfect reunion for the band he’s followed since its beginnings and illustrates the exclusive novelty of attending a screamo show in London. He has faith in the scene, populated by bands such as Scadenza which I would consider paying attention to if you like the sound of screaming.
My pulse is altered as I walk through Trafalgar square, and I conclude that the lineup: which initially seemed a reach, or maybe a stroke of luck turned out to be pretty miraculous.
Private life & AM Radio present Samba Jean Baptiste +3 Album Listening Party. Thursday, February 19th 2026
Me and my friend burst when we read the undisclosable address of Samba Jean-Baptiste’s listening party; we had often yearned for our experience in this venue which hosted a “quiet show” by Harto Falión and some of his boys (including Cajm) in July- a wonderful anomaly within the evenings of my GCSE summer. The trackside auditorium evokes a funny purgatory vibe, with paw shaped windows from which you can spy on dads liming home and yg’s doing loons in London fields’ February twilight. You can tell the crowd are initially disoriented by the nowhereness of the space as they roam wondering where to sit and conclude to stand.
I am happy to be back; images of Harto rapping on a sofa with his feet up, veiled in a scarf that brushes his microphone are rekindled. Another reconception of music experience will be induced on my revisit.
Theodora's 10-minute, oceanic keyboard piece inaugurates the evening- this is also my introduction to her work. Amidst the pianist’s sustained arpeggiations, which cause metal pipes to rattle, I grasp onto a key theme that will be true across the 3 acts of the night: they all nicely comply to Brian Eno’s definition of ambient music, music that allows for drifting attention, and “accommodates many levels of listening without enforcing one in particular”. There's an entrancing quality shared by the three musicians, characterised by repetition, birthing an underlying progression that is not blatant as it is purgative.
Smokers return and so the room is chilly when Cajm’s set commences, going mostly unnoticed by the condensing crowd: greatly populated by capes and cloaks. I don’t know whether to expect a mix featuring some of his production for the likes of Jawinino or John Glacier, something more industrial-inclined or anything else- his YouTube features derivations of church-organ music. His set is an idiosyncratic, electronic prelude to the album, humbling the many that thought they could nod their heads to his perpetually mutating beats while also talking over most of the music- which he mixes on his knees.
Samba rises from the audience which has decided to wait on the floor- shuffling pedantically, you can tell the males are perplexed as to whether they are looking suave or infantile. He makes an endearing speech, confessing his shyness about publicly sharing his music that he is used to approaching privately- he is awkwardly content to be ‘braving the cold together’. The opening track is beautiful, and all of a sudden I feel the urge to apologise to my dad that I'm not with him on his birthday. The coolness of the crowd shatters.
The artificial-whispers that remind us we’re listening to ‘+3’ in most songs, and his recurring use of floaty autotune makes it feel like I’m listening to a zany strain of a trap mixtape.
Samba has nothing to do with the nostalgia-baiters and Dean Blunt impersonators that a soundcloud mix may foolishly associate him with- he’s one fine songwriter. The emerging and vanishing synths over his cloudless guitar distinguish this album from his past work; the fuller compositions seem in a fleeting exchange with his balmy contralto, summoned in such a way that wouldn’t wake up his roommate. Portrayals of life's physical traces and ashes throughout the ‘mixtape’, evoke anagogical interpretations of the ordinary. Everything he utters turns vital.
In paralleling this listening party with Nettspend’s (in which he bleh’s out as many sounds as he would at a concert) that has flooded my fyp, I affirm the significance of tonight’s experience. Samba is definitely not performing and maybe not even exhibiting his work, but it’s nice to think he is an equal subject to it as me. It seems that he wrote these songs to materialize moments of his being- while they are certainly vivid glimpses for me, I’d expect they are much more so for him.
+3 was precious. I can sense its fables will act as a sweet remedy for 2026’s cruel twists of fate.
We are on a roll with our Los Angeles coverage: Hollywood Superstar thanks critic Taylor Lewandowski for this, his mysterious and emotional guide to a week of art in LA, where a childhood crush gets transferenced onto all the egos and names at every party.
Like with all men, I like it when he lies, but I love it when they tell me about what happens when they speak to strangers at the urinal.
This piece has both, so read it and understand.
(pic took by K.O.)
