The Wit of the Staircase is the name of Theresa Duncan’s blog on TypePad.com.

From the French phrase ‘esprit d’escalier’, it refers to the perfect witty response you think up after the conversation or argument is ended. The answer you cannot make, the pattern you cannot complete till afterwards, suddenly comes to you when it is too late.
And I am now replying too late, 18 years to be fair... perfectly aligned with l’esprit d’escalier: The Last note on The Wit of the Staircase is from Monday, 31 December 2007. A cheer to a “New Beginning”:

Monday, December 31, 2007
New Beginning

And so each venture


It's a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
 


So here I am, in the middle way, having had
 twenty years -


Twenty years largely wasted, the years of
 l'entre deux guerres -


Trying to use words, and every attempt


Is a wholly new start, and a different kind
of failure


Because one has only learnt to get the better


of words


For the thing one no longer has to say, or


the way in which


One is no longer disposed to say it. And so


each venture


Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
 With shabby equipment always deteriorating
 In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
 ## ## Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what


there is to conquer


By strength and submission, has already 


been discovered


Once or twice, or several times, by men whom


one cannot hope


To emulate - but there is no competition -
 There is only the fight to recover


what has been lost


And found and lost again and again: and now,


under conditions


That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither


gain nor loss.


For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not


our business.

--T. S. Eliot
 East Coker
 Four Quartets

Have you ever seen the movie eXistenZ? Directed by David Cronenberg in 1999, it features as main character the iconic Jennifer Jason Leight under the pseudonym of Allegra Geller. Picture a complex, beautiful blonde woman, whose job is game design and who entertains a relationship with an equally beautiful man played by Jude Law.

Now keep this plot in mind, but to “Allegra” substitute “Theresa”, to “Ted” substitute “Jeremy” and to fiction substitute reality.This blog post, Would I Ever Kiss a Scientologist?, tells the story of a real-life game designer and her resultant suicide.
Cronenberg’s movie ends with two killings, "Death to transCendenZ!!!"; our dispatch starts with two suicides, The Golden Suicides.
With no exclamation marks at all.

Today is Sunday, 27 July 2025. It’s 00:30 and I am sitting on my couch, laughing at myself with Theresa Duncan, just not the right one. I bought this book via Amazon sure about the fact that it was a hidden gem of hers, and I also mentioned it to Taylor (Hi Taylor), who also bought it and two days later sent me this message:

Re-browsing the book I noticed what my blind trust didn’t make me notice before: poems are from 2010. Theresa Duncan took her own life on Sunday, 10 June, 2007.
Turns out this other woman, who answers to the name of T.D., also corresponds to her facial features, having meshed blonde hair and light blue eyes. What a hodgepodge.

This is the starting point of my dispatch, a book I purchased and read, thinking it was from the Theresa Duncan on the right. I am one of the latest truly romantic human beings, and this is a love story. My very favourite field.

Year 2007, 10th Street and 2nd Avenue, Manhattan’s East Village, New York City.
A pretty, young-ish pioneer of blogging and video game auteur responding to the name of Theresa Duncan, age 40, overdosed in her infamously bohemian apartment.
For the sake of the Walgreens enthusiast: on the nightstand there was a bowl full of Benadryl pills, a bottle of Tylenol PM and a glass of champagne. For the sake of lovebirds: there was also a note saying “I love all of you”.

During the night, about a week later, witnesses on Rockaway Beach saw a man take off his clothes and wander into the Pacific Ocean: the light of the following day revealed his wallet, a note and his identity: Jeremy Blake, 35, video artist and Duncan’s boyfriend for over a decade.

They were one of those show-stopping couples of New York, both ridiculously gifted and good looking. She had an intimidating blond head of hair and a pantagruelic mind; he was an art star featuring the Whitney among his lengthy list of credits. Most importantly, they both had love. The most prized possession.

Their passion for their internal world was matched only by the paranoia of their outlook. The two would describe plots by the government, people tailing them and breaking into their home. Friends, who tried to dissuade the couple from their fantasies - that seemed to be ripped from a Tom Clancy novel - were met with anger and exclusion.

After their “Golden Suicides” people latched a lot around the possible causes of this tragedy. Sources mentioned a shared codependent paranoia regarding Scientology, and one of their leading men, the singer-songwriter Beck: easier to swallow than other absurd theories, I chose this to be my favourite and most relevant one. Reason why is I asked out a friend to the closest Scientology church.

I double-blink when I see the eight-pointed cross taking the entire construction hostage on the left. Immediately below, in vermilion red sans-serif font, reigns the word ‘Scientology’. This new building, the biggest in Italy, was inaugurated in 2015, 31th October, Halloween day… dare I say trick or treat?

As soon as we approach the gate going thru it shamelessly it begins to close behind the back of the car. Safe to say we back up at light speed. In the nearby parking lot, without any gate to worry about, we park and hop off. Ten meters and we are in: ten seconds and we get approached by a woman in a white shirt asking the point of our visit with a bedazzling smile on her face. With equally bedazzling smiles we reply, ‘we are in to be into’. Follow the white rabbit.

A sliding door opens onto a tunnel whose red shade is thicker and more stomach-churning than the one chosen for the façade sign. To get to the monster's stomach, you have to go through its mouth first.

All I can remember is being swallowed by a red vortex. Sofas, carpets, chairs, candles, flowers and vases: I am now in some war field where the blood left from a mass murder has soiled the walkable and breathable space. According to the official data begging for attention from the screens all over, more than 6.5 million people have joined the movement. I see why there isn't a single spot uncovered.

While the guide explains to us how the infinite screens and controllers displayed in a serpentine shape all around the space work, as if we had never faced some basic commands, my hungry eyes roam around. Water and fire patterns overflow from the fonts on book covers and from the cheap AI paintings on the walls: mouth-watering waterfalls, endless fields of lavender and corn, groups of smiles as big as whole faces, proud to have said no; no to drugs, no to shapes other than triangles, yes to L. Ron Hubbard!

Above a rail of burning books, a dark bordeaux stain splattered on a marbled table: “See a thought.” I immediately point at it, asking for an explanation. When the elephant is in the room, either you ride it or it stomps on you; not today that I got a new haircut.

My guide makes me hold two aluminium cans and asks me about a person and a situation. Vaguely. This “ultra technology” should capture my aura frequencies and register my body response to that thought. I later, via google, find out the specific object is called 3 E Meter and it is an intellectual historical property of the Institution.

