WHAT I SAW LAST WEEK: 4th December
ZM
it’s the nearly end of the year! i’m so cold! we’re nearly done n i can’t wait to break for christmas bc i feel like an industrious woodland creature and i am sooooo ready to hibernate. i haven’t seen an exhibition in ages! i am actually going to continue these WISLW’s maybe even if we break because i want to spend my xmas hols catching up on everything i’ve missed. idk, i say that and … let’s see. i am optimistic now but on my first day off i might just sleep for 24 hours. i have managed to squeeze some bits and bobs in around our mad rush to finish for christmas. here they are!
NICOLE EISENMAN @ WHITECHAPEL
i love a painting show, and Nicole Eisenman is a PAINTER baby! like a painter who is comfortable with the fact of painting and making images as an action in and of itself. i love and respect when painters test the conceptual limits of painting as a medium, but there’s something about leaning into the magic and trickery of constructing a crazy kooky image – that’s my personal taste speaking, to be clear. it just always hits my pleasure receptors just right, 10/10 on the vibe-o-meter.
the paintings themselves, as images, were really interesting and beautiful. some were funny, handling their own humour and construction with an edgey or gritty arm’s length distance.
some were cerebral, handling the canon of art history like it was so light and nimble, rather than a weighty thing. eg;;; this painting feat a mini-breughel in the bottom right corner.
weird warp-y viewpoints
idk, this show was soooo A Bit Of Me that it’s hard to extract my enjoyment of it from the way it hit at my personal taste sooooo exactly. i just wanted to yoink these off the wall and take em home with me, sit with them and live with them. wish i had art-buying money (i WISH artists were subsidised by the government so art could be more affordable!)
https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/nicole-eisenman-what-happened/
SNOWPIERCER
ok so i keep accidentally watching films, enjoying them and then realising ‘omg it’s bong joon ho!’
watched parasite, yeah great! watched Okja, LOVED IT! watched SNOWPEIRCER, and i thought it was EXCELLENT. truly! obviously: chris evans is in it and i fancy him so, great. but it’s also set in a weird dystopian post-apocalyptic future where the world is froze solid and uninhabitable, there’s only a couple hundred humans left and they all live on a train that goes round and round the world on a big loop. there’s also a train class system, very fucked up. this is a revolutionary film, in that, it envisions a metaphor for social relations and then lets a revolution rip. this isn’t a spoiler, it literally happens in the first 20 mins. the uprising bit is the inciting incident. it’s an interesting and un-cathartic ending. i loved it. i love u bong joon ho! i want to kiss u on ur beautiful genius face. i want to take you to the pub and chat shit w u. mwah mwah mwah.
WE SHAPE OURSELVES WITH THE FORCE OF EACH OTHER
last weekend i read a poem at this event at the ICA, the poem was there it is by jayne cortez (here’s a link: )
i got there a bit early so was kicking around for a bit before i went on, and i caught azad ashim sharma from the87press reading a poem by Sarona Abuaker – i can’t recall the name of the poem, but it made me tear up, so ,,, i mean, take my word w a pinch of salt bc i read literally no poetry and understand barely any poetry besides (that is just not the setting my head or my heart is wired on, to my DISMAY!) but here’s a link to sarona’s debut collection if u would like to take me at my word! buy Why so few women on the street at night by Sarona Abuaker // from the87press
JOY CROOKES @ HACKNEY CHURCH
WE LOVE!!! bengali girlies being talented and outspoken cultural icons!!! i love joy crookes, i really do. i get why lads sing HE’S ONE OF OUR OWN when a hometown hero bangs a top bins screamer in the back of the net. i’d yell SHE’S ONE OF OUR OWN if joy crookes ever took up football. i’d yell SHE’S ONE OF OUR OWN now if anyone cared to let me. my fella got cutie lil surprise tickets for us to go to her palestine fundraiser performance at hackney church, and it was a really nice time. just a groovy lil night and good karma only etc.
i’ve also never been to hackney church for a lil gig and it’s a really interesting space! i spent the train home googling its history (it’s been around since the 11th century!) and trying to figure out if it was still a functioning church (it IS!!! i think that’s bonkers lmao. havin a boogie in the house of god!?!?!) london is full of curious spaces! aren’t we lucky!
MASSIVE LAMB
my boyfriend made this massive leg of lamb, apparently it was on offer at sainsbury’s, look isn’t it enormous!
FRANKIE’S CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS
something about this guy’s deadpan delivery in front of his subject, they’re literally listening and reacting to what he’s saying about them, the fact that his lines are written so well – the natural longform endpoint of all those starterpack urban anthrolopological observation meme pages. this is a guy that pays close attention to the culture at large in the world around him, the way humans position themselves within that. icl, i love him.
£££££s
if u haven’t read gabrielle’s blog about how much money she made this year, here it is. she’s kinda said all i would want to say and more obvs. so like, ditto. but j for transparency n to add my numbers to the pile, i made: £22.5k.
beyond dittoing gab’s words, i am j kind of bereft about that. i don’t have anything to say, don’t want to say anything other than ‘oh my god oh my god’. no clever thoughts, so i’ll j let gab’s words have a second home here in WISLW.
i think i need to get a second job, so if u need someone to do lil admin jobs, or little bits of copywriting, lmk! maybe i could also pull pints bc i think i’d find the sociability of that quite nice to balance out the anti-social nature of writing? idk.
i mostly j think it’s funny. i was really interested in what gab wrote about needs and wants, the way those two things can be in conflict or tense. because i really like my life! like, yes, i make like just about minimum wage in a city like london and literally how do i afford to spend £875 a month on rent alone? a mystery. and bills? i feel like all i do is pay my bills and then i just never buy anything else, so that’s probably how. but the thing is, i don’t actually think it would be possible for me to not do this job. i don’t think that is an option bc i don’t want anything else more than i want to WRITE. i like my life because i get to be a writer. i get to do this silly job that pays peanuts, but i consider myself LUCKY! because i’d rather do this than have the anything else, without this the everything else wouldn’t matter because i would stop making sense as a person or an entity. like, i know that’s what gab said in different words and a different way. i think i j have to say that aloud in my words and my way for it to be real to myself, in relation to myself.
2 SONGS FOR U
very interested in people who have unusual or astoundingly arresting voices or vocal performances. if that makes sense? like i want to listen to things that are unusual and arresting.
benjamin clementine
love this, this guy’s got a voice that has this innate confidence. it’s a confident performance, never grandiose never theatrical, but it’s still dramatic? it’s got this insistence or yeah, confidence! that i find really compelling and beautiful. it’s sincere, but not overly. it’s literally amazing.
greta van fleet
these yowling glam rock kids, this sounds like my soul is being ripped in two but not in a weird way, in a really cool way. can’t figure out where they sit in the culture? like are greta van fleet cool? if not, why not? don’t get why they wouldn’t be bc they’re doing this weird thing in a kinda ironic way, but sincerely too. it’s like so sincere it must be a schtick, but idk. glam rock! yowling! it’s beautiful! what an unusual beautiful yowling voice! YOWLING!!!!
XMAS TREE
not mine, i am muslim
SOFTLAUNCHING MY BF IN THE BACKGROUND OF GB NEWS AT THE PALESTINE PROTEST
we were in the background on gb news and i think that is honestly so embarassing, so un-chic. and as with all embarassing things, i have to tell everyone all about it.
SOFTLAUNCHING MY POTENTIAL NEXT TEXT IN THE NEW YEAR
maybe, if i don’t change my mind/forget what i actually want to say? someone remind me
xmas pig