The last time I saw Zechariah we stared at the all-brick insane asylum out our school bus window. We were the last two left. It was nothing unusual. A remnant from the past wedged between two corn fields. We lived the closest to our bus driver. Sometimes after she dropped us off, we’d race our bikes to horses enclosed in an electric fence. We timed our grip on the electric fence, congratulating each other on lengthy, shocking interludes. We loved the sensation of the volt charging through our limbs, but before the bus slowed for a stop, he looked at me with dirt on his face, and said, "I'm moving to California tomorrow. I'll never see you again." I said nothing, but he repeated as he walked backwards down the aisle: "Goodbye…goodbye…goodbye."
Twenty years later, I'm flying to Los Angeles, because he sent me a DM on Instagram from a suspect account with a tearful emoji profile picture and nondescript images. Anyway, the message: "Hi—I know it's been a long time, but I've been thinking about you. Would you come to LA?" I replied immediately and we kept DMing over the last month, but it never felt right, as if this person existed, not in a far away city, but on a different planet. I didn't say no. How could I?
I arrived at Taix on Sunset at 10pm. I waited for Zechariah to meet me. Earlier, I dropped my bags off at a high school friend's apartment and immediately grabbed an Uber. I listened to Joyce Carol Oates describing Joan Didion's analysis of media narrative on Jarrett Earnest's new podcast Private Lives: "We try to decipher meaning out of things that may in fact, be somewhat haphazard or chaotic." I thought about August Strindberg, specifically Eric Johannesson's The Novels of August Strindberg, and Johannesson's own description of the human brain's nature to collect spontaneous minutiae and arrange, nonsensical or not, in order, but, then or now, I questioned my own anxiety-ridden feelings about Zechariah. Every symbol I absorbed, I believed to be a sign, not an ordinary sign, like a red light or discount sale, but the heightened sense of my Uber driver named Darius and the rings along his fingers with sharp edges pointing forward.
I sent a couple texts to Zechariah. No replies. The restaurant was packed. A guy told me it's closing in a week to be bulldozed for another vulgar apartment complex. I ordered Trout Almondine. I sat alone, but it didn’t take long to be surrounded by people. I recognized some from other literary events over the last couple years, like Sammy Loren who runs the reading series Casual Encountersz and Joseph Mosconi who oversees the Poetic Research Bureau. I had missed a "social sculpture" reading outside Taix with writers like Lily Lady, Meat Stevens, Sophia Le Fraga, and others. I met the Executive Chairman of Book of the Month Club and editor of Volume 0, John Lippman, who described the pros of publishing a novel in this new subscription based program, which has existed since 1916, but revamped in 2017 with Lippman's leadership the venture reached ten million in revenue and climbed to fifty million in 2024. Obviously, Lippman crushed the market. I finished my Trout—no Zechariah.
The next day I met K.O. Nnamdie, owner and curator of Eidmann Gallery, at Frieze. I didn't tell them about Zechariah—not yet. Instead, we chatted about the allure of Los Angeles, a failed bookstore, laughable presentations. I leave K.O. to explore on my own. I circle the booths, projecting Zechariah's unknown expression on middle-aged men wearing designer or boys with funny faces and receding hairlines. Zechariah still hasn't replied. Editors from a magazine told me frieze was a boring, bloated event for wealthy cretins. Another impressive iteration of "luxury items" for Bezos types. Regardless, I stopped at Lomex's booth with a male nude sculpture twisted with missing limbs by Kye Christensen-Knowles, along with several portraits of Hiji Nam, Diane Severin Nguyen, Olivia Kan-Sperling, and Liv Cuniberti in his typical dystopian coldness. Each subject is wearing black, seated in a folding chair against a rough backdrop.
I drifted out of Lomex and farther past the metal benches hiding the vents pumping AC into the tent; I hear another airplane take off. I stopped at Gordon Robichaux's presentation of Uzi Parnes. Like Christensen-Knowles' work, they retain a fragmented otherworldly quality—a fantastical other. Most of them were photographs from Uzi Parnes' slideshow of the infamous cruising-abundant New York City piers revised into assemblage. The most effective was *The Beach Club*—revealing a row of urinals in the foreground of a deconstructed pier with skyscrapers in the far distance and a red light attached to its frame. I couldn't help it. I thought about Zechariah. Our lives felt like this. Distant. Dissociated. Why won't he text me back? I sought the decadence and glamor of Uzi Parnes. Would Zechariah understand this? Parnes sat alone on a bench behind me. He looked bored—maybe even overwhelmed. I tried to imagine the infamous Chandelier Club—the original context for these pieces. An underground necessity for absolute fantasy.