The needle oscillates and she can’t wait for me to see it. I don’t.

The needle of my energy also oscillates and I ask for a coffee. Out from the monster’s mouth, across the courtyard, behind a white door, downstairs, in the gut of the system: the canteen. Hidden from the daylight, a disturbingly and desolating vast room with a cashier rechargeable through the insertion of a coin; 2 bucks for a diet coke, a smarter version of the coffee I asked for: quick, take away, uncontaminated. And of course, red.

Lots of lost faces around, looking at me looking at them looking at my red lipstick. I sense they might be hypnotised from this very specific shade and that's why they all keep coming back to this place. If this Scientology site was a perfume that would be Hypnotic Poison by Dior: red, bordeaux, timeless and poisonous. As a woman in red lipstick. Would I ever kiss a Scientologist?

I’m not gonna write what I’ve seen during the very last moments of permanence under the surface of the visible, into the very core of the place, where the stomachs are fed and the minds starved. My guide made sure I wasn’t taking pictures and escorted me upstairs, back from the dead, alive again. I’d say I haven’t been digested, more like bulimicly puked out.

In this certain way, I must say a Scientologist saved my life. And my wallet.

I wish Theresa could write the same, on her blog, like it was all a game of hers in which she has been trapped for too long. Paraphrasing Cronenberg’s Allegra: "Death to transCendenZ!!!".
Alive again, at the enthusiastic speed of an exclamation mark.

Hollywood Superstar wants to know when the London millennial gallery circuit is going to catch up with the stylish, curatorially erudite and munificent women of Hamburg’s art world?

Presenting reportage from Hamburg from local writer Eva Paden. Chess Club, a Superstar-favourite gallery and wunderkind, invited several Londoners to participate in a 96-hour-long festival alongside other international artists. Amanda, Chess Club’s grand dame, has a curatorial strategy that is as much about enmeshing scenes as it is about strategically positioning works within a space. The festival was organised alongside duo-run AKA studios, another curatorial off-space in the city.

Both AKA and Chess Club aim to foster new connections, including this Anglo-German alliance, which saw a highly specific selection from the UK underground’s writers, performers, painters, photographers, and filmmakers. This was a group of people - a cohort (?) - already familiar with each others’ practices, flown out to reap the delights of European art funding.

While the rest of the art world takes its summer break, 96 hours provides a platform. The festival avoided the drabness of most not-for-profit events (bad techno-DJ empty dancehall filled with serious inauthenticity and a distinct lack of appeal to any artistic participants) by sampling directly from London’s subcultural petri-dish. 96 Hours was filled with live cultures as opposed to culturally disparate artists flown in to fill a bland, identitarian quota. This is not a reference to Kissick’s Harper’s lament but instead a product of direct experience with satellite fairs and off-spaces at Art Basel and Frieze.

96 hours” demonstrates a willingness on behalf of the state-funded Hamburg milieu. A desire to invest in the non-commercial, non-aligned, un-represented art emerging from London that the privately funded (demonstrably by the looks of HMRC tax reports) small-gallery world always ignores to their detriment. Publicly funded institutions, too. Except Raven Row. We love you Raven Row.

Critic Eva Paden reports on the curation, vibe and general atmosphere of this artworld novelty: a non-commercial festival. As Paden writes: “Hosting is the new mode of curating”.

In chess, the move known as “pawn promotion” elevates a pawn which reaches the opposite end of the board to a queen, the most powerful figure of the game.

“96 hours of summer” is a new initiative of Hamburg it-girl collaboration: Chess Club x AKA studios. Chess Club, a downtown gallery run by Amanda Charlott Weimer, and AKA studios, a rave-ready exhibition space/studio housed in a warehouse, run by the two local artists, Noemi Liv Nicolaisen and Mia Lotta Joedecke. Both venues know how to host and are notorious for turning exhibitions into full-blown happenings, each having previously been invited by the Kunstverein in Hamburg to co-host their afterparties. Both venues were given generous city funding for the festival; this allowed the contingent be to opened up, an international cohort was invited, including a large UK contingent, to prop up the 4-day long program:

Thursday: Exhibition Opening at Chess club, with music by Loi

Friday: Exhibition Opening at AKA studios, followed by three performances (Clara Schmidt, Alex Thake (as Hope Slattery), Sasha Lukashenkova and an afterparty with 20Stitches, Speckman, Cielo.mp3, Europa and Schuu.

Saturday: Decompressurization Act II, a play by Emma Bombail and Layo Mussi. Listening room with Soli City, back at Chess Club.

Sunday: Closing day! Summer party at AKA studios with a BBQ. “An informal wedding“ reading program by Charlotte Masha Bialas and concerts by Iku and Charlie Osborne.

I arrive at Chess Club. It’s already day three - around the 40th hour of the 96-hour festival. We’re in the heart of Hamburg’s shopping district. A paved street surrounded by restaurants, the opera nearby and Alsterhaus around the corner. I spot a group of people outside Chess Club, still awake and glowing from the party the night before. Some dart into one of the neighbouring restaurants for takeaway, and there’s an amicable nod from the staff, who are, after a year and a half of the gallery, familiar with Amanda and her crew.

I spot Pauline Schey and Theresa Weisheit outside, friends of Amanda who run Frankfurt-based experimental listening bar “score__”. We sit down on Chess Club’s kitschy, deep-red carpet, a remnant of the buildings former life as a 1980s cowboy boot store, to watch Soli City’s set. Surrounded by dried flowers, humming into his e-flute saxophone, Soli looks like a woodland fairy in an urbane, folk-revivalist Midsummer Night’s Dream. The scene feels melancholic. I’m hit with a strange nostalgia. For what, I’m not sure, but the feeling is sensible: Chess is soon closing its current iteration at Colonnaden. During it’s run, the gallery became a place for artistic hangouts, fostered a community. It has hosted shows, catalogue launches and performances alongside live music events. I usually avoid goodbyes, but as my friend S. once said, they’re meant to be celebrated with friends. That’s what this feels like: an informal, sentimental farewell.

