Pi Magazine - Issue 734: Nurture

NURTURE

Editors’ Foreword

As final-year students graduating in a few months, we found ourselves reminiscing more than ever on the communities we joined and how they’ve since evolved. These conversations inspired the theme for this term’s issue: ‘Nurture’.

‘Nurture’ pays homage to growing and growing up, as contributors speak to their distinctly personal experiences of nurture, giving their respects to the communities and forces that have shaped them. The issue ventures through each trail, ranging from understanding the universal duties owed to our physical environment to appreciating the intimate recollection of memories evoked from watching films.

In these weeks when winter transitions into spring, all contributors committed themselves to this magazine, be it as writers, editors, illustrators, photographers, or designers. We are endlessly grateful to the time and care taken with each contribution and hope the final product is a testament to this effort.

Thank you for taking the time to read and we hope that you enjoy Pi Magazine Issue 734: Nurture!

Your

Editors-in-Chief, Anushka and Josh

The Legend of NepoBabies and the Mythof Meritocracy

Written by Nell Wedgwood

Artwork by Beca Summers

We all saw that nepo baby New York Magazine cover. Upon its release, it quickly spread everywhere, and countless people began speaking out against nepotism amongst Hollywood’s elite. But nepotism is nothing new and it’s not news. It’s been around and well documented for like ever - just look at Jesus. People expressed outrage at the prevalence of nepotism in popular media, but surely much more sinister is the nepotism prevalent in places out of the spotlight. In the shadows of the law and finance industries, for example, lurks an abundance of privilege and parents’ feet in doors.

The bigger story here is Gen X’s confrontation with their shattered ideals of meritocracy. It’s probably not fair that the people highlighted by New York Magazine had an easier path to success than most. But we need to reframe the discussion around equality and merit.

Michael Young coined the term ‘meritocracy’ as a satire in 1958. His description of a meritocratic future encompassed a dystopian society. ‘Meritocracy’ as a word spread through common language use with none of its intended negative connotations. In 2001, Young expressed his dismay at New Labour’s embracing of the term:

It is impossible (or at least immoral) to identify a finite set of ‘merits’ by which to judge every member of a society. It is also not desirable. A symbiotic society requires different people to partake in different jobs and activities, therefore individuals should have different merits, skills, talents and interests by necessity.

“It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.”

Sustenance For Suffragettes

Written by Billy Nicholles

Artwork by Beca Summers

When I think about being nurtured, I think of our relationship with food. The food we eat nourishes our bodies; it provides us with strength and comfort. The power of food stretches beyond its material sustenance; it fosters communal bonds through the shared experience of nourishment it provides.

In the early 1900s, the British Suffragettes chose to abstain from consuming any food in protest of their exclusion from the political establishment.

In response, the government forcibly fed hunger strikers.

Whilst food still nurtured them, the shared experience of forcible feeding was of pain, not pleasure. It was the shared experience of a patriarchal government physically invading these women’s bodies, and applying the nurturing power of food mechanically, and by force.

And yet, Suffragettes still found sustenance in the process. The oppression of women, epitomised in this most brutal of practices, nurtured these women’s spirit and conviction in their cause.

Oh, Holloway, grim Holloway, With grey, forbidding towers! Stern are they walls, but sterner still Is woman’s free, unconquered will.

- A hunger-striking Suffragette on her experience in Holloway Prison, 1912

messed with the generation”wrong

Written by Laetitia de Belgique

During the early years of childhood, our parents and family members instilled in us an understanding of the world’s rights and wrongs. As time passed, we have come to learn the sacred rules of society; from not making eye-contact in the tube to not breaking the law, our lives quickly become walled in by regulations - legal, social, and more. Don’t get me wrong, many-a-times these are necessary, and we learn to follow each as we find our place in the world. But at what point do we need to begin questioning these for the sake of change?

