NOT SO POPULAR

I V: BODY/SPACE
Contents
Editors Note Pages 3-4
Aniela Czajewska Pages 4-7
Jade French Pages
Editors Note:
This issues theme is body/space.

thinking about how physicality is used in pri-
vate, public and all the spaces inbetween.
Bodies interweave, duck and dive away from
each other.
Our contributors have used photography,
flm stills, found imagery, poetry, short stories,
essays and
commentry in their responses.
Through remainng spacefeminist writers
and thinkers have sought to push past the
barriers of what is in order to imagine what
might yet be.
HATTY CARMAN
ANIELA CZAJEWSKA
I nourish it and it sustains me; I direct it and it acts on my behalf. It
feels and the sensation is my own; its spatial presence allows my
thoughts, my dreams, my desires to occupy material space, to be
made manifest. With what could I be more intimately connected
than my own body? Indeed, if I cannot call it my own, is there
anything at all to which I can lay claim?
Yet how often I have despised it. These thoughts are familiar to
most of us, if not all: too big, too small, misshaped, ill-propor-
tioned. Treacherously ugly. Disappointing. This loathing amplifed
by mental struggles and distress, I starved and cut it, tried to
purge it of its (my?) wrongness and its (my?) pain. I know I am
far from unique in this. Comparatively speaking, I escaped these
habits unscathed. Was my body my own then? Were these
privations the marks of a defant ownership, or the ultimate
proof of my thrall to something beyond my control? The answer
still eludes me.
But here is what I do know about bodies, ownership, and space:
I cannot intentionally hurt myself on stage // whereas the
dancers among my peers sport twisted ankles almost as a matter
of course.
I must sign reams of paper to prove that I wish to wear pierced
jewellery // yet a cotton swab may enter my vagina with impunity.
I compulsively consider escape strategies; my choice of seat on
the night bus is carefully calibrated // but despite my foresight,
I cowered in the corner, my fellow travellers silently collusive in
his lewd touches and words.
Something as paltry and seemingly insignifcant as bodily style
comes to be the one opportunity for defance in an order that
defnes us based on visual difference.
A shaved head signifes dyke, and thats what the teenage boys
yelled as they threw rocks at her. They were thirteen years old
to her twenty one, and already incensed that someone could
dare to be different, to refuse to pander to their expectations
and desires.
Yet long, fowing locks, evoking medieval princesses whose chas-
tity was choked by vicious instruments of iron, are much easier
for an attacker to grab; self-defence manuals warn us of this, as
though it were our duty to expect assault.
I nourish it and it sustains me; I direct it and it acts on my behalf. It
feels and the sensation is my own; its spatial presence allows my
thoughts, my dreams, my desires to occupy material space, to be
made manifest. With what could I be more intimately connected
than my own body? Indeed, if I cannot call it my own, is there
anything at all to which I can lay claim?
So every day, we make ourselves ready for the world, never sure
which demand holds more claim on us the exhortation to be
never too busy to be beautiful, or the endless chorus of what
was she wearing?. Our cosmetic choices are battle strategies,
quotidian micro-politics. Whose body, when beauty is dictated by
the beholders eye? Our oppressors divide and conquer, pitting
woman against woman not only in the compulsory competition
of looks, but even in the basic freedom to veil or reveal as much
of our bodies as we choose.
Yet all these atrocities pale in comparison to the death toll the
fate prescribed as punishment for female resistance. This week,
a man felt so entitled to womens bodies and sexual attention
that his response to rejection was to shoot up a sorority house;
earlier this year, a girl refused a boys invitation to prom and he
stabbed her to death. Over two hundred Nigerian school girls
were abducted last month, and the worlds only response was a
hashtag and an incorrect list of names. And these are just the high
profle, media-worthy cases. When the only time the world
hears a long list of transgender women named is to commemo-
rate their violent deaths whose body? When more women are
killed or injured by men than by cancer, traffc accidents, and war,
combined whose body?
I do not want my relationship with my body, the body of woman
and the body of women to be a litany of sorrows. But in the face
of these overwhelming realities, answering the question with the
words my body has the taste of bitterest irony.
ANIELA CZAJEWSKA
Whose Body?
Lace
perforate and puncture
tiny little holes through which substance will
fow, seep, leak, drip.
permeate.
under the eye of the microscope
i am not i, diaphanous i dissolve
and all that is air melts into the solid
again.
skin, skin, paper thin
all that keeps the outside from the in.
but the lampshade casts shadows,
red light through my fngers,
starbursts for eyelids.
to suture requires needles;
stab. drag the thread through,
pull tight. disinfect.
weaving unweaving.
beautiful lace.
ANIELA CZAJEWSKA ANIELA CZAJEWSKA
We're sown together, she's born to mesmer
Beside, astride her, I die inside her.
NASTASIA ALBERTI NASTASIA ALBERTI
NASTASIA ALBERTI
An improvement on these nothings,
to subtly increase, and to build
upon the emptiness that has occurred for it is forever in past tense that these refections stem -
has balanced desirability and futility.
Sat in front of screen, the open saturation
of the words at hand, coming as they do not
in this hand, but in a generic font,
and the pouring over of words does not happen after they are written
but before and during,
as the freeze grips the tide and the fow stems itself backwards to the start of
the ended day. It tries harder, but the ties and their reaching become as wholesome as the minute,
and the dilation of this moment ceases to believe,
stretching ponderously over cliff-tops and fghting its way
from the head, to the reached for hands that stretch,
elongating themselves and forming gateways of a tendency
which, when taken in isolation, as it always must be,
is laid down sidled with a partition,
and ground forwards into abstraction, so that nothing can be grasped.
It cannot be grasped, but the clasping of these moments,
closed within a fst,
is a weakness.
Complication
SAM STENSLAND
His name was a message in a bottle
on the sea of his body.
She'd found the wrong
bottle. It just said hello.
She wrote goodbye,
under the hello, put it back in,
and gave it to the waves.
Your mood leaves things small things
where one room becomes another
and another.
Here and there are not opposites,
but neither was my concern for you
reconcilable with what I understood
as my own distance from things.
Because of
the why in because
she didnt go all the way this time,
not as far as orgasm, which
was not going out of its way
to please her either;
not in these grubby lodgings,
things in the cupboard
unaccountable
even during the taking
down of names,
the great textile census of 92.
Three things
Five rivers
HUGH SMITH
My practice deals with the idea of home, often examining its ability to become a foreign and anx-
ious space. I question the idea of home being transitory, and I use the body to suggest the idea of
the familiar and the unfamiliar coexisting within the space.
Stemming from my own experiences of living in other peoples homes a lot as a child, my work ex-
plores the lost ideal of the home, and documents an attempt at governing a space that is not mine,
and never will be.
CAMILLA GREENWELL CAMILLA GREENWELL
CAMILLA GREENWELL
Narcissism is often considered a social pathology. Selfes are
not just about narcissism though. They are not hung up on
walls like mirrors waiting to be seduced; they are shamelessly
catapulted into the cloud where a crowd is already waiting.
What matters above all is how the crowd perceives us. Giving
our self-protraits an audience is the key to our own visibility,
enabling our story to be documented.