At Bel Ami's booth, a veiled head gazed back against chafed crimson. Inspired by Oskar Kokoschka and Fernand Khnopff, Soshiro Matsubara deconstructs common themes of unrequited love and tragic heroes. In Lover, two ceramic heads, one on top of the other, rest on a black pedestal. They do not appear to be lifeless, but resting peacefully. Similar to Matsubara and Bel Ami's neighboring gallery at the fair, Company presented Sergio Miguel's paintings inspired by 17th and 18th century traditions, which depicted young women wearing shrouds and cloaks, concealing a forbidden desire.
Later, I turned around and watched a young man with a perfect jawline pose with his Lacoste polo collar popped before a photograph of a pornstar in a domestic scene. He said to his friend: "Look at me."
Before I left with K.O., I noticed Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo's sculpture of a punching bag in blue and pink, which reminded me of countless friends on Instagram posting yet another headline, revealing the escalating clash. This time Kansas has revoked all transgender IDs and birth certificates overnight. Like many times this year, its unbelievability becomes fact becomes anxiety becomes rage becomes fantasy becomes action, apathy. What will it mean to create a true paradigm shift?
K.O. and I sat in an Uber, heading to Chateau Marmont, where I have never been, but K.O. insisted is "a real treat.". Within the shadow of my reflection in the tinted window and incoming traffic, I witnessed Zechariah dancing along the highway, like an angel. I felt empty after frieze. K.O. described their newfound love for Los Angeles — its glamor, mystique. I imagined Zechariah sitting in class drawing headless horsemen disappearing in a scratched out forest. I have a tendency to deflect, hide. K.O. told me: stop swallowing demons.
At Chateau Marmont, K.O. and I ate a light dinner. Across from our table lounged Luca Guadagnino with his entourage. I tried not to stare at him, but when I stood up to use the restroom, we shared a passing glance. I heard his chair, but I didn't believe he followed me until I opened the door to the restroom for him. I didn't say anything. I acted normal. We approached the floor-length urinals filled with ice. We pissed next to each other. We washed our hands at the sinks. We inspected ourselves in the mirror. I asked him, "Do you struggle with obsession?" He replied, laughing: "Of course." “Do you know the life of Newton Arvin?” “No,” he said. “I’ve been reading Capote’s biography. They were lovers. Arvin wrote an award-winning biography on Melville.” “Okay,” he said. “So what?” "He grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana." "Where is Indiana?" asked Luca. "It doesn't matter," I said. "What does matter?" "Police ransacked his home in Massachusetts, confiscating his gay erotica and journals depicting numerous love affairs." "What does this have to do with obsession?" asked Luca. "It is the negation of obsession—the patrolling of desire…" "Interesting," he said. "Maybe there's a movie there…"
After dinner, K.O. disappeared to their hotel room and I caught another Uber to a party at O-Town House hosted by Lomex and Gaylord Fine Arts. Every odd angle of the space was jammed with people. I met up with two new friends: Miguel and Justin. We pushed through the crowd, awkwardly navigating the scene. We tried to find the dance floor. We climbed stairs and squeezed onto the balcony. Miguel ran into a long lost college friend and I talked to his friend about her speculative fiction mag. Alana Haim brushed past me.
I noticed Aria Dean in the corner with Laszlo Horvath, whose performance in Diane Severin Nguygen's WAR SONGS at MOCA was routinely shared on Instagram, and now held a heavier significance as the war with Iran had commenced with various headlines communicating the death of Iran Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. We finally squeezed through and into the next room, down the stairs, where I ran into Patrick McGraw, editor of Heavy Traffic, and finally to the packed dance floor below. We danced around slumped figures and stoic women. Dennis Hopper’s son laughed in the corner with a boy in denim. Jasmine Johnson behind the deck. I closed my eyes and envisioned Zechariah in an American Apparel ad. I opened my eyes and thought Zechariah was dancing in the corner with his shirt off. I edged closer, but no it wasn't Zechariah. It couldn't be. I checked my phone. There was a text message…
The next day, I stood on the balcony of this Richard Neutra house in the Hollywood Hills with Jane DeLynn, writer of the recently republished In Thrall and most notably Don Juan in the Village. For frieze art week, Blue Heights Art Culture, Del Vaz Projects, and OKEY DOKEY KONRAD FISCHER presented Rita McBride's wunderkrammer. An impressive installation that mirrored the house's architecture and its aerial view of the city. I watched a woman in a blue dress dance on the balcony. She ignored us, gazing in intervals across the sprawl of Los Angeles. In the main room, a chair was positioned on a platform covered in rugs with a Terminator poster hanging on the wall. The promotional text read like a true premonition, not a far away dream:
In the Year of Darkness, 2029,
the rulers of this planet
devised the ultimate plan.