I was recently reminded of the power of rebellion when attending a talk about the future of Myanmar, where activists spoke on the struggle of Myanmar’s youth to break the boundaries imposed upon them by the militarist regime. “You messed with the wrong generation” sounded through the lecture hall as one of the speakers expressed the hopes of the country’s youth to re-establish the nation they once knew. Like colouring outside the lines as a child, it might be time to follow Myanmar’s youth in seeking to achieve the change we want future generations to enjoy.

On Nurture, Nature, and “Perspective”

Written by James Clark

It’s strange to think that in the city, with the world at your fingertips, that you’d ever miss country life. I’ve spent most of life growing up in a small village in rural Wiltshire– and nature has been my nurture, if you’ll allow me. In the change of the seasons, I’ve found a rhythm of life; the quiet has brought me peace; the forests have given me escape. I’ve been so lucky to be awarded a unique perspective – to have learnt how to breathe when life can become overbearing. Even now, stepping off a crowded coach into the dapple light of my Wiltshire valley, I become grounded – and I become whole.

“You’ve

Excerpt from a Cantonese recipe blog

Written by Shu Nga Keziah Cho

This soup is good enough for company thanks to the boiled pork. Count yourself lucky: in the old days they slaughtered pigs for special occasions only. The base of it all is the lotus. The leaves are for blanketing rice, the seeds for crushing, but here we use the root, perforated and stringy. Cleaver in hand you’ll do nothing about the fibres. You could bite down and still they would be there between your teeth and the chopsticks. Spider silk thin. Why fight?

Dormant underwater the root dreams of its children, feeding bitterness into their hearts. You don’t dream but stay waist deep in the soil, clawing. By now the sun is dropping beneath the crane, a rich bleeding lavender. Time to set the table, sprinkle basil over ripe tomatoes, round rice into domes. The soup seethes on the hob. No seat will be left unfilled by nightfall. You gather around the table as the clouds darken and feast on lotus root. Bite into its tenderness. Try to pull the threads apart.

Artwork by Beca Summers

An Ode to My Flatmates

Written by Eliza Power

Photography by Noemi Duroux

Contrary to everything I’ve believed since I was four years old, you absolutely do not feel like a grown up once you reach your twenties - nor do you want to be one. I know everyone says that, but it doesn’t really sink in until you’re sitting on the cold floor of your living room, cradling a hot water bottle because you can’t afford to put the heating on, chatting with your flatmates about how on earth any of you hold down ‘big girl’ jobs or study at some of the leading universities in the world whilst subsisting solely on peanut butter and bagels. My flat, as you can imagine, is very much filled with bagels. That is, alongside heavily misogynistic rap (that goes entirely against any of our beliefs), and crippling existential anxiety soothed only by podcasters who assure you you’re meant to feel lost in your twenties. It is also, however, filled with love, care, and immense nurture - aspects you don’t realise you need until you’re crying over Hinge dates gone wrong, the inevitable early-twenties fall out with your mother, or the 1-to-1 meeting with your boss that proved what an absolute misogynist he was. It’s these things people don’t tell you about what adulthood will look like. More so than any romantic relationship I’ve had, friendship - or “flatship” in this case - is what gets you through some of the most turbulent years of your life. (They also don’t tell you that the PhD student you move in with - upon your mum’s recommendation that you move in with someone studious because they’ll party less - will throw up on you three consecutive times in Ubers after nights out. Or that you won’t love them any less for it.)

case—is

In our first month living together, said flatmate sobbed to us because his friend had had sex in his bedroom at our housewarming party the night before. Safe to say, that incident set the tone for our next 18 months together, and despite his protests whenever I bring it up, I’m immensely glad it did. Now every time one of us is on the verge of a breakdown, or in the midst of one, tea is made, hugs are offered, and unsolicited advice from our fellow relatively clueless twenty-somethings is appreciatively received. These people, who used to be strangers, will become some of your biggest supporters. And I don’t mean just celebrating the big wins, graduations, and birthdays together, they will be there to celebrate you even in the tiniest of moments - the moments you show personal growth, assert healthy boundaries, ditch the boy who’s been stringing you along for three months, or take up a new hobby to ‘heal your inner child.’ In all honesty, I never thought I’d be so happy to have people by my side when I, sleep-deprived and heartbroken, decide to start freezing batches of ginger shots or take up making sourdough.

