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RIOT // MUSIC

v RIOT // MUSIC

THIS TIME AROUND:

Copyright © 2016 by Riot | All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. www.riotmagazine.comOrders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Big Distribution: Tel: (800) 800-8000; Fax: (800) 800-8001 or visit www.bigbooks.com. |Printed in the United States of America.

At home with dior homme 6 - 7 Can you help the movement to eradicate slavery from fashion? 8 - 9

How to be a person in the world: Interview to Heather Havrilesky 10 - 11

Is Madonna held to different standards because of her age? 12 - 13

5 young actors to look at cannes 18 - 19

The internet was just gifted two hours of unreleased prince songs 14 - 15

Watch Hari Nefs sering TED talk on trans survival 20 - 21 Sheffield doc/fest is back with brilliantly diverse, queer line-up 22 - 23 Beyond instagram with amalia ulna 24 - 25

History behind Cake by the Ocean: DNCE vvvv

CHIEF EDITORS ANDREA DIAZ OJEDA - CAMILO ROCHA CALDERÓN SENIOR EDITOR MARTHA RODRIGUEZ ART SENIOR ANDREA DIAZ ART CHIEF CAMILO ROCHA FASHION Sophia HARRIS ( Director ) DANIEL SPOND (Junior) ART STEPHAN CRAIG (Art senior) NEDD SALT (Culture: Film & photography senior) MUSIC CAMERON POLK (Editor in chief) CHRISTINA ZEN (Junior Editor) CULTURE JENIFFER PULK (Director) DONNA SNOW (Art Senior) COLABORATIONS DANIEL CHAPMAN | AMANDA ZUGG | PEREZ HILTON | NICOLE CHAPMAN | NED STARK |JHON SNOW | DANERY TARGAREYAN | SANSA STARK | MARGERY TYRELL GRAPHICS AND TEXT SASHA MILIANI (Director) ADVERTISING CAMILLE STEPHAN (Director) ANTHONY JUNIOR (Senior account Manager) PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION NATHAN PHAN (DIRECTOR) MARKETING JANET TUROE (Director) RIOT MIAMI: 800 BRICKWELL AVENUE, SUITE 530, MIAMI, FLORIDA, 33131 USA. (305) 371-9392 | LOS ANGELES NO. 415, SUITE 67893 USA

Now we are in the fifth month of the year; it seemed like yesterday when we welcomed you to the magazine, but actually it’s been a year and five months, in which we quickly earned our position at the vanguard of fashion and style, abiding the premise of originate – don’t imitate. We have witnessed in first row the evolution of design and culture, keeping ahead all the time. We watch how the paradigms were broken and how the new ideas took over in a constant evolution. Therefore we saw the need to make some changes and embrace the new era of design, art, culture and above all, support the crazy ones who decide to try and propose new things. RIOT do not intent to change the world, but if we can plant the seed of change, inspiring you to take action in the matter, we are more than satisfy. The beauty of this world lies in the permanent change, we live in an evolutionary process that today can be linear and tomorrow chaotic, but at the end is great. As the world evolves, we must too, developing our ideas. The world we knew 6 months ago no longer exists. The world of last week no longer exists. We have to make the future our present. Challenging ourselves to establish new paradigms and breaking the standards. Only when we believe we can change the world, we change it. --- ANDREA DIAZ OJEDA & CAMILO ROCHA CALDERÓN

Jamelia has the perfect response to Piers Morgan about Beyoncé 4-5

Jesse Darling: from batman to empire, from gender to war

26 - 27

Indie flick dear white people is back to 28 - 29 skewer racism

16 - 17

RIOT // CULTURE

JAMELIA HAS THE PERFECT RESPONSE TO PIERS MORGAN’S INFLAMMATORY ARTICLE ABOUT BEYONCÉ ‘Piers Morgan, you don't like Beyoncé in Lemonade because her blackness isn't white enough for you any more.’ CULTURE | Charlotte Gush Twitter troll and occasional TV villain Piers Morgan used his Daily Mail column earlier this week to express his concerns about Beyoncé having become a "militant activist" (his words) due to explorations of race on new album and audio-visual masterpiece, Lemonade. Despite claiming that he "bow[s] to no man nor woman when it comes to my admiration for this lady," Morgan then scratched his head over her transformation from a seemingly agenda-less entertainer into someone with a political message, after having seen the many, many killings of young black men by police in America, the shameful abandonment of the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the racism faced by the black community every day . After many, many people called Morgan out on his ridiculous and reductive assessment that Beyoncé is "play[ing] the race card" by celebrating blackness and addressing racism in her work, British singer and TV presented Jamelia has walked him through exactly what is wrong with his inflammatory words, and why it is that he just doesn't 'get' it.

