Episode 26: IT'S OUR 10TH BIRTHDAY!!!! so here's a Q&A about Poor Artists etc

Download transcript here or read below.

INFO:
bonus episode: a recording from a talk we did at San Mei Gallery as part of Van Gogh House's Festival of Encounters

ZM: Hello and welcome back to the White Pube Podcast. I’m ZM & it’s Sunday, 12th October 2025. If you know anything about the White Pube’s villain origin story, that date will ring alarm bells because it is the White Pubes 10th birthday. That is right. One oh ten years, whole decade. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Air horns. I’m going to insert sound effects on this track from somewhere.

Yeah, it is our birthday, and that’s lovely. Well, I love a round number. A whole decade. That’s a third of our lives. Can you believe it? I actually can’t believe it, but it makes sense. You know what I mean? But, rather than a normal text review essay episode where can I give you a little recording from a talk we did a couple weeks ago at the Festival of Encounters, hosted by Van Gogh house at San Mei Gallery, which is a gallery ten minutes down the road from Van Gogh’s house.

It is me interviewing Gabrielle about our book Poor Artists, that came out last year. It is out now in paperback. And also e-book and audiobook, if that is your format of preference. But just to say, if you haven’t read the book and you don’t want spoilers, then maybe pause this episode and come back to it once you’ve read it. Because we don’t do like spoilers spoilers. But, we do discuss some of the chapters towards the end of the book, and maybe you don’t want to know what happens. You don’t know where it’s going. You just want to be surprised. Well, that’s fine, that’s your prerogative. Yeah. Pin if you don’t want spoilers, but listen on if you want to hear our chat.

And thank you for sticking with us for the past ten years. Maybe you’ve not been listening from the beginning. Maybe it’s only seven years. I don’t know, but, it feels like a real privilege to be able to do this job that we love so much. And it’s just. I feel quite emotional and strange because ten years is such a long time. I’ve not done anything for ten years. But. Yeah. Right. And that’s lovely, isn’t it? Okay, bye. Before I cry. See you later. Here’s the talk.

Rufus introducing us: I’m sure you probably all know who the white pube is, but I’m going to give a little introduction anyway, in case you have an idea where you are. So the White Pube is the collaborative identity of UK based critics Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad. They have been turning heads since 2015, when the pair began publishing provocative observations and essays online from the art school studios, and have earned themselves an international cult following due to their innovative writing style, their honesty and irreverence, and their willingness to challenge the pale, male, stale establishment. Poor Artists is their first book, which they also are going to be talking about today. But do you have copies of that book, available? If anyone’s buying them then you can get them signed afterwards. The talk is going to be about 40 minutes long with 20 minutes for Q&A. So yeah, I hope you’ll enjoy it. And thank you very much.

Z&G: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

G: Thank you for coming. You could have done anything today.

Z: This is Sunday. Take it away. Okay, so we’ve got a slightly different format. I’m in charge. I’m interviewing Gabrielle. Because maybe this is the beauty of working in collaboration, right? We’re self-sustaining ecosystem a terrarium. But also, I hate answering questions, and I get dead nervous. And I know all the best questions to ask. None of that. So everyone that’s ever interviewed us, but like, yeah, so for this talk, I will not be Zarina Muhammad. I’m going to be a generic interviewer. You can think Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman. Davina McCall, whoever you want to know. And I’m whoever, but I’m not myself. So if we all just suspend all disbelief, And then also, please be on your best attention paying attention behavior because we have some prizes for the four best questions. At the end.

G: We’ve got a special riser printed for us. Is bingo from the Liverpool event earlier this year, and they have just been on the shelf in my bedroom. I need to get rid, but there’s four of them. So the four best questions, can get one for free. Yes.

Z: And then we do have some. This is like housekeeping and like. Okay. Right. Switched off ur phonessss? But, I’m going to make some assumptions that we have here. And, I’m going to hope that you’ve all read the book, or if you’ve not read the book that you’re happy to have spoilers.

