“Narcissists are the ones who make it,” declares Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) at a house party she attends with her budding art star boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther) in Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Myself. This statement, tossed off with a cigarette, lays out both Thomas and Signe’s modus operandi, as well as the point of the … Continue reading
Author Archives: Jessica Caroline and Emily Colucci
To Be Gorgeous: A Conversation on Thierry Mugler and Jimmy DeSana at the Brooklyn Museum
“To be Gorgeous, strictly speaking, is something in itself. To be Gorgeous therefore is admirable, to be Absolutely Gorgeous most desired.” So begins an essay in one of the many zines in the Brooklyn Museum’s Jimmy DeSana: Submission exhibition, which is joined by the museum’s concurrent Thierry Mugler: Couturissime show in advocating for skin-deep/skin-tight beauty. … Continue reading
Fear and Loathing at MoMA: A Conversation on Wolfgang Tillmans and Meret Oppenheim
To look without fear. That’s the title of Wolfgang Tillmans’s current dizzying retrospective at MoMA. But this begs questions, namely, who is supposed to be looking without fear? Tillmans? The audience? If it’s the viewers, what are we bravely confronting? Berlin clubs? Photographs of Frank Ocean, Kate Moss, and Chloë Sevigny? A whole lot of images … Continue reading
It’s Kinda Long but Full of Suspense: A Conversation on “Zola”
An ill-fated trip to America’s heart of darkness–Florida–that becomes a whirlwind of sex work and crime. A doomed friendship forged over stripping and text messages. A montage of the most repulsive dicks you can imagine. It’s no question that Zola, the cinematic adaptation of A’Ziah “Zola” King’s jaw-dropping and riveting 148-tweet Twitter magnum opus directed by … Continue reading
Does the World Need More Lesbian Corn?: A Conversation on Camille Roy’s “Honey Mine”
As primarily nonfiction readers, your faithful co-founder Emily Colucci and contributor Jessica Caroline have been making an effort to overcome our general reluctance to engage more in contemporary fiction. We gave Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts and Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby a whirl. However, it’s not like authors at larger publishing houses are in dire need of … Continue reading
No Power, Yet Filled With Opinions: A Conversation on “Pretend It’s a City”
In Netflix’s Pretend It’s a City, our ornery idol and filth elder Fran Lebowitz says, “The anger is, I have no power, yet I’m filled with opinions.” Not only relatable, but accurate as well. Since Fran wouldn’t want us to hold back in our own opinions about Martin Scorcese’s Fran-centric docuseries, your ever-faithful Jessica Caroline … Continue reading
We Could Have Been a Power Couple!: A Conversation on “Spree”
The day after I finished watching Eugene Kotlyarenko’s film Spree, Azealia Banks documented digging up her dead cat Lucifer and boiling his bones on Instagram stories (apparently she wants to gild his skull). It was a witchier version of Joe Keery’s maniacally eager, viewer count-obsessed protagonist and spree killer Kurt Kunkle’s homicidal ride-share rampage turned … Continue reading
Everything Will Be Human, or at Least Californian: A Conversation About “Sensoria” and “We Want It All”
The first few chapters of McKenzie Wark’s Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century, recently published by Verso Books, had us both thinking: why are we reading Wark’s book reports? Are we to do a book report on book reports? So instead of that exercise in grad(e) school nostalgia, we decided to have a meandering chat … Continue reading
Klepto-Bowie-mania: The Items We Would Steal From “David Bowie Is”
“I can’t give everything away,” were some of the final words heard from David Bowie on this planet on the final track of his last album Blackstar. And true to form, he really didn’t–remaining the man who fell to Earth as much as a mere man since his first inhabitation of the Bowie name until … Continue reading