London
Long Read Interview
Akram Khan on the Pleasure of Drowning in Horizontal Time
Akram Khan is one of the most celebrated and respected dance artists and storytellers today. Khan’s work stays rooted in long-term creative partnerships and is mostly known for its…
Long Read Interview
Eva Oh on the Psychology of Desire and Sexwork in the City
My friends and I hit Nolita, an area of Lower Manhattan, one summer night; it was New York Fashion Week, and we headed to a magazine party for which…
Long Read Interview
Penelope Haralambidou on Allegorical Construction and the Mirror for Princesses
In recent decades the medieval Italian poet and writer Christine de Pizan has been the subject of renewed interest, motivated by a feminist reappraisal of this remarkable, pioneering author…
Epistolary
An Urban Confessional
Hi J., Our memories from Croydon keep on coming back these days. Did I ever tell you about the time I almost got mugged, roughed up a bit…
Long Read Interview
Katherine Angel on Vulnerability as Desire
Over the past dozen years, Katherine Angel’s writing has sought to create intimate spaces for sexual joy in spite of the myriad socially constructed barriers against that possibility today.
Extra Reading
Spy Stories
The espionage novel facilitates a delicious sort of voyeurism, giving you access to the intimate and sometimes sordid details of another human’s life. How do you feel about meeting the…
Some Thoughts On...
Cosmetics
Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder. Nº1 • Femme Fatale In an iconic scene from Billy Wilder’s 1944 thriller…
Tentacular Thinking
Mistakes are Pure Colour
I am having an erotic lunch, I write to Ronnie. Entrecôte. Béarnaise. Sole meunière. White wine. A cigarette. I am in Paris, the city is hot, like a tongue,…
Extra Reading
Coming-of-Age Stories
Coming of age is the most exquisitely painful of life’s many transformations. It’s a period of heightened sensitivity to the world and bewilderment at the eruption of desires beyond our…
Epistolary
The Appropriate
Dear Branwell, I tried to marry every single one of my serious relationships. That first one, my first graduate school boyfriend, was ring shopping when I left him.
Some Thoughts On...
Cuisine
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Nº1 • Key Lime Pie At the beginning of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, two men go out for oysters.
Musings
Notes on Longing
(I) Towards the end of 2020, my husband and I spent what felt like hours going over Covid-19 protocols. We were about to host…
Long Read Interview
Michael Armitage on Mythic Landscapes and Visual Memory
At the cusp of figurative and abstract aesthetic traditions, Michael Armitage’s paintings are large works of expressionist landscapes. Human–animal beings are woven into visual ecologies rich with sensual life.
Some Thoughts On...
Sexual Undertones
Silvana Mangano in Teorema (1968)© Reporters Associati – Roma Nº1 • Cinema as Refuge In a 1969 interview in Lyon,…
Long Read Interview
Tai Shani on Affects Unknown
Working across performance, film and installation, artist Tai Shani has steadily developed an intoxicating mythology. Drawn from Greek myths, science fiction, queer theory and feminist activism, her fictions trouble…
Long Read Interview
Bethan Laura Wood on the Dreamer that Dreams the Dream
In December 2015, I met Bethan Laura Wood at a serendipitous event, where a joint friend of ours, the curator Sigrid Kirk, hosted a group of female creatives over…
Long Read Interview
Saelia Aparicio on Masturbators and Hybrid-Bodied Creatures
Born in Valladolid, Spain and now living and working in London, artist Saelia Aparicio understands bodies – their leakiness, unruliness and sensitivity. Her sculptural cosmos is populated by hybrid…
Long Read Interview
Charlie Fox on Transformation and the Deliciously Weird Creatures Who Live within Him
Sometimes you pick up a book not realising the power that lies beneath its cover. Like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, what exactly is in it remains a mystery,…