G: Who’s read The book. Right. That’s that’s quite a lot.

Z: Okay. We can keep it vague.

G: I don’t know, I don’t know. Some people really don’t care about spoilers. You don’t care about spoilers. We’ve spoken about this before. And I was like, you’re a psycho.

Z: Okay, okay. What an honor to be with you. Here Gabrielle!

Okay, I’ve got a quickfire round first, which I’ve not actually sent you ahead of time, have I not? Okay. Who is your favorite character in the book?

G: Mo, he’s my boyfriend.

Z: Which character was your favorite to write?

G: GUSTAVE COURBET.

Z: What is your favorite chapter overall?

G: The Jupiter residency. Yeah.

Z: Which chapter is the most important?

G: Uncertainty. Which is the big, confrontation.

Z: Which chapter could most likely have been cut out by a snip Happy editor.

G: The art hospital.

Z: Is there a chapter that got cut that you regret cutting? Yes or no?

G: Do you know what I was looking at? Like the. This isn’t a quick fire answer, but I was looking at, like, our original chapter list, which we like, scrawled and stuck on the wall. When we went to Ireland to do a residency. And I was like, what the fuck was the Etsy ghost chapter?

Z: I imagine your collaborator actually really regrets not putting it in. Yeah. If she was here.

G: I think she would, yeah. And it was coming back to me and I was like, oh, wait, just the title alone makes you want to do it the same way. Like the White Cube makes you want to be a critic for ten years.

Z: The Etsy Ghost.

G: It’s like the Etsy Witches, the, curse on Charlie Kirk. Anyway. Carry on.

Z: Which chapter do you think is the general public’s favorite?

G: I think a lot of people talk about, I can’t even remember what it’s called. The one towards the beginning about, like, all nighters.You know, anyway, the one early on about, like, just loving art so much that you stay up all night and. And then the art attack guy starts talking to us through The tele. Wendy. Wendy. Wendy. I feel like people get really happy when they talk about that, which feels like it. Like it’s doing something. Yeah.

Z: Ok. Shoot shag, marry: Mo, valentine. Sheila.

G: Well, Sheila’s me Nan. So. I’ll marry my Nan. Shag Mo. Shoot Valentine. Yeah. Rough.

Z: Shoot shag, marry: Royal Tunbridge Wills. Abraham Maslow & the art King.

G: Shoot the art King. Marry Maslow, isn’t it? Oh, God. No, I don’t like this. Round! Then shag Wills.

Z: Why is there no smoking hot sex scene between quest and mo?

G: Because I wouldn’t let you do It.

Z: I’m Jeremy Paxman.

G: Okay. Oh man, we had like, the same vision for the book. And then when we sat down to write it, Zarina’s version was like, like Smut/YA.

Z: ‘And then they kiss….’

G: At the end of every chapter, which, to be fair, was like, sort of in keeping because the entire draft of the book was actually called, art dates. Like Zarina’s this girl that I know and me & ZArina. Well, would get followers of the internet and we’d be like. Who are these people. And then eventually put, like, a call out on Instagram to say, like, if you want to go on an art date, here’s our email address. Let’s go to a gallery and then like we did that loads for years and we made loads of like, incredible friends off the back of it and weirdly felt like we had networked by accident.

Like we didn’t mean to like network. But this idea came back around, the, the experience of like going somewhere and talking about cultural things and like, connecting over culture was like, actually very special to us. And maybe we should write a book about it and maybe we should interview people, and maybe all those conversations could be like dialog and all the people could become characters. And we proposed that we would write a book to Penguin called Art dates, and they were like, yeah, cool. And then we wrote it and it was like, so unromantic. So depressing. And then it got a bit violent and we were like, we need we need to change the title. But it’s why, like if you go through the chapter list, a lot of the chapter titles still allude to like someone going on a date we will like we’ll keep it in there because it’s funny, but

Z: Yeah, no sex.