Ultimately selfes are another way of furnishing the internet
presence which has become so vital to getting on in life. The
whole point of having an internet presence is to have access to
each other; not just access to information. Weve had this for
years by way of radio, television, newspapers and such. Now
we want to be found and seen by others. We have to be visible.
With their inherent ability to capture real-time existence, self-
ies seem to be the perfect windows into our souls.

But there is little truth in them. They are doctored, forced
and unnervingly self-conscious. They are also silly and can
make powerful moments seem inane. Like when David Cam-
erons Im on the phone to Obama selfe amidst the erupting
Ukraine crisis got ridiculed on Twitter earlier this year. Imagine
a peasant taking a selfe at the beheading of Anne Boleyn it
probably would have gone viral and trivialised the death of a
fallen Queen.

Today, as our own digital feats glow back at us like a series of
victories, we construct a very alert sense of how our own lives
look from the outside. We give our lives to the internet freely,
glad to be seen by others. This behaviour reminds me of Prin-
cess Di or Rhianna playing coy with the press and manipulating
them, knowing the cameras are upon them. With the internet
following our every move and thought it is hard not to get
sucked into the spotlight like these two women and construct
a memorable digital persona.

Selfes: Endlesly Watching Ourselves
JESS BRAND JESS BRAND
What messages are we sending out? This is me having fun. This
is me looking pretty. This is me in the library revising or pro-
crastinating or something. We make our lives visible but we
control how they appear. It is both a strong sense of ego cou-
pled with the lure of visibility. This heady combination is the
guiding force behind user-driven entities like Facebook and In-
stagram, which both struck gold in my opinion by tapping into
this psychology of visibility and fear of our own insignifcance.
No one wants to be alone. Being visible is equated to matter-
ing: upload or be forgotten.

So were all hard at work curating dazzling digital narratives,
choosing which moments and parts of ourselves to believe
in, and which to forget. Even the notorious belfes are just a
bunch of girls desperately seeking to immortalise their booties.
Whats the point in having such a magnifcent piece of ass if it
is forgotten or invisible?

On the surface selfe mania looks fun and harmless. Yet there
is something unsettling about our appearance mattering so
much. Aesthetics are driving us more than ever. Selfes clog
the mind with a negative fxation on how others perceive us, in
the same way that 24-hour news feeds and constant notifca-
tions cause mental congestion.

Perhaps a new social pathology is stirring. We are all turning
into PR gurus, contributing to the marketisation of the self. The
beautiful centrifugal ethos that spawned computer networks
and then the internet has morphed into a very individualistic
medium. Todays youth grow up on an internet that demands
a hyper-self conscious attitude, which does little to promote
real communal action or foster progress and instead deifes
the self. Confusingly the word share is repeatedly used to de-
scribe egotistical deeds.

