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INDIGO 2

Thursday, 9 February 2017

STAG E 3, 4 & 5 Durham Drama Festival 2017 starts today, we look at some of the performances happening at the various venues F O O D & DR I NK 6 Celebrating Syria: looking at Syrian culture through food A recipe for valentines day TR AV E L 7 An Ode to Italy: solo travel in quite possibly the most beautiful country in Europe V I S U AL AR TS 8&9 Interviewing Alastair Hudson: how art inspires social change in the local community F IL M & TV 10 Is La La Land overrated?

11 Transphobia at the BBC F ASHI ON 12 Exploring the relationship between fashion and gender norms F E ATU R E S 13 Students speak out about their personal housing woes BOOKS 14 On Virginia Woolf M U SI C 15 Interviewing an Australian Durham student who balances surfing, singing, and studying C R E A TI V E W R I TI N G 16 Flora and Fauna

O

ne of the great things about university is that virtually everything you could possibly want to do is right at your doorstep.

At no other point in your life will you be able to play sports, play in an orchestra, or participate in theatre in such close temporal and physical proximity.

You might say it’s possible to reproduce this in a metropolis like London, New York, or Hong Kong where there are amenities like these around, but the community is never really the same.

Unless all your friends end up in London banks, London law firms, or London news agencies, it’s going to be difficult to re-establish that same sense of solidarity that we feel now.

The Durham Drama Festival (DDF) that is currently happening is possibly the biggest event that Durham Student Theatre organises.

Even if you are not a huge fan of theatre and drama, it is something that’s worth checking out, even if just to say that you’ve done it before.

As with many things to do in Durham, don’t put it off till you’re in your last year then regret not having enough time to do it.

It is one of the big events in the Durham calendar. Stage cuts through the smokescreen and shows you where some of the shows are happening, and give their take on what DDF is like.

Elsewhere in Indigo, Fashion questions gender norms as they are mapped onto the clothes we wear. While some might see gendered clothes as being oppressive and a mere extension of hegemonic masculinity, others might see gendered clothes as convenient – style aside, why would you not want clothes that tend to fit with your body type?

Food & Drink explore Syrian cuisine, and reminds us that amidst genuine threats to national security and cultural heritage, people of war-torn areas like Syria and the Middle East are people like you and me.

Special thanks goes to the Durham Student Theatre for providing photos for our cover page, as well as for our story on the DDF.

IND IGO E D ITO R S YC Chin Olivia Howcroft (deputy) FE A TUR E S E D ITO R S Sophie Paterson Matthew Chalmers (deputy) C R E A TIV E W R ITING E D ITO R Anna Gibbs S TA GE E D ITO R Alison Gamble V IS UA L A R TS E D ITO R S Lolita Gendler Lucy Sara-Kelly (deputy) BO O KS E D ITO R Aaron Bell FA S H IO N E D ITO R S Victor Schagerlund Emma Denison (deputy) FO O D & D R INK E D ITO R S Divya Shastri Robbie Tominey-Nevado (deputy) TR A V E L E D ITO R S Naoise Murphy Charis Cheesman FIL M & TV E D ITO R Simon Fearn M US IC E D ITO R Bethany Madden

YC

Cover illustration: Samuel Kirkman

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STAGE Thursday, 9 February 2017

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Durham Drama Festival 2017 What is DDF?

By Annie Davison

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he annual Durham Drama Festival is now officially 42 years old! It’s a fantastic week long festival which aims to encourage, showcase, and celebrate the new writing of talented Durham university students. There are 9 shows around various sites in Durham City, including The Assembly Rooms Theatre, the Durham Students Union, and Chad’s College. Three shows perform a night, and some venues have limited capacity, so make sure

By Alison Gamble stage@ palatinate.org.uk

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urham Drama Festival is one of the most unique events in the Student Theatre calendar. Whether you’re a writer, actor, director, or just a drama-fanatic, there’s something for everyone. DDF productions are of another level, and celebrate everything that students can do, from heartfelt dramas to gloriously feminist musicals, such as last year’s production of The Princes’ Quest. On top of achieving sell-out success during the festival in February, many shows even make it to the Edinburgh Fringe later in the year! Just like Durham itself, these plays are hugely diverse, celebrating the variety of characters and stories that students here want to tell. There’s a lot to look forward to in this year’s spread, and best of all, these are plays written by students, for students.

For this week’s Palatinate, we here at Stage have talked to the writers about their productions, and the influence behind each show. Whether you’re interested in short stories or a documentary-style piece, the array of writing styles promises that the 42nd Durham Drama Festival will be completely unique. The writers themselves will also attest to just how rewarding an opportunity DDF can be, serving as one of the few opportunities to showcase student writing, whilst getting invaluable feedback from the judges, who are all industry experts.

The actors and directors have been working incredibly hard, negating their degrees and sleepschedules in order to produce the very best kind of entertainment. And you don’t just have to take my word for it, as we’ve got some fantastic rehearsal photos to showcase their efforts, and everything you can expect from the festival this year.

But the tickets are notoriously hard to get a hold of; writing this, the Site Specific shows have entirely sold out, but tickets may be available on the door.

With many of the other nights already sold out as well, there’s but little chance left to grab a ticket for this fantastic celebration of student theatre, in its most impressive array. Do not miss out.

Photographs: Samuel Kirkman; Logos and Posters: Facebook, Durham Drama Festival

you book your tickets FAST. The performances have a huge variety of characters, stories and genres, ranging from a verbatim piece about the tragic Colorado shootings, to a retelling of Brexit in the style of Euripides, to a hilarious comedy about the ghost writer of Kevin Spacey. There is literally something for everyone.

Not only is there the excellent shows to watch, but throughout the week 10 industry professionals will be visiting Durham to deliver workshops and talks about all aspects of theatre; producing, directing, writing for screen and stage, acting, and dramaturgy. This is an amazing opportunity to talk to and pick the brains of some of the industry’s best professionals, some of which are Durham alumni.

STAGE 3

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Meet the Writers Site Specific | Thursday 9th February The Bocchae: a post-truth tragicomedy in three parts by Alison Middleton Remember the Brexit? We do. In fact, it bears spooky resemblance to Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae.’ Did Ancient Greek tragedy predict the future, or is there something even spookier going on here? Boris and Dave have been mates since day, but when their party is shaken by a referendum on the EU, their lives change forever. No man is an island, but Britain is. Channel your deep angst about the future of the UK with this very surreal tragicomedy about a very real state of affairs. “Political and classical theatre at their finest” – A Middleton, 2016 The Bocchae is a post-truth tragicomedy about Brexit, based on Euripides’s tragedy The Bacchae.

Its influence, unfortunately, is the current political climate, but I hope that it demonstrates the importance of Art™ in these fairly Bleak times. I’ve always thought that Euripides’ Bacchae is funnier than it’s given credit for, and wanted to use this opportunity to show that the lines between comedy and tragedy are often more blurred than we’d like to think.

Ultimately the hybrid of classical theatre and modern politics seeks to demonstrate the similarity of the two, rather than promote any specific political message. I submitted it for Durham Drama Festival because it’s a very Groovy platform for new and experimental writing, and would definitely encourage anyone else to do the same.

A Year in Minutes by Hamish Clayton Kristofferson Park Residences Committee is like any other residential committee. They squabble over who picked an apple from the tree without prior permission, walking too close to one another’s windows, and why that back gate is quite so squeaky. Taking the form of a year’s worth of minutes from their meetings, it soon becomes clear that the events of Kristofferson Park (much like the political events of this year) are about to take a turn for the unexpected.

The play is inspired by the residential committee that my house in Ross-on-Wye is a part of. I was flicking through the minutes of the latest AGM and found it hilarious that they were taking such

Daisy’s Dead by Alice Clarke Set in the aftermath of a burglary gone wrong, one of the burglars has been stabbed and left behind. The piece follows the negotiations between the hurt burglar and the hostage, as one cannot escape from the situation without the other. To make matters worse the hostage says and does exactly what he thinks. How far can he push the burglar before the burglar snaps? Can the burglar restrain himself until he Heavily influenced by working at the Edinburgh Fringe for the last two years, I wrote Daisy’s Dead to bring something different to audiences at Durham. Set in the aftermath of a robbery gone wrong, the play follows the negotiations between a hostage, Ben, and his stabbed captor, Jack, as neither of them can escape without the help of the other. With quick-fire dialogue, absurd conversations, and elements of black comedy, I wanted to capture the energy and pace of gangster films such as Pulp Fiction and put them on stage in Durham. The Durham Drama Festival is a fantastic platform to experiment on, and to get work judged by professionals as well as to gauge the reactions of large audiences. Wanting to pursue writing as a profession in the future, DDF seemed like the perfect place to start, as well as giving me the opportunity to work with a fantastic team in bringing my ideas to life.

petty things so seriously. It is definitely an idea that can be played around with and exaggerated. It was in the back of my mind when I started writing some absurdist dialogue between two characters (who break up the minutes of the meetings), before I realised I could write a year’s worth of meetings and allow some sort of plot to develop over the course of the year.