G; No sex, no no sex. Because like, also, I do think, that like when you write a book, you don’t need to say the quest woke up and she brushed their teeth and she had breakfast. And then she went about today, and then she brush the teeth. Then she went back to bed. Like that’s just assumed. The reader can fill in the blanks. Mo & quest were teenagers. They were shagging. we don’t need to say they were shagging.

Z: Yeah. Would you rather be invisible? Like quest in the no-show or miniature borrower sized living under the floorboards, like quest in phrogging?

G: I think if I was really, really little, so little that I fell down the floorboards, I would have a panic attack. I think it would be vile. I think I already feel like I’m too small and I wish I was like a six foot. My boyfriend’s six foot eight, I wish I was six foot eight.

Z: Can say this is psychologically interesting.

G: I think about it all the time. And I think he does too. No. I’d love to be invisible. I’d love to sneak into places and not have to pay and pull people’s pants down and,

Z: It’s like a critics dream, a critics fantasy is being invisible. So I can snoop on all the things.

G: Yeah. I mean, like, more seriously, sometimes being so visible that when we walk in places, people are like, oh, the way of you being like, it’s nice. But you started to feel like, oh fuck. Like you have to like, we don’t know. They’re going to see me be a critic. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t always like it.

I think there have been points in all like ten year history when we’ve had a lot of hate and a lot of scary men coming in. In our business. And, like. Yeah, that would point to I just wish we could, like, exist in public spaces without that potential of, like, someone being like, I know who you are, and I know everything about you. And I’ve got this incredibly well formed judgment about your entire politics at it. And you’re like, I will. I don’t know anything about you, so it’s not fair. I’d hate about. Yeah, I’d be invisible.

Z: Thank you for the quick fire. Miss de la Puente, you are an art critic who is more often likely to be found writing steaming hot critical takedowns of other people’s art works of art. What was it like making something for once?

G: Well, no one’s even written a steaming hot takedown of poor artists.

Z: People tried.

G: There’s like one bad review. Which is Crazy. What, like, oh, I don’t understand it. We’ve pissed so many people off. Like, even if they enjoyed the book, would they not have just wrote a bad review for fun? Anyway, my real answer is in the end I didn’t mind. I don’t think I felt that’s good because, like, we went to art school and we made things for years and we were like, always being told, like about the value or the success or like the precision of what it is we’ve made and like being made to think about that and, when we left art school and we started to write criticism, it was just like another thing we made, like I used to make paintings and now I make writings and also, like all followers for years, have told us whether things are good or bad or no. So it’s fine.

It’s also never that deep as well. I just like if anyone’s read today’s White Pube text by any chance, like, it’s just not that deep. I think it’s fine. So the book is like, again, I don’t know, it’s nice that there are so many good reviews of it because I’m glad that, like, people have gotten the weird vision that we were like trying to make everyone like, like come, come into our hallucination. And people like that were quite excited to do that. But yeah, I didn’t get that scared. I think Zarina did. I think that’s why she’s asking me. Which is understandable, because whenever you make something and you put it anywhere, there’s, like, a moment of vulnerability. But I think generally, like, people, people’s self-esteem is, like, too tied into the thing that they do or make. And, like, the best way to go about things is to, like, divorce them, like, have a bit. There’s just so that, you know, available to. But I don’t know, it’s, it’s, you know, like a like yeah, I’m sort of comparing art to food. I have to feel like I do that every time I do a talk.

Z: No, I think you kind of you there’s a process of disavowal, right? Where you throw the thing away from yourself and you’ve got to separate it from your body. Yeah. And if you were writing a review, you said that no one’s done the steaming or critical takedown.

G: Well, if you do this, it will pause there. Sorry. Okay. Art review tried.

Z: They did. They put their best foot forward. I hear.

G: It was sort of like it ended up being quite nice because then steam steaming hot takedown was like, ugh this is like Jacqueline Wilson for art students. And I was like…. Thanks. That is the HEIGHT of Praise.