"Piers Morgan, you don't like Beyoncé in Lemonade because her blackness isn't white enough for you any more," Jamelia writes in the zinging opener. "You are a middle aged, British white man. You have no idea, I repeat: NO IDEA what it is like to be a black woman...," she continues, adding, "Let me break this down for you: Beyoncé's album is not an attack on anyone; it is a celebration of the strength, endurance and potential within black womanhood," neatly linking that point to the #BlackGirlMagic movement on social media. Quoting perhaps the most ludicrous line in Morgan's wholly silly piece -- that is, when he states that, "The New Beyoncé wants to be seen as a black woman" -- Jamelia says "this line made me laugh out loud!," explaining that, "Beyoncé has always been black, she just did what millions of black people feel the need to do to gain success: she made her black palatable to you, which is why you're such a big fan! … Along with working twice as hard to get half as much, we dilute ourselves and our culture so you accept us," concluding, "I guess some of us have had enough".

Credits Text Charlotte Gush Image via Tidal

RIOT // FASHION

like Vetements and Burberry are introducing show-nowbuy-now sales cycles, and Raf Simons recently resigned as women’s designer for Dior citing too much work and too little time, Van Assche’s understanding of luxury is crucial. «If luxury is being comfortable, yeah, in this place I’m very comfortable,» he says. «I have a happy life here.»

AT HOME WITH DIOR HOMME

Luxury starts at home and Kris Van Assche let us into his most personal space, as Willy Vanderperre shoots his fall-winter 16 collectvion. FASHION |Anders Christian Madsen Look up Dior on Forbes, the Scrooge McDuck of glossy publishing, and count the word ‘luxury’ in tenfold. With annual sales of some $43 billion, you’ll soon understand how Kris Van Assche, the Artistic Director of Dior Homme, can cover his runways in beds of white roses and sell jeans at $826. It’s luxury all the way at Dior, which houses its Paris ateliers behind the most luxurious street of them all, Avenue Montaigne, where Kardashian-Jenners lunch at L’Avenue and future wives of Russian oligarchs get fitted for their bridal gowns. But tell Van Assche you want to interview him at the place in Paris that most represents luxury to him, and he’ll invite you to his own appartement. «I wasn’t going to take you to a spa,» he quips. Located in the prim and proper 17th arrondissement not far

from the Arc de Triomphe, his most private sanctuary is a fourth-floor flat of the grander persuasion with parquet flooring and swirly stucco friezes framing the ceilings. On a sunny March day -the last of the women’s shows, which this menswear designer says he’s had no choice but to follow thanks to Instagram terrorists like yours truly -- its white walls are gilded by the sun lighting them up through the terrace doors that form an arch through the two large drawing rooms. He was never set on the 17th but took the place because of that terrace, «which is super rare in France.» Oh, and it’s «a five-minute drive from the office,» he says. «Heaven!» In a time when fashion is at a crossroads, luxury brands

Van Assche shares his home with his boyfriend and two Burmese cats, Frida and Diego (after Kahlo and Rivera) who take turns at climbing the interviewer while he takes notes on their master’s Pierre Jeanneret furniture. Van Assche is into 50s minimalism — mainly French, never Danish. «What is luxury in fashion today? It’s a very good question. There seems to be much more interest for the visual than for the real value behind things. It sounds like a cliché, but luxury is time and freedom.» Which begs two obvious questions. «Creatively I feel quite free. I do really enjoy the creative aspect of my work. I love it,» he says, answering one. «Timewise, I’m quite okay. I do actually get to enjoy this place, on the weekend and so on. I have a very full-time job and that’s fine, but it’s not impossible this life. I do enjoy it.» This year Van Assche celebrates a decade at the helm of Dior Homme, and at 39 he’s got the residential track record to measure a career at the forefront of the luxury industry. Upon arriving in Paris 18 years ago, Van Assche moved around the city’s chambres des bonne -studio flats -- until his job could afford him an industrial space: «nice, but kind of cold and minimal and stone floors and all that. Little by little it got a bit warmer and a bit more French, and here I would like to stay for a while.»

