HSR correspondent Eileen Tweaking Slightly chatted with Jawnino at Exit, Glasgow. It was packed, no one on their phones, etc. Half the conversation was lost to the wind/redacted, but he told HSR he was the laziest artist in the UK and put us onto other stuff too. Read below.

'Nonchalance' is a word often attached to the some of the most contrived, boring fashion people you have ever met. It was used in the RA bio to sell tickets for Jawnino at Exit, Glasgow, but I think that is an inappropriate gloss for an evident, unforced, lack of ego and artistic curiosity for the world, outside the eternal recurring mirror of our For You Page.

Anyway, we are at Exit, a nightclub space taken over by a young man with a vision. I'd spoken to a friend of mine, a professional whistler, fresh off her European tour, who gave a hint to the nightclub's lore. There are the two floors, the upper part used to be an artist studios/strip club and the lower section - which makes up the club - also used to be a strip club, except the lower strip club was dodgier.

There was a staircase going between the two named ‘pigeon world’.

'Why?' I ask.

‘It had dead pigeons in it.'

We speak in the backrooms of the club where everyone seems to be laughing about Jawnino's rangers jacket.

Jawnino: 'They're booing! Someone in here must be supporting rangers. Somebody.’

(There's lore here that's too much to go into right now.)

Jawnino: “We’ll excuse it tonight”

Hollywood Superstar Review: Where would you take a girl on a date?

Jawnino: “Som Saa in Whitechapel, it’s the best Thai food, they do a little 2-4-1 deal.”

(It's loud so we go outside on the street.)

HSR: Laziest Artist in UK right now?*

Jawnino: That's a dark one. I'm going to have to say me.
I just feel like, flow-wise and just, I’m just talking a lot. I’m not really spitting and rapping as hard as a lot of people go. I’m just talking my truth. Like, it's not really a rapping thing. And I feel like I could have more output, so I’d say me.

I mention that HSR are trying to contact Eline Vehrodia.

Jawnino: Yeah, yeah. There's another girl I think you'd tap into. She's called Angel Gray. She just released one song recently. It's called "Outside." She's who I'm fucking with right now, UK-like, female-wise. And obviously BXKS, like, that's my... that's my sister. But like, Angel Gray is tapped.

HSR: First grime record that made an impression on you?

Jawnino: **Skepta, Mike Lowery.

HSR: And then 2026 is the year of...

The Firehorse.

HSR: Firehorse?

Yeah, Firehorse. It's not just a horse, it's the Firehorse.

HSR: It's the Firehorse. What's the Firehorse?

Jawnino: It means more enjoyment, more litness. We're growing up. 2025 was a period where we enjoyed and we take it back, we enjoyed what was going on, we understand. But 2026 is where we let go, unleash, and do our thing.

Hollywood Superstar visits Hannah Taurins studio in Brooklyn. Represented by Theta gallery, Taurins paintings are a step forward for contemporary figuration, which can sometimes fall into the gutter between ironic grotesque john currin derivations and tired imitations of Francis Bacon's phantasmagoria. Taurins captures the archival impulse - media is an ouroborus - with the pechance and kitschness of Audrey Hepburns Funny Face (1957).

Her mannequins, her muses, are drawn from the torn pages of now defunct fashion magazines, or scans from the FIT library. She preserves the flaws of the copier in her pastels and gouache. Inspiration ranges from carefully curated wedding boards on Pinterest, to the editorials of brands like Kiko Kostadinov.

Taurins work, for this editor, when paired with the accelerating relationship between fashion and art, encapsulates the habits of a certain level of online personhood. Mining for information, for images, nostalgic or futuristic, through digital and traditional archival integration.

Hannah Taurins reminds us most of Francis Picabia, "He's such a freak" Taurins says, "I love him".

Her exhibitions, including solo show God, Let me Be Your Instrument (Theta, 2025) and Cabin Pressure (2025) on view at Air Service Basel. are dramturgical, following the rise, hubris and desire of her female protagonists.

Hollywood Superstar

How do you source images? What do you look for? There is a trend at the moment for artists working in both traditional and non-traditional mediums to search for slightly retro, editorial images on Pinterest. It's a new kind of source material. That and the mannequin trend, but I guess models are just mannequins, in a way.

Hannah Taurins

I’m not above Pinterest - it’s crazy - like for the next show I'm working on a bridal theme, and obviously, Pinterest is perfectly engineered for bridal planning.

You can often tell when the original poster is just a really passionate researcher with a scanner. I like to use libraries at FIT. Thefashionspot.com is a big one too. I follow a bunch of fashion magazine scan accounts on instagram. I used to use Flickr when I was using freakier, niche photos and was more paranoid about copyright. Deviant Art, too.

It’s tough because not every good photo is going to make a good drawing. That’s why I felt challenged by the Kiko Kostadinov images. They were such compelling photos, but hard to translate into compelling images.

With some works I have to take on more responsibility for the “why” of the drawing.

I used to not draw men at all, I just didn’t feel interested in it. This has changed for me recently. Lately I’ve been drawing men in a fantasy lover role! This has been lots of fun for me, and I think is a result of some recent healing. Plus I love men. Maybe before I felt as if to make a successful work I had to embody the subject, and I felt far away from men. But now I just love to put them in as a little vessel for desire.

HS

When you work, you’re drawing from a photocopy of the original photograph, so you're twice removed from the actual photographic scene. Your backgrounds, too, have a semi-abstraction in them, like you’ve captured the detritus on the surface of the photograph, or the glare on the camera lens.

HT

My images are distorted from the magazine. I like the idea of incorporating a glare or translating the glitch that comes with the photocopy. It’s exciting to me that you noticed that. Sometimes the decisions I make with color are a result of my printer running low on ink or something. But even to include a margin or to draw the stack of pages underneath the page with my reference.

HS

Do you feel like there's a trend in figurative painting, or drawing, toward using super niche internet language?

HT

I've felt this way since Tumblr. The source material feels like a natural part of my practice. I had a fashion makeup blog - which I deleted when I was in cringe mode. I pick the images in a way that I can say something about myself. For my last show at Theta, God, Let me be Your Instrument, it was about this groupie. She is following this musician around that she's enamoured by, and she reaches stardom, but then she falls, and she dies. It’s super personal, that story.

I remember in high school making paintings of screenshots from snapchat messages. My teachers hated it! They had no idea why I was doing it. I was fascinated by how my friends and I were communicating with each other.

HS

There is a painting of her called Groupies Live Forever, 2025 where her soul is coming out of her body - she finds herself spiritually reborn. How did the concept for this piece arise?

When I first thought of it, I knew the show would be about rock stars. All the images I had been compiling were fashion images referencing music. I thought the protagonist of the paintings could be a groupie. I did get my heart broken by a musician while making this show. I remember doing a walkthrough at the gallery with a drawing class from Princeton. I turned totally red when I told them the show was about my breakup. It was so vulnerable but that’s how I knew it was right for me to share. What better catalyst for personal transformation than love and heartbreak? This painting is about that. In life if you do it consciously I think one dies and is reborn many times.