Z: But if you were writing your own review & And you had to tear it apart. What Criticisms would you make of the book?

G: I wish it was longer. I wish, I wish it was a bit longer. Like, I think like two chapters. I don’t think it needed to be 2 to 2. So I think we need to like, flog a dead horse. But I think.

Z: More side quests.

G: Either more side quests, because like, there’s a whole section where the quest is getting to a point, and then she gets to this point and then we we decided to like, switch the book and have them two other characters like it speak from their point of view, partly because we wanted to leave quest to more, but also because we wanted to explore introducing other people into quests life when actually like she’d been so isolated for so long, that she, like, forgot what it was like to talk to another human being. And then we would return and finish the story, I think. Then we ended it two fast. And we we kind of wrapped it. We were like, we were like that excited to wrap up, like, tie a bow on it or something because we were exhausted.

Z: I wasn’t exhausted I’m Laura Keunsberg.

G: No, I would do the, and also, I think we really got it into our heads, but like, Penguin wanted 80,000 words. So, like, we actually had a book that was 120,000. And then in the last week, I was like, Zarina I’ll be back in 48 hours. And I cut it to shit and I was like, hey, we’re ready, Penguin, here you go.

And I don’t actually think anything in that edit needed to be in it. What? What even was it? I don’t know, for if we’d have had more time, maybe we would have filled in a bit more, put put a bit more cement in it or something. But the book was like six months overdue because of my health and. Yeah, that’s what I, that’s that’s my criticisms. But I kind of like how pithy it is for the most part. So I don’t want to go to too long. Yeah.

Z: That right. Word on the grapevine Is that you and your collaborator read a book called Into the Woods by John Yorke, which is loosely about narrative theory, like the mechanics that make a story kind of feel satisfying, make it operate and function. We come to expect stories in a certain format. It gives you the basic lay out of that format and I think the first four, the first two acts so quite long. The third act was quite long. Act four and five were quite short. Just rebalancing that. That’s a so that’s a really sharp criticism. Very good critique.

A question from @ Art theoriez on Instagram. Would you consider doing a spinoff sequel.

G: Just all the sex scenes.

Z: Which– is your collaborator interested in that.

G: To be honest, with like something that we would tell ourselves when we were writing and making those edits like, oh, maybe we’ll revisit this one day and we’ll put all those like you, we would call in them side quests into like a smaller publication or something. It’s hard because I feel like I’ve said everything I ever want to say in that one book, and I have not had a new thought since.

It’s been like two years and I’m still empty. I can’t it’s like, yeah, like the 2p machine is dead. All the toys have fallen off. Yeah. The what? Silence. I don’t know.

Z: If ur collaborator were here, I suspect she’d say that’s not true.

G: Hey, I don’t I just think that when you. When we write. When I write, like I need to, I need to live to be able to write. And it’s not been enough time to do any live in my. My life personally is like is very one note. I’m. I’m generally not well and I’m in the same house and nothing changes and it’s, it’s like starting to shift a little bit and like loosen up this year because of, like the doctors are like finally, getting to grips with what Long-covid is five years later. So like, things are now starting to change. So then I think after that come back, you know, I’ll tell you if I’ve got any new words, but I don’t know, I there are things I want to do, but like after that. Yeah. That will go into writing because everything will always go into writing because I’m a writer. But not yet, no.

Z: Okay. Changing the segment. This book is full of weird magic. There are castles in French wormholes that appear out of nowhere, transformation, shrinkage, or invisibility. There are monsters – mountains of sentient art materials talking babies, Cilla Black ghosts, the French revolutionaries. I think you’ve answered this question before, but, for the function of magic in this book, what purpose does it serve within the narrative?

G: So I was in the pub last week. I do leave the house sometimes I went to the pub, because dead Ink, publisher Dead Ink Books Independent Publishing Company in Liverpool have just released like is it like an anthology called Writing the Magic? And basically the editor goes to like different fantasy authors and asks, like, you know, what does fantasy mean to you?