“These people, who used to be strangers, will become some of your biggest supporters”

Perhaps the most rewarding thing that happens when you move in with strangers is that you learn how to argue. Or rather, how not to argue. Instead of brushing things under the carpet only for it to be dredged up eight months later at Christmas dinner, or breaking out in huge fights followed by the mutual slamming of doors, you’ll learn to sort things out with your flatmates. Maybe it’s the fear of conflict or maybe it’s bringing together people from different backgrounds that necessitates open communication, but living with other people involves a constant re-evaluation of boundaries. You can’t afford to fall out with the people you’ve chosen to live with (certainly not in this economy), so you’re forced to talk things out, or live in unbearable tension. Coming from a family where an argument would be swiftly swept under the rug, I’ve learnt more about conflict resolution from living with friends than I could from any self-help book on the shelves.

All this growth, however, goes hand-in-hand with the immeasurable uncertainty of your twenties. You often don’t know what you’re doing, if you’re doing it well, or indeed who you even are. And whilst at first it can seem unprecedentedly scary, the reality is that the uncertainty which characterises much of your twenties can lead to you developing some of the best friendships of your life. And as long as you have those there’s so much less to be scared of.

“friendship—or “flatship” in this

what gets you through some of the most turbulent years of your life.”

“the uncertainty which characterises much of your twenties can lead to you developing some of the best friendships of your life.”

Is There

Power In a Union?

Written and Artwork by Nell Wedgwood

A strike is a form of industrial action that usually happens when trade union members are in a dispute with their employers that cannot be solved through negotiations. A trade union can only call for industrial action if a majority of its members support it in a ballot. Individual union members do not have to take part in industrial action, although they may be encouraged to by people on the picket line.

In recent years, the University and College Union (UCU) has organised several strikes, resulting in university students losing valuable teaching time. Many students, while still on the side of their teaching staff, question the efficacy of UCU strikes. The teachers’ working conditions are our learning conditions after all, so why wouldn’t we want them to have the time, capacity, and resources to teach us to the best of their ability – especially when we’re paying at least £9,250 a year for a university education? University staff are aware of and appreciative of student support and sympathy, and many regret having to inconvenience students in this way. The point of a strike, however, is something much bigger. It’s supposed to be annoying and disruptive. The point of inconveniencing students is to encourage them to write to university leaders and demand their attention and compliance with striker demands.

Some staff members, however, while endorsing many aims of the UCU strikes, choose not to actively partake in them. Prof. X, a UCL lecturer who asked to remain anonymous, is not striking. Prof. X supports many aspects of the strike and respects anyone’s right to strike. They see the choice to strike – specifically to withdraw from teaching responsibilities – as exceptionally personal. Coming from a family rooted in a mining community, they are acutely aware of how divisive strike action can be, and of the consequences not just for the strikers themselves, but for those who lose a resource. Strikers are, by definition, out of work and as such receive no pay. Prof X’s grandfather was a child during the 1926 general strike, and saw his parents struggle to pay for food or fuel. By necessity, they resorted to selling their precious and sentimental belongings “including my grandad’s beloved Meccano set that my great-grandparents had saved to buy him for Christmas, and

so my great-grandad made the very difficult decision to break the strike and return to work,” Prof X told me. Part of their choice not to withhold teaching stems from their family history of facing insurmountable barriers to education. Their great-grandparents lived in the kind of poverty which no academic who takes strike action would experience, and as a result their grandad missed out on education - the consequences of which he dealt with for the rest of his life. “I teach all sorts of people, including those who have struggled to afford to come to UCL. I, therefore, do not feel comfortable withdrawing teaching.”