HS

So what about the next show, the bride? That’s a kind of another nostalgic kick, bridal couture is such a specific niche but a huge industry, every Pinterest user can recount being accosted with a million bridal mood pages.

HT

I want to do a delusional bride. I’m building the storyline now - what is her character arc? I’m the age my mom was when she got married and had me. I’m curious about the fantasy of the perfect bride and holy union, and the anxieties surrounding that. I feel caught now more than ever between being a sort of perfectly self contained artist for the rest of my life, taking lovers, whatever, and really buying the marriage story.

There’s something there too about Jung’s Animus - the unconscious masculine in a woman. The first work I made with this show in mind was of a pregnant woman. It’s my fantasy about self-fertilization, the result of integrating all parts of oneself and achieving this kind of creative fertility.

HS

How do you feel like your practice and Instagram interact with each other? This idea of looking, being looked at. Your work have these female protagonists that appeal to a gaze - but also to a digital lens. Like, your paintings do well on Instagram. When your refiguring these photocopied images, or painting a steven meisel campaign, do you feel the gaze changes at all?

HT

I used to feel shameful about this, but I no longer do. Making work that does well on Instagram is important to me - fuck it. People have fantasies about what artists are like - my work is about meeting people halfway, creating things. That’s where desire comes in. I think viewers desire something naughty, an insight into me as a person, or into the artwork.

I am often looking for an energy - one for myself and one that I want to bring to the work, as well. It feels so earnest, it's my own creative and sexual desire, and if that's a traditional male gaze…then.

I think you can tell my work is made by a woman. I went to Cooper Union when it wasn’t super fashionable to be making sexy figurative work. It was conceptual work that went down easier there. I’ve gotten a few bad reviews - this vlogger went into my show and talked about this one work, Spread. He comes into the gallery and starts talking about the work, but doesn’t want to be told about it, he’s monologing like:

“I’ve just been seeing images of this painting all over Instagram, and had to come see it myself, it must be a fluke, it collapses modernism and postmodernism into one painting, and theres no way that Hannah Taurins could have been aware she was making such a brilliant move”.

Something about Barnett Newman, lines, abstraction and Courbet’s origin of the world. He just couldn’t give me the compliment. He couldn’t acknowledge the sensuality of the show for one second; he even described the painting as prudish.

Hannah Taurins work installed at Salon (October 16th-19th, 2025) by Hollywood Superstar, Chess Club and Gnossienne Gallery.

HS

Talk to me about your process of making. Do you ever paint from live models? Or only printed images?

I much prefer working from printed images because I can be kind of weird and intense in the studio. I like to get very stoned and listen to the same songs over and over again. I feel moved to draw at odd hours and can’t predict when I need to step away for a walk or a nap or whatever.

When I'm making work, this shift happens. I'll be looking at something and being so present in my body. I find that the hardest thing about my process is to let myself be that present, and when there's someone else in the studio, it's so much harder. I have to completely objectify them. There's a shift between looking at someone as a person in your studio, and breaking them down into shapes and lines.

And that switch doesn't happen when you paint from images?

HT

It’s almost automatic but once it happens, it feels like there is no separation from myself and the image. I am just a vessel for the work. I’m addicted to that space, and have been since I was a kid.

A few weeks ago, when the Frieze Fair came to London town, Hollywood Superstar sat down (in the DM) with a radical and Instagram-powered neo-gallerist to talk about network painting and speedrunning shows with no nation. Here is the interview with Arden Asher-Tate, aka. Pirates of the Carbomb Infantry.

Best group project since Reena Spaulings...it incidentally, or on purpose, has a overlap with the artists. Like Merlin Carpenter. They also don't priotise silly things like spelling, visual aesthetic cohesion, or neo-liberal graphics, much like the editorial over here in Hollywood.

Have you been asked to submit a project? If you haven't, maybe you need to be:

a) more underground

b) less commercially viable

c) worse at instagram

Access the project here.

PIRATES OF THE CARBOMB INFANTRY:

Hello Percy Jackson's Mom. I am very glad you have liked exhibits. The project is anarcho nomadic space run by myself, sculptor Arden Asher-Taste.

After schooling I went to New York with very romantic idea of finding group of artists like Franco Polish Black Jean Porno Club.

I found painters who piss in corners and galleries in apartments, but you know these kids pay 3000 dollars now for an apartment? That was the case in New York. In Europe provision and scrappiness push against confines of bureaucratic rules but in Brooklyn my friends wanted art lifestyle outside capitalist careerism. I too wanted no rules but my Visa had run out and my money had run out. So now I am back in Berlin and there are painters who piss in corners here too.

HOLLYWOD SUPERSTAR:

What is there to be gained from nomadism in Today's World?

PIRATES OF THE CARBOMB INFANTRY:

hen you live nomadic you meet many artists and you become less of a tight ass because you need people to take you to bars and places to sleep. You take the train all over with university rail pass and never graduate and meet many artists and God forbid you see their artwork or you might puke. But you need these friends and they too are contours that help define your own taste.

HSR:

More than travelling between cities, which are all expensive and full of corners of piss- there is travelling through DMs. I have found you coming closer and closer as my friends excitedly report being asked to 'make solo show'. Pirates of the Carbomb Infantry sail the seas of the social fabric to make decisions about programmes? How do you choose?*

PIRATES OF THE CARBOMB INFANTRY:

I follow back artists if I like their work and usually I ask them to make show. Two hundred artists have been asked to do exhibit, and I wait on images from one hundred more. But there are no tags and sales and no open bar. So the whole anarcho nomadic project space continues as decentralised accelerationist system driven by desire to make show.**

HSR:

It’s iPhone realness. And perhaps a way to solve the problem of recording performance/art. You speedrun the opening: it instantly becomes a memory on an iPhone. It is a collective camera roll. One of the reasons why I admire the practice because it is just so lean. What do you say to the idea that The fat that gets cut out to make your lean gallery practice are the people. That it’s a non human and semi anonymous non event. In this case, you are looking for some purity, no? No messy human ‘buzz’ involved?

PIRATES OF THE CARBOMB INFANTRY:

I like very much the idea of a speed run. In the states there are massive conferences of streamers who run through video games as fast as possible. They find gaps in wall collision detectors and niche tech to skip cut scenes. Boys in bedrooms spend hours a day breaking the game and finding optimal routes to the endpoint. Reclusive artists like me can watch from my studio in Berlin, and live the route vicariously. I don’t romanticize efficiency programs, but I see value in breaking the game of exhibition and art career.

Now there is need to interrogate networking from the angle of social practice, and while the project cuts out the physical gathering, the event of the iPhone opening is intrinsically social, by means of distribution.

HSR:

One thing that brings your shows together is the printing out of things, the use of printer paper. Do you see any other patterns in what people present to pirates?