How do you go about writing it? And anyway, two of those writers were down and I ended up in the pub with Alex Pheby. He wrote mordew if anyone’s read mordew. It’s fucking incredible. Means & Zarina are obsessed with it. And he was basically saying to me like, like for him, he’s a fantasy writer. He writes these like, how would you even describe more dew. I don’t even know.

Z: I’m Jonathan Ross, I haven’t read it.

G: Okay. Mordew is like, a story about a young boy who grows up in a town where the mud is alive and, like, body parts come up out of it and like, oh, and you’re like, oh. And then it goes from there. It’s great. But anyway, Alex Pheby was saying to me like, he is a fantasy writer, that’s where he gets like put in Waterstones. But like, he doesn’t really feel like fantasy exists because like, everything is fantasy because nothing is real. And the way he was like justifying that was to say that, you know, we all accept that certain things are real because we’ve just like, we’ve all got like, like our idea of reality is sort of like made by consensus or something. We all decided that gravity exists and that pillar is holding the ceiling up and whatever, and chairs exist and so forth. But he was like, why? Like, why have we? How is how and why have we gotten to that point? And if we’ve gotten to that point, can we not get to other points? Like I’m explaining this badly, he he made me feel like I was on the moon.

But to apply that politically, to feel like, oh, actually, nothing is fixed in place, everything is always malleable and you can poke at it and you can stretch it and you can change it just felt like it made so much sense. So like actually the function of magic in poor artists was also just like the function of art in any gallery space, or like a performance in a theater, whatever it is like to not just accept that reality has to stay the way it is, because actually reality doesn’t feel great and the reality that we’ve accepted is also also comes with like this horrible governance by evil rich people who make us all feel shit. So like, why would we just carry on going about our lives and accept that? I was like, I should only read fantasy. But when he was speaking to me, I was like, oh my God, it’s yeah, I’ve never thought about it that way. Especially because, like, fantasy, he gets such a hard ride. Like, people think it’s so cringe or it’s like like a low art.

Z: But that’s interesting considering the potential it has to, like, make reality a kind of plastic. Like, it’s interesting that it could be a really dangerous, uncontrollable genre that threatens something in the status quo.

G: But I feel like those those types of art making. Yeah, like get put down on purpose. Not to be like, a mad conspiracy theorist.

Z:

No no, but Mo says this in uncertainty

G: Mo does say this uncertainty, uncertainty. Yeah. Like like we, you know, let’s not fund that type of art. Because if too many people are reading mordew than we’re going to have, you know, a really difficult time as a government. Yeah, yeah, there is a revolution in the book. So like.

Z: Wow, this is this is a good segue into the next segment. But okay. Anarchism and dee dee dee dee dee there’s a theme tune. What research did you and your collaborator do into anarchism to put together the book’s political backbone?

G: I mean, like we watched YouTube documentaries because if you’re going to watch anarchist documentaries, where better. But mostly, honestly, I just spent a lot of time speaking to my best mate in Liverpool, Priya Sharma, who, like. Years and years ago we were in a WhatsApp group chat. I must have been like 2020 or beginning of 2021 when, whenever? From when? Whenever Biden got in. And I remember like the group chat being like, oh, thank God. Biden got in and called and everyone was like, we. And Priya was the only one who was like, why are you all celebrating? Like, it’s not good that any of these people got in. And I was like, oh my God. And it was just silence in the group chat jaw drop. And I thought about it for ages. I was like, yeah, I feel so embarrassed. But it was like a good type of shame. Shame is important sometimes. Like, yeah, I just thought about that for a while.

And then she was doing these, like activations in Liverpool at the time. We used to get food and we would speak for like seven hours. And when you go for a meal with someone and you speak for seven hours, and you just, like, write all the world’s wrongs, and all the tables around you change and like, they’ve eaten, there’s been like five different meals. I decided, yeah. And you just sat there, like, ordering mango lassis. She just taught me so much about how about, like what equality and what maximum freedom could look like if it came with maximum equality and respect. And this was like just before I got sick. So then when I got sick, I feel like everything that she’d been like, trying to open my eyes to came true.