Before I knew it, the events were turning darker and darker and it became a black comedy with parallels to the turbulent events of 2016. Perhaps the links are not overly subtle, but I would rather everyone take enjoyment from it than anything else.

Assembly Rooms Theatre 10th - 11th February Screen 9 by Kate Barton “There were shouts everywhere. Then I heard the transition from shouts to screams.”

Screen 9 is a documentary piece which is a culmination of over a year’s worth of research into the Aurora shootings in Colorado during a showing of ‘The Dark and Knight Rises’ in 2012. The script follows four characters, created from interviews with American citizens, survivors, articles, press releases, blogs, videos, tweets, and trial coverage. The play follows the before, during, and aftermath of the event, focusing on how individuals respond and cope with tragedy. Every single line has been resourced and nothing has been fabricated.

Part of me struggles to take the credit as the writer for Screen 9. In truth, I feel that I should have been named the facilitator, complier and researcher for the project! Screen 9 is a documentary piece which has been over a year in the making; a culmination of research into the Aurora shootings in Colorado during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. The script follows four characters, created from interviews with American citizens, survivors, articles, press releases, blogs, videos, tweets, and trial coverage. Every single line has been resourced and nothing has been fabricated.

I wanted to explore the notion that tragedy can occur anywhere and that it changes, not only our conception of the space it took place in, but also the individual. Like many things, it came about after a 4 am conversation 2 years ago and my passion for telling stories from voices rarely heard. This is the survivor’s story, not mine.

STAGE Thursday, 9 February 2017

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Black Box | Friday 10th - Saturday 11th February Rose, by Isabelle Culkin

Alford and the Acid Tip by Kate Lipson California. USA. The local penitentiary’s Death Row is in full swing. But not if three protesters can help it. Follow their journeys through mind, matter, and surreality.

From game shows to prison gates, Alford and the Acid Trip is a hallucinogenic comedic exploration of the capital punishment and its consequences.

Toll by Charlie Keable ‘I thought they wanted soldiers.’ Four long years later, Toll realised the army wanted much more from him.

Join Oliver Clemence Soanes, or ‘Toll’ to his friends, as he recalls his memories of the so called ‘Great’ War. From plucky recruit to shell-shocked survivor, this is a true story of the horrors of war unlike any other.

Rose is 21 and pregnant. Mark is 20 and not entirely sure whether he’s the dad. ‘Rose’ is the story of two people whose paths cross based on a split-second decision.

A contemporary take on storytelling, ‘Rose’ explores the reasons why people stay, and at what point our stories begin, crossover, and end.

I’ve always loved storytelling. After binge watching one-person shows at The Edinburgh Fringe, it struck me as strange that I had never attempted to write a monologue; monologues seem the perfect mode for storytelling. I looked towards short stories I had written when I was a teenager. I played around with loads of different characters and ideas, I found the part of a story I wanted and then I worked backwards. By the time I got into the swing of things it was no longer a monologue, but in part a duologue, and in part a pair of parallel monologues. It seemed wrong to give only one character a voice in a story that was so obviously about two people if not more.

Rose more than anything else definitely looks at the places in which stories begin, crossover and end, and at which points people enter and leave our stories, and whether we can ever determine that for ourselves.

The Not So Divine Comedy, by Freddie Drewer The only sexy religious play you will see in 2017. ‘The Not So Divine Comedy’ showcases everyone’s favourite stars! Featuring icons such as... that hunky Spanish dude you ‘met’ in Magaluf; that cute but mysterious guy just like in that band you love; Frodo Baggins; that one angel who really loves Valentine’s Day; a very relatable protagonist; and the author of the best-selling autobiography of all time - God! I wrote A Not So Divine Comedy as something that would be fun to write, fun to act in and fun to watch.

It has been a hard year both for me personally and the world at large, and I wanted to write something that would be all-round enjoyable.

In writing it I hoped to give funny women a spotlight in theatre. I wanted to write female characters who are more than just pretty sights that sometimes speak, and get away from the stereotype that women are wise and competent, and men are bumbling and incompetent. The main character of A Not So Divine Comedy, Rachel, is ridiculous; she’s hypocrite, she’s insecure and she’s a pervert. I wanted the audience to be able to laugh at her antics, whilst also finding her very human and sympathetic in her flaws, and in this way also laugh at themselves.

I also wanted to write for the female gaze - to put women in the visual driver’s seat and portray men in a sexualised (and comical) light. It’s not fair on men that they are never portrayed as objects of lust and so A Not So Divine Comedy was written to pay thanks to all the sexy men for all the joy they bring to the world.

Cold Fronts and Hot Flushes: The Short Stories of Kevin Spacey, by Andrew Shires A ghostwriter and his best friend work tirelessly to create the greatest book ever written. A book of short stories about love, religion, friendship, and spiders. Except they didn’t write a single word. Kevin Spacey wrote it.

Kevin Spacey wrote everything.

The play is a number of short stories, with a framing narrative intended to explore ideas around writing itself, and creative ownership. I’ve always been a really big fan of short stories of any genre, and I really like the way they can sometimes come together to be part of a bigger picture, so I’ve tried to incorporate some of that into my play. It’s also been a nice chance to write something less comedy oriented than the Revue, though a lot of the stories are meant to be funny. Some of the ideas in it are more personal, whereas some are merely meant to be fun, so one of the main challenges was to structure everything so as to keep the play relatively balanced. DDF is a fantastic opportunity to share new writing, and it’s something I’ve been intending to try for a while, so it’s been great to finally have the opportunity.

FOOD AND DRINK 6

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Celebrating Syria

By Georgina Oatts food@palatinate.org

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atherine Zoepf writes of lambs intestine stuffed with rice and pistachios – gleaming, translucent and still surprisingly meaty. Her host in Aleppo told her, “you have to be fearless!” Ten years later, these lighthearted words about the exotic nature of Syrian cuisine rings even more true as Syria is ripped apart at its core. According to Unicef, it is the “largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, with the lives of more than 8 million children in danger.” Syria’s people are showing inspirational bravery in withstanding the traumas. With no choice at all, they are fleeing their homes and making life-endangering journeys in search of safety.

Here in Britain though, little fear is evident in

The basic concept is to raise awareness through sharing pictures of Syrian cuisine on social media embracing Syrian cuisine. As magpies of the culinary world, us Brits are ever enthusiastic to widen our repertoire of unusual foods. The CookForSyria campaign is taking advantage of the greed of British foodies to raise awareness and vital funds for the Syrian plight.

The campaign is the brainchild of top food Instagrammer, Clerkenwell Boy, and founder of Suitc ase magazine, Serena Guen. Dubbed the ‘supperclub movement that became a global campaign,’ the basic concept is to raise awareness through sharing pictures of Syrian cuisine on social media. This developed into hosting Syrian themed supper-clubs with all proceeds going to Unicef UK’s Children of Syria Fund and NEXTGen London, Unicef UK’s young professional movement. This evolved into a campaign that took London and the rest of the UK by storm. November, in particular, saw hundred of restaurants across London put Syrian inspired dishes on their menus with the profits all being donated to the cause. They also held a star-studded banquet with names like Angela Harnett, Yotam Ottolenghi and Jose Pizarro each cooking a course.

Highly sought after tickets were priced at £180 a head.

The movement has seen London taken over by Fetteh, Kibbeh, Zataa’r and pomegranate-jewelled feasts. It continues today, and will continue as long as Syria needs our help. The crisis in Syria is continuing, despite our media having seemingly forgotten it. Thousands are dying or fleeing their country every day. The CookForSyria campaign defines this as a risk of “losing a generation.” A risk that may be more comprehendible to us is the very real risk of losing a culture. In the rush away from Syria and the need to find homes elsewhere, Syrians are forced to leave behind their pasts. Syrian culture is exciting though and the food delicious. Juicy lemons, pink pomegranates and creamy feta scatter their plates. We too are now embracing earthy sumac, vibrant Za’atar, sweet, oozing figs and tahini

in our brownies (don’t knock it till you try it). If we can do nothing else to help these people with little in their life to be thankful for, we can eat their food, celebrate their culture and in doing so raise awareness of their plight.