Credits Photography Willy Vanderperre | Styling Mauricio Nardi | Text Anders Christan Madsen | Hair Anthony Turner at Art Partner | Make-up Lynsey Alexander at Streeters using Estée Lauder Make-up Models Nathan Dionisio, Koen Verdumen at Success, Etienne Martinet at 16MEN. Dylan Roques, Paulius Meskaukas, Otto Vainaste, Trè Samuels at Bananas. | All Clothing Dior Homme

RIOT // FASHION

Credits Text Charlotte Gush Photography courtesy Slave To Fashion / Safia Minney

FASHION |Charlotte Gush Safia Minney has been pioneering ethical fashion for 25 years, having reengineered the entire supply chain to create a slavery-free, fair trade, environmentally friendly fashion business, People Tree, as well as being instrumental in creating a wider movement for positive change across the industry. Now, she needs your help.

can you help the movement to eradicate slavery from fashion?

Ethical fashion pioneer Safia Minney is creating a new campaign and book illuminating both the harsh realities of the fashion supply chain and what we can all do to fix it.

Safia is launching a new project, Slave To Fashion, which encompasses a book and campaign to illuminate the harsh realities of slavery in the fashion supply chain and to spread awareness of the actions we can all take to fix it. A Kickstarter page has been set up to fund the project -- which will include research, interviews and mini documentaries -- and it needs £15,000 in pledges to reach its target before Thursday 19 May. «This book and campaign, Slave To Fashion, is really important to me, because it gives people an understanding of modern slavery in the garment industry and shows how we can eradicate slavery both from business and our day-to-day consumption,» Safia explains in a video to explain the purpose of the Kickstarter fund. With the institution in 2015 of the Modern Slavery Act in the UK -- which requires companies with a turnover of more £36 million or more to report on slavery in their supply chain -- this issue has been brought

into sharp perspective. “71% of companies believe there is a likelihood of modern slavery occurring at some stage in their supply chains,” the Slave To Fashion project report, noting that it is “complex, hidden and challenging to address”. “It is predominantly women who make our clothes around the world,” notes John Hilary, the director of anti-poverty charity War on Want. “These women were promised an amazing future of emancipation. Instead, for many of them it has turned out to be a nightmare, they haven’t seen any emancipation, they’ve just experienced more and more exploitation”. “This project, Slave To Fashion, will be the facts and the people closer to you, and will show how together we can eradicate slavery,” Safia explains, adding that, “We need to hold companies accountable for the way they do business, so please pledge and be part of the solution”. The Slave To Fashion project needs £15,000 in pledges to reach their target in the next 14 days. Pledges large and small come with tokens of gratitude, from a copy of the book for donations over £20, to T-shirts, exclusive designs and events the more you can pledge. Visit the Slave To Fashion Kickstarter page to pledge and find out more.

RIOT // CULTURE

10 CULTURE |Christina Cacouris In the age of perpetual singledom and eternal best friendship, agony aunt columns are supposed to be redundant - brunch with the girls should solve any issue. The reality is however, that we all contain deep, dark questions no amount of mimosas is ever going to solve - enter Ask Polly, a weekly column on The Cut. From ‘can I dump my dying boyfriend’ to the more commonplace ‘how do I start believing in my worth’, there’s no question Heather Havrilesky won’t answer (at length - most columns are around 4,000 words). Heather’s column is much read, loved, and debated in the comments section, and so it’s not much of a surprise that she has a book out soon, called How To Be a Person in the World, out on 12 July. How did you become Ask Polly? It’s so modern but Agony Aunt columns are... So what you’re trying to say is: Agony Aunts are kind of an old thing, but Ask Polly’s sort of weird and irreverent, and how did it start? Exactly! I had a job in my 20s writing for this magazine, Suck. During the dotcom crash, the first content crash if you will, an omen of things to come these days, I had a job there and wrote all kinds of irreverent stuff. And then I didn’t have a job anymore! So I needed to do something, and someone said, ‘Start a blog, blogs are all the new rage.’ This is like 2001. So I started a blog, but I didn’t want it to be a journal. I wanted it to be obnoxious and interesting. And I needed a structure. So I started answering advice letters on my blog. Mostly it was aggressive, nasty stuff that I wrote. And then slowly as I got older, the blog evolved into this weird, real advice giving thing, where I would go on and on about the psychological reasons for people feeling the way they feel.