Because I lost so much freedom. And then I realized, like, I’m being I’m not being treated with respect by the places that I thought we would do, though, and I found, like, the most caring, the most support, and the most like, like, like. Yeah. What’s the I’d like future in speaking to other sick people in, like, making these communities and, and then Priya would drop lots of food off for me and I was like, like, that’s what it is. That’s what this means to, like, look after each other. And anyway, it meant that by the time we came to write the book and we were like writing about the problems with thought and then getting to like ahead with it and thinking like, between the two of us. Yeah. But even if we write a book where we say like, it’s all shit we should solve, rip it up and start again, like it’s not gonna work like all one book’s not going away.

And we were interviewing other people. And there’s a line in the book, about like, what if the thing that changed the whole world would be an artwork? Like, what is if you were to make something so, like, attractive, but so, like, secretly revolutionary, the you kind of coated it in, in silver or whatever was like trendy at the time. And then the art world would like, as we would like, accumulate it because that’s what they do. They accumulate and they accumulate and then whatever. Like once it got into the art world system, like it exploded and you like, you know, Trojan Horse, the into them. And we were thinking about that all the time. And like I was like, I don’t know if the book is it. I love that the White Cube. Sell the book, for example. So I think maybe it is it. But that’s just because whoever the book seller there is like cool as fuck. But yeah, like we were, we were talking about sign and it all just was like getting bigger and bigger. And I felt like, yeah, anarchism was the only answer towards towards like feeling less bad when you’re alive.

And that would mean a small life where you just, like, care for the people in your immediate circle because like the the conversation me and Priya have been having, like in the past few weeks, is about an anarcho nihilism, like, which is a strand of anarchism that sort of feels like we’re done for. Like we can all sit here and we can have these like nice little chats on a Sunday afternoon in a gallery. But like, nothing’s actually going to change. Like the governments aren’t going to feel like the thing we, you and me want isn’t going to happen. The art world is not going to ever be the shape that we want it to be, because these things have been built in such a way that it’s like cursed forever and it’s like poison for like the reason, like. Politicians and MPs exist is because of, like enclosure of land. These people are wanting to protect their property and it’s all fucked and it’s like fucked in like a thorough way where it’s like cursed from the roots. So like, why would we bother? And again, there’s like even in anarcho nihilism, there’s like an idea of hope that. Yeah, just like crunch it down and attend to your immediate surroundings, make sure that people, you know, have got their basic needs met and then just like, love each other.

And it’s so emotional. I really feel that now. I feel like, is it Joy James who is like, you know, we we we like, fight back because we think we can win resistance. I feel like I’m like this. Like, I’m, like, really hitting a wall with it, even with anarchism. Because I just think, like, I don’t have faith. Yeah. And it’s like this. It’s it comes down to even, like when we released the book, we were like, you know, in a material way. We were like, once we released a book, we’re going to end enough to get like a deposit for a house and like, and then we Can delete Patreon and we won’t have to, like, beg people for money like losers. But none of these things happen. Oh, just stay in the house.

Z; Okay, I can’t answer this if you comment on. I’m actually Alex from, erm. call her daddy, but, so I wouldn’t know this, but, the other week you collaborator. I was watching a video on YouTube where David Graeber was talking to Charlie Rose, and he described himself as an anthropologist and an anarchist. And Charlie Rose gets him to define it, right. And he’s like, okay, well, and anarchists, this is really interesting and like explanation for it, because an anarchist would say – say there’s someone over there, they need to have a well dug instead of going to petition the government saying, please can the government build the well? An anarchist would just get a shovel and dig the well? Yeah, and that’s. No, that’s just been playing on my mind. Your collaborators minds a lot. For like, the past week or so, since I watch that. Because I think, you know, when you think about things like, why Palestine action or something like – ohhh I said it now, like, fuck, I’m gonna get fucking arrested. Like, don’t tell anyone. That’s why things like that. Those, those methods of direct action are so abhorrent to the government is because it’s someone doing that directly, right. They’re digging the well, they’re doing the thing that is going to get directly in the way of the government trying to ship arms to Israel or something like that. It’s that’s why it’s – ah fuck don’t tell anyone I’ve said this. I can, but that’s why. I don’t know if that’s necessarily like a counter to nihilism, but also thinking about your collaborator. Can’t stop thinking about it. Yeah.