But with the main campaign having passed and the missed opportunities to try Symmetry Breakfast’s Syrian Brunch at the Good Egg ringing in our ears, what can we do to get involved? To inject your own kitchen with some Syrian vibrancy, head to their recipe archive online. You can host a supperclub or just share your creations online. Or you can purchase the recipe book and contribute yourself to the increasing total of funds raised. Just inside Syria, more than 7.9 million people were provided with access to safe water, two rounds of polio vaccination campaigns reached over 2.9 million children, and nearly 841,000 children received psychological support, all from the proceeds from CookForSyria.

Here in Durham, too, you can also embrace a medjool date or two at our very own Taste of Syria event being held at John’s on February 9th. In collaboration with Durham based charity, Live to Remain, the event will see fellow students, refugee families and Durham locals taste Syrian cuisine and perhaps even indulge in some traditional dance. Tickets are available in advance (£5) and on the door (£6) through the Facebook event with all proceeds heading straight to war-torn Syria.

Just like the family-style tradition of eating in Syria, what the campaign is really aiming for is inspiring the act of sharing. Being Instagram-based, the scope is extensive for spreading awareness of not only the plight of Syria but the positives of their culture. We are bombarded with reasons why social media is the spawn of the devil. How it is increasing our depression rates tenfold. How we waste half our lives staring at a screen. Not enough is made of the incredible successes social media allows for, or the large, supportive communities it can create. CookForSyria is demonstrating this for us. The campaign is a celebration. It is hopeful and inclusive. Syrian culture is not lost and will not be if we continue to share and support.

Food for Love

By Robbie Tominey-Nevado deputy.food@palatinate.org,uk

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o Valentines dessert can truly be complete without two essential ingredients – chocolate, and strawberries – and this cheesecake recipe does not lack either. Here is my own version of a Nigella recipe to which I implore you to add your own twists!

Through the substitution of the dark chocolate below for your partner’s favourite, this dish immediately takes on a personalised feel and is something you simply cannot not adore. A further romantic addition would be to use heart-shaped moulds to shape your cheesecake. Nevertheless, the recipe below makes far too much for two people to handle, so if the date is a disaster at least you can console yourself with a gigantic slice the day after.

1. To make the base, bash the biscuits in a bag and then mix with the butter and cocoa. Add to the tin (23cm) and place in the freezer. Put the oven on at 180 degrees, and melt the chocolate.

Beating the cream cheese, add the sugar to combine them. Next beat in the whole eggs, the yolks and sour cream.

2. Finally, add the cocoa and the melted chocolate, and whisk to a smooth batter. Remove tin out of the freezer and line with a layer of Clingfilm, and then another layer of strong foil on top, as this will give protection from the water bath. Sit the tin in a pan and pour in the filling. Fill the roasting pan with boiling water to halfway up. Bake for 45-60 mins – the cake should still have a wobble.

Make sure you let it cool and decorate with strawberries before serving!

For the Base: - 125g ginger biscuits - 60g butter - 1 tbsp. cocoa powder

Photograph: Hussein Alazaat via Flickr

For the Filling: - 175g dark chocolate (or your favourite) - 500g cream cheese - 3 eggs - 3 egg yolks - 142ml sour cream - 1/2 tsp. cocoa powder

TRAVEL Thursday, 9 February 2017

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An ode to Italy Pizzas, piazzas, panoramas and pastries. Welcome to Italy.

By Rachel Tan travel@palatinate.org.uk

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aples, 11:08pm. I’m standing on a rooftop balcony overlooking the glittering city lights, which glow orange in the surrounding darkness. In the distance, suspended in the vast quiet of the night, looms the faint outline of Mount Vesuvius. Soon, I will be leaving Italy, having completed a thoroughly exhilarating tour of the breath-taking country.

My friends and I decided to visit Italy this winter to avoid freezing temperatures and of course to discover the country’s renowned and eclectic mix of cuisine, culture and sights. The three weeks spent in Milan, Genoa, Cinque Terre, Florence, Rome and Naples were much colder than expected, but we were not disappointed by the abundance of incredible food, brilliant architecture, art and scenic views.

Milan

After a 4am rush to the airport, flight delays and 30 hours without sleep, Milan greeted us with snow! The weather later turned grey and rainy but this did not take away from the magnificence of Milan’s Duomo, a colossal architectural masterpiece of pinkish-white marble. It features various altars and sarcophagi, and I was absolutely in awe of the vast array of intricately carved sculptures on its impressive facade.

Near the Duomo, we explored the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (for window shopping only definitely unsuited for the student budget!) and headed down a side street to Luini, a famous panzerotti shop. Luini is so popular that it has its own ‘bouncer’ to usher customers into separate queues that stretch out onto the street. The affordable and mouth-watering piece of panzerotti-goodness was so worth the wait!

An evening trip to San Bernadino Alle Ossa, otherwise known as ‘the bone church,’ was an eerily macabre alternative to the usually picturesque sights of Milan. Dating back to a 13th century chamber which stored bones from the local graveyard, the church’s ossuary is mostly decorated with human skulls and femurs. The walls are covered with bones of hospital patients as well as beheaded criminals, supposedly a balance between good and bad, innocent and guilty.

Genoa and Cinque Terre

Streaming sunshine, baby blue skies reflected over the expanse of cerulean sea and clusters of pastel apartments spread out amongst lush greenery and rocky cliffs - the Italian west coast was perhaps the most vibrant part of our journey. The port city of Genoa is famous for its fresh seafood, pesto sauce and focaccia bread. We followed street signs towards the old harbour and made our way through a labyrinth of narrow, cobblestone alleys, past quaint foccacerias (bread shops) and colourful blocks of flats.

After enjoying a panoramic view of the whole city from Spianatta Casteletto, we chased the sunset by trying to reach one of the highest points of Genoa.

Unfortunately, the Castello Bruzzo was closed, but we caught a breathtaking glimpse of the city as it was saturated with gold, orange and pink hues.

We spent Christmas Eve visiting the stunning villages of Cinque Terre (‘five lands’). Each village has its own distinct charm, from the enchanting fishing harbours of Riomaggiore and Vernazza, the dramatic cliffs of Manarola and Corniglia, to the swirling deep blue and emerald waters of Monterossa al Mare. We found ourselves nimbly venturing along the rocky coast, enjoying the brilliant weather, fresh calamari and a yet another spectacular sunset.

the queues, we pre-booked entrance tickets online and were treated to an endless stretch of galleries, filled with paintings, breath-taking tapestries, sculptures and exquisite murals.

Naples

I had been forewarned by a few friends that Naples is more ‘dodgy’ than the rest of Italy. However, while it does not exude the extravagant elegance of Rome, or the artistic serenity of Florence, Naples is a more vibrant and ‘real’ experience of life in Italy.

The city is alive with chaotic traffic, bursts of graffiti

Florence

The iconic artistic centre of Italy is well known for its museums and galleries, filled with Renaissance masterpieces by artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Entrance fees to some of the famed destinations (including Palazzo Pitti, Galleria dell’Accademia and Giardini di Boboli) can take their toll on the ever-limited student budget, so we spent most of our time wandering through the various piazzas, public streets and admiring the architectural wonder that is the city itself. Of course, it is possible to take a day trip to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as well as to the Tuscan countryside or Siena.

Rome

Despite the throng of tourists, Rome turned out to be my favourite Italian city for its grandeur and opulent beauty. There is an abundance of places of interest to explore and admire, each indubitably rich in culture and history. On New Year’s Eve, we took in the view of the city at the Janiculum, before wandering around the colossal Castel Sant’Angelo along the tranquil Tiber river.

New Year’s Day happened to be the first Sunday of the month, an excellent time to hit the tourist sites as entry to state museums and attractions are free of charge. Charting a north-west route, we made our way on foot from the Colosseum and stopped at the Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and the Pantheon.

We also spent a day at the stunning Vatican City, home to some resplendent art as well as the stunning Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica. To avoid

and cafes selling local delights.

An unusual cold spell hit Naples during our day trip to Pompeii as we braced the -2 degree weather and biting wind, taking shelter behind the derelict walls of the imposing ruins, a grand amphitheatre and even an ancient brothel. Most of the furniture and artefacts had been moved to the archaeological museum in Naples. However, the expanse of excavated stone buildings and the towering Mount Vesuvius were a sight to behold.

This trip was my very first ‘independent’ vacation and being spontaneous and somewhat naïve freshers, we planned the schedule, transport and accommodation for only half the trip. Going with the flow resulted in many close calls (including a missed bus and an 11-hour coach ride), but some of my best memories include running for trains and arriving at the very last moment. Italy has been a completely immersive and captivating experience – and if my wish at Rome’s Trevi Fountain comes true someday – I’ll be back.