PIRATES OF THE CARBOMB INFANTRY:

Yes. With printing there is cheapness and informality, but also a rich history of expediency. In the same way this space rethinks need for context and infrastructure, many of these artists are challenging material value structures, focusing instead on communicating. Screaming nonsense is also communication. That is the speaking of growing babies.**

HSR:

Do you want to 'break art career' of 'big' artists for a moment? Or is it more important for these 'small' artists to be together?

PIRATES OF THE CARBOMB INFANTRY:

Hito’s show was very good. Over a 10 minute rant the performer linked together Georgia Alliata’s POCBI selfie exhibit, Guzzler, bad Jake Shore work, and her own theoretical oeuvre. These social games of in-jokes, forgery, and trolling are the same strategies the Real Fine Arts artists were playing with Network Painting in the early 2010’s (I use Network Painting from Jana Euler, in how she uses for self/scene-referentiality in her work. Later it was used by Zach Feuer gallery in NYC for the show Context Message, curated by Real Fine Arts.) We are interested in not big or small, but a familial conversation. Everyone points up to their big sister and makes mocking face. That is a part of family love.

Hollywood Superstar meets with Olivia Kan-Sperling, writer and New Yorker and editor at The Paris Review. Her writing has appeared in Heavy Traffic, The Paris Review, Art Review and Spike. Moat Recently, she has released Little Pink Book (2025) a softcore porn fantasy about a lonely barista-blogger in Shanghai, following her first novel Island Time (2022) a novel concerned with the psycho-geography of Kendall Jenner

This Artist Take should be read in full, continously, rather than in modicom

I understood the Artist’s Take prompt as “things that inspire me” and/or “things I like.” I realized I don’t have much to say about things I like and that the things that inspire me do so because they leave something half-empty / fill me with negativity. I also just like things because they are bad. Mulling over my taste, I often think of a line in Huysmans’s Against Nature: “𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝓌𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓈𝑜 𝒶𝒷𝓈𝓊𝓇𝒹, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓃 𝒾𝓃 𝓈𝓊𝒸𝒽 𝒶 𝒹𝒾𝓈𝑔𝓊𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝓉𝓎𝓁𝑒, 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒷𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝓉𝑜𝓀𝑒𝓃𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒶𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝓁𝓂𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝓇𝑒𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓀𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓇𝒶𝓇𝑒.”

Huysmans’s hipster edgelord aesthete protagonist, Des Esseintes, has a very advanced contrarian aesthetic sensibility, especially as regards badness of all kinds. His turtle doesn’t match his rug so he encrusts it with jewels until it dies! This is a list of things I’ve obsessed over but feel badly about in different ways.

1. Rihanna

In 5th grade I read a New Yorker article about a woman who has written many hit songs for Rihanna. It described her process: singing random phrases into the microphone while scrolling through her notes app, into which she had copied language ripped from TV shows or advertisements encountered while walking around the city. That’s when I knew, I love words…(Equally inspiring to me: how Young Thug writes songs, which is, scrawl a shape on a napkin while on drugs, then “read” it in the recording booth while on drugs.)

So because since 5th grade I’m into language, I like that Rihanna has an album called Talk That Talk. Rihanna is always singing about saying stuff or even writing. “Birthday Cake” rocks and it’s an extended metaphor involving writing stuff in icing on her birthday cake. (“Come and put your name on it / Put your name on it / … Cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake… / And it's not even my birthday / But you wanna put your name on it!”) Rihanna is not a singer, she is a speaker, the blown-out speaker in an Uber that is playing the radio that is playing Rihanna. This is the ineffable beauty, mystery, and melancholy of Rihanna, and I find it very moving, but I feel this good girl gone bad’s music is, mostly, bad as in not good.

I think Des Esseintes is fascinated by bad books because the worse something is, the more impressive the mental labor required to enjoy it. In my heart, I know I don’t “like” Rihanna except in some convoluted intellectual way, which makes me sad. So does Rihanna. Her best lyrics are: “Yellow diamonds in the light / Now we're standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine / What it takes to come alive.” The senseless fragments of her club song lyrics hopelessly grasping for meaning yet failing to achieve any kind of real emotional resonance is very poignant to me.

2. Edouard Levé, Autoportrait

It got back to me that someone—“this guy”—said my work is a “narcissistic self-affirmation project.” My writing is like always an explicit interpretation/homage to other people’s writing/art/etc!! But yeah I have written about my life sometimes?? (I’m generously assuming this is a genuine critique of my writing and not how I dress FashionNova on instagram.) Obviously all art is partially a narcissistic self-affirmation project, because it means forcing your stupid interiority into an immortal object, then asking other people to care about it. Certainly everything that goes “against nature” is a hubristic human enterprise...but usually only one half of humanity is reprimanded for any of this. Less glaring instances of misogyny are honestly so sad and painful and crushing to me, but towards this unknown (not even interesting to narrow down which guy it was) reader, I feel condescension and abstractly pissed off, which is very very inspiring! I wonder whether “this guy” likes the autofictional work of Huysmans…Mishima…Josef Strau…Proust… Or Edouard Levé, another male inspiration of mine:

Levé’s Autoportrait (English translation Lorin Stein) is a short book composed only of true, first-person statements about himself. The variability this simple constraint produces is stunning: the book is a time-lapse experience of content moving around in a very tight contour, meaning being created through rhythm and differentiation. Autoportrait is a new literary form, but also a tale as old as time…The truth and beauty of all autobiography is that it’s the most humbling form of literature: nothing mutilates your own subjectivity so much as reducing it to a text. It is also the most generous to the reader: nothing teaches you about your own subjectivity like the ruthless dissection of someone else’s.

But in order to learn about yourself you unfortunately first have to learn a lot about Edouard Levé, who seems like a typical guy and asshole. You learn the facts of his life, but also, more interestingly, that he believes an accurate self-portrait can be rendered only in facts. Facts, he clarifies, are unchanging truths. So he can write about his eye color and what parts of women’s bodies he has come on, but not his feelings or future. Even more suspect to me, the implication that a person/ality can exist in a void—the longer Levé’s monologue goes on, the stranger it becomes that all of these confessions lack an addressee. In a text that strives towards unsparing realism, Levé has accidentally constructed a conspicuous fiction: that he exists in a world of one.

Anyways I thought it would be a fun exercise to invent my own protocol of speech to write what I would consider a “true” portrait of myself. I did butmy autoportraitwas actually agonizing, a hysterical self-negation project!!