If you read it, it’s like bad, rambling Ask Polly answers. So it was like a practice ground. It was something just to get me to write. I was pretty much unemployed and needed ways of writing. But I kept answering advice letters. So I wrote to Choire Sicha, I pitched him saying «I should write an existential advice column for you guys.» And he said yes, great, do it. How do you choose which letter to answer? I’m very moody, so I base it completely on my mood. There are days when I don’t want to answer anything about dating. There are days when I don’t want to answer anything that’s too heavy. There are days when they have this concrete problem that opens up into a very familiar trap. How did you start collecting the ones that make the book? I knew that I needed a range of things, but for a while I just started answering a ton of letters. Our approach was very unscientific at first, it was just do a lot of extra work. There was a while where I was definitely doing too much and I was like, Jesus, all these responses sound the same. I wasn’t going into it with enough inspiration. [My editor] had so many letters at one point… I feel like he had 45. Does how you’re feeling change how much a letter speaks to you? The ones I want to answer depend on what I’m going through that week. Luckily I’m usually going through something! I find a have week of the month where I don’t relate at all, I’m just Teflon Polly. I was going to say Teflon Heather then I realised no one knows who Heather is. Then I have a week where I’m in the gutter. How to be a Person in the World is out 12 July. Credits Text Christina Cacouri

RIOT // THINK PIECES

Is Madonna held to different standards because of her age?

The icon a barrage of online abuse over her revealing outfit at The Met gala, is ageism at play? THINK PIECES | Wendy Syfret

There are few fashion events more prestigious - and more carefully-scrutinised - than New York’s annual Met Gala. In many ways, it’s the battle royale of red-carpet events; designers clamour for the opportunity to dress a handful of the world’s most famous women, and the column inches that come with it. This year’s dress code was entitled ‘Manus X Machina’; a theme which spawned a plethora of

metallic gowns, interactive outfits and a headline-grabbing pair of robotic arms. In the midst of this, it was Madonna’s sheer Givenchy dress that provoked the night’s biggest reaction, resulting in a slew of ageist jokes on Twitter and, predictably, Piers Morgan

tweeting ‘put it away’. It’s hardly news that the entertainment industry labels women with a sell-by date, but the vitriol sparked by the star’s 57-year-old buttocks highlights a few worrying truths about modern society.

industry that continues to write linear, shallow roles for women and a society that shames young women for their appearance. If you’re plus-size, too skinny or older than the ‘beautiful’ average, it’s likely you’ll be slated regardless of what you wear.

Although her Met Gala look may be less controversial than full-frontal photography and blatant blasphemy, the look seemed to kick up just as much of a fuss, and thus the star took to Instagram to fight her corner. Alongside a selfie, Madonna posted a lengthy caption which argued that «the fact that people actually believe a woman is not allowed to express her sexuality and be adventurous past a certain age is proof that we still live in an ageist and sexist society.» She’s right. Other celebrities left little to the imagination; Karlie Kloss’ dress featured cut-outs that left it barely there, Beyoncé went full-length latex and Lady Gaga wore no trousers. Shockingly narrow, and women that aren’t seen to meet these ideals are often crucified for daring to flaunt their sex apeal.

Although it might seem a stretch to brand Madonna’s Met Gala look a daring political statement, the extreme yet unsurprising reactions to her outfit highlight that there’s still work to be done. We live in a society that tries to commodify young women and use their beauty to sell products and generate box office revenue. It’s tragic that women like Madonna are branded ‘too old’ or ‘try-hard’ for still daring to flaunt their sexuality, and are seen to have passed an assumed expiry date often attributed to famous women. In a world which still affiliates youth with beauty, it’s essential that women like Madonna keep flashing the flesh; she may have been savaged, but at least she has managed to spark debate once again.

She remains that male-dominated, and mainstream media places female youth on a pedestal - this same idealisation of youth has resulted in a fashion industry that continues to hire underage models, a film

Credits Text Jake Hall Photography Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott

RIOT // MUSIC

HISTORY BEHIND

CAKE BY THE OCEAN DNCE share how they group and how they wrote their most energetic song. MUSIC |Francesca Dunn It could be any new group playing one of its very first shows, except for one thing: The singer is Joe Jonas. Not too long ago he and siblings Kevin and Nick were playing for stadiums of screaming tweens as the Jonas Brothers, one of the world’s biggest boy bands, who landed two No. 1 Billboard 200 albums, 13 Billboard Hot 100 hits and several blockbuster Disney channel shows and movies before splitting in 2013. Two years later, Joe is starting over, and starting small, as frontman of a new group named DNCE. Along with guitarist JinJoo Lee, bassist Cole Whittle and former Jonas Brothers drummer Jack Lawless, Jonas is testing the waters with DNCE’s debut single, “Cake by the Ocean,” a dance-rock earworm released on Republic Records. Enter Swedish producers Mattman & Robin and Justin Tranter of rock band Semi Precious Weapons. After a few days of “hanging out and having a few drinks,” says Jonas, everything fell into place with “Cake by the Ocean,” inspired by the Swedes fumbling the name for the cocktail sex on the beach. “It was the launchpad; we scrapped everything we’d written before that.” He could have easily ventured out alone with the resulting batch of feel-good jams (set for a February release). Instead, after his years in a literal band of brothers, Jonas sought out a new family. “Getting up onstage with friends of mine is so much bet-

ter than being up there by myself,” he says. DNCE formed organically: Tranter introduced Jonas to Whittle, his Semi Precious Weapons bandmate; like Lawless (whom Jonas calls “my brother” and likens to shaggy Muppets drummer Animal), Lee played with the Jonases in the past, before gigs with Charli XCX. “I called them up, like, ‘Quit the other bands and come hang!’ ” says Jonas. Adds Lawless: “No matter the situation, Joe’s always searching for fun. What’s the point of being alive if you can’t have as much fun as possible all the time?” But DNCE’s four-night basement-bar stint wasn’t just a “nonstop party,” as Lee calls it; it served as rehearsal for the group’s highstakes live debut days later at the iHeartRadio festival in Las Vegas. Along with a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” DNCE played three originals: “Cake by the Ocean,” potential single “Pay My Rent” and “Toothbrush,” a sexy romp that mirrors where Jonas is in his personal life outside the band. “It’s about taking that next step in a relationship -- sometimes you have a drawer at somebody’s place or you leave a toothbrush,” says Jonas, who has been dating Hadid since June. Just as she attended DNCE’s late-night basement romps despite early call times for Fashion Week, he took time out to catch her on the runway at Tommy Hilfiger’s show: “Watching her walk is incredible,” he gushes. “It’s like she has this extra-diva version of herself.”

RIOT // MUSIC

Credits Text Wendy Syfret Photography vía Flickr

PRINCE UNRELEASED SONGS The internet was just gifted two hours of unreleased songs. MUSIC | Wendy Syfret When news of Prince’s sudden passing broke, there was immediate speculation over his rumoured piles on unreleased material. In 2014 he hinted at how much gold he might have buried away telling the BBC «A song from 1985 might come out in 2021. I have a whole organisation who look after stuff». While that treasure is yet to be mined, an anonymous SoundCloud user has published a small sample, uploading this two-and-a-half-hour mix made up of bootleg unreleased material. At the time of writing, the origin of the mix remains unknown. Going by the generic name User 353868239 their track description explains: «Over the years, I have amassed a decent number of O(+> bootlegs and demos, but like a lot of folks, I’d heard there was a bottomless pit of the stuff. After his stint of shows at the Forum, I employed the powers of the internet to help me dig up some of these rarer recordings. I had no idea what I was in for: I found 87 discs worth of bootlegs.» Considering the mix in question is free, we’d like to think the legend would be cool with it. He was after all an earlier adopter of listening to music online. In 1998 he was one of the first artists to make an album available for purchase via download. Three years later he beat the Tidal wave by launching NPG Music Club—a website that allowed users to listen to new Prince songs for a monthly fee. Prince was officially good at everything.

RIOT // FILM

young actors

Michael O’Shea

One of the most buzzed about films at this year’s Cannes is billed as an «atmospheric tale about love, loss and vampires.» Meaning it’s basically an indie vampire romance in the vein of Let the Right One In. It’s called The Transfiguration and little is known about its first-time filmmaker, or its relatively unknown cast. We do know that Eric Ruffin is the young lead.

to look out for at

cannes

As we predict film’s breakout faces of 2016, these stars of tomorrow might just be catapulted to superstardom following their appearance on the Croisette.

George MacKay

In Matt Ross’s upcoming indie flick, 24-year-old English actor plays Viggo Mortensen’s son. Before that, when he was just 10 years old, he played one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, his first role. Then, once he grew into his rougharound-the-edges look, he bagged a role in Duane Hopkins’ gritty social realist drama Bypass. But still, he hadn’t made waves across the Atlantic. Now, in the offbeat indie that received rave reviews at Sundance, his star is rising.