Photographs: Rachel Tan

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VISUAL ARTS

Thursday, 9 February 2017

8

MIMA’s Director, Alistair Hudson, t

IT’S T MUCH MORE INTERESTING Q TO A THINK OF PUTIN TAKING Q HIS TOP A OFF AS PART OF AN AESTHETIC QA REGIME

By Lolita Gendler Visual Arts Editor visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk he Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art sits a glistening safe house amongst the city’s crumbling town halls and abandoned shops.

As an institution originally created with the sole purpose of bringing internationally acclaimed artists to the North, Erick van Egeraat Associated Architects made sure that it was worlds away from anything else in the area. Now MIMA faces a different challenge.

Since 2014, director Alistair Hudson has refocused the museum’s focus. Instead of being a glossy edition to Middlesbrough’s Timeout to do list, MIMA has become an integral hydration pack to the community. The aim is to remind the ‘art world elite’ that art is an instrumental function to societies’ structure and to show the ‘art-phobic’ non-believers that art is for everyone.

Can Art be multifaceted, or is there one road for art?

I describe it as an ecology, there is one system that we all operate in. Basically, there are different manifestations of what we call art within that system; according to different indices and criteria and forces at work. So, you have a system of art… and I use the word use of art very generally as well – everybody uses art, somehow. Even if it’s to reinforce this idea that art is useless, but that in itself is a purpose in order for a means to power and status or cultural recognition.

So, that ecology would include in it; Raphael, your mother’s noodles, Botticelli, bad craft, the works… education… however you want to describe art. Equally I say a lot that we should stop thinking about whether something is art or not, but to think about to what degree it is art or has artistic competence.

In an email correspondence in OnCurating you said that you “contest the conviction that art must be purely representational, a mirror of reality, and cannot ultimately operate beyond this.” What is it about this idea of Art as representation that troubles you?

If you look at the idea of representation itself, in a way this is a very old idea, this concept of representation comes in line with the picture frame. Again I argue now to say that even the picture frame itself is in operation in the world. So everything is not pure representation, you cannot have pure representation, everything is operation. Even a system of representation is something that is operated by people, and subject to forces at work and different ideas. I mean, actually, John Berger was talking a lot about this sort of thing in the 1970s; this is basically a materialist argument. So, it’s an extension of that in a way, and what we’re saying is that we need to move away from the idea of art being representation, it can be representative but it is not pure representation. It is always in operation.

You believe that this integration already exists, that art is a part of society?

And has been for most of civilisation. So for about 40,000 years, art was part of ordinary life processes. Round about 170/180 years ago, the idea of art, in terms of how we think about it now, came into being; in terms of the western canon, as an autonomous thing. That’s quite a short period in the history of humanity.

So really could you say that MIMA is not doing anything new, it’s just reminding people of an early understanding of art?

Q

A Q

Yeah, I keep saying to people that its really old fashioned, it’s not avant-garde at all. Avant-garde itself is part of that modernist mind-set But bringing this realisation to the wider community is obviously, even though an old idea, quite a long-term goal, as changing people’s intuitions about things takes time. Not necessarily correctly, but there is a long-standing tradition of believing in the ‘pureness’ of autonomous art; believing in the richness of an experience which is in and of itself. Something that you may perhaps lose when you introduce a social function?

Yes, but I would disagree with that, because I think, someone, for example, who might say; “well I come to the gallery to get away from society, I’m coming to have some sort of ‘out of body’ ‘esoteric’ ‘warm’ ‘fuzzy’ cultural experience”, is themselves using that museum as part of the social civic structure, it’s part of the whole framework. They’re not escaping from the world when they walk into a museum. They might be paying to see an exhibition so it’s part of the economy, they might be in a way gaining knowledge to use in wider discourse. They might be using that art to inform their behaviours and opinions outside the museum. The museum does not, equally as the art does not, exist separately from the world. The museum itself, MIMA, is subject to forces at work; Government funding, public opinion, pressures from the university, internal struggles within staff, you know whether the foods good or not, all of these things are in play. None of it is excluded.

Given that, would you say it becomes even more difficult to pick artists and artworks to exhibit.

Once you acknowledge the inescapable external pressures, i.e. being part of a wider institution such as Teesside University. Do you feel you should be ‘politically correct’? Can you take a stance and have social opinions? Is there a greater pressure now you have acknowledged the depth of your social function?

I think in general we try to be more transparent about it, because the tradition is that a museum is neutral, and they’re not, they never have been. They are created by their users, now what we might describe as the ‘elitist, intellectual, autonomous model’ – the users of that museum are people like rich art collectors, and self-important curators, and ‘the friends group’ [Those who are members or sponsors of galleries] The nice polite middle class people etc. etc. That’s one particular set of users of a museum, what we’re talking about with MIMA is expanding that range of users, which might include refugees, schools, children, and actually being honest and seeing their importance, rather than just saying we’ll allow this to happen, fully integrating it in. And I think also in that situation you are very clear and open about the fact that the museum is run by those who have interest in it, who have a stake in it. You can grow and learn to have a stake in it if you haven’t had one before, but clearly at any one time who controls the museum, to varying degrees, is kind of a subjective thing. And that’s not a bad thing, so I guess I’ve been quite open.

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VISUAL ARTS

Thursday, 9 February 2017

talks art, “the elite” & social change Like I was openly pro remain in the referendum, and wrote stuff online, articles, did stuff in the building; we did and do projects that work to support our refugees and asylum seekers. We had a banner up in the atrium saying ‘welcome refugees’, which some people found quite problematic. So yeah, I think the institution should be subjective and boisterous, it should be human!

So, it’s quite liberating.

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Yeah, it’s actually more fun, more creative and artists respond better to it, and I think people respond better to it.

So some of your practice is based on the essay ‘lexicon of usership’, this idea of the importance of terminology in the museum culture. I just wonder if you truly believe that language has the credence this article implies, if we adjust our language will change really follow or is this an academics fantasy of reinforcement?

I think the language of the museum is really important, that’s why we’re doing this rebrand with Kellenberger-White. It’s not just about the logo and the aesthetics of the institution its about that language we employ. So, I constantly on press releases avoid or delete language which would be normal art world language, like ‘questioning notions of’ , and erm ‘to do with’, and all of this slightly lazy language that goes under the pretence of being academic and intellectual.

And actually, things like the lexicon are quite interesting, because it’s not really academic language, a lot of the words are things like ‘hacking’ and ‘piggy backing’ or ‘1:1 scale’. They can become academic, and you can intellectualize them, but essentially, it’s about getting the language right or reclaiming words, or repurposing words through use that do a better job than the existing language.

So, looking in a very Wittgensteinian sense at the usership of language...

Yeah and I would then extend that to art and to museums, I think, again, rather than asking what art means, this is, in a way, the trap that the 200-yearold Modern period has created, where everyone goes ‘well I don’t understand what it means’. But meaning comes from use in a Wittgensteinian sense.

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So, you shouldn’t ask what a work of art means, you should ask how you use it How do I myself use this thing in front of me, or how do we collectively use this thing, or how does everybody use this object. Then the meaning will come from understanding that.

So the understanding of aesthetics that MIMA is grounded in is the polar opposite to a modernist, Kantian aesthetic, with that in mind if I put the seemingly simple question to you of what is beauty, would you see function as integrated in that?

Yeah, 100 per cent, which we kind of already know, because we know that… the 8th criteria of Art Utíl is about rethinking aesthetics and actually what it is. You know I refer to Kant in a lot of talks as the ‘software engineer’ who made this happen. Again, this Kantian model seems restrictive, aesthetics is much broader than that, it’s much more interesting as well.

To think of Putin taking his top off as part of an aesthetic regime, as is why some particular flowers look a particular way they do for quite functional reasons.

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None the less we describe them as being beautiful. Actually, I think a lot of the time when we say beauty we mean something that works really well.

Is it quite difficult to find the right place for MIMA in its wider community, as a lot of your aims are focused on a society that doesn’t quite see the value of art, but at the same time an art world that doesn’t quite see the value of having a social function.

So it must be quite difficult, as you almost sit outside both of these worlds that don’t quite accept you even though you seem to be building a bridge between the two. Do you find these hurdles come up a lot, is it quite restrictive for you? Do you find people want to engage and open up to the debate?