We think we are sharing? No, we are watching. Endlessly
watching ourselves.
Collage: Flore Kunst
Anxiety and worry build up, stomach aches and headaches build up, but theres no space
to exhale. There are no antibiotics to take, or vitamins to swill down. Instead theres just a
crushing panic, rising up-throat and threatening to turn into tears.
I cry on the tube. Huddled into my scarf so other commuters dont freak out at the cry-
ing girl. I imagine all the things they could think could be wrong with me. STIs, heartbreak,
loss the whole tumbling of reasons that could make someone sob in a public place.
Fear, worry, apprehension. Its seriously unsightly to breakdown on the tube for no appar-
ent reason. Lonely.You cant put into words that youre exhausted, that the bodies moving
closer towards you is stressful, that youre just really terrifed that you might not succeed,
that you dont even know what success could be.
If you turned to the person next to you and said |help| would they shrink away? No one
on the journey has blinked my way or offered to help. And thats what I want. I want to be
unnoticed. Ignored. I cant stop crying but now Im heading upwards towards the cold, my
face blotched.
Loneliness, and fear of loneliness, come from the mind and crawl into the air. They blacken
the spaces in front of you, each step whirling you closer to the ground. Breathe, they tell
you to breathe in-and-out-for-a-count-of-ten to calm your body with rhythm and air.
The abyss stretches out, a long, blank motorway crisscrossing over and under. Marked by
wan service stations and limp burgers, treating you to a chai latte at the moment you just
want a cheap brew. Grey skies wash out, colourless clouds gather together. Cars eke an
existence based on our needs/wants/journeys but never actually taking you to the place
you know/want to be. We can laugh, beneath the anxiety, until it bubbles over. Opting out,
dirty protesting. We want more than this that we have in front of us but we dont know
how to get there we dont know how to get there we dont know how to get there.
Our arses scrape the open road, we sag into the journey. We hope we can out-of-body the
way out-of-this-town. Girl, theres a better life for me & you. Just out-of-reachbreathe.
weve got to get out of this place
if its the last thing we ever do
JADE FRENCH HSIENLOONG LIM
HANNAH MORT HANNAH MORT
HANNAH MORT
When the body is numb
MEREDITH JOHNSTON
///when the body is numb/////////and left alone to only feel/////////things it cant
physically////
I get sad. I get sad and lonely and depressed. I mourn for things that have not yet
happened //////
Please someone tell me what I want to do with my life because apparently I dont think
for myself Thats what my therapist said
Conclusions preached from an alternative reach of the hand onto my sweating
shoulder.
//////
I want to swim into sick sadness of whiskey cokes in dimly lit pool halls until I fuck
my
way into a frenzy. Swallow sand in my sour apple rotting cunt until a shadow child
spits
out onto the red lit streets to turn tricks.
Ive been depressed on the best drugs, that are supposed to make me tomato juice
happy.
Heat swirls from cheek to cheek until smile fades into cavernous cracks and empty
space.
//////
What. to. do.
I want to live one thousand lives
(Re: Contradictions. See second paragraph, please someone tell me what I want to do
with my life...etc.)
and I am selfsh
ripping hot wax off me until i am reborn a child of wonder and wetness and moisture
brought on by suspect fngers.
Been masturbating with an electric toothbrush because that is what makes
my life
unique and art
///////
right?
///////
I can taste hot iron in my mouth from my own blood seeping onto the
back of my
tongue.
I am alive
it says to me
I am alive and actively rusting
kick the aluminum can away until it falls into the deep set river
pulled out by a volunteer crew and recycled into someone elses super-
hero jaw line
sweet v8 curing a hangover that I had no cause producing.
///////
I reach my hand down into my throat and pluck out the half chewed tablet
of Vicodin
pop it onto your tongue so we can ride the numb nimble wave together
as I move my legs around your waist.
and wring my hands with your lotion soaked skin.
clothespin you to my bed
out to dry
out to dry
///////
MEREDITH JOHNSTON
I currently have a few different jobs, and one of them is working as a life model. Ive got pretty clear
rules about what I do, I only sit for classes, and I dont allow any photography. Whilst this puts me on a
spectrum of people who take their clothes off for money, to me the experience is entirely non-sexual,
Im totally comfortable with it, and Ive never received much criticism on that front.
However, after flming our frst Not So Forum, a soon-to-be-broadcast series of flmed forums with
outspoken public fgures and a studio audience, Ive begun to see this lack of criticism in a new light.