3. Euphoria

Des Esseintes also likes the other type of bad: everything that is morbid, perverse, and disturbing. One of his favorite artists is 17th century Dutch engraver Jan Luyken, whose prints show “𝒷𝑜𝒹𝒾𝑒𝓈 𝓇𝑜𝒶𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑜𝓃 𝒻𝒾𝓇𝑒𝓈, 𝓈𝓀𝓊𝓁𝓁𝓈 𝓈𝓁𝒾𝓉 𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓃 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓈, 𝓉𝓇𝑒𝓅𝒶𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓃𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑔𝒶𝓈𝒽𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝒶𝓌𝓈, 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈 𝓈𝑒𝓅𝒶𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒶𝒷𝒹𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝓌𝒾𝓈𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝓃 𝓈𝓅𝑜𝑜𝓁𝓈, 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝑔𝑒𝓇 𝓃𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓈 𝓈𝓁𝑜𝓌𝓁𝓎 𝑒𝓍𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓅𝒾𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓇𝓈, 𝑒𝓎𝑒𝓈 𝑔𝑜𝓊𝑔𝑒𝒹, 𝓁𝒾𝓂𝒷𝓈 𝒹𝒾𝓈𝓁𝑜𝒸𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒹𝑒𝓁𝒾𝒷𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓁𝓎 𝒷𝓇𝑜𝓀𝑒𝓃, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒷𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓈 𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝒻 𝒻𝓁𝑒𝓈𝒽 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶𝑔𝑜𝓃𝒾𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓁𝓎 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝒷𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝑒𝑒𝓉𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝓂𝑒𝓉𝒶𝓁. 𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓀𝓈 𝒻𝒾𝓁𝓁𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒾𝓂𝒶𝑔𝒾𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈, 𝑜𝒻𝒻𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝒾𝓇 𝑜𝒹𝑜𝓇𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒷𝓊𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔, 𝑜𝑜𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒷𝓁𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒸𝓁𝒶𝓂𝑜𝓇𝑜𝓊𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒸𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒽𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑜𝓇 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓂𝒶𝓁𝑒𝒹𝒾𝒸𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝓈, 𝑔𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝒟𝑒𝓈 𝐸𝓈𝓈𝑒𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓈, 𝓌𝒽𝑜 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓁𝒹 𝒻𝒶𝓈𝒸𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓇𝑒𝒹 𝓇𝑜𝑜𝓂, 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒸𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓅𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝓈𝑒-𝒻𝓁𝑒𝓈𝒽.” That’s how I feel watching Euphoria! Except Euphoria is more than morbid; it is evil. Think of a greedy Hollywood man, or woman, sitting at a big desk, cutting deals, with Eckhaus Latta, with drugdealers pushing fentanyl, making teens ADDICTED to pain, making teens want to rape, wear Eckhaus Latta, and kill themselves… I wish sometimes to create a work as powerful as this.

4. Dallas, Texas (George Bush Meditation Garden)

I went here with my boyfriend on his business trip. I was excited because everyone said Dallas—at least, the parts of Dallas to be seen on a boyfriend’s business trip—was the most boring place ever. I love places like Dallas because I am perverse and take pleasure from forcing a thing to give something up to my perspective against its will [[narcissistic self-affirmation]]. A curious detail, an accidental angle!—it feels good to see something no one has ever seen before. What’s there to say about Paris? But as it turns out, it’s hard to say anything about Dallas, too. It’s hard to see it in the first place. A city that has nothing hidden is the hardest to see, and Dallas has no secret from me. It is not a secret that the city’s symbol is literally the fucking Exxon Pegasus.

I went to the George Bush Presidential Library and there was nothing to photograph that would be like, “holy shit…?” Everything seemed obvious and good, like universal human rights. As a contrarian I’ve always thought Bush was subtly charming and funny, but after driving around his neighborhood in Dallas I know for real how bad being a Republican is, and how being a normie is no joke at all, because they are so fucking rich and run not just Dallas but everything. Actually, Dallas is a Democrat city with a gay rainbow crosswalk area, exactly like my hometown, which made it even worse. Dallas has a thriving LGBTQ community. In fact,Dallas seemed like a place of perfect equality. Nothing rose to attention or sank below it: an even field.

At one point I did a reverse orientalism exercise where I imagined “a Chinese person” taking note of the phrases repeated in gilded lettering across the mirrored skyscrapers and white wooden signs decorating businesses around the city, trying to come up with the occidental’s Auspicious Moment Good Fortune Golden Dragon Trading Company—something like: ᴜɴɪᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴏɴᴛɪᴄᴇʟʟᴏ ᴘʀᴇᴍɪᴜᴍ ᴘᴀᴛɪᴏ ꜱᴏʟᴜᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ꜱᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛɪᴇꜱ & ꜱᴏɴꜱ ʀɪᴠᴇʀ ᴄʀᴇᴇᴋ ʙᴀʀ & ɢʀɪʟʟᴇ ɪɴᴠᴇꜱᴛᴍᴇɴᴛꜱ ꜱᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ ᴏɴ ᴘʟᴀᴢᴀ ꜱᴛʀᴇᴇᴛ. But then I remembered it’s not my imagination—I technically am “a Chinese person” :(

At 5PM I walked out of the Presidential Library into the glaring sun of the George Bush Meditation Garden. The park achieves what a French theorist wrote about Chinese painting: the ideal landscape displays a perfect blandness; the eye should catch on nothing. Sitting in the George Bush Meditation Garden I realized that, in real life, perfect blandness is terrible feng shui. It is upsetting to walk around in a Chinese scroll painting, not to mention the pages of an in-flight magazine. I mean everything in Downtown Dallas looked exactly like the photos of Dallas printed on ultra-thin-shiny-paper in those magazine inserts, which are basically just real estate catalogues, that fall out of free regional newspapers or the coffeetables of hotel lobbies and bring news of local vineyards and interior design firms that look exactly like the local vineyards and interior design firms in the fake magazines trying to boost the economies of every other United State. When you’re in a car it’s okay because this flat city passes by like a movie, but actually walking around in a 2D-looking place like that gives you a kind of media-dimensional-vertigo that would have a stupid name in a Christopher Nolan movie: “the bends” or something. “It’s all wrong,” diCaprio would say, “See that?” And he’d point at a tell-tale sign like two fire hydrants placed too close together. Then he’d start getting “the bends,” a torturous mental-physical state that comes from being in the wrong dimension for too long. Dallas Syndrome is just Paris Syndrome for people with a narcissistic self-affirmation problem, like hipsters. You’re not supposed to find Paris in Dallas, Texas. I like to do what I am not supposed to. But Dallas didn’t let me!

For example, “George Bush Meditation Garden” is funny, and that’s why I had to invent it. In reality, the garden was named after a different white male politician whose name did not clash so obviously with the idea of Eastern spiritualism and therefore would not make for good writing; I cannot remember the two words at all.

5. Robert Duncan, “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow”

I love this poem so much! I love a lot of things so much, but this is the only thing that is to me like a prayer. If you’re always going around being inspired by things (taking and using them for your own narcissistic etc etc) then what is left that is holy? I think this poem can only be holy because it’s aesthetically alienating to me; the language seems intentionally archaic (it’s 1960), which I usually find embarrassing, contrived, and definitely irreconcilable with my “pop” sensibility. Therein lies the disconnect that creates a negative space, a blank space,an emptiness “so near to the heart / an eternal pasture folded in all thought / … created by light / wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.” The meadow is inspiration :) and this place of inspiration sounds like death.

Worldpeace DMT is not a solo project or a collective. It's a shapeshifting acoustic project. A brass band. A performance that manifests in differing forms in a variety of venues; a solo acoustic project at Gonzo’s NYC, a seven-person instrumental band at EU; RE at the Cause, and a live brass band at Ormside.