Yeah, I mean how you’ve put it is kind of perfect really, but you know it’s a slow process to make this stuff happen, because its about behavioural change. And actually what you find is kind of the people who think they know what art is and have a particular set idea of what art is are the people who struggle with it the most. Whereas Bini [refugee and local

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They know what’s going on, they can see it, they can feel it, you know it’s working in an operational way for them community leader], IPC, the guys that come to MIMAs workshops, they just get it, you don’t need to explain it, they just get it.

So, that sort of works and I think when you explain it to people it’s quite straightforward. So actually if I do a talk about Art Utíl to a local community group in the church hall, they tend to go “oh yeah this is great, this is exactly what art should be.” It kind of demystifies the whole thing, because you know the business of art has been broiled in mystification for a long time.

So, it’s actually quite a relief for a lot of people. Who it’s not a relief to are people who have a vested interest in that mystified type of art. Of course, now what is happening is everyone’s starting to come to grips with the changing world they’ve suddenly realised that their backs are against the wall. Particularly after the economic crash and everything that’s happened with Trump and Brexit and all that sort of thing, they’ve kind of gone ‘oh yeah maybe there is a bit of truth in all that stuff after all’. So, it’s very interesting now, in art terms there’s a lot of currency in what MIMA’s doing. You know we have conversations all the time around the museum with European partners, with Chicago, china, this is the live debate where all the interesting stuff is happening. The artworld will catch up at some point.

More internally speaking, your first aim on your manifesto is a “unified team”. Obviously MIMA’s initial plan was to bring big international artists to raise the art profile of the north and people will have joined MIMA with that intention in mind. Now it is going through a transition is there any internal resistance.

Yeah partly, some people found it quite hard to see, you need to grow through it, it takes some convincing. Like with all these things you have to do it to really understand it, so there’s the initial words, and then there’s the ‘well what does that mean, what does that look like, what does that taste like, will we get recognition? But even when I came for my interview I said, you know, there’s no point just going for big names. If you want to put MIMA on the map, there’s no point in showing the same old big names that everyone else is showing, because who are you trying to impress.

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You can go and see Louis Bourgeois at pretty much every gallery in the UK. So, let’s do something else.

And equally the names we do show are not unknown.

No I just mean that the focus has shifted its not all you’re doing.

Yeah I mean basically we’re not doing the Glitzy famous artists that are propped up by the one per cent.

The Hollywood Blockbuster exhibition Yeah ...[Pause].. Although that doesn’t rule it out, we might do it at one point.

What’s interesting about MIMA and the way its talked about is that there is a newsroom mentality to what goes on here, being current being on the ground and having these live discussions, so if a blockbuster show was what you needed to do you have the flexibility to be able to do it. So, in a way the transition that’s being talked about has no definite end point, there isn’t a single goal your aiming for, that once reached will be the finished product.

Yeah, see that would be a bad idea to have that end point, because once you do that and you’ve planned it and decided what it is you’ve ruled everything else out.

So, it’s a continuum, the transition is itself the aim then?

Yeah, which in itself its quite hard to do in an institution because in most places like this they operate by all the curators going around all the biennales in the world with a notepad. Saying “oh well, that’d be nice, that’d be good, is it okay to like this person, have we got some consensus on whether they’re cool. Okay, well we’ll show them then,” and then they plan out their list of shows, that will be approved by the art world.

When asked about the hoops needed to be jumped by being a public institution Alistair replied simply...

It’s a bloody nightmare, we should just show some watercolours on the wall.

In a previous interview you said: “It’s not whether we choose to have culture or not, but what kind of culture we want”. What kind of culture do you want?

Me personally, well, varied, tolerant, emphatic, humane, but equally slightly feisty. It should be a good mix. Everyone’s subject to their conditioning, so I was brought up with, you know, watching lots of TV and going to the la hacienda nightclub. That was like my art education, watching John Berger and la hacienda. So, you know somewhere amongst that… with a nice country walk in between.

And to some degree you would like that reflected in what you do here at MIMA. Well, yeah absolutely, I mean that’s the crazy thing, there was an idea that places like this were to enhance the culture of a place but of course all these places have great cultures already, it’s just not always identified as that. And it’s probably a question of highlighting the positive aspects of culture as opposed to the negative, damaging ones. For example, kids driving modified cars, doing donuts in a way is a really great thing, but then equally is viewed as a bad thing by some people. So somewhere in that… and I think it’s a question of teasing out the positive elements of those aspects of culture.

Alistair reminds us all that the currency of Art handles higher stakes than the blue-chip auction houses would have you believe. Everything is in operation in an enormous and ever-fluctuating context. Art is no different. If we misunderstand its breadth and influence by taking it off the curriculum, by starving its budget, restricting it to the ‘elite’; if we try to remove it with our ignorant tweezer… Well, I hope you like flashing red lights and the sound of a buzzer because this is one game of operation we aren’t going to win.

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FILM & TV 10

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Please don’t stop the music(als)!

La La Land is currently on everyone’s lips, but will it be enough to revive the grand old tradition of classic Hollywood musicals?

By Martin Shore film@palatinate.org.uk

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ollywood’s not like it used to be. Gone are the huge, hot-stepping superstars like Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds. The hype has it that La La Land is set to change this, paving the way for musical theatre to reappear in our cinemas.

Five movies which made ‘La La Land’

For me the critical adoration is not entirely deserved, but La La Land certainly had its moments.

The relationship between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling’s characters was more grounded than you’d expect in the genre; the soundtrack is woven nicely throughout the plot; and characters don’t seem too out of place leaping into song.

Though a perfectly enjoyable film, La La Land is a short on innovation. The movie is little more than a simple nostalgia trip for the fifties and the fancy feet of Fred Astaire. Amidst the references to Singin’ in the Rain, Casablanca and Rebel Without a Cause, the film has nothing new to offer.

Damien Chazelle’s screenplay does little to rework rom-com convent i o n s, l e a v ing us with a cooki e cutt e r plot: a) boy m e e t s girl b) they gradually fall in love c) boy upsets girl d) they reconcile.

M o r e c r i t i c a l l y, the musical numbers were instantly forgettable aside from stand-out track ‘City of Stars’. The vocals do little to help matters.

Gosling’s gravelly tones are perfect for neon-soaked thrill-rides like

Drive; he’s less successful as jazzed-up heart-throb Seb. It’s a shame, given the obvious talent involved.

Chazelle seemed like an obvious choice to recraft the movie musical – the path to La La Land was tinged with music-driven films like the brutally brilliant Whiplash. Though that film showcased Chazelle as a master of tension and intense drama, he is less at home in the genre conventions of a classical-

1) Singin’ in the Rain. Set in the early days of cinema, this tale of the romance between an aspiring actress (Debbie Reynolds) and dashing leading man (Gene Kelly) is the basis for much of Seb and Mia’s relationship. Gosling even cheekily swings round a lamppost in homage to the Hollywood classic. The dream sequence in La La Land’s epilogue borrows heavily from both Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris, another Gene Kelly film.

2) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Like La La Land, this is a bittersweet love story about “young love and thwarted dreams.” Across four acts (again like La La Land), the film charts the doomed relationship between an umbrella seller (Catherine Deneuve) and a mechanic (Nino Castelnuovo).

There’s social climbing and sexual jealousy, all while our heroes drift into the arms of other lovers.

The movie is little more than a nostalgia trip for the fifties and fancy feet of Fred Astaire. ly-styled musical.

Then there’s the fact that despite La La Land’s awards-success, many movie musicals have fared less well. Take the cinematic adaptation of Les Miserables, often dismissed by theatre-goers as a shoddy attempt to emulate the stage show. These risky stage-to-screen adaptations have most likely turned directors off to the possibility of reviving the musical film tradition. Why risk it when you can make the next sci-fi or action blockbuster?

Perhaps future film-makers will learn from La La Land’s mistakes. To my mind the film was light on large-scale song-and-dance numbers. Movie musicals should feature less long sections of dialogue and character-building and more memorable musical numbers.

Future directors should take a leaf from Baz Lurhman’s book and aim to equal Moulin Rouge’s bright colours, massive show dances and melodramatic exchanges. The opening song of La La Land is full of vibrant colour; sustaining this tone throughout would make a stronger case for the rebirth of the Hollywood musical.

Is La La Land the best model for a new generation of Hollywood musicals? Perhaps not, but ultimately box office statistics and awards’ season success will decide. The film has already hoovered up a record number of Golden Globes along with 14 Oscar nominations. If it is as successful as everyone has predicted, it’s likely future films will seek to cash in on its success. So perhaps don’t shelve the tap shoes quite yet. Though La La Land is a flawed reworking of classic Hollywood, we’re likely to be seeing a lot more of its ilk in the future.