The frst talk focused on the question Who owns womens bodies?, although I wont spoil too much
because you really should watch the full thing. In the course of the discussion many great points were
made, but to me it felt like most of these were undermined by a disturbing undercurrent to the
conversation.
Im sure its nothing any of us havent heard before, a dismissive joke about a vajazzle from an immacu-
lately groomed woman and a knowing laugh from the audience. This was followed by a comparison of
posing nude for Louis Vuitton to glamour modelling, the conclusion being that the frst was ok because
that was art. At this point I wished I had raised my hand and said something because it all smacks of hy-
pocrisy, and a huge degree of snobbery. Again and again we see this replicated in the media and popular
opinion, the decision as to whether a woman is celebrating her own sexuality, or merely a victim of the
patriarchy seems to fall along class lines.
Why did lingerie football cause such an outcry in Australia, when Rollerderby, another sport where
attractive scantily clad women beat the tar out of each other, is seen as ironic and assertive? Why is
burlesque empowering and stripping not? Why is a Brazilian wax socially acceptable when a vajazzle is,
these days, little more than a punchline? These divisions seem to fall along lines of generally prescribed
taste and so of class. The view of a womans role in the use of her body is dictated by prejudiced
assumptions about where she must be from, what her education level is, and whether society deems
her capable of having made a choice.
As far as Im concerned, if you want to get a Brazilian wax thats totally fne. I understand the arguments
about infantalizing womens bodies and aspiring to a porn ascetic, but if its the way I want to style that
part of my body then I will and Ive yet to meet anyone who would judge or mock me for that. Much
like the unfortunate fringe I gave myself at 15, its my hair and Im going to cut it how I like. If people then
choose to stick gemstones all over their hairless vagina that, to me, is no more degrading, its just more
sparkly. However the conventional wisdom seems to go that this is tasteless, this is done by poorly
educated women, so this can be used as a punchline, and a by-word for disempowered womens bodies.
Generally, society is prepared to assume a woman is making an empowered choice, when her body is
being used for some sort of art. But the distinction between what is and isnt art is biased and hypo-
critical. Why have I never received any criticism for my life modelling? Im certain that, if I were striking
those very same poses for a photographer, not only would I receive a hell of a lot more money, but I
would be changed from an artists model to a glamour model and my friends and family would
certainly have some words of warning.
Why is this? A photorealistic drawing of my naked body isnt necessarily more artistic than an actual
photograph, and my role in producing the two is certainly the same. Very few would consider glamour
models part of the art world, and the common portrayal of them is as unintelligent, unempowered and
used.
On the other hand fashion models, many of whom regularly pose naked and in explicitly sexual images,
are seen as having active careers beyond these images, and the images themselves are often thought of
as art. What makes one category of women passive victims and the other not?
The sheer ridiculousness of this division becomes apparent when you consider different categories
of photography. Images from the now-dead Nuts magazine would not commonly be considered art,
but Terry Richardson, famous for producing explicit and aggressive pornographic images, is commonly
considered a fashion photographer and an artist. Incidentally Terry Richardson is also commonly con-
sidered a sexual predator, famed for coercing and confusing his young models into sex acts and is one
of the best examples of producing art that takes all agency away from its subjects. However, the nude
women in his photographs are still fashion models and not the subject of as many offhand jokes or
casual assumptions about their class as their glamour counterparts.
It might seem like a trivial issue, just another example of only-way-is-essex-baiting that the media seems
to fnd so easy, and part of the wider issue of class and snobbery that is Englands endemic curse.
However, this comes at a time when the importance of equality not just for but between women has
never been more signifcant. According to a recent report from the IPPR, the income gap between
graduate and non-graduate women has tripled, leaving many arguing that feminist movements are
leaving working class and less educated women behind. Clearly there are serious social and economic