Alex Thake, a Frankfurt based artist, is sat beside me. She explains how her reading, which took place at the AKA opening, was a “Don Quijote story told through Candy Darling”. It reminds me of a TikTok reel I saw about “5 books where you can’t trust the narrator”. She explains her idea of the unreliable narrator. It sticks with me - how we reconstruct events through fragments, memory and second-hand impressions. Nozomi Ngceni’s sculpture HCC² (2025) captures a similar subjectivity. Her xerox black-and-white prints rest on a flat surface, supported by staircase-like structures on both sides. Reflected in the space by the idiosyncratic mirrored ceiling, and loosely balancing on another mirror, the sculpture is endlessly repeated: “A mirrored image that exists in a multitude of dimensions“ Nozomi writes in her artist statement. It’s an homage to the space; the end is the beginning is the end. This is not a final goodbye though - Amanda will continue to do shows elsewhere. Still, there's something about this particular red-carpeted place which will be hard to replicate.

Hung on the conrete wall, I spot Portrait of Lydia (2025) by Callum Hansen, a London-based photographer. The work plays on the black-and-white motif, depicting a woman lying in her underwear, hands crossed almost protectively in front of her while meeting the camera’s gaze. Hansen captures the tension between the openness in her eyes and her defensive posture: a negotiation of intimacy one could only allow from lovers, intimates. “This is Lydia!” Amanda points out, a mutual friend from London, and I take a step closer. She tells me that the artist re-photographed the original plate many times. Through a layering process involving various types of paper, the surface has taken on a dream-like texture, textured by soft scratches and abrasions. These marks are almost distracting. It gives the image a falsely engineered “vintage” feel - a quiet nod to the nature of the medium, it’s tendency to age and how that dilutes or exacerbates the physicality of memory. While it’s conceptually introspective, it carries a strikingly expressive dedication to emotion. If I’m being totally honest, I would say it’s the kind of photo someone would take with them to war.

On Sunday, I arrive at AKA’s courtyard. It’s nestled between the former halls of a 19th-century listed electricity station. Like the aftermath of a Baroque Bacchanale, people lie sprawled, entangled upon huge pillows. It smells of hot dogs, and I assume somebody's parents are managing the barbecue. I want to see the show, so I head inside.

In Aka’s vast warehouse space, every work is either BIG or made of many small pieces. First, I gravitate towards the work of Clara Schmidt, a recent graduate of HFBK (University of Fine Arts Hamburg). Her retail-esque Gossip Harbour (2025) is a sculptural composition made of hundreds of tiny collectables, neatly found together on the shelves for a brief moment. Other works also have stage-like or display-ish qualities, like British-born, Berlin-based artist Hannah Rose Stewart’s Bench Stage (2025) which is used later as a stage for Iku’s and a London-based performance artist Charlie Osbourne’s concert. Instead of building a post-industrial-white-cube-art-space, AKA invites their guests to have fun with the vast halls. Artworks function as props, setting AKA up as the auto-fiction-party girl’s version of Warhol’s factory. Rosa Lüder’s enlarged-early-2000s-flip-phone-gemstones that embellish the windows of the space complete this aesthetic of celebration and playfulness.

A beam of llight emerges from one of AKA’s smaller backrooms. Callum Hansen’s film Memorial Rounds (2024) is projected onto cracked walls. The film shows a camera vlog in first person. Skull bong, car drifting, play-fights; raw emotion and diy-material produce a film of highly intense, adolescent feeling. It fits the space. His quasi-coming-of-age-music video is a rebellious, romanticized non-conformative image of an anti-hero aesthetic. The film is fragmented by two pianists performing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. Beethoven died long before youth culture became a thing, but I assume he was something like a proto-rockstar of his times, which makes me wonder what the coke of the 17th century was like.

Amidst all this century-spanning teenage chaos, I sense that the works by Loerdy Wesely and Floss Crossley & Theo Mackenzie offer a more conceptual (ironically or otherwise) counterpoint. One wall works formal and structural discipline form a quiet, calming geometrical rhythm. I look at the title: Señor Hunter Bidens Collection of Victorian Literatuur an unlikely combination of words. The artwork uses paper, and its materiality, as its prime communicator. Paper represents two facets of the artists’ lives. For Crossley, it bears the notation of customer’s orders - her artist bio details that she is a small plates waitress - and is printed with the words of her vocational reading, taken on shift breaks Nabokov’s Lolita.

Passing Australian artist Zach Rockman’s painting of punk-looking-1970’s-like-mugshots, I head back down the stairs to join the Informal Wedding. “You & Me” by Disclosure plays. Two people walk down the make-shift aisle, and the seated crowd starts clapping. They wear soft cotton dresses made in the early 2000s, fringy light brown Patrizia Pepe Vinted finds, polka dots and stripes. Both the romantic sentiment and specific styling contrast the upstairs works, like with sculptor and painter Nicolai Olesen‘s black, sharp, angular sculpture. Flora Lenzmann’s pronunciation of “Lavender Lady“ stays with me for days.

Ozzy Osborne died during the installation of 96 hours of summer. Amanda and I spoke about his passing and how his death set a certain tone. At first, I didn’t understand why (“Millennial low IQ“ - Robin Ogunmuyiwa) but I believe the hippie-heavy metal Peter Pan, Ozzy, became something of a spiritual guide for the extended weekend: Nobody here wants, or can, be alone.

I can’t help but wonder if hosting has become the new mode of curating/exhibiting. While Amanda says the festival is about “making memories together“ Noemi (Aka studios) speaks of the event as “a cultural handshake“ (a more pragmatic interpretation). Either way, it feels like a stage for the kind of community it seeks to create:

“Oh no! No one who was great in this world will be forgotten; but each was great here in their own special way, and each was great in relation to the greatness of what they loved.”

-Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death from Sasha Lukashenkova’s performance on Friday at AKA studios

–
Starring: Tobias Bartenschlager, Charlotte Masha Bialas, Emma Bombail, Floss Crossley, Callum Hansen, Iku, Mia Lotta Joedecke, Sem Lala, Flora Lenzmann, Sasha Lukashenkova, Rosa Lüders, Theo Mackenzie, Nozomi Ngceni, Noemi Liv Nicolaisen, Nicolai Olesen, Charlie Osborne, Zach Rockman, Roberto Ronzani, Clara Schmidt, Hannah Stewart, Alex Thake, Lilli Thiessen, Amanda Weimer and Loerdy Wesely.

https://chessclubspace.com/
https://www.instagram.com/aka_akastudios/

I met Countess Elizabeth Bàthory in the pub opening her leather trench coat, I was hoping she would flash me but she only wanted to flog me her DVDs. “Cult…” she gasped, between breaths of cigarette smoke that came trickling out from her mouth, and perhaps also her nose and ears... she seduced me through her last remaining eyelashes giving me the look of a smouldering cinepheliac... I could only oblige... My roommate stole my DVD player and I cancelled my MUBI subscription so I left 20 quid poorer and with so much plastic in my living room, watching YouTube Shorts. Where was the cinema? I saw her again sleeping under a piece of carpet in a corner of Peckhamplex. Timidly, I asked her, since I couldn’t watch the films myself, whether she would be able to summarise them for me. “I already have,” she said, “I’ve been thinking of you.” She touched my hand as she gave me a stack of papers, she was soft with an ancient twinkle in her eye. This new blog series for Hollywood Superstar is a transcription of her manuscripts.

Vol.1: The Bloodettes (2005), set in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in the year 2025. Director Jean-Pierre Bekolo said that he was bemused to hear from European critics that he had made "The First African sci-fi film". An outspoken critic of Western film festival imperialism and its obstruction of African cinematic self-definition, Bekolo addressed these concerns directly in his 2018 open letter to the Berlinale, which can be read here. Bekolo makes films for “places, not for audiences”. His films are about Yaoundé, where “funerals are the best parties,” and where the complete mimicry of the Hollywood horror genre is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, by attempting to make sci-fi in a place without a future - where bureaucracy is bloody and time is unstable - Bekolo’s process yields a film of “many impossible genres.” Shown last year at UCLA’s programme African Futurism perhaps this morbidly sexy political satire fits more comfortably in the tradition of The Gothic. Two vampiric sex workers deal with the dead body of a dictator by using their seductive/destructive bodies as modern agents of the pre-colonial women's secret society Mevoungou. For the enjoyers of neon-soaked streets, those who want to see women sexually dominate in ways scientifically unforeseen, those interested in hearing the hardest loop from a post-millenium soundtrack…

- Eileen Slightly

The diary of Countess Elizabeth Báthory: The Bloodettes (2005)

'My friend is tired - Your corpse is beautiful’

One moment the light and sounds were falling out of the shut door, and the next only a scream. It’s weird however used I am to women screaming it’s always a jump to hear someone you love do it. Into the room we fell from the ceiling, His body was cold, wet and stiffer then His cock just 2 minutes prior. How did a man write and direct this, how did he write us so right and real we not only demand respect from you, but love and respect ourselves. Anyway, more of that later. First we gotta find out what to do with this Goddam body. All these powerful men coming and cumming night in night out, they uphold an idea of this country and our cunts that frankly don’t work. You see this country is independent now, but the structure of hypocrisies was left behind, and these dogs of men desperately re-enforce it.

How can you describe our future when you’ve only focused on re-writing our history? We’re living in the future of 2025, listening to mevoungou, we know this dystopia like it avoids us. How can you expect us to dance and sit and look this goddam good just to belittle our native tongues? Yep you paid for this night, but we paid for this country with our asses.

“How can you film a love story where love is impossible?”

Quickly we lost his body either in a fridge or another scene, now alone with us three in this car and his head in a Sainsbury’s bag for life, we ride.

How can you feign sisterhood? I can’t even explain it, you would just have to experience it, or you just have to believe when I say it’s me + Majolie + Chouchou 4eva. To recognise the ‘I’ is to admit there is not only you but others, tonight I reject this self-alienation, there is no ‘I’ only ‘we’. Our blood has been sucked and un-sucked time and time again. Who said this story is one you can follow? You make us laugh. This is beyond narrative, beyond these structures and beyond the systems we’ve been raised in. Tonight we will get ready in our own time. Slow motion fight scenes in front of cars and hotel rooms remind me of the old kung-fu movies we’d mimic as kids, the powers of the east to battle the evils of the west. We shimmy around putting on knickers and skirts and swapping tops and blotting lipstick. Circles around the bedroom, I smile up at the posters they have in their room, especially the Scream (1996) one that I too have hung on the wall in the nook of my lair. Our beautiful bodies joyfully montage to the repeating melodies, we hum along. I feel the blood leave my veins and I’m light headed again. This is sacred.

Eternal powers, cgi, holding her hand. We sit to eat at the table in the room we cooked in. I sip lots of green potion from my comically large wine glass and transport back and forth from this alien planet to the moon. 2025 is here, I wear glitter on the lids of my eyes and the sky has the colours of love bites and wine.

“How can you make a horror film in a place where death is a party”

I slurped and sniffed too many letters this weekend and now the salt I lick from my fingers burns my tongue. He throws a punch and I knock him to the ground, my kung foo choreo is reminiscent of Bausch; the absurdity of reality. Blood takes a hold of him, clogging up his airways, choking him, he always liked it rough. He splutters red, Majorie reaches over and with her finger collects the thick dribble and smudges it onto her lip and cheek. My tummy grumbles. Only through destruction can we achieve such beauty...or something like that.

When their zippers are undone, their walls come down, they told us all their secrets and now we can use them to bury the body.
Stood around the open casket, orange plates holding cake. We exist in these spaces of the in-between and nowhere in particular. How did we get here? Was this before or after? It doesn’t matter, it just happens; how can we continue to make sense in plots and art when the real life makes no sense at all. Our world holds too many histories, projections and thingamabobs all too intersected to be told or sold separately. Christian Metz defines fiction as “seems-real” tonight we define fiction as “non-fiction”. The General's dead and we gossip over his body.

I spent this evening surrounded by my best friends, but whispering with Him, he too saw the words I was saying. They bled into his skin and he said little but wrote me the sort of lines I usually struggle to write. We performed so naturally that I wondered if we’d directed it together, or if he just had once been me as well as the director. I don’t know, it’s confusing, but as I said, isn’t that the point. This evening bled out of his skin and we appeared clean in a morning. I smiled on my way home, clambering into bed with my Majolie and my Chouchou, they sleepily engulfed me with body and blanket, and together we shall wait for tomorrow.

"How can you make an action film in a country where acting is subversive?”