FILM & TV Thursday, 9 February 2017

11

Transphobia at the BBC

This January the BBC screened controversial documentary Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best?, ignoring the concerns of activists and an 11,000 strong petition.

By Jessica Derwent film@palatinate.org.uk

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he recently aired Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? has caused controversy and led to outcry from trans charities, activists, and the general public. It has cast serious doubts on the BBC’s commitment to impartiality.

It subtly attacked the gender-affirmative consensus among transgender experts – the idea that children should be supported when they identify as a different gender and helped to transition, which is to express themselves through their name, clothes and other means.

“The documentary went against the knowledge and experience of UK medical practitioners who work with trans children, as well as voices from the trans community.”

This led to a manipulation of what was meant to be a balanced debate.

Durham’s own LGBT+ Association have shared their concerns with Palatinate. Transgender rep Luke Armitage and acting president Fred Banks said the following: “It went against the knowledge and experience of UK medical practitioners who work with trans children, as well as voices from the trans community.

“A request to allow the programme to be reviewed by UK trans experts was denied, and thus despite the BBC being fully aware of concerns about its detrimental impact it was shown anyway.”

This petition received over 11,000 signatures, yet there has been no official comment from the BBC on the issue.

“I am very concerned about the potential negative influence this will have on the public perception of trans children and adults,” Banks and Armitage conclude.

Dr Kenneth Zucker, a transgender psychologist who lost his job for his controversial methods, was a questionable ‘expert’ for the documentary to use, yet was granted a prominent role and generous

3) Swing Time . One of the highlights of La La Land is ‘A Lovely Night’, a song in which Seb and Mia pretend not to be desperately in love (“We’ve stumbled on a view / that’s tailor-made for two / what a shame those two are you and me”), before engaging in a ferocious tap dance. Note the similarities with ‘A Fine Romance’, a Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire duet from Swing Time, featuring the classic line “we should be like a couple of hot tomatoes / but you’re as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes.”

screen time. He was fired from the clinic CAMH in 2015 after an external review shut the clinic down.

Whilst the BBC acknowledged this fact, they did not have a satisfactory reason for his inclusion.

They portrayed him as a renegade psychologist going against the tide, instead of the disgraced psychologist he is.

His approach has been likened to reparative therapy (a method used to ‘cure’ patients of homosexuality) and he often equates identifying as transgender with mental illness. Several of his comments during the programme smacked of transphobia, including: “a four-year-old might say that he’s a dog… do you go out and buy dog food?”

It wasn’t just the selection of experts that revealed an underlying transphobia. The voice over, traditionally a dispassioned voice in documentaries, was also guilty of some transphobic and demeaning comments. “Online media and TV shows are now full of young people who are proud to talk about their transgender identity” they said, implying that the gender-affirmative approach was the product of keyboard warriors and not the vast majority of transgender experts.

A sense of panicked hysteria was created. At the start of the documentary we are told that “parents are facing an explosion in the number of children who think they were born in the wrong body.” Here sympathy is clearly on the parents’ side, transgender kids are an “explosion” to be “faced,” a threat to the norms of family life.

We were also introduced to Chris, whose daughter identified as a trans boy in childhood before ‘desisting’ in adolescence. Chris was explicitly por-

sided, Dr Norman Spack and transgender psychotherapist Hershel Russell added a gender-affirmative counterweight, and vocally opposed Zucker’s views. Some of Spack’s comments about the joy he found from helping children transition were genuinely moving.

John Conroy produced and directed the documentary, famous for his hardcore investigative journalist pieces such as Ross Kemp on Gangs: Bloods and Crips in St Louis. Hardly the kind of documentary style appropriate for this programme.

The documentary sensationalized the trans debate. It made it into a hard-hitting news story which showed disregard for the real life implications this will have on children already regularly discriminated against. For this, Conroy and the BBC should be ashamed.

Photographs (from top to bottom): Tim Evanson; fantastic-life via Wikimedia Commons

Sympathy is clearly on the parents’ side, transgender kids are an “explosion” to be faced, a threat to the norms of family life. trayed as a victim. A repeated soundbite from Chris tells how “it was like a battle, a warzone. She would literally scream ‘AAH! I’M A BOY!’” Once again sympathy is with the parents, transgender children are enemies in a warzone, to be defeated if they ‘desist’.

In fairness, the program was not entirely one-

4) Sweet Charity. Another La La Land number, ‘Someone in the Crowd’ harks back to 60’s classic Sweet Charity in its vibrant colours and ensemble dancing.

Rather than schmoozing with the great and good of Hollywood like Mia and her friends, Charity is a bored taxi driver who hopes that a night on the town might cheer her up, singing about it in ‘There’s Gotta be Something Better Than This’. Recommended as a pre-drinking song before heading to Klute.

5) Funny Face. A romance between a fashion photographer (Fred Astaire) and a bookshop assistant turned model (Audrey Hepburn), Funny Face has the same ingredients of glamorous dreams coming true and strained romance as La La Land. In La La Land’s epilogue a shot of Emma Stone posing in front of a cardboard cut-out of the Arc de Triomphe is a nod to Hepburn’s photo-shoots in Funny Face.

FASHION 12

Thursday, 9 February 2017

An escape from normativity Are gendered clothes an outdated concept? Anna Gibbs and Ted Lavis Coward certainly think so.

Anna Gibbs

take this moment to tell Donald Trump – ( I’m certain he reads Palatinate) – that a) I am a woman and so whatever I wear, whether that be a suit or a dress (I’ll pass thanks), I am still ‘dressing like a woman’.

And b) I don’t give a flying fig what men think about my outfits, because, amazingly, I don’t need your approval. *Gives low bow and exits stage left*.

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et’s skip forwards in our on-trend pebble grey time machine to 2116 AD. Hopefully, by then, we’ll have long realised how dim and useless gender divides are, and how restrictive they can be in regard to hindering what people can achieve.When I sit down and think about it, (I don’t know why sitting down is a requirement for pondering, but we’re here now, aren’t we?) quite a large percentage of my favourite items of clothing are ‘men’s’. I have a chestnut backpack satchel from Zatchels which, despite being the size of a small suitcase and therefore happily oversized enough for my taste, was also cheaper than the pipsqueak women’s versions. There is nothing I hate more (this may be a slight exaggeration, terms and conditions apply), than mini satchels. Except on children. Otherwise they just make me feel like I want to tie my shoelaces tightly very angrily to demonstrate my passive aggressiveness towards their tiny stitches.

I digress.

I recently bought some men’s boots over the women’s on offer for the simple reasons that they were sturdier; with more character- brogue-style multi-toned leather; with dark metal hooks at the top, tartan skin inside. What a dream. Then you glance over at the opposite side of the shoe shop floor in despair. Sleek, dainty, less practical for exploring, more uncomfortable. I’m alright, but thanks for the offer. Why do men get the most interesting, adventurous, even intellectual fashion choices? I then, to my shame, noticed myself feeling ashamed to be buying men’s shoes, fiercely making selfdeprecating jokes to the staff regarding my choice, such as that my brother has a similar pair. As if I had to validate my taste and preference for the more daring style.

I wish I hadn’t. I additionally hate that ‘daring’ outfits for women usually involve ridiculously high heels in a block colour with some arrangement of feathers, and an either tiny or huge dress. The same thing over and over in adverts, worn by celebrities at premieres. Boring, boring, boriiiing.

Sometimes I ache to dress like a young Tudor prince, or a Victorian sailor, or in a high-necked military jacket – one of the dashing scarlet ones with the gold buttons and collar which frames your face very theatrically. I want that drama! I suppose it makes sense, after so many years of men being the ones discovering things, and inventing things and starting (cough)( additional louder further coughs) wars, with women being forced to live as second-class citizens. Men would get the most adventur-

Ted Lavis Coward

ous outf its, as they were allowed to actually go and live fully. Let us not forget Ross’s costumes in Poldark. I solemnly swear, with you readers as my witnesses, that when I finally have enough money, I will one day buy a copy of his coat with the surreal and heavy drape, and a tricorn hat, which I will proudly wear over my bobbed hair. I think I’ll curl it too. Not the hat, I mean, the hair. Oh, and let us not forget to mention suits.

Wait one second whilst I lie back, eyes closed, and imagine the perfect tweed suit, or matt navy and dove grey concoction. If you’ve seen the film ‘Mood Indigo’, or even just the wonderful trailer, I dare you to tell me your heart doesn’t flutter at the prospect of running around Paris in a sharp suit, to jazz music. And with pet mice. How have we been so ridiculous as to have regressed throughout history? Men used to wear tunics in Ancient Rome did they not, and how are we letting ourselves forget that French nobility used to ponce around in high heels in court? Let the men of today ponce freely too! Honestly, why not?