Hollywood Superstar met up with Worldpeace DMT on the eve of their first album release: The Velvet Underground & Rowan. The new album has a happy-go-lucky sound, straight out of the early noughties, repackaged into a self-reflective cacophony of positivity alongside 60s, folky inflections. Hollywood Superstar first saw Rowan Miles - one half of duo The Femcels - perform at The Cause as part of the seven person Worldpeace DMT ensemble. Looking like Michelle Philips of the Mamas and Papas she added a whimsy to the set, a magically careering, sweetened melody that balanced out the night's headliners, EesDeeKid, FakeMink and Bassvictim. Listening to The Velvet Underground & Rowan simulates a serotonin level forgotten in the mire of the post-2016 drainer epidemic. One-and-a-half minute songs like Hey Marshmellow featuring electronic adventure time sounds with screamo vocals - it's post-hyperpop poptimism, or indiepop revival.

In May, Hollywood Superstar saw Worldpeace DMT perform a solo acoustic set at Gonzo's, NYC, a recording studio turned events space in St. Marks Square. The night was a beatnik, new-age, eccentric come absurdist mix of performance, poetry and live music curated by Cormac Mac. It featured performances by Charlie Osborne, Skjold Rambo, Born Weekend and Worldpeace DMT. Before his set, Hollywood Superstar found Worldpeace DMT busking in the badly lit, leopard print carpeted green room to an audience of Londoners and New Yorkers. He bought a welcome aura of 70's cult-leader (I feel like there were girls at his feet?) meets 00s bushwick hipster, or brit-pop frontman, in a time of indiesleaze electro and sadboi bedroom pop.

This interview was conducted at the Worldpeace DMT headquarters - a bedroom in "East Road" - filled by music equipment and a single Beastie Boys poster. The interview started at 11pm after Worldpeace DMT, played a rap song that he and his housemates had mixed earlier that day. It’s a half-uplifting, half-comedic rap song about how their friend should quit stripping and believe in herself. The lyrics of the song, X's Defiance ft. Friendo x Soldierr x heavy rain… have a kind of nïave sweetness and an uplifting melody that matches, or balances, the ethos of happiness at the core of World peace DMT.

Phoenix rising from the ashes
but she loves to shake her ass
shake that ass for some cash
throw a stone and break that glass

East Road is a house-come-recording studio, which makes sense, because World peace DMT is way more than a solo project. It’s a collaboration within a scene that lives together, plays together and informs each other's production. Ike Clateman, producer and one-half of Bassvictim joins us mid-interview, coming up the stairs from the bedroom/studio directly below. He tells me that World peace DMT is a conductor, more than anything, he controls the cacophagny.

Rowan Miles and World peace DMT (2025)

Across two hours, Worldpeace DMT tells Hollywood Superstar about his lore, resistance to the Radio 6 Music pipeline and the need for optimistic major chords.

Hollywood Superstar

Do you mind just recapping the last hour? My headphones were recording Aidan and Thomas playing GTA downstairs.

WPDMT

Yeah, that's ok. I really enjoy talking about myself.

The Beach Boys play

HS

You mentioned that the music you used to make was sadder and that now you’ve started making more upbeat stuff - why?

WPDMT

Meeting Rowan gave me permission to make a different kind of music to what I ws usually drawn toward. A lot of the music we both loved and grew up on I’d kept shelved for a long time. She gave it a new context, which helped me find a way to approach it. When I was younger everything had to be moody. Songs come out much brighter now.

HS

You said that Worldpeace DMT is like a wedding band for hire, adaptable, happy to do anything.

WPDMT

It is - it’s a gun for hire. I wouldn’t do anything - but if someone proposed an idea like writing library music, an orchestral performance or a Bassvictim acoustic album, as Worldpeace DMT, then you know - I’d be happy to help facilitate.

HS

To generalise pop music is often seen as more optimistic and upbeat while music coming from the underground proportionally feels darker and more aggressive. Your music is fun and bright but a far cry from the mainstream.

Worldpeace DMT

I’m not trying to whitewash everything with happy clappy music. I like dark music. I just think that at this point, in this scene, for whatever reason, Worldpeace DMT caught people off guard.

HS

I know people were caught off guard at the cause - they weren't expecting the aesthetic of Worldpeace DMT - it didn’t match what the crowd was looking for after FakeMink and Eesdeekid.

IKE CLATEMAN

It’s just a melodic sensibility that's very foreign to contemporary ears. Right now, Leo’s sound is happy dub reggae mixed with weird space sounds. He uses cowboy chords and Rolling Stones, like, major rock chords that people don’t do nowadays. I don’t know why that sensibility went out.

Charlie Osborne and Worldpeace DMT performing at Gonzo's, NYC. (2025)

HS

You said you and Rowan would always be the only ones playing retro music at parties, and everyone hated it.

WPDMT

Rowan bought me back to enjoying music I hadn’t thought about for a while. I first met her at Ormside with Ike when I was less confident. I thought she was really cool. Like, someone who wouldn't want to talk to me. Eventually, we got to working together and created this weird universe of our own. While it sounded traditional, it felt exciting and fresh, diferent from the other sounds being out out.

The way in which we work is that if somethings funny then its good - if we laugh, then we use it. Whether its a vocal take, an idea for a song or a lyric or a cover or whatever. We are always just trying to make each other laugh - once we’ve done that we’re like, lets do it.

• Worldpeace DMT performing with Rowan Miles* (2025)

IC

I guess you could imagine it as a meme in the beginning. They were making music and if it made them smile, it was good. It doesn’t mean its comedy rock. It’s honestly surprising your able to do this as a British person. I feel as though its a sense of sincere irony that i've only ever seen americans be able to do.

IC

Anyone in LDN making music right now you wanna flame?

WPDMT

Well, I exist in a complete microcosm of my own friends and right now I’m happy there.

HS

Worldpeace DMT is a product of its environment - the way it was created was from everyone around you, right? You guys are always working on each others projects, producing etc.

WPDMT

Yeah well it came about from a last minute name I decided on for a show we did in Glasgow. I made some songs and Ike was hyped about it and suddenly people were into it also - there was a collection of ten or so people who really helped. I do the work, write most the songs and do my best to make it happen. But for some reason everyone -

IC

Rallied around it. Decided it was a thing that needed to happen.

WPDMT

Sometimes i feel like i’m just a conductor, for others. I’ve got one album coming out with Rowan, and we’re working on a second at the moment. Who knows what will happen. I want to do film scores and live action brass performances. I’d like to do everything.

WorldPeace DMT performing with 300skullsandcounting (2025)

HS

How did that play into the album - that mentality?

WPDMT

I'd always been a musician since I was young, but starting Worldpeace DMT I got more confident. It’s almost like a Pack-a-Punch on Nazi zombies in COD, the gates were open and I just could make whatever music I wanted. Finishing it was hard 'cause I had to mix it, but once I found the root of it’s identity it more or less wrote itself. I knew the character, I just had to play him.

You know, there are so many fucking projects, like ** REDACTED* like, can you tell me what ** REDACTED’s fucking identity is? I feel like Worldpeace DMT has an identity, I’m proud of that.