Why the fuck are you still trying to answer me? There is no answer. Well I’m lying. There’s too many answers, a thousand truths and you still pick to pray to one. The lights flood out the opening door,
out the hotel bed sheets,
out the limousines window rolling down,
out the open casket,
out all the holes,
bam.
BAM. Light floods out over us all, and how can you still hide in a place with no shadows but your own?

As part of a regular blog, waitress-turned-writer-turned-political-savant Floss Crossley responds to baiting questions from Editorial. Crossley mediates on political apathy, slacktivism, dictatorial boardgames and the continually futile philosophising of micro-trends. WE THANK HER.

I just invaded China by candlelight. The electricity has run out.
I lost my card again so I can’t take money out so I can’t top it up at the store.
But it’s ok we have some old wax burnt down to a height too ugly for
tomorrow’s restaurant guests. My ears are warmed by an aviator hat I refer to
as Russian and my boyfriend’s upset his new jacket will be my new jacket now because he
thought he was a woman’s small. His six silver buckles are
creaking out a whistle from any slight movement.

My friend L starts shouting at my friend M. M’s dressed like he’s a
young Sci-Fi concubine- loose twisting linens and high-laced
leather boots. L is in a tall Prussian Cavalry hat, black, red
lining, gold stitching. M rolled a six, as he always seems to
do, and now his two green men are a massive threat to L’s
five orange occupying Scandinavia. My friend E is bored
and wants to actually hang out and talk and things. She has a
weed leaf and a Jamaican flag on the camo jacket I gave her
that came in the post for me, but I couldn’t have ordered. I’m
in a coat that makes my shoulders extend to far greater
lengths than our grandmothers could have hoped for us in
the 70s when they burnt their bras.

Most of my legs are covered, but the last button is only nay heigh so the two parts of the
coat swing open to reveal my cute little brogues. They
ripped open on a job interview- but luckily the interviewer
was an artist, so I got the job and he taped them up, but the
only tape he had was for his artwork, which was real camo
tape from Operation Desert Storm, but then I’m not sure if
I’ve got the job anymore because this was six months ago and
it’s subject to funding. But now, if I take Russia, I’ll have the
whole of Asia, and I can expand west. I’ll let L and M shout
and I’ll laugh every time they emasculate each other so that
they will make rash competitive moves and not notice how I
benefit from a weakened Europe.

While L dramatically rolls his dice, I check the light box in my hand. I click “See Post Anyway” to a trigger warning on Instagram. I see a dead child. Their face is obscured by blood. Below reads “liked by my ex boyfriend and others”. I know he’s liking the journalism, not the content, but it still reads in bad taste. I look around at the kitchen. The room is foggy. E’s clothes dry dangled over the kitchen cabinets. She did not manage to get all the dog period out of her new Polish T-shirt so her Black Water merch really is stained in blood. The heat of the room - the wet smoker’s breath locked in to keep out the winter wind - causes the tape which held an old photo against the fridge to finally give up its last grip. The glue’s dried out. The paper floats calmly down - the space heater’s upwards breeze allowing it to fall in slow motion- turning seductively from a mysterious food-stained blank side to reveal to me a long enough flash of text and garment- Melania in Kakhi:

I DONT REALLY CARE DO YOU ###

When S. Sweeney asked me to discuss the correlation between my milieu’s habit of wearing military regalia and the current accelerating political climate, I have to admit I was a little defensive. My reasons to be so I think are summed up in that historic image of the First Lady climbing the steps of air force one.

1. I. Trendy Military jackets are nothing new, we’ve only just moved on from last decade’s olive green high street revolutionaries.
2. II. I’m forced to address or even allude to the Indie Sleaze revival, and in a worse extension, I’m forced to address that a notable response of my friends and I - in the wake of mass global horrors - is as immaterial as a mild change in style and self-imaging.

   

One line of Research:

Vogue says:

Few garments better encapsulate the “I love typewriters and casual amphetamines” spirit of the indie sleaze than ornate martial jackets.

Even typing the words indie sleaze to say you don’t care about indie sleaze feels too much like an authorial legitimising of indie sleaze. (That's five
times I’ve said it now) I’ve always been
disgusted by the Hellp and the fit of their jeans. I
think it’s nice when my best friends waddle
around in tight denim and pointy sandals, but I
don’t want to see a plastic outline of what men
are lacking. I understand that the military jacket
is now often associated with the post-Celine
Opium for white boys vibe you see on evil “What
Are People At The X Gig Wearing” reels. And I
am uncomfortable with a restaurant coworker
assuming my association. But I do
own a typewriter and am prescribed
amphetamines. Separate to any contemporary
influence in this trend, there is definitely a bit of
newly or not-so-newly adults just dressing up as
what they thought a cool person looked like
when they were twelve. We have given up faith in new ideas of cool as they seem untrustworthy,
manipulated by all the microplastics and blue light rays we have since allowed to poison our imaginations.

There’s a very Gothic current to the English Memory of the World Wars. As a child on the 11th of November a melodramatic solemnness would take over me. In the shade of the town’s memorial monument, I’d display my plastic poppy on the square breast of my duffel coat with all the seriousness of a junior cadet. Staring up at the awesome obelisk, I would whisper a prayer for my troops and my country. The cold turning my little cheeks and fingers pink, I’d yearn for my father’s hand as he stood a foot behind me far away on the beaches of Normandy. I’d then wake up to shake my head at classmates slightly further along in puberty then I, their sweet perfumes smells and metallic crisp rattlings invading my total sensorial immersion in the still, calming fantasy of an old world war. At school, I took Evacuee Day so seriously that I was scouted by a teacher to play a sickly Victorian child in mortar and pestle workshops at the local community centre.

Maybe the hot nazis in New York think they’re being Libertines when they wear a trump hat and say retard. And the anorexic revival of this fashion is definitely not completely detached from their popularity. I do think, however, that a real fascist dress code is a lot more The Row than Slimane or Ali Express. People looked at Melania’s inauguration outfit and choked at the return to fascism. The Chanel style tailoring and colour scheme was certainly 1940s inspired, but I’d argue this is still cosplay over continuation. Georgia Meloni is a real fascist and she is one of the most normal looking people I have ever seen.