To conclude, as we’re on the topic, I would like to

Gender identity does not always align with gender expression, but as an agender person I do tend to buy clothing that is not associated with either men or women. I seem to spend as much time in Topshop as I do Topman, but most of the outfits I string together are compiled from mostly charity shop finds in which I don’t even know the intended gender for most of the items.

My gender identity further translates in the way I do my makeup. Every morning I take my liquid eyeliner and add dots and lines to my face. I feel more comfortable with my gender-neutral face paint than I would red lipstick in the same way I’m more comfortable in high waisted trousers than I would be a skirt. As someone who is physically quite masculine I have found myself scared in the past to express androgynously.

Androgyny isn’t a new concept in fashion for women, but for men androgyny is still stigmatised and is often dodged in countless “androgynous” ranges, which feature women in hoodies and tracksuits but never men in dresses. Female androgyny is fashionable but men expressing themselves in an effeminate manner, or anything that is considered less than masculine, is still met with various prejudices.

The effeminate is still considered lesser and this is exactly how men are affected and restricted by misogyny. Androgyny is more than women presenting masculinity, it just seems that even in 2017 this is the only kind of androgyny palpable to the masses – the kind that perpetuates misogyny.

Photograph: Zsofi Borsi.

Styled by Victor Schagerlund

FEATURES Thursday, 9 February 2017

13

Housing from hell The good, the bad and the ‘slugly’

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ndigo Features asked students for their best and worst housing experiences. Here are some of the best.

“

When I first got to my house at the start of the year, the toilets hadn’t been cleaned and the house was generally in an absolute state.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we had a slug problem for months after too: we’d wake up and there would be several slugs on the kitchen floor every morning.

One of my housemates had a major phobia of them and ended up leaving a line of salt around her bed.

Eventually, we had to leave a line of salt around the kitchen cupboards too, to stop them from coming in.

“

House parties can be messy, especially when there is a paucity of toilets. It would seem that in these situations any white ceramic hole will do, and therefore is the next best thing. However, whichever opportunistic urinator bit the bullet and straddled the sink for some relief found the sink, with the screech of ripping plaster, tumbling from the wall. The culprit was never found, though luckily their landlord got it sorted within a few days.

“

It came as an awful surprise to me, but more so to my friend, when he came blasting through the bathroom floor, and crashing through the ceiling. Although funny in hindsight it was certainly particularly dangerous, and not what anyone expected when buying the house. It’s long-term comedic value probably doesn’t eliminate the thought of just how hazardous that was.

“

In the first week of term we made the mistake of hoovering the vinyl kitchen tiles and it left a small chip in the flooring. It was literally the size of a pinhead, and nothing that anyone would ever notice… or so we thought. A week later our landlord came round for an inspection and without missing a beat went straight for the kitchen tile and loudly asked ‘has anyone been walking on the floor in heels, because there’s a hole in the floor?’

Us, flustered, and scared of owning up to the real reason in case he charged us for a whole new floor went and got all of the heels that we owned and proceeded to watch him try to fit them into the hole.

None of them fitted, of course, but I still have a feeling that we’re going to be charged for it.

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Our toilet door handle broke so you could only open it from the outside. People kept getting locked-in so we had to try to sellotape it to stop it locking in the meantime. Luckily the landlord fixed it pretty soon though.

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Our landlord’s really nice, and very quick with dealing with any issues that we have with the house. For example, he bought us a bookcase and does any maintenance work for free… except weeding the garden. He apparently sprung it on us that weeding was our job, and if we just took 20 minutes a week to do some gardening then it ‘wouldn’t be such a big job by the end of the year’.

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Visiting a house, a trip on which the landlord declined to accompany us, we were alerted to the presence of a mysterious ‘back-room’. It was relayed to us by the inhabitants of the house that this rather distant landlord, who remained unknown to both us and the building’s natives,

had suggested the back-room could be used as a bedroom but unofficially, as it was not registered.

However, whether anyone would want to use such a room as their personal haven of privacy and respite is incredibly contentious: the smell was overwhelmingly disgusting, think of a dead skunk marinated in a cesspit. We did not sign the house.

“

Our heating broke for the third time this academic year right when winter began frostily setting in. This was the same time our dishwasher broke down mid-cycle and we now have festering water stewing there which is starting to smell like spoilt cottage cheese. The heating has still not been fixed but we got little heaters delivered. But unfortunately I managed to break mine. Time passes slowly in this cold, cold house.

“

When unpacking in my new home I was suddenly shocked, and pleasantly distracted from the tickling nerves of a new year at university.

Unbeknownst to me, or my housemates, we shared our adjacent fields with inquisitive gangs of horses.

I immediately felt a strong sense of simpatico with their hipster hair-dos and scruffy beards: they appeared almost as teenage and angsty as me. Hearing them gallop across Whinney Hill like a Great Plains mustang, although free from the harnesses of whooping Comanche braves, still brings a smile to my lips. There is no doubt that they have proved a most surprising and welcome addition to the family.

Photograph: Arthur Dimsdale via Palatinate Flickr

BOOKS 14

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Hearing the voice of Virginia Woolf

By Eloise Carey books@palatinate.org.uk

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avid Mitchell described writing a novel as “a kind of controlled personality disorder”. I would argue that reading one can be too, particularly a novel as complex and layered as Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Having first read the novel the summer I turned sixteen, this was undoubtedly a book for which my appreciation would only continue to grow. I will not say that my understanding has deepened, for I don’t think any of Woolf’s works are meant to be understood.

But my awareness and awe of this incredible depth is something that was reignited by the discussion of “hearing voices in literature”. Waugh describes Woolf as “perennially fascinating from a vast spectrum of angles”. Although impossible to segregate this formidable author into categories, it may help in addressing the great expanse of different people, authors, and generations that she has touched.

Woolf as a pioneer

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augh highlighted, in her lecture, that lingering on the darker details of Woolf’s childhood trauma and later psychosis is to be in danger of destroying the independence of her work. Woolf was quite alone in her creative experimentation and exploration. Even her beloved husband Leonard was disassociated from Woolf’s literary persona; she did in fact herself once state ‘one might walk hand in hand without ever marrying’. Although she did eventually marry, this musing seems to indicate that Woolf viewed herself, perhaps slightly arrogantly, perhaps wistfully, as quite apart from even those like-minded intellectuals surrounding her.

This isolation has been argued by some literary critics to have been her greatest, although most destructive, state of mind. It was in these moments of extreme loneliness that Woolf began to create Mrs Dalloway. Fiction became incredibly experimental for Woolf in this time, she was not so much creating a world as projecting the one she lived in already. In fact, the originality of her work was not in setting, characters or even description but in the structure of her writing. Her use of the literary mechanism of ‘double-voicing’ and layers of narrative through splitting of consciousness is eerie to a reader; you feel constantly a couple of steps behind the present, overwhelmed by the spectacle of an ordinary day.

This is not dissimilar to the sensation Woolf herself experienced, describing the voices of her characters ‘flying ahead of her like birds’. That she captured this emotional response in her writing is demonstrative of supreme talent.

It is arguably Woolf’s isolation from the constraints of polite conversation that allowed the freedom of a discourse not attributable to any character, nor attached to a human embodiment. Through the chaotic yet rhythmic structures of her work, she refused to be tied down by expectations of other writers of the time or the demands of ‘real time’.

Woolf understood that it is much more terrifying when a voice has no source, and no time pattern.

This style creating a sense of déjà vu and entrapment in one moment before suddenly flying through the next. It is almost porous; voices seep out under every line until you are unsure who or what is narrating the scene.

Isolation

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and madness

here is an idea that we are all constantly shifting between several versions of reality, ontological pluralism1. It is common that creative intellects struggle to make distinctions between these layers of reality. Many authors say that their characters sometimes become uncannily real. For Woolf, the creative process was even more intense than this, she often lost temporal grounding and a sense of which reality was hers.

In describing her own bouts of creativity and those of her characters (for example in To the Lighthouse), there is a clear desperation to keep the ordinary world within grasp, peppered with frequent descriptions of sinking and difficulties in converting time and space. This has been identified by psychiatrists as describing the brink of psychosis, and Woolf would often become lost in “the waters of annihilation” and a “queer state”.

Woolf as a feminist

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oolf was well-accustomed to the expectations of women of her status, even though she largely rejected these ideals. She could not help but portray some of the agonising loneliness of female post-war grief that settled over London like a heavy mist in those years.

Despite her heralding as a feminist powerhouse, Woolf’s work exposed a vulnerability to the Draconian views that still held England in their grip.