They would reshape the Past.
The plan required something
that felt no pity. No Pain
No fear;
Something unstoppable. They created
I joined Jane outside. She sat on a bench, asking AI about the various hovels in the hills. The surrounding area were not extravagant icons of celebrity wealth, but crumbling, vacant buildings. At the bottom of the house, trash collected in a wide-spread thicket. I too stared, like Jane, at the beige home above us with rectangular windows. I imagined some bloated pornographer, peering out the window. The most conspicuous house in the hills was a purple castle, which someone told us belonged to an alley of clowns. It didn't take long. The vision of Los Angeles nuked to ground zero, patrolled by artificial intelligence. Humans plotting under asbestos, water-depleted landscape. 2029? Or, is this another unrealized fear, like the year The Terminator came out, 1984? Jane and I gazed upon the city of LA. The woman in the blue dress danced around us, oblivious.
I still haven't responded to Zechariah's text. I've read it several times: "im sorry. im bad at communicating. im scared to meet you." Jane drove fast down the winding streets. She told me: "This is dangerous." I told her about the time Elizabath Taylor pulled Montgomery Clift's teeth out of his esophagus and saved his life after his near-death accident, driving down hills just like these. I hold onto my seat.
Jane dropped me off at the location of callie d. cohen's solo presentation, aletheia, curated by K. O. Nnamdie for their new gallery, Eidmann. Located in an apartment above Sunset, the exhibition fused the natural light and duality between the glamorous life below and the seclusion of this apartment in the hills. cohen's paintings, lace pressed onto wood panels; and various found objects, like silver Doc Marten boots, a glass eyeball, an old polaroid of the artist, and others created a fragmented conception of identity in flex. Evolving from their time at anonymous, K.O. Nnamdie heightens the presentation by its environmental context and exploration of identity against complicated signifiers.
On the balcony, I ran into Miguel again and Kendall Getty. Miguel asked about her tattoo on her elbow: a knife with the name Tura on its blade. She described the actress Tura Satana, most notable for her performance in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Getty described Satana's gang rape at age ten in Chicago and subsequent training in martial arts, which resulted in her systematic revenge on each of her rapists. "I believe this tattoo protects me," she told us. I had never heard of Tura Satana, and I had not seen Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, but imagined Kendall Getty's knife floating above us—a psychic, haunting enactment of justice. I responded to Zechariah: "meet me tonight at bar latino."
I sat next to Hedi El Kholti and watched Los Super Elegantes at bar latino. Sophia Le Fraga, Pedro Alejandro Verdin, and Michele Lorusso curated an exhibition of artists from Eve Fowler to Precious Okoyomon with DJ sets by Mia Carucci & Untitled Halo and, of course, a reunion of the mythic early aught art group, Los Super Elegantes. Essentially, the last great party of LA art week. Before they began, Martiniano Lopez-Croze tossed his jacket to Hedi and said, "Be careful! It's Valentino!" Hedi rolled it up and placed it on his lap. The small bar was now packed. I scanned the room. Everyone had sweat pouring down their necks. Alec Malin stood on a chair with his shirt off, lighting the stage. After some confusion, Milena Muzquiz and Martiniano Lopez-Croze finally began. They twirled around the tight stage. The music played loud over the speakers.
Vaginal Davis in Index once described their songs as "musical retable. You’re never sure when one song has officially ended. Most are sung either in Spanish or Italian, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t understand what’s being said word for word. The lyrics are abstract, they act them out.” Mike Kelley described their "aesthetic [as] pure pop…[and] punk. . . . The crumminess of their performance technique is less satire (or Jack Smith–style countertechnique) than an additional coat of degradation to sweeten the mix.” I fall into a trance. I don't think about Zechariah. I feel the sweat rolling down my back.
After the performance, I stumbled outside. The parking lot jammed with another social sculpture. My phone died. I worried I'd never be able to find Zechariah. I tried to borrow a charger, but couldn't find one, so I nervously stood in a group with K.O., Miguel, and Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo. Miguel told Jade: "You have strong psychic capabilities." I decided to wander through the various cliques. I ran into Erica Dawn Lyle, former touring guitarist for Bikini Kill, who once performed in Indianapolis. We chatted about the difference between New York City and LA. I wandered back into the crowd. I tried to find Zechariah in the multitude of human expressions. I attempted to construct him in my mind until several groups split and I recognized him leaning against a sedan with arms crossed, confused, pale, skinny, afraid. I no longer recognized him. How could I? He looked exactly like me.