And, now, months after I began writing I’m still sitting around the table playing my board game. America and China are now in a trade war. Germany has promised to increase their military spending. I’m losing all of Europe, isolated in my island territory with a few guilty figures in the Middle East. They’re quietly well defended but unable to expand. It's Spring now so I wear a light Kakhi jacket I borrowed from L to dress as one of Gadaffi’s bodyguard for Halloween. I’ve paired it with a cute Glastonbury vibe dress just like TikTok showed me to. I want the white dress to feel like the end of the Hunger Games, I have my man and a child and a large expansive field with only birds over head. I'm not from District twelve, I'm from London and could probably do this all right now if I really wanted. But late at night I'd watch the Tesla satellites cross past the stars and know I’d still be in cosplay. The world is very loudly falling apart, and we know that we are not the real victims, nor the true perpetrators. We’re complicit through our impotency, we’re zombie soldiers dragged through comfortable trenches, hoping at least one of us could be a Sigfried Sasoon or Wilfred Owen.

Below are three accounts from the editorial team of their time at EU:RE/ London Woodstock/ Battle of the Bands. We hope that the multivalency of our narrative can put the ROCK back into baroque; as we shimmy up the Post-Drain pipe to the heavens of NEW BRITISH MUSIC. Here we are:

Cyberdog mini dress and over-the-knee black fishnet socks

The fever dream which was The Cause became a house party without a house and an afters before the gig had finished. The night was a mystical green room with a club attached underneath. In the upstairs bar people kept accidentally drinking the non-alcoholic strawberry cocktail puree, which looked like ketchup in a cup.

The downstairs was an apocalyptic onslaught of what I’ve started describing as ‘Post Drain’. I’ve noticed a scene of kids, maybe 5 years younger than me, glorifying what my early teen years were. They are a mismatch of drainer sensibilities, Sherlock fanfic era tumblr, proto influencer-Charlie Barker mixed with early 2000s; emo, mallgoth, gyaru, grime, Lolita and e-girl.

This is what I imagine all those magazines are constantly trying to coin as the godforsaken term Indie Sleeze. I fear they have it all wrong. Yes, these guys are wearing Isabel Marant sneaker wedges - but - they aren’t trying to glorify the downtown Hipster scene of the 2010s or the indie aesthetic; it’s a much more nuanced amalgamation of internet-core. They’re fans of the ”UK underground”, they listen to BassVictim, Fakemink, Fimi, Feng, with their forefathers being Lancey, Yung Lean, Lil B and Imogen Heap. It’s heavily attached to the music being made now, not just a replica of past counterculture-turned-aesthetic.

The atmosphere of the club, despite making me feel fucking old at the age of 23, was good. I had begun worrying that Covid had fucked up the 18 year olds ability to party, but, as I danced (pressed up against the security guards trying to control Maria’s quirked-up crowd) my faith was restored. They happily partied to Leo’s 10-piece hippie band WPDMT complete with Effie’s hand-knit headbands, bongos and a whistle, and I have to say I’m walking away glad the scene isn’t all Hedi Slimane and no fun.

DSquared dress. Chie Mihara heeled pumps. Sheer white knee socks
I was in the Green Room when someone turned to me to ask if I had a filter. “Wait”, she said, “You actually don’t look like the kind of girl who would have a filter”. This was my evening at EU:RE at The Cause.

The green room is filled with people one could categorise in a high-school-cafeteria fashion. There are jocks, geeks, nerds, indie twee revivalists, myspace-emos, dolls and hot-quasi emo cheerleaders, clean-girl goths and warring ex-girlfriend vinted warriors. This may be a Jaded London culture grab visuals factory. I’m failing the micro-trend test, but winning the battle of sobriety, stepping over the vomit-caked shower in the toilets.

WPDMT, led by WPDMT (original member) and Rowan Miles. She sang like an angel and dressed like one of the nubile young women in the cult from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I respected the female-to-male ratio in this band, having spent a substantial amount of time watching all-male bands perform music to kill yourself to. WPDMT had the cadence of a sugary-sweet edible - it made the sweaty pit of the crowd feel like a shroom trip at a millennial Greenpeace festival. Think the scene needs more of that.

Bassvictim starts, and half the venue turns on their heels toward the stage. Maria’s ethereal: sitting on her knees (thigh socks are taped up with double-sided tape), hands outstretched into the crowd like she’s Mother Teresa. I have an image of her in my mind like this from a couple of shows, a baroque painting, where she leans toward the crowd while everyone’s trying to get a piece.

When Ike and Maria play, it's a mix between this heady, sweaty mosh pit and moments of absolute introspection and quiet; you're getting flung into someone, and the next moment you’re alone listening to Wooden Girl with your eyes closed.

Blue latex corset. White t-shirt. Vintage a-symmetrical skirt. Blue fishnet socks

I saw the most fragile minds of my generation grabbing at greenroom wristbands like they were the last helicopters out of Saigon
And the Viet cong was an endless flow of 18 year old emos
The mature emos (Mitsubishi Suicide) were upstairs
And so was all 300 members of Worldpeace DMT (and counting)

This is like my fyp in real life, but that’s not what I said, Issey K said that

Yung Lean saw my friend Fleur playing the whistle for WPDMT and asked her to go on tour
With him I was like damn that’s crazy.
When I say damn that’s crazy that’s when I know
my beer to coke ratio was completely off
And that I could neither smile nor laugh
Only agree. That
my corset had been squashing up my internal organs, I was like oh fuck
don’t puke on Young Lean’s bodyguards.

The curse of the cause was lifted at an undisclosed afters location
Which went on for the rest of the night and day and then some night again
Everybody gives a glimpse of their personal internal hell in these situations,
apart from Chill Chris who does Atomiser.
A tenacious doll (banned from Fold)
told me she was impressed, like damn, I didn’t know straight people
got down like this.

Everybody wants a British invasion,
recession historians aren't stuck for a reason
sensitive yanks come over
just to go back.

Between Brooklyn and London, photographer and curator Alex Arauz builds a quietly
powerful body of work that explores how identity is formed in domestic space. Through
exhibitions, curatorial projects and film initiatives, he asks how the places we live – and the
images we make within them – shape who we are.

The quiet politics of domestic life

Alex Arauz’s photography unfolds in intimate spaces – the lived-in rooms and private
corners that carry the traces of who we are. Working between Brooklyn and London, Arauz
uses photography and moving image to ask how identity takes shape within the domestic,
and how memory lingers in the ordinary. His work slips between editorial and art practice,
between images made for magazines and those made for quiet reflection. The result is a
body of work that feels grounded, familiar and deeply human. “The home,” his images
seem to say, “is where identity is rehearsed, performed and remembered.”