Margaret Qualley

If you’ve seen Palo Alto there’s a chance you might recognise this face. The 21-year-old actress played Rachel, one of the girls who James Franco’s creepy coach comes onto. But it was only a small role in comparison to The Nice Guys, a buddy cop caper in which she stars alongside Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe.

Daphne Scoccia

Italian newcomer is set to make a big splash in the Director’s Fortnight strand of Cannes. She stars in Fiore, Claudio Giovannesi’s drama about a teenage girl who, after being abandoned on the streets by her family and charged for theft, lands in a juvenile detention center where sexes aren’t allowed to mix.

Andrea Arnold

It’s been five long years since last movie, Wuthering Heights. Now she’s about to remind us why we fell in love with her films in the first place. To start with, she’s great at casting unknowns. Take Katie Jarvis, who was considered for Fish Tank after being spotted at a train station arguing with her boyfriend. For Sasha Lane, the star of Arnold’s upcoming American Honey, it was much the same. Credits Text Donnie Darco Photography vía Flickr

RIOT //CULTURE

watch hari nefs searing ted talk on trans survival Titled #FreeTheFemme, Nef's talk is a powerful lesson in the dangers of shaming femme 'aesthetics of survival. CULTURE | Hannah Ongley In a deeply honest essay last year, Hari Nef dissected the prevailing misconceptions about transgender women. "Most trans women struggle to shape/frame their bodies in accordance with patriarchal beauty standards — not because these standards are good or valid, but because they preserve dignity and even save lives," she wrote. The actress and IMG model has now expanded on these thoughts in a searing TED Talk that name-checks everyone from Caitlyn Jenner and Lana Del Rey to radical second wave feminists like Eleanor Burkett, all in the space of just 12 minutes. Titled #FreeTheFemme, Nef's talk is a powerful lesson in the dangers of shaming femme "aesthetics of survival." For the record, though Nef has a lot to say on Jenner's "conservative politics and bumpy advocacy," she's not here for criticism of the reality star's fashion choices. "What if Caitlyn had appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in a pantsuit," she asks, "no makeup, her hair pulled back, arms crossed — yeah, I think she would have looked really cool, but would we all have accepted her so readily as a woman?

Would she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair to begin with?" She cites a particularly divisive 1979 book by radical feminist activist Janice Raymond called The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (yuck), in which the author argues that a trans woman is not breaking any boundaries by modelling herself as a "caricature of much that feminists have rejected about man-made femininity." Nef welcomes Raymond to 2016 by questioning why it is trans women that cop the blame for this when the patriarchy hasn't just created these ideals but enforces them very strongly — and often very physically. "I believe that Raymond's call for women to break real gender boundaries is a call we should answer," she says. "But do we have to answer with our bodies? Is it our fault if the dominant, manmade beauty ideals exclude the bodies that most of us were born with? And is it bad if we want to do something about that? Make a couple of changes? Because men are scary pigs and patriarchy is real." Amen. It's not just trans women who are criticised for clothing themselves in lipstick and high heels. Nef also points to an article by Sarah

Nicole Prickett about the portrayal of Lana Del Rey as a gender deserter for rejecting upwardly mobile feminism in favour of passive glamor. But she goes in particularly hard when addressing why femme aesthetics are so important to women not protected by cis, race, or class privilege. "It is so hard to gain access to hormones, to jump through all the medical hoops," she says. "It is so expensive to buy cosmetics, new clothes, healthy food, any number of means towards body feminisation. Even if a trans woman does manage to look or seem femme, her

race, her class, or her citizenship can place further targets on her back. When it comes to trans women with limited resources, their femme can be the difference between life and death. So I gotta ask — why are we shamed for our femme?" It's worth watching more than once. It's also video proof that Hari Nef hosting Fashion Police would be absolutely the most brilliant thing ever. Credits Text Hannah Ongley Photography Alasdair McLellan

RIOT // FILM

SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST IS BACK WITH BRILLIANTLY DIVERSE, QUEER LINE UP The international documentary festival returns in June with a vibrant line up of real life films about young black activists in britain, lgbt issues worldwide, a dance extravaganza and loads more. FILM | Colin Crummy Local and international activism is given the big screen treatment in a number of films. In Generation Revolution, directors Usayd Younis and Cassie Quarless document the young black and brown activists instigating social and political change in London, in the film's world premiere. There is a welcome airing of Nanfu Wang's first person account on the frontline of activism in China in Hooligan Sparrow. And in Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, a group of lesbian women fight to clear their names after being found guilty of gang raping two young girls in 1994. There is a strong LGBT presence across the festival strands but a revived Queer strand includes a look at how the world of ballroom provides community for a new set of LGBT youth in New York in Kiki; meanwhile Strike a Pose follows the professional dancers who took voguing to the masses as the backups on Madonna's Ambition tour. Credits Text Colin Crummy Photography Kimell Shuz