forces that need to be addressed to correct this. But surely we should also look at the language used by
the media in general, and sadly, in a lot of self-proclaimed feminist commentary. If the most outspoken
and publicly visible women are happy to buy into the common assumption that those who use their
bodies in certain ways are incapable of making a conscious and empowered decision, then their value
as public commentators is seriously damaged by an inherent snobbery and hypocrisy.
The perceived agency of women over their bodies is an endlessly controversial issue. Ive not even
begun to touch on the perception and control of the bodies of women who are not cisgender, and the
perceived agency and control of women of colour, particularly when they are exposing fesh. These are
fascinating and important issues, ones that Im not best placed to write about. Im merely pointing out
an inherent social hypocrisy, a hierarchy of taste thats forced me, recently, to readdress the nature of
some of the work I do. Am I comfortable life modelling because Ive deemed it a nonsexual context? Im
not sure I can ever truly control the way my nudity is received by others, and if so, do I merely feel safer
because I know that sketches, as opposed to photographs, unequivocally fall into the category society
has deemed art. If so I need to take a serious look at the way I make choices about my body, and the
standards I judge other womens choices by. Most importantly I need to make sure that the next time I
hear a throwaway comment about a certain type of women, be it in a conversation or at a forum, that
I pick up on it and argue back.
Body/Hyprocrisy
EMILY CARLTON EMILY CARLTON
For My Bitches
Recently a friend messaged me in need of some feminist empathy. She along with others had
made a complaint about the dodgy misogynist behaviour of one of her lecturers and he was
subsequently suspended. Now the faculty was tense with many of her peers defending the
lecturer and my friend felt guilty for upsetting things. But she knew she had done the right
thing, the only person at fault was the lecturer who compromised the integrity of his faculty
through his creepy behaviour. On a different occasion she had recently called out one of her
peers on his misogynist language and again felt guilt. Essentially her guilt came because she had
crossed the invisible (glass) line between being a woman and being a bitch.
Think about the times that youve been called a bitch. Chances are in the majority of those
cases you were doing or saying something entirely justifed in response to the bad behaviour
of others. Some creepy dude sidles up to you on the bus, you decide that this time youre not
going to humour him and instead tell him to leave you alone: I was just trying to
compliment you. Bitch! Your partner does something rude and you get upset about it: Stop
being a bitch!
Real guys go for real down to Mars girls
Its no secret that women are taught to constantly pander to fragile male egos. Smile. Laugh at
their jokes. Dont challenge them if their arguments are weak, dont correct them if their facts
are wrong and especially dont call them out if they say something disrespectful to you or to
other women. A bitch then is a woman who fails to conform to this code of feminine behav-
iour, essentially when she behaves with the presumption that she is a human being.
Bitch is used to disempower women when we stand up for ourselves and break the ultimate
taboo of not obsessively putting others before ourselves. This pathological self-sacrifcing is
something that is so internalised that its hard to shake off and is what forces us to bite our
tongues even when we know were right or to self-fagellate with feelings of guilt when we do
speak up. In the case of my friend she was surrounded by supposedly progressive peers and
yet still this sexism and her internalised guilt persisted.
So my proposal is not worry about being a bitch and instead to take it back as a term of
empowerment, to be proud to be bitches, to congratulate our friends for being badass bitches
and to celebrate our queen bitch idols.
CRAZY BITCH
BITCH, STUPID ASS BITCH
OLD PUNK ASS BITCH, OLD DUMB ASS BITCH
A BITCH IS A BITCH, JUST A BITCH
- ANDRE 3000
SO, WHAT, AM I NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE AN OPINION?
SHOULD I KEEP QUIET JUST BECAUSE IM A WOMAN?
CALL ME A BITCH CAUSE I SPEAK WHATS ON MY MIND
GUESS ITS EASIER FOR YOU TO SWALLOW IF I SAT AND SMILED
- CHRISTINA AGUILERA
ROBIN MURPHY ROBIN MURPHY
FLORE KUNST
FLORE KUNST
http://24.media.tumblr.com/8
31ee157b9adaf0d26ec098a92
ac2a80/tumblr_n3cwzb9Z8S-
1t8ulp5o1_1280.jpg
FLORE KUNST
and I remember
ice between my teeth
ice under our feet
we were strung out
over street corners
padded sleeves with
abandoned cardboard
bicycle helmet bandana
and yes after a while
it did feel like
going into battle
sleeping on rough carpet foor