G: It’s like there’s a, there’s an anarchist text called Blessed by the flame. Blessed is the flame. Blessed is the flame by an anonymous writer who describes this. It describes us all as being like, domesticated and as like as like subscribing to legalism. Like so. Yeah. So in a we don’t even realize like how deep. And then in it we are and like maybe that goes back to the question of like, why write magically?

Because like that made me that made me want to know. That made me want to go past it or beyond it, or like hold us and everything we do and everything we’ve, we’ve subscribed to like, at like arm’s length so I could see it for what it is. But I’ve, like, ruined life for myself. Because. I don’t trust anyone. Now. I just yeah, yeah, it’s not a bad thing.

Z: The only. Okay. Right. What chapter is this from bee beee beee beee NEW segment. And what chapters? This bit from: adults Look at artists and think you do that thing we all did when we were kids. The scribbling and drawing and finger painting. I wish I could have kept doing that too. But because they didn’t, they infantilized it.

G: Is it Wendy? Okay, wait, that uncertainty. Just tell me.

Z: PHrogging

G: Like last year I read this book like five times I.

Z:

phrogging is an example of illegalist action. For those of you that don’t know,

G: phrogging is when you, like, secretly live in someone else’s house.

Z: And illegalism is based on the idea that since capitalists steal from people you, me, us, it would be legitimate to steal back from the capitalists. So it’s things like theft, burglary, like when you rob Tesco, counterfeiting, squatting, arson. Like squatting, like phrogging. But also. Yeah. arson. All of it comes under the umbrella of propaganda by the deed. Individual acts to transgress the law and demonstrate that the law is a form of arbitrary and abusive power. Do you think it is important for quest to flip, to go dark, to not be a law abiding artist-citizen?

G: Yeah. Because, like, I think – That’s the the thing of fantasy, isn’t it? Just like right in general, like you can write the person you want to be. I think a lot about like, what I could do physically and then think, oh my God. But if I ended up in jail, how how much sicker would I be? I Can’t even, like, stand up for ten minutes. I think us writing quest As a lawbreaker was great. It it makes me like, makes me think of, you know, me and Priya have kind of been chatting about Krystos Sakalos? Is one of the guys that got, convicted in the mid 2000s in Greece for bombing luxury car dealerships and banks and as a part of like a anarchist group, no one ever died. It’s fine. yKnow, like, I read things like that and I think, quest should’ve blown something up. I’m like, we had visions like that. There was murders and things. I don’t know how, how and why we pulled it back, but, we went with something else instead. If you’ve read the book, something a bit more physical. Yeah, I think I think it’s important. I think I think it has. I think it’s you have to be because I’m very well-behaved.

Z: You have to hold that thought. But is it possible for heroes transgress the moral boundaries of our of our world? Or like the world we live in, social contract that we all subscribe to and still remain a hero? Or does she Become an anti-hero?

G: Well, my English Literature GCSE A-level teacher, when we left school, gave us all like a rubber duck. Everyone in the class and like it was those like rubber ducks that were fashionable at the time that were like different characters. And she gave everyone like a nice little nice. And then she gave me the devil one and I was like, Miss Speed!!! Why’ve you given me this? And she was like, just read the note. And then I went home and I was like, oh. And it said, good luck with university. Gabrielle. Don’t forget, the devil is always more interesting. And I was like, oh my God. And the next time I saw her, she went to me, you’re a little bit evil aren’t ya? It’s like, but she was so right. I’m like, I’m an evil critic. I’m so evil. Because I enjoy it like. I don’t know what your question was.