HS

Well, can you tell me what Worldpeace DMT identity is?

WPDMT

I can tell you what it isn’t. I don’t want to be part of the landfill of BBC 6 Music. Like the thumbs up, verified, whatever. I live in a house with three American people. I have few English friends and an irrational disdain for the music scene in the UK right now. Worldpeace DMT is a crusade against that. I can see them coming for me from a mile off. They're like "Oh, this guy". He should join the crew. Fuck that. Fuck all that. Fuck it. I’m speaking like that to ward myself off because that's the stream, the kind of road that is most likely to try absorb me and I’d rather be out on my own.

HS

What do you want your music to be? How do you want people to feel when they listen to it? If not BBC Radio 6 coded - then what is it?

WPDMT

If I can make music which has a function in people's lives, so that they can listen to it when they have a bath, or wake up in the morning, on the bus home or with their friends. Then, I'm happy.

Worldpeace DMT’s debut album The Velvet Underground & Rowan made with Rowan Please was released earlier this month.

Artist Take with Günseli Yalcinkaya

HIGH WEIRDNESS, ERIK DAVIS

I don't believe in gatekeeping so, in case you ever need a comprehensive history of weirdness, Erik Davis is your guy. He's the same author who wrote Tech Gnosis, another one of my favourite books of all time, but this book in particular really hits for reasons that will begin to feel self-explanatory the further down you get in this list. I love ED because he gives off major oracle energy in his writing, but his physical vibe is giving Californian pothead. I like this juxtaposition when it comes to writers, anyone who's too polished clearly hasn't lived. Besides, I love a freak who's done their research.

PAREIDOLIA (aka seeing faces in inanimate objects)

Me and my friend Dan have a running chat where we will send each other random objects that appear to have faces, because they're funny. I read somewhere that pareidolia was once considered a symptom of madness, but that doesn't really work in the digital age when most of us find it easier to tap away at little screens than to have a normal human conversation. Also, the tendency to find patterns in random data makes us adopt a similar role to the shaman way back when people observed symbols to better infer the spirit realm, which I enjoy because it forces you into an animist pov. With AI and robots, we're coming back full circle, it seems.

THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982) JIM HENSON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--0xBC0SotY

Anyone who knows me knows that I fucking love puppets, they're magical as hell. I particularly like The Dark Crystal because I read somewhere that Jim Henson spent his entire career making Sesame Street and The Muppets so he could make enough money to fund his first feature length film. When he finally did it, some of the executives walked out of the screening room, which I find very sad. Sometimes, I think about how the same guy who dreamed up The Dark Crystal was also behind Kermit's 'It's Not Easy Being Green' solo in Sesame Street... Anyway, I rewatched TDC a few months back and I don't really get what's going on, but that's not the point. The animatronics go hard, so do Brian Froud's character designs. According to co-director Frank Oz, Henson's intention was to "get back to the darkness of the original Grimms' Fairy Tales", as he believed that it was unhealthy for children to never be afraid. Makes you think.

THE HEDGEHOG SONG (1967) THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bogz2xZy-bo

Love this song. It's about a guy who doesn't have a girl to love and feels all depressed when suddenly he meets a funny little hedgehog, who sings him a song – it all sounds very happy, but it's a bit sad, too, and timeless.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997) LUC BESSON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnTE2h0ZY74

One of the best films on (or off) this planet. I have a weird nostalgic connection to this film, which extends to memories of being a child visiting family in Istanbul and staying up late, being transfixed by the sight of the alien singing opera on the space cruise. Now that I think about it, Milla Jovovich as Leeloo was probably one of my biggest influences growing up, along with Brian Molko from Placebo. Plus, the John Paul Gautier fashion is insane, I love all the costumes with a passion.

CRYPTIDS

Image of the Loveland Frogman

Trevor Paglen once told me that cryptids are to me what aliens are to him and he's totally right. I've written about cryptids more than probably anything else, so I'll spare you the details here. To me, they're the perfect gateway to exploring some of my favourite research topics – fictioning, reality constructs, government disinformation, control systems, medieval bestiaries... all the good stuff. My favourite cryptid is the Loveland Frogman for no reason other than the fact that he looks all tiny and pixelated in most of the 'sightings', it's very cute. Besides, I used to be a people pleaser until I realised that being a cryptid is way better.

Can fiction ever be art criticism? How did the merger between the art world and advertising occur? Where is the reward in critical distance?

Natasha Stagg admires art, but would not call herself an art critic. Her book, Artless (Stories 2019-2023) documents the fashion, art and nightlife scenes of New York city. A follow up to Sleeveless (2011-2019), Artless comprises dispatches from NYC’s artistic “scene”- with essays featured in Spike, Artforum, Buffalo Zine and Gagosian Quarterly. Always self-effacing, the author pleads with us not to take things too seriously by describing her new book as “What I think sometimes, some days, about some things”.

You could mistake Stagg’s writing for autofiction (with titles like “Is Anyone Listening to Me? I Love It” and “Social Suicide”) but the star of Artless is Stagg’s foray into pithy, non-autobiographical shorts. Her upcoming fiction work, Grand Rapids, tells the tale of fifteen year-old Tess and her titular Michigan hometown. Published in September through Semiotext(e), its cover features one of Issy Wood’s painted Fiat interiors. Wood’s work is an apt choice - her painted veneration of stagnant objects reflects Stagg’s writing, which transforms Grand Rapids into a collection of architecture and emblems.

Here, Stagg speaks with Hollywood Superstar editor Sydney Sweeney about the moral grey area of her profession, the mythical creature that is the objective art critic and her high school reunion in Michigan.

Sydney Sweeney

Tell us about the title Artless? We know, and love, Sleeveless. Each of your collection titles feels super specific.

Natasha Stagg

My editor Chris Kraus suggested adding date range as as a way of establishing it as a series of essays born from a certain time. The name ‘Sleeveless’ is fairly enigmatic. You don’t necessarily know what you’re going to get from its title, so you add a subtitle : ‘Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019’ and people know it’s a book of essays. Artless is a word often used to describe prose, as in ungainly, naive, imprecise. While I like art, I'm not an expert. A lot of the stories were assignments or press releases, but I call them “stories” because that’s what they all are, even if they were also musings, or reviews, or diaries.

SS

One of my favorite chapters in Sleeveless talks about the microtrend and the micro influencer. Do you think we have micro trends in contemporary art right now?

NS

The NYC scene, which is the only one I would know right now, does feel increasingly niche.It does feel a little bit oversaturated with micro- influencers - that thing of everybody knowing everybody. Is there such a thing as there being too many, or not enough, personalities?

SS

There’s a photo of Charli XCX wearing a t-shirt with - “They don’t build statues of critics” on it. Where is the reward in having critical distance?