Madonna pops up again in Uncle Howard, filmmaker Aaron Brookner's archival

story of his director uncle, Williams Burroughs biographer and player on the 80s New York scene whose work fell beneath the cracks when he died of AIDS in 1989. Out Run follows three Filipino transgender women attempting to win seats for LGBT candidates. And in Back on Board, former Olympic diver Greg Louganis, whose HIV + status caused controversy in sporting circles at the time of his coming out in 1995, is profiled. Cinema heavyweights will be in Sheffield for the festival. Michael Moore opens the festival with his new work, Where to Invade Next. Ken Loach will be celebrated with a screening for Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach, followed by a Q&A with one of Britain's foremost filmmakers. Tilda Swinton directs another celebration of a British artist, this time art critic john Berger in The Seasons of Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger. This closing night film of the festival will include a Q&A with Tilda Swinton and co director Bartek Dziadosz.

RIOT // ART

Beyond instagram with Amalia Ulman

Instagram into a site of performance art, in a five month long performance she documented the life, love and nervous breakdown of a girl who’d just moved to LA, casually taking apart the image-obsessed world we live in.

Credits Text Felix Petty Photography Renata Raksha

ART | Felix Petty I can't remember when I first realised Amalia's Instagram account had become the home of a piece of meticulously scripted performance art, when I realised it was no longer Amalia in the pictures, but "Amalia".

falls. It takes aim as much at the performance the character undertakes as it does the viewervoyeur who can’t tear their eyes away from the unfolding spectacle. There’s a honed vacuity to the images that implicates us all.

Amalia had recently moved from London, where she'd graduated from Central Saint Martins, to Los Angeles, and I thought, well that's what Los Angeles does to people, isn't it? Turns everyone into selfie obsessed narcissists, posting pictures of latte art, banal motivational slogans, and videos of themselves dancing sexily to Iggy Azalea. I think I'd definitely realised around the time Amalia went to hospital to "have" breast enlargement surgery.

«I want to be ‘figuring things out’ till I die,» she explains, of her diverse style and forms «Some ideas will work, some won’t. I guess I have no sense of ridicule, which protects me from overthinking.» The thread that runs through much of her work, that makes its approach so singularly satisfying, is the way she uses narrative to explore modern life.

Excellences and Perfections, the title of that performance, was conducted on Instagram for five months in mid-2014. In it «Amalia» moves to LA, gets a boyfriend, has plastic surgery, has a breakdown, gets better. The end. Amalia’s got a Flaubertian eye for finding beauty in banal detail, uncovering the romantic idealism that springs from such banality, and picking apart the fall out when the romantic bubble gets popped. Excellences And Perfections might be satire, but it’s hard to say just where the blow

Part of this, as she says, is to explore the use of cliche. We’re all meant to be building our personal brands now, rewriting our lives to make ourselves look perfect, broadcasting our perfect jobs, hobbies, friends, dinners, coffees, we’re all characters in a play, just Amalia’s work often reveals we’re simply caricatures. Alternatively, it’s a kind of hypocrisy, another kind of cliche, in the way society is structured; the simple dichotomies between powerful and powerless, female and male. «I’m fascinated by con artists (at my core, I guess I’m Argentinian!) and by how people

pass for others, through performance, poise, clothes etc. The same way as when people get surgery, look prettier or younger, and they are treated better because they have a sweeter look.» At Frieze she unveiled a new video installation with Arcadia Missa based around the history of diary keeping and unwritten female histories, as well as a holiday she took to North Korea, to enter the booth you had to remove your shoes and hand over your phone. The film used cutesy aesthetics and stereotypically girly language as a way of discussing larger issues around media representation, often using that cute tone-of-voice to slip in forceful, powerful statements. «You can only escape that manipulation, political and personal, by recognising the language.» She explains. «Most of the script was made from emails men have sent to me in the past.»