“Arauz’s photographs don’t seek spectacle; they hold a kind of stillness,
inviting the viewer to slow down and notice the ordinary.”
Waste Store, 2023 – Looking at the city from inside
In early 2023, Arauz exhibited as part of I Wonder How Many People in This City, a group
show at Waste Store curated by Isabel Kang. The title alone captures a tension that runs
through Arauz’s work – how we live together, yet remain apart, in the fabric of a city. His
contribution to the show didn’t depict the city directly. Instead, it turned inward. The rooms,
objects and light that fill his frames speak of urban experience at its most personal: the
half-open doorway, the rumpled bed, the soft flare of sunlight through a curtain. These are
not portraits of the metropolis, but of what the city feels like from within.
Emalin, 2024 – Screens, memory and everyday rituals
A year later, Arauz’s practice took another turn inward with his contribution to One for
Sorrow, Two for Joy at Emalin (July–August 2024), curated by Lauren Auder and Tosia
Leniarska. The exhibition transformed the gallery into a living room – a sofa, a television,
two speakers – a gesture that blurred the boundary between public exhibition and private
viewing. Arauz presented OOBE – Out Of Body Experience, a video piece that extends his
fascination with interiority and the act of looking. The title nods to that strange state of
observing oneself from outside, as though memory has slipped into the present.

Curating the scene – Ginny on Frederick and beyond
Arauz’s curiosity about images extends beyond his own photography. He has also played
an active curatorial role in London’s independent art landscape, helping to guide the
programme at Ginny on Frederick, a small but influential gallery celebrated for its
experimental approach and commitment to emerging voices. By contributing to the
gallery’s curatorial direction, Arauz helped foster a platform that embraces experimentation
and risk – the same qualities that shape his own work.
Waiting Room Film Festival – nurturing new voices
Arauz is also a founding member of the Waiting Room Film Festival, a grassroots platform
for experimental and artist-led moving image. The festival has become known for
championing early work from artists who later shape new directions in contemporary film
and video art. Among those shown is Josiane M.H. Pozi, whose early films found a home
at the festival. Pozi has since gained wide attention for her diaristic approach to
image-making – weaving together fragments of daily life, digital memory and the
representation of Black identity. Her rise reflects the kind of raw, authentic talent that
Waiting Room was designed to support.
Arauz’s curatorial and photographic work share the same ethos: an
attention to the overlooked, and a belief that quiet observation can be a
radical act.

What ties Arauz’s activities together – as artist, curator and organiser – is an
understanding of the everyday as a space of meaning. In his editorial work, he brings
sensitivity and texture to fashion portraiture; in his gallery projects, he turns that same
sensibility toward introspection. He approaches the home as an emotional landscape
rather than a static setting. His rooms are charged with feeling, and his subjects – whether
people or places – exist somewhere between presence and absence.
The art of attention

Across exhibitions, festivals and curatorial projects, Arauz offers an antidote to the noise of
contemporary visual culture. His practice encourages slowness and care, inviting the
viewer to linger on a patch of light, a familiar room, or a fleeting expression. In an age of
speed and saturation, Arauz’s work insists on attention – on the idea that seeing carefully,
whether through a lens or across a community, is itself a form of art.

“I have more sympathy this time around towards myself and to Libya. She looked tired.”

Franz Fanon describes the American flag flying as a reminder of reality’s conditions, recognized through its tension, a stimulant. At first the flag appears graceful, but as you get closer, that grace seems to break apart, and we pick up as many pieces of mercy we can find.

I’m drawn to that visual stimulant of tension because it feels energised. Fanon described the moment of this encounter as a “jolt”. A "jolt" represents a profound moment of realisation, rupture, or awakening that disrupts the established order of consciousness or being. It’s not necessarily a shock in how we might think of it objectively, but a transformative moment where existing structures—psychological, social, or colonial—are disrupted. It signifies a moment of profound disillusionment. The catalyst that is a transformative possibility. It’s as much about the shattering of the old as it is about the emergence of the new—a dynamic, often painful, necessary step towards agency.

So I find myself in Libya for the first time in 12 years, where these “jolts” visualise that Libya is still a child learning how to walk. The flag came to symbolise the reality of a country stuck in time from conditions of a civil war that the West conditioned to happen; I saw faded flags everywhere, often distressed, covered in dust, tied up underneath air conditioning vents. Not too much has changed since the last time I was there. Lanes still don’t exist. Men do donuts with their cars in the middle of an intersection. Libyans are quick to find humour in their situation. They have to laugh a little at themselves - try not to lose themselves to the stress. I found myself doing the same. All my relatives said the same thing - “it’s Libya, that's how it is”.

When you think of the American highways, you think of open roads, long-haul trucks - Road trip Americana. Maybe country music is playing in the background. Every car I saw in Libya was missing a tail light with fake Mercedes Benz emblems on the hood of Hondas; at least one door wouldn't be able to unlock on its own.

After 12 years, I was ready to document everything. In 10 days, I had taken nearly 1,000 photos and videos. The last time I was there, I disliked everything that it was to be Libyan. In retrospect, I was a kid who hated myself—living in Portland. I begged my parents to buy me a patagonia puffer vest because it was “cool”. So here I was, in a much better place, eager to prove to myself that I had changed and that validation existed in that act of catching these jolts. I came out of that tension and discomfort I had held within myself - that I was always scared to grow out of.

Here’s my top 5 photos from that trip:

1: First Look

There is no such thing as “too much” in an Arab wedding. The glam and drama of the brides’ sisters and friends having the first look at the bride was all too good. I was lucky enough to sneak a picture before the hijabi security guards tried to follow me around all night to tape the back of my phone to stop me from documenting. Weddings are like the club: You can tell who’s single based on how much they shake their hips. Aunties sit and gossip to figure out which ones they can set up with their sons.

2: Bootlegs Galore

If the fakes on Canal St were actually all storefronts, then we’d all agree it would be a game-changer for the market. That was Libya. These shops' dedication to having lights, mannequins, etc, is all for their culture of logo-mania. They love a logo. None of the major fashion houses have an actual store in the country, except for Omega Jewelry (thanks to Ben Saoud). This hijab store plastered all the logos of the ‘designers’ they sell—big fan of the directness here.