NS

I respect critics more than I respect my own profession, probably. I think I'm trying to be as honest as possible about my involvement in the scene, in my writing. Almost all critics have some kind of involvement with what they write on, but serious critics get basically nothing from it, not even good pay, and they work because they are just passionate about unbiased commentary needing to exist. The art world is so circle jerky, and corrupt, and objective critics are so rare at this point, maybe there should be statues of them.

SS

Art speak can be incredibly alienating, it’s a way of excluding certain people from the art world.

NS

I am interested in the way that art can work its way into fashion or marketing - there is a lot of cross pollination. People get tired of the same words, so you have to find synonyms. Sometimes these come from slang, or memes or whatever, but people can see through the application of viral language to marketing really quickly - it’s so painfully obvious when advertising adapts the language of the internet.

SS

A lot of Artless is fiction, moving away from the cultural critique towards a short story format that recalls Mary Gaitskill.

NS

I have always been happier writing fiction. It provides a kind of freedom. In non-fiction you are making a claim, even when you state clearly you’re not an authority on whatever the subject is. In the introduction to Artless I tell the reader not to listen to any of these claims. My favourite story is maybe the one I wrote as a press release for the artist Alex Carver. He did a show of paintings that used a process of layering prints with an intricate stamping process. His research ended up inspiring ‘Transplant’, which follows a family whose patriarch has a transplanted heart.

SS

The combination of fictional writing and the display of art has formed a new kind of art criticism, maybe without the critical element. I think it’s exciting.

NS

I am so inundated with cultural criticism at this point, writing more of it can feel like throwing fuel onto a fire. Or pointless. My goal has always been to focus on language, so that it is the writing that moves, rather than the content. And anyway, there is no such thing as fiction and non-fiction, really. Nothing can be proven to be either or the other. There's also no such thing as critical distance. Whatever lines exist, they can always be blurred.

SS

Do you see yourself as a writer more than, let's say, an art or scene critic? Or are you a mixture of both, like Cookie Mueller, who wrote Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black?

NS

I always go back to Elizabeth Hardwick, who wrote so much criticism and commentary, but also one of the best novels, Sleepless Nights, when she was 63. I feel really good about having written four books. It means I am actually a writer. My first book could have been a one-off; I wrote it in grad school. The second and third were collections of shorter pieces I’d mostly already written as assignments. So it feels good that I’m publishing another novel, even if it’s ten years after the first one.

SS

It feels as if the time period in which Artless is set, the years of Covid, fuelled the transition in your writing practice from cultural critiques to fictional storytelling.

NS

I think you’re right. Covid was an online overload. Many of us experienced a collective media fatigue. To pivot after this time is only natural - there was so much reflection on reality, maybe too much, and life became miserable. Everyone was looking for a way to escape; fiction writing feels like an extension of that desire.

SS

How long have you been working on Grand Rapids?

NS

It’s hard to say. I started it right after publishing my last novel, Surveys, in 2016, but I didn’t do anything with it for a long time and then came back to it recently. I’m sure a lot of people have had this feeling - of coming back to something and recognising any of the words. I feel that way with my Substack, even. I will often re-read something I’ve published to make sure I’m not repeating myself, but it will feel foreign even two days later. It’s all a balancing act. You want to write away from what you have already written, but you don’t want to think so much about it that it inhibits your natural flow.

SS

Natural flow is kind of my worst enemy. I wait until it reaches me to start a piece. Can you tell me a bit about the plot of Grand Rapids?

NS

It’s a kind of coming-of-age story set in the city where I lived during high school. When I finished writing Grand Rapids, I actually went back to Grand Rapids for my high school reunion. It felt like I was doing reconnaissance for the book. When you grow up somewhere, things feel differently sized when you go back. The city felt bigger, not smaller, than I remembered. It has grown, but that wasn’t it. The buildings downtown felt bigger.

SS

I know it’s fiction, but, did you tap into your own autobiography?

NS

Of course. That’s always the easy in for me. I wanted to start with something I had a lot of emotional knowledge of. My high school days were my own and still are, but I was interested in whether revisiting that time and place could get me to a character arc, something more universal. I love talking to people who are younger or older than me who find something to relate to in my writing. It’s cool to know that my stories are not necessarily tethered to a generation. You always hear that millennials are so different from zoomers or whoever else, but I have had an opportunity to see what is similar between us, the opportunity being that I can publish stories and know from the response that non-millennials read them, too.

SS

I mean, it’s the mark of a good writer if your work unconsciously speaks to a group of people, even if that wasn’t the intention.

NS

Definitely. I have a lot of trouble with a specific type of Gen X writer I used to like more when they lately take a defensive stance on their generation. It’s different for each generation but, I don’t think you see the signs until it’s too late.

Grand Rapids is published by Semiotexte. Available to pre order now

Dana Dawud’s Open Secret is a psychological operation with Buddhism in its heart. The primary body of the O.S orbital system is Monad (2024-), recut for every screening- so far it has evolved across 20 countries, conjuring the angelic aliens of the New New international style in film. Dana’s ambient theory podcast Pleasurehelmet and her writing series Interview with an Artist are on Soundcloud and Substack. Here is her "Artist Take" with Hollywood Superstar.

Open Secret x Hollywood Superstar at Sands Cinema on 14/4/25, 6pm.

"Internet cinema is waiting for something to happen altogether".

Liza Tegel, choreographer, poet, dancer, internet poet, internet dancer.

Exceptional presence and so important to the movement of my thought is Liza Tegel, I just revisited the pleasurehelmet episode she did and she says that her work is defined by the phrase “I live to get away from which I lived”. I have always been really into Swedish art/poetry and when I found Liza Tegel https://on.soundcloud.com/eNZYwRSyLxCjjLxs9 Elis Burrau, Jonathan Brott of L’Amour La Mort, Albin Duvkar and others, I was in a way reunited with a scene that somehow I always ready knew and didn’t know and what connects us is understanding that internet poetry is real. She says “Posting is a platform which directs me where I don’t have to be physically present”. In a way posting becomes this movement that carries into these different lines of thought and intersections of subcultures, and Liza’s posting/writing and her dance practice embodies that and more. She is the contemporary to me. The Swedish internet is 10000 years ahead of the west.

Helen Cioux’s on Rembrant’s Slaughtered Ox, from her essay ‘Bathsheba or the Interior Bible’ (1993)

Bataille argued that the slaughterhouse and the museum share a strange intimacy; this closeness is often expressed in the historical development of both spaces and how the objects in the museum function as the skeletal remains of death and violence, or event the fruits of it. However, Helene Cixous’ reading of the Slaughtered Ox turns the slaughterhouse/the painting into a church, the Ox is crucified and the space of the painting creates the space of that possibility.

Helene Cixous has been very important to me as a writer/painter; her essays, specifically in that book where Rembrandt’s painting is featured, attend to writing/drawing/painting and how the possibility/impossibility of their convergence create new meanings and textures. Typing this on my phone right now makes my thought run differently than typing it on my computer; the screen's smoothness and the touchscreen's intimacy make me feel stronger about every word. I actually started answering these questions on my computer, but I would write only the first sentence. The rest flows better from my fingers into my phone.