of occupied classrooms
long meetings in a drafty
hallway raised hands soy milk
dream lightly under watch of
security guards and neon bars
secret caucus in a travelodge
hotel in central london
take out your sim card and
leave it in the bathroom sink
how many people can you bring
to the brink to the edge of the
march and push beyond?
its hard to beat that feeling beating
back the cops and breaking kettle
walls with nothing but our hands
its hard to beat the black bloc
but Ive seen them beaten down
huddled in foetal knees drawn up
on grey cracked pavement stone
cops raining down blows
banners draped down multi story
arts school build costumes book blocs
face off with theatre of the oppressed
against pepper spray mad plainclothes
charging wild horses in uniform into
crowds of students with essay deadlines
thats what they call priorities
spent fve hours hemmed in on westminster
bridge burnt placards and a level homework
kids get wild eyes looking down into thames
fow far from soft into these restless hearts
hard to fnd a song we all know
goddamn those words are illusive
downtime in squatted social centres
collecting witness statement marks
of trained dog teeth on loose elbow
frst aid kit hopeless for what could
bleed internally what could follow us
through rooms for our whole lives
some battles you dont win or lose
they just fght you
witness this day my hand
DECCA MULDOWNEY
ELLEN ANGUS ELLEN ANGUS
Human saliva contains antibacterial agents.
RED Pepper
the antioxidant lycopene. RED LONG PEPPER? The level of carotene, like lycopene, is nine times higher
in red peppers. Red peppers have twice the vitamin C content of green peppers
toe nail
a horn-like envelope covering the dorsal
- main chemical component consists of hard keratin which is high in sulphur compared to keratins of
skin
A mix of vellus hair and Terminal hair around the belly button
Fine Hair fne composed of protein, notably keratin.
Urine
organic solutes including urea, creatinine, uric acid, and trace amounts of enzymes, carbohydrates,
hormones, fatty acids, pigments, and inorganic ions such as sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), magnesium
(Mg2+), calcium (Ca2+) AMONG OTHERS
ELLEN ANGUS
The social power of hegemony happens on micro levels now- individually promoted and adopted across the
board- from person to person on a scale of conversation (online discourse) that is both international, immediate,
and exists in the private sphere of ones home or hand-set. The hegemonic beliefs of a society used to move at the
glacial pace of that societys economic and social breakthroughs. Now, however, this change happens constantly and
on the micro-level of person to person relations and encounters. There is no longer such thing as a breakthrough,
as Foucault always doubted there was, but change happening almost constantly within the minds of people, and
against a backdrop of excessive, changing information.
The parameters of hegemonic acceptability have blurred conceptually, as to transgress is only one way to achieve
the shock that seems to satisfy as coolness in our post-technological, celebrity obsessed culture.
Eight years ago, in a Media Studies class, we are told that hegemony dictates that a photo of a toned, white, blond
woman in gym clothes is a acceptably ideal female, and that simultaneously hegemony rejects the image of a female
bodybuilder that we were shown afterwards. A few of the male class members demonstratively sounded a sonic
recoil in their mass disgust.
In this certain technological age, the social scenes have revealed themselves to one another; this actually happens
live, as now our use of these forums is so integrated into our public and private realms: the instant you see some-
thing you like, you realise you like it, and make it public. Inevitably (to some of us!) in this set up, the queer social
community of East London has proven the coolest. In the sense that it is the sought-after culture to popular
celebrities. Yet it is also a loose grouping of scenes and queer connections. Helped by the confdence provided in
being the kings and queens and club kids of our very own romanticised and politicised constructed world, these
cultures set up and blur the parameters of hegemonic acceptability every day- through our eyes, our tastes and
our personal, performative presentations.
Every day, each person on the street redefnes how a girl, boy, woman, man or human can reproduce their catego-
ries. We decide our gendered and human presentation within a setting of drag and queerness. The iconographic
image of our restrictive sexes worn like a joke hat or camp pop culture reference, opens the gate for us to
present in any nature we like.
Micro-power, operating between every person, is the site of change. And within this setting, the thought, there
is something unusual about that person, and I like it, is the act of emancipation. The power of creativity coercing