Musings
Ocular Offal, Chromatic Cannibals
It was dusk when we sat on folding chairs in the concrete courtyard, our backs to the industrial steel bins. We tapped personal screens made of unbreakable sapphire to…
Long Read Interview
Tim Etchells on Ventriloquism, Phone Sex, and the Hard Work of Language
The erotic quality of the oeuvre of visual artist and writer Tim Etchells is perhaps not immediately apparent. Though it is conceptual in nature and precise in execution, his visual…
Musings
Event Horizon
Event is a thing that happens or takes place, marked by its levels of significance; it is the momentous imprint of planned or unplanned happenings that can have a social…
Long Read Interview
Ed Atkins on Abject Bodies, Incorporeality and Virtual Flesh
Many years ago at Tate Britain, I picked up a small paperback written by an artist called Ed Atkins. Stacked in a darkened exhibition space that preceded a screening room,…
Tentacular Thinking
The Monstrous Passion
The tongue, this invertebrate, which is the grey eminence of Amorpolis, is the prime minister in the shadow cabinet; in fact, much more capable than the officially serving Penis;…
Essay
Musings
Do You Want to Play…
How shall we start talking about the course of activities that does not serve to represent you? Would you be interested in such an activity in the first instance? Do…
Long Read Interview
Matthew Beaumont on London Nightwalking: Evoking the Dangerous and Sensual
Life brings coincidences, or coincidences pronounce life. I came across Matthew Beaumont’s tremendous research at one of my favourite bookshops in London. Currently wrapped up in thinking about the night…
Musings
Warding Off the Evil Eye
In ancient Rome, there was a firm scientific belief in the Evil Eye, a curse fired from the glare of a malevolent gazer on an unsuspecting…
Long Read Interview
James Richards on Physical Logics and Living with Images
Turner-Prize nominated artist James Richards uses a particular phrase to describe his fascination with the films of fellow artist Steve Reinke; that through his work you get a sense…
Long Read Interview
Simon Stephens on Scorsese, Libidinous Creativity and Looking for Humanity Where You Least Expect it
I first met Simon Stephens when he conducted a workshop with a group of young directors at the National Theatre Studio in London. He gave us chunks from his latest…
Musings
Principles of Pleasure
Pleasure is a double bind. Its inherent quality of finitude keeps you under the influence. It attracts and repels at all times. Perhaps it is a continuous engagement and negotiation…
Long Read Interview
Eddie Peake on Revolution, the Ideal Body, and Roger Rabbit
Eddie Peake’s artworks marshal affect to inseminate the hallowed gallery space with a sweaty slick of bodies rendered under the fluorescent light of the nightclub. Driven by jungle music, his…
Encounter
- Sophie von Hellermann
- Ayòbámi Adébáyò
- Jayden Ali
- Katherine Angel
- Saelia Aparicio
- Michael Armitage
- Ed Atkins
- Marlies Augustijn
- Matthew Beaumont
- Holly Black
- Holly Blakey
- Jennifer Boyd
- Joan Juliet Buck
- Lena C. Emery
- Ernesto Chahoud
- Hans Demeyer
- Patrizio Di Massimo
- Kitty Drake
- Ben Eastham
- Lauren Elkin
- Tim Etchells
- Charlie Fox
- Andi Gáldi Vinkó
- David Haines
- Penelope Haralambidou
- Lara Haworth
- Celia Hempton
- Tim Hoare
- Natasha Hoare
- Vincent Honoré
- Isaac Julien
- Akram Khan
- Matt Lambert
- Eva Oh
- Lola Olufemi
- Eddie Peake
- Agnieszka Piotrowska
- Laure Prouvost
- Caitlin Quinlan
- James Richards
- Tai Shani
- Kashif Sharma-Patel
- Antonia Showering
- Julia Silverberg
- Victoria Sin
- Simon Stephens
- Fatos Üstek
- Johnny Vivash
- Ivar Wigan
- Tobias Withers
- Bethan Laura Wood
Visit
- Florist
The Covent Garden Academy of Flowers
St Martin's Courtyard, 9 Slingsby Pl, Covent Garden, London
www.academyofflowers.com- Club
The New Evaristo Club
57 Greek St, W1D 3DX, London