Monadology, Deleuze’s take on the Monad, as inspired by these two pictures.

What interests me the most in Deleuze’s take on Leibniz is the POV of the subject/object and the idea of Baroque perspective. And that is what I’ve been exploring in my film, a baroque perspective in cinema, with folds and unfolds of memetic references, digital imagery and multitudes of iterations from cinematographies from all corners of the planet. The seriality and the iterative with each cut function as an unfolding/folding that takes us closer to the Baroque.

Driving your car in Dubai

Those who know me (specifically my online friends) know that I’m always sending voicenotes while driving my car. Driving, walking or being in any other vehicle while moving through a city is such an immersive experience, there’s always something to look at that passes you by faster than your ability to capture it. The temporality of how things pass you by is always faster than the duration you need to take a photo on your phone; the car is anti-photography. I find that poetic. In Dubai, you have to drive faster than in other places, and the highways are vast and open. My favorite moments are when light refracts off glass skyscrapers.

The Cross Versus The Circle

Spinning the cross quickly creates a circle, and parts of the longer line of the cross can make a tangent while the small one can create a chord. If the cross had equal sides, then it could be a diameter. The cross and the circle are too intimate, like the museum and the slaughterhouse.

Alien subjectivity in internet Cinema

Going back to perspectivism and thinking about the alien as subject, the alien as the main subject or feminine hero, following Chris Kraus's Alien’s and Anorexia. The image dictates the cut and acts as the alien subjectivity. Internet cinema acts as a space or an environment where alien encounters are expected to happen. It’s like in Chris Kraus’ Gravity and Grace where the group waited for the mystical experience to occur and realised it had already happened because now they are all together waiting for something. Internet cinema is waiting for something to happen together.

Hollywood Superstar asks The Femcels for inspiration and recommendations to increase our cultural capital. “We want to be able to talk to girls at parties” we exclaim, prostrating ourselves at Gabi and Rowan’s feet while they vape. Their hit song “He Needs Me” is about being a crazy manic pixie dream girl and a fem (cell) in 2025. He needs me, He needs me, He needs me, He needs ME. He blocked me on Snapchat. He won't text me when he skateboards.

"Sometimes I trip over so he doesn't think I'm too perfect"

Femcel No.1 Rowan (24)

Dancer, Edgar Degas (1891) Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle.

It’s at the Hamburg Kunsthalle - where I did Erasmus, and I thought I had seen into a wormhole where Edward Degas had painted weird sci-fi dogs. That is, until my boyfriend at the time ruined it. I work as an illustrator, which is already being replaced with AI. Rich people will always want to buy real paintings. Rich people will always want to buy my paintings.

Fluffy (1980) by Gloria Balsam

Fluffy is a dog who tries to run from her but she always knows it will be by her side. The song makes me feel like I’m in a musical in a parallel universe where everything is so beautiful and strange. I’m in contact with Gloria - I am going to interview her soon : 3 I can do a perfect off-pitch impression of the song, and I’m gonna sing it to her on Zoom. Singing always sounds better out of tune.

The Cuck Song by Leonard Cohen

“What really makes me sick is that everything goes on as it went before.” I’m not really a jealous person (I’m so chill), so maybe I would be susceptible to taking cuckoldry like a chump. Cucks should have rights. I read somewhere that allegedly David dobrick is a cuck, and I see that for him, it kind of humanises him. My favourite bit of the poem is where he keeps putting his full name in a line: “You just wanted to cuckold Leonard Cohen”. Then he goes: “I like that line because it’s got my name in it” he’s so funny and real.

I think you have to revel in the cuckoldry. Last year at a party my friend and I [name redacted] were standing next to a sofa of people, and we were saying how we were both flirting with someone, and that it was going well. Then we look down and the two people we were flirting with start kissing. They start lying down on the sofa, caressing each other and smooching their hearts out. It was unbelievable. We put on some cucky drake song and started jumping around and singing it to them, but they were too into it to notice.

Also, I feel like Leonard was kinda being cucked on that record (death of a ladies' man) because Phil Spector kind of ran away with his music and made sweet love to it, and Leonard had to hate it even tho it’s amazing because he fucked his girl.

Soft City (2008) by Pushwagners and Ghost World (1995)

My tutor at university showed it to me, so maybe in 2021. I think dystopia is so hard to do well, and this is a true masterpiece If you like 60s/70s style illustrations then you should buy this. My friend Barney was upset that I didn’t show him sooner and told me off for gatekeeping.

If the Femcels were in a comic, we should find god. Or go up to strangers and ask them random stuff. Ghost World (COMIC, NOT FILM, NO OFFENCE) is a good reference point. It’s so perfect. I love that half the comic is them just saying random ugly men are hot. I think that’s so real. It’s the meat and potatoes of life.

London could be a soft city. I’m on set as an extra on a Jason Statham movie. All of us are dressed in uniforms of green satin Zara and suits with powdered foundation so it feels like a slay soft city.

Buildings used to be scary because people had more hope

Femcel No.2 Gabi (24)

Shiki-Jitsu or Ritual (2000) Hideako Anno

It’s crazy how a 40-something man can know how to convey exactly what a 16-something girl can feel like around a 40-something man. Teenage-girl Gabriella feels like a dream away, but love and pop force me to remember how I felt. I think all I wanted to be was dope and cool.

As a female, I think an appeal of an anime girl is to go “she’s literally meee” when watching; they tend to have hyperbolic versions of our characteristics. The muse in Shiku-Jitsu is psychotic yet relatable; her psychosis is loveable, but the uncovering of her is too grotesque to be an animated chick. She only wears red and lives in a castle she crafted herself, an abandoned warehouse filled with red umbrellas; she’s flesh, a human flesh version of a big-boobed blue-haired character.

“Could I be an anime girl in real life?” Maybe I could if I got a boob job. The closest we ever got to being anime girls was the 2020 e-girl culture. Maybe if we locked ourselves inside for another 10 years, we would come out as animations.

Lip Kit Glosses by Kylie Jenner

Glosses is a 2018 cinematic masterpiece. Kylie Jenner. IG baddies. Convertible. LA. 3 Strikes by Terror Jr. “Literally so cute”.

As a teen, I was prone to disregard anything mainstream, but I always loved Kylie; she’s just an emo chick in a millionaire's body.

Snap Maps (2017- present)

I am a bog-standard victim of panopticism. I can’t do makeup without pretending I am in a YouTube video. My internal monologue sometimes transcends to a podcast; when I have a crush, I dream about how they view me. I would definitely live off-grid. But yeah, I fuck with snap maps, bitimojis, everyone knowing where I am. Dope.

Knockout by Lil Wayne and Niki Minaj (2010), Young Money Senile Ft Nikic, Wayne, Tyga (2014)

Damn young money senile is fire. It's a rap version of a Melanie Martinez video. Knockout is perfect song-wise, though my dream is to scream like Weezy. “Hey, barbie, can I call you Barbra” Perfect. Video-wise, maybe Senile.

Putting socks on top of ur shoes and tying it for security with another sock