Z: Anti-Hero. Yeah. Can you blow things up & still be a hero?

G: Okay. So, yeah, at the time, I just read shitloads, like Paradise Lost and, like, I don’t know, it was, I was it just she was right. I don’t want to read about good people I want to read about, like, people you think ooooEUGH?. Because it feels like when your mate like does something you’re like you shouldn’t have done that. you get like a bit excited. I want that feeling all the time.

Z: But do you think quest is the hero of poor artists? Who Do you think the hero is?

G: I don’t think we needed one? like in in narrative terms, like a hero is like this person who, at the start of the story, like, is missing something and they want, they really want something. So at the beginning of the book, quest really wants to be an artist. Like she’s like, I want to be like, I want to be a capital A artist. And then over the course of your story, different things will happen in that hero’s life that like put that won’t further it further away until they get to like a piece of information or like a confrontation or something weird will happen with like another character that shows them that actually they need something. It’s not that they want something, they need something. And actually like the need might be more important than the want. So I think in that sense, quest fits it because like, she really wants to be an artist, like a professional one, but actually what she just needs is to make art. And that’s two very different things. And she she has to let go of the ones to, to see that.

But like the reason I say I don’t think we need one is because, like, we were writing a nonfiction book. The the way that we got this book deal with Penguin was to put it through the nonfiction avenue, which essentially means like, we’ll write three chapters, we’ll give them to you, and we’ll put it in a book proposal month, how you what is going to happen in the rest of the story? And then you’re going to give us some money and a book advance to go away and write the rest of the book. When people write fiction books, they write the whole fucking thing, and then they sell the whole thing to publishers. And like, we financially just couldn’t do the second one. That’s why, like, so many writers are like middle class, because they can afford to do it or like they aren’t on middle class and they’re like, scrape has to like, work and force themselves to stay up late and just burn out trying to get shit done.

But it meant that we had a nonfiction editor on the book. We didn’t have someone who was going to tell us, like, about heroes and anti-heroes. She was just like, trying to make sure it made sense. Fact checking the book, which made a Lot of sense. And I’m glad – we had Josephine Graywoode, she was amazing. Like, even in the initial meeting with Penguin, when we described the art dates thing to them, it was more about pitching them an idea of like, here’s a vehicle that we can like, adopt to share interesting conversations with or about art.

It wasn’t like we want to tell an amazing story. so often when we would have like issues with drafts throughout the writing process, she would say to us, like, because you’re trying to write a story, all of a sudden, like, go back to the original idea. And every time she said that, I was like, oh yeah, who are get a grip. Come on. We’ve been critics for ten years. We haven’t been to like, uni to do a creative writing MA. We don’t have a clue. We read one book about how to write stories and we were like, this is WE FOUND the answers. We literally just googled it.

Z: Okay. Right. And I’m aware of time. So very quickly, last question I’ve missed all the best ones as well. This is – I’ve been bad at my job. Sorry. My last question is do you think. Yes. No as well. Okay. Do you think poor artist has a happy ending?

G: Yes. NO!!!!

Z: Okay, okay. So this is the actual last question. Do you think this book takes art seriously? Yes. No.

G: Yeah, I think it really does, actually. Yeah. So fucking. That man can shut the fuck up can’t he. When I was in uni, we basically submitted the same thing. We were like, we’ve made a website ha-ha. And then Zarina’s got marked and she got her first. And then the tutor who marked it was off sick, so someone else marked mine n gave me a two on the same thing.

Z: We handed in the same thing!!!

G: And in the explanation he wrote on mine. And so it isn’t. You doubt the value on purpose of art. And I was like. YES!!!! obviously you’ve been paying attention. I can’t even remember his name.

Z: I know his name. But … Thank you very much.

G: Thank you.

Z: I’m still James O’Brien, but we will take questions. We will take questions now.

TWP JINGLE!!!!!!!