RIOT // ART

Jesse Darling: from batman to empire, from gender to war

Credits: Text Martha Hunt Photography Thomas Blond

We look inside the artist's new show at Arcadia Missa as it closes this weekend ART | Martha Hunt For Jesse Darling's latest solo exhibition at Arcadia Missa, South London, entitled The Great Near, the press release for the exhibition is edited verbatim from the Wikipedia definition of modernity. The prioritization of individualism, freedom and formal equality; faith in inevitable social, scientific n technological progress/human perfectibility; rationalization professionalization; industrialization, urbanization, secularization; the development of the nation-state n its constituent institutions eg representative democracy,public education, modern bureaucracy; forms of care. It can be read as an index to the works, in large part legibly assembled from equally legible low- and no- cost material: steel, cloth, clay. Barbed wire and plastic cherries gird Temps de Cerises I; plastic ivy the cruciform of Saint Batman, face of pink expanding foam; body of printed binliner. Temps de Cerises II rests on wood stilts and trolley wheels; a hot pink matte, flat, tall rectangle with bare branch that blossoms pink expanding foam (while a red flashing bike light bears signal or alarm). Colonel Shanks flat, tall, rectangular body rests on the A-frame of an aluminium mobility crutch and bent steel legs (shy or broken); its rear bearing bike chain and grosgrain ribbon; its front a

white styrofoam staghead. Cavalry of sculpted clay horseheads rests on stems of bent steel mounted on a cheap shelf. On the walls, mounted burnt eyes or faces of dishcloth flags, hoisted by steel frames whose arrows point nowhere, in opposite directions: these named Domestic Terror, 1 2 and 3. Halos, horns or crowns of thorns; these spectres of good and evil of the secular, discredited Christianity of white, western nation-states. The hubris and detritus of Empire is what The Great Near draws from and builds on. Equally, masculinity, no less than femininity, could be a drag - cos-

tume, joke or nightmare. The single painting in the exhibition depicts a head-in-hand Batman, streaming blood from the lower abdomen; Batman being, as Darling emphasises, a self-appointed hero, hubristic and with no particular powers. There are moments of dark humour in The Great Near, a palpable faith in the work of hands and palpable pleasure in vivid colour and a light touch. These brighten an essentially dark landscape. As Darling put in a recent Facebook status update: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The apocalypse has already happened its jus not evenly distributed.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Credits Text Nathan London Photography Simon Simmens

RIOT // FILM

FILM | Nathan London Indie flick dear white people is back to skewer racism on TV. The film about «being a black face in a white place» is heading to your laptop, as ten brand-new episodes. Justin Simien’s breakout 2014 Dear White People is being turned into a series for Netflix. The crowd funded indie success premiered at Sundance, where positive reviews helped it sell globally—defying traditional Hollywood wisdom about the marketability of African-American films. The film followed a group of black students at a primarily white Ivy League school, where ingrained racism doesn’t lie far below the surface. As a TV series, Dear White People will deal with the same

situation, though it’s unclear if the original cast are back on board, or if audiences will be transported to a different university. Dear White People highlights the importance of millennial to recognize opportunities we have and to use them properly to propel towards equality for all races. Although millennial do have the fortune of having technological support, it is important to understand that we also have to keep focus on issues that are relevant to our generation. As a generation of millennial, we must act upon unequal treatments that affect our generation. We must commit and not become distracted with the fastpace technological life and focus on what truly

matters to us. We must discuss, and use our generation’s gift, technology, with each other and not at each other in regards to equal treatment. At prestigious Winchester University, biracial student Samantha White begins her radio show, «Dear White People, the amount of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, your weed man, Tyrone, doesn’t count.» Sam becomes president of the all-black residential hall Parker/ Armstrong, whose existence is facing extinction in the name of diversification. TV reality show «Black Face/White Place» smells gold in Sam’s story and decides to follow it, rejecting the proposal of fellow black student Coco Conners, who pitched her show «Doing Time at an Ivy League». The clamor over

Sam’s rise also becomes a career-defining opportunity for black misfit Lionel Higgins when he is asked to join the school’s lily-white newspaper staff to cover the controversy, even though he secretly knows little about black culture. «During the film’s release, I had the pleasure to speak with hundreds of students and faculty across a variety of college campuses dealing with these very issues in real time,» Simien has said. «I’m so grateful to have this platform: not only to give a voice to those too often unheard in our culture, but to also tell great stories from new points of views.» Netflix has ordered ten 30-minute episodes, which are set to debut in 2017.

RIOT | CULTURE