unacceptance or tolerance to become envy and inspiration. This combined with the staunch adoption of
intersectional feminism by young women in the area might just provide the emancipatory moment weve grown up
hoping for, and which many of us moved here for.
The (Y)east London Scene These Days
And the efect of its cultural popularity [OR: Foucaults History of
Sexuality continued: Biopower Enacted in East London Gender Politics.]
MARTHA MARGETSON
Photography: Nastasia Alberti
I also have WRITERS BLOCK; an affiction that has followed me around London, the West Mid-
lands, and now the east coast of America. I have two plays to fnish one to edit, one to complete
and neither are getting done. I had assumed putting my body into a new space would add another
10 minutes onto my radio play, and push me beyond Act 1 Scene 1 on the stage play. And, of course,
help me meet my copy deadline. I am discovering that currently my body in a different place has
left my creative mind in the same dark tunnel/abyss as ever.
I have always put emphasis on the correlative relationship between my work and where I am. In
Australia, I would write write write a million short scripts, stories, sketches. In Asia, I was never
without a pen and journal, scribbling everything I saw and said and thought. New places meant new
thoughts, I believed. I had assumed my trip to the USA would give my pen a new lease of life, and
ink would magically blot and scribble all over my page. I imagined furious tapping on keyboards in
Manhattan a la Carrie Bradshaw, not the mindless pushing of refresh on my Facebook homepage.
In NYC (where I am mostly based), people keep asking me about the UK political whirlwind du
jour UKIP or the UKIP as people quite irritatingly refer to it. New Jersey, like New York and
many other east coast states, is flled with immigrants, namely my family. Their stories are much the
same; they arrived with nothing, and now they have everything.
Im not trying to compare my writers block to the struggle of an impoverished immigrant in a new
country. That would be terribly self-involved, even though I am quite self-involved. But the reason
UKIP exists and is successful (the product of disengaged groups with the political world) is not
exclusive to its space. UKIP, or the UKIP, could exist anywhere where unhappy people searching
for work reside. People mocking them on twitter, or dangerously just referring to their support-
ers as right-wing lunatics, will simply intensify feelings of isolation from a group who are already
constantly under represented. They are disengaged bodies in a space that dismisses them.
Professor Harris Beider outlined the disconnection with white working class people with politics
in 2011 [http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/fles/jrf/working-class-community-cohesion-full.pdf], the same
year summer riots began nationally. And, as if by magic, a party appeared offering a voice for the
ignored, and gained support. In America, too, there are voices that have been forgotten in the midst
of a global recession. Nothing is exclusive to its space, yet everybody seems surprised.
I know a lot of UKIP voters (insert: some of my best friends are) and they are not the unedu-
cated, racist right-wingers they have been portrayed as. Many are drawn to the fat rate of tax,
the rejection of the EU, the possible dismantling of the NHS, which some believe to be inferior to
other developed countries healthcare systems. A lot of them are young, hyper-educated, knee-deep
in debt, angry and looking for answers from a political system that has forgotten them. What is
scary, of course, is that some are simply drawn in by Farages weird man-down-the-pub glamorous
exterior that appears to mask a serious xenophobic and racist centre.
Anyway, I have just done the unthinkable and made a tenuous link between my writers block and
the rise of a right-wing party. But if nothing is exclusive to its space, that is certainly bad news
for my impending deadline, or the two plays I am yet to fnish. Potentially its the body you have
to change in order to see change. Of course Im still hoping that by changing the space, you will
change the body. We shall see.
OLIVIA HENNESSY OLIVIA HENNESSY
Photography: Nastasia Alberti
I AM WRITING THIS FROM VERONA, NEW JERSEY AN ALL-AMERICAN, 4X4D, GUN WIELD-
ING, SOPRANOS-TOURISM SECTION OF SUBURBIA. SITTING IN A DINER, STIRRING CREAM
INTO MY COFFEE, I HAVE A COPY-WRITING DEADLINE. SO NATURALLY I AM ON FACEBOOK.
Close Your Eyes & Think Of England
HANNAH FARRELL HANNAH FARRELL
HANNAH FARRELL
To liberate
is to remove the shackles
and chains
that attach themselves to an individual
or a collective frame
but
who is to decide
which shackle rubs
whose existence raw?
Who is to decide
which shackle
rusts the wrong values
into an individuals core?