3: Passport Photo

One of the most important things I had to do in Libya was to get my first passport. The order of events to get a passport there is like the plot of a well-awarded indie short film. When we needed to take our photos, I noticed that they had a menu of outfit choices one could be photoshopped into. Seeing that half of the options became increasingly militant made me laugh. How many men decided: “I want that one.”

4: Beautiful

The freshest orange juice would cost you maybe 50 cents for a bottle. Even gas was cheaper than water at 30 cents a gallon. I miss how simple it was. The beauty of everyday life in Libya is that, as chaotic as it might get, they take pride in the simplicity of executing their tasks. If you’re going to do something once, you had better do it right - and do it the “easy” way. They have an eye for finding the shortcuts on the street or the “DIY” approach to fix anything - literally. Driving on the freeway, I saw these guys on the side with hundreds of oranges, and it felt like they were just emanating a glow onto the street. Orange juice tastes better here. Maybe it’s because it's made by two chill dudes posted on the side of a high-speed freeway with no lanes: like this ^.

5: She’s tired

Any neighbourhood I visited in Tripoli and Benghazi was never short of a Libyan flag. They were everywhere. I had revisited the area called “The Old City,” where my Dad spent most of his childhood selling Jewelry in the Medina. He took us on a tour of his old spots. During my 10 days in Libya, I took a photo of every flag that I saw - this one made me the most emotional. Just a faded flag folded up on itself, tucked in the corner of an arch, in a place I hadn’t seen in 12 years. It felt like you could see the flag's life, not only because it was faded but because it was alone. It hadn’t been interrupted by anything else, no wires, graffiti, or even more flags surrounding it. I think this sums up what I felt like coming back. Tied up, faded…but still the same. Older now, understanding what a flying flag aloft in the wind means when you see yours faded and blue. I have more sympathy for myself…for Libya. She looked tired.

Alex Arauz on Seeing the World from Inside the Room

Interview by Hollywood Superstar
Photography by Alex Arauz

Hollywood Superstar Review sits down with Brooklyn- and London-based
photographer and curator Alex Arauz to talk about his work in domestic spaces,
moving image, curating, and his film festival. In this wide-ranging conversation, Arauz
reflects on identity, memory, and the quiet power of observation.

HSR: Alex, your work often explores home, intimacy, and memory.
Why do you keep coming back to domestic spaces?
AA: I think the home is where everything begins and ends. It’s not just a physical space – it’s
emotional, psychological, even spiritual. I grew up surrounded by people who expressed
themselves through objects and habits, not through grand gestures. The things we live with –
light, noise, clutter – they all carry identity. My photographs are ways of trying to see that
clearly, without judging it.

HSR: There’s a real stillness to your images. They’re not flashy; they
feel observed. Is that a deliberate contrast to the visual noise of
social media and fashion imagery?
AA: Definitely. I love images that take their time. We’re surrounded by pictures that move fast
and tell us how to feel, and I’ve never been interested in that. I like photography that breathes
– that invites you to notice something small. The quiet can be political too. Choosing not to
perform, not to over-explain, can be a form of resistance.

HSR: Your show at Waste Store in 2023 – I Wonder How Many
People in This City – was a really introspective take on urban life.
How did you approach that?
AA: Isabel Kang, who curated the show, was thinking about how people coexist in the same
city but live completely different experiences. I wanted to look at that through interiors – what

the city feels like from the inside. You don’t always need to show the skyline; sometimes it’s a
reflection in a mirror or the light on a floor that says more about urban life than a street
photograph ever could.

HSR: And then at Emalin in 2024, you presented OOBE – Out of
Body Experience. The title itself feels psychological.
AA: It was. The piece was shown in a space that looked like someone’s living room – a sofa, a
TV, a couple of speakers. It became a kind of dream loop about watching yourself from
outside. I was thinking about how screens shape our sense of self – how memory gets filtered
through technology. It’s not nostalgia, exactly, but a way of seeing how much mediation sits
between us and our experiences now.

HSR: You’ve also been involved behind the scenes as a curator at
Ginny on Frederick. How does curating relate to your photographic
work?
AA: For me, curating is another kind of storytelling. At Ginny on Frederick, it was about
helping build an environment where artists could show work that didn’t need to fit into
commercial expectations. I love small spaces – they let you be precise, and you can create
emotional connections between works. My own images often deal with those small, intimate
moments, so there’s a natural crossover.

HSR: You’re also a founding member of Waiting Room Film Festival.
How did that start?
AA: It started with a few friends who were frustrated that there weren’t enough platforms for
early or experimental moving-image work. We wanted to make something that didn’t feel like
a “festival” in the traditional sense – more like a conversation. We screened the first films of a
lot of artists who are now doing incredible things, like Josiane M.H. Pozi. Her early work was
this raw, poetic look at daily life – deeply personal. That’s the energy we wanted: honest and
unpolished.

HSR: You move between photography, moving image, and curating.
How do you balance all those roles?

AA: They’re all part of the same impulse – to pay attention. Whether I’m taking a picture or
helping someone else show their work, it’s about noticing the quiet things that define us. The
line between artist and organiser feels less important than the act of creating space, literally or
metaphorically, for people to be seen.

HSR: There’s a lot of talk about authenticity in art and fashion right
now. What does that word mean to you?
AA: Authenticity isn’t about being raw or confessional. It’s about honesty of attention. I think
people can feel when something’s been really looked at – when the artist has slowed down
enough to see what’s actually there. That’s what I try to do, whether it’s a photograph of a
curtain or a film about memory.

HSR: If you had to describe your practice in one sentence, what
would it be?
AA: I’d say it’s about learning to look again – at your surroundings, your history, yourself.

HSR: So what’s next for you?
AA: I’m developing a new body of work that extends some of these ideas into sound and
installation. I want to explore how memory exists not just visually but physically – in the way
spaces hold echoes or silence. And I’ll keep working with other artists through the festival and
smaller projects. Collaboration keeps the work alive for me.

HSR: Last question – if your work were a movie, what kind of movie
would it be?
AA: (laughs) Probably something slow, set mostly indoors, where not much happens – but by
the end, everything feels different.

Follow Alex Arauz on Instagram at @alexarauz and see more of his work at
alexarauz.com.