Throughout Mrs Dalloway, Big Ben’s chimes act as an inescapable reminder of male supremacy, a phallic embodiment of patriarchy that continued to lord over even the liberal sections of society. No matter how much she attempted to break out of the ‘domestic phantom of femininity rendering women incapable of hearing their own voices’, Woolf’s exploration of voice in her books always holds a powerful and menacing male narrative, such as the imposing Sir William Bradshaw .

Woolf did however recognise that viewing women as only one definition, and being capable of thought and intellect at only on the most superficial level was damaging – she wrote that expressing the self as one voice was a vehicle of oppression. At least in this way Woolf rebelled, the complexity of narra-

1 The doctrine that a logically perspicuous description of reality will use multiple quantifiers which cannot be thought of as ranging over a single domain Turner, J. J Philos Logic (2012) 41:419

tive in her novels through streams of consciousness refused to allow her female characters to be trapped in a two-dimensional description.

Despite this quiet power of her female characters however, Woolf was painfully vulnerable to the expectations impressed upon her. She admits in her diaries that her first bouts of psychosis were attributable to voices she heard manifested in the guilt at over-eating during her bedrest. The fact that concerns with how she looked dominated the mind of one of the most talented and seemingly disinterested of feminists at the time shows the pervasiveness of society’s norms. The male doctors in her novels haunted Woolf in her bedchamber when she was illest, and are always portrayed as quite monstrous and cold, machines of proportion. She often mused “who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?” and lamented the more difficult pathway of female authors and artists of the time.

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Conclusion

here is no succinct nor satisfying conclusion I could draw about Virginia Woolf. It would do her an injustice to attempt to do so. She was a many-faceted woman, in my own view first and foremost an author, for it was to her craft that she ultimately surrendered everything.

In her suicide note to Leonard, Virginia submits ‘I begin to hear voices ’. It is fitting that in penning her goodbye, even in insanity, Virginia was poetically circular. It was voices in her head that first inspired her to write, and voices that carried her away again, out of temporal reality, and into the dark waters.

Eloise Carey attended Durham’s ‘Hearing Voices’ exhibition and lectures. Further reading (and the inspiration for this article) can be found in ‘It’s important to listen to imaginary voices…’ by Patricia Waugh, Department of English Studies at Durham University (www.theconversation.com).

Photograph: Wolf Gang via Flickr / Creative Commons

MUSIC Thursday, 9 February 2017

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Ed Wells: Singing, surfing, studying Australian student Ed Wells discusses studying Law while trying to launch a music career in both Australia and the UK

By Bethany Madden music@palatinate.org.uk

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fter completing a Music degree back in homeland Australia, Ed Wells has continued his academic endeavours by coming to Durham to study Law.

Born in Hong Kong, Ed moved to Sydney when he was around five years old and, as in many cases, cites his parents as being responsible for an early interest in music. Starting out, as all the best musicians do, with a coloured xylophone, Ed progressed to piano lessons at around the same time as his move to Australia. It’s clear that he holds his early piano teacher in high regard, crediting him with an early introduction to jazz music which inspired Ed to pick up the saxophone at age eight, and later moving on to guitar and song writing.

He eventually started to perform his own music back in 2013, after what felt like a natural pro-

Upon listening to his latest single, ‘Close The Distance’, you can hear the evolution of his sound. gression, stating that “for me, it just needed lyrics”.

Since the days of being too shy to perform (Ed accredits this to a girl in choir practice telling him that he couldn’t sing), he has certainly come a long way, having recently played in Newcastle at Sofar Sounds.

Of his first EP, Ed states that “my sound was quite different then. Still now, I suppose I’m still trying to find a sound that represents me as an artist”.

Ed cites Bon Iver and Anderson .Paak as some

of his inspirations and, upon listening to his latest single, ‘Close The Distance’, you can hear the evolution of his sound. While retaining his warm melodies, Ed has introduced some more electronic beats reminiscent of James Blake.

Simultaneously breaking into both the UK and Australian music scenes is no mean feat, especially with a Law degree to juggle on top of that. “I’m really interested in law. If music works out then yeah that’s great but it’s also just depends on how hard you work on things so that’s why I’m doing my best to work as hard as I can on the music, effectively full time still just to keep it ticking and keep that opportunity open”; it’s a good job Ed likes to keep busy. As a result, he has not yet had a chance to properly explore the North East music scene, but is keen to get back to playing some gigs when he returns home for Easter. The North East weather, however, Ed has experienced aplenty; in true Aussie style, Ed talks about how “I feel like I need a surf now. I’m looking outside in the morning and thinking, where is the sun?”

In the future, Ed hopes to play again in London and is also keen to explore other UK cities such as Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester, having enjoyed many UK artists work, namely Tom Misch and Jordan Rakei. He hasn’t forgotten his Australian roots, however, “It’s funny; I’ve found that when I’ll be recommending music to mates over here, most of them tend to be Australian so I suppose that reflects quite well on what Australians produce in terms of music.”

Australia’s own Matt Corby and Sticky Fingers are some of Ed’s top picks, but he acknowledges the flexibility and opportunity of being in the UK, “you’ve got a lot more at your door living in the UK and basing yourself in the UK because you’ve got Europe next door, you’ve got all these cities in the UK which are perfect for touring. I just found that when I was here in 2014 playing, the scene in Lon-

don was great. People would just go to gigs, they might have no idea who you are but they’d be out just because they knew the venue or something.

Some of the shows that I played here were some of the best experiences that I’ve had doing music because people are there for the love of it, so you’re in good company really.”

Ed is always on the lookout for other musicians around Durham, saying that “If I hear that someone plays music then I’ll go and chat to them. That is

Some of the shows that I played here were some of the best experiences that I’ve had doing music because people are there for the love of it. one of the things I miss doing- playing with other people. The shows just before I left Sydney, were some of the most fun because you’re just with your mates. Your afternoons are spent getting ready to play and yeah, it’s fun. Just hanging out with your mates for a job, which is cool.”

He’s got his sights set on Empty Shop for a possible future performance and is keen to polish up on his Jazz skills at their jam nights at some point in the future. In the mean time, his ideal venues to play are Glastonbury, Sydney Opera House and The Albert Hall; not a bad selection.

Make sure to check out Ed’s music, including new single Close The Distance on Spotify and Apple Music.

Photograph: Ed Wells

CREATIVE WRITING 16

Thursday, 9 February 2017

A word from the editor

Flora & Fauna The Hippo Child

By Kate Thomas Pudgy limbs Supple skin ‘Hello?,’ she asks the strangers on the bank Forced grins Clenched jaws The bold child tastes their sun-bleached smiles Scraps of fish Zebra and The taste of sin lingers on her tongue

By Anna Gibbs Creative Writing Editor creativewriting@palatinate.org.uk

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find the fact that ‘Fauna’ could be mistaken for the word ‘fawn’ charming. If you sat inside the word ‘fawn’, it would be cosy and warm, with a bronze light flickering constantly. It reminds me of when I was once rushing to a lecture last term and was almost certain that I saw a fawn walking down the bailey. Unfortunately-with no offense intended to the faux fawn- it turned out to be quite simply a boy with very ruffled curls, two of which were curled upwards like ears.

In our time of constantly staring at screens, and admiring landscapes and nature more on Instagram feeds than in real life, will the use of nature for self expression in literature begin to decline? If so, does this matter? It could be argued that long gone poets, such as Ovid in his Metamorphoses, have already utilised nature for communicating extensively. But I do wonder whether, as we increasingly destroy and endanger our plants and animals, we will again begin to record nature in case it slips from our fingers before we have time to appreciate it again.

Will gardens become a rarity, and flowers more revered, whilst the Dodo bird finds itself accompanied in extinction?

Illustration: Anna Gibbs

Child wonders Dragons grin The sun beats down on a shrinking kingdom Lean limbs Moist skin ‘Hello?,’ she whispers at dank waters Hapi’s child Happiest Yellow eyes sing from the growing muck No rain falls Sweet, don’t Wander from the gasping riverside Drums beating Sides quiver Parched earth greedily slurps the liquid Rain Rain ‘Hello?,’ she does not say aloud

Yellow Daffodils

By Concetta Culora You see that I don’t look so good in yellow, like your other dolls they do.

Yellow daffodils that matched her dress The sun in her eyes as she lay down to rest, She waited and waited for him to arrive But the day it grew cold As she opened her eyes, Where are you? She wondered Heartbeat in mouth, The sun it was going Tears they fell down Creases in dress as she whispered his name, It was spring when he left And spring when he came.