Western education is a sin
it is not liberation
it is instead
a shackle bellow the shin.

If you were to lick a shackle it may taste of metal
and if I were to lick that same shackle
it may taste of sugar
so
how is liberation to work
when we all understand the world
through a different palate
of words?

Western education is a sin
it is not liberation
it is instead
a shackle bellow the shin.

that women are entitled to an education
and that
that education should be free
but others,
others dont agree with me
because they believe
the
Western curriculum to be a shackle
that wraps itself around its students ankles.

Western education is a sin
it is not liberation
it is instead
a shackle bellow the shin.

The word justice
triggers a number of visions,
which can create friction
because those in opposition
begin to argue that
each others ideologies are dated
and built upon fction
but
if we strip things back
we are left with a remainder:
fact,
which is that we are all
made of the same thing;
fesh and blood and bone and skin.

Western education is a sin
it is not liberation
it is instead
a shackle bellow the shin.

The ideas that escape
from my mouth
are shaped by the education
I have received
an experience that has made me believe
that women are entitled to an education
and that
that education should be free
but others,
others dont agree with me
because they believe
the
Western curriculum to be a shackle
that wraps itself around its students ankles.

Western education is a sin
it is not liberation
it is instead
a shackle bellow the shin.
ROSIE SPENCE ROSIE SPENCE
{excerpt from} Liberation is Justice