Universities may be idealised and romanticised as places that foster and nurture intellectual inquiry and exploration, but the reality is that they are for-profit institutions. Universities as institutions see increasing pay and benefits for staff as bad for business, as it undercuts their profit margin. From this line of thinking, it follows that students are consumers and, therefore, protected by consumer rights. This is a powerful position to utilise. Students can support staff in their striking endeavours, while also claiming compensation for the loss of services they are paying for. 75,000 students from UCL and 17 other UK universities have joined the Student Group Claim campaign, seeking compensation from their universities for the disruption to their teaching caused by COVID-19 and strike action. While the campaign is utilising legal firms to pursue litigation, students do not need to pay for legal assistance to seek compensation for lost teaching. UCL’s Student Union (SU) voted in favour of supporting UCU strike action, but they are ultimately

there to support students. They can, and do, aid students seeking compensation. Students should keep a note of any missed or disrupted teaching and content, and the SU can help navigate UCL’s internal procedures.

While compensation may be available, students still question the bigger, longer-lasting effects of the strikes. Lost teaching and contact hours mean lost content. The loss of learning makes many students question the validity and value of their degrees. Are the students affected by strikes fully prepared for life after university? Are they gaining the essential skills they were promised? Finalists also question the point of their actively supporting the strikes. Even though they may want better work conditions so they might have better learning conditions, taking the time to write to the provost and demand change can feel like overkill given that they won’t be around to reap the benefits. Here we must examine the concept of a union. The idea is to act as a whole to support everybody’s interests. Take matters of pay disparity: male union members strike in solidarity with female members, white members in solidarity with POC members, and able-bodied members in solidarity with members with disabilities. Students are not a part of the UCU and, nevertheless, striking staff require the support of students – consumers – to effect change. To see any real, meaningful change we must reframe our concept of unions to embrace a unity of human beings; to reach a place of mutual respect, empathy, and nurturing of one another.

A Based Plant -

Future

Written by Billy Nicholles

Artwork by Sophie Hoet

Rapid climate change is one of the most pressing global problems of our age, and we seem to be almost totally united in our desire to fight it.

How we do so, however, is less certain. Who has the most responsibility to change? Who should make the biggest sacrifices?

One industry that I think needs more attention, and crucially more action, is animal agriculture. Abstaining from animal products is one of the best things we can do to nurture our warming planet. And it’s not only the environment that would benefit.

It is becoming undeniable that removing animal products from our diets and our lives is one of the best things we can do for our planet. Eliminating animal agriculture would dramatically reduce deforestation, allow us to rewild and renew our natural environments, and make a huge dent in our global greenhouse gas emissions.

The role of animal agriculture in promoting climate change is significant and underappreciated: by most estimates, the industry is responsible for between a fifth and a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, roughly equivalent to all transportation combined.

Simply put, animal agriculture just isn’t sustainable. Abstaining from it is increasingly being recognised as one of the biggest and most important steps we can take to reverse the destruction that we have caused to our environment.

But cutting out animal products doesn’t just nurture our planet. It also nurtures an often-disregarded group that suffer in unprecedented, incomprehensible numbers. I don’t think you have to be an ‘animal lover’ to be horrified at what happens to non-human animals in factory farms, where the vast majority of our meat, dairy, and eggs come from. I don’t think you even have to care about them that much at all.

What we do to billions and billions of sentient, living beings every year can only be described as the antithesis of ‘nurture’.

Of course, this doesn’t make omitting animal products from our lives, and especially our diets, easy. Our relationships with food are exceptionally personal and sensitive to us. The food we eat nurtures us too, and it nurtures more than our physical bodies. It nourishes our cultural bonds, our mental wellbeing, our very sense of identity.

To hear that we have to change such a fundamental, such a treasured, part of our lives can feel instinctively uncomfortable. I felt like this for a long time even after becoming convinced of the need to care for our planet in this way.

I think a lot of people are at this stage. We know that eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, our consumption of animal products is crucial if we are to steer our planet away from a climate change catastrophe. And yet we also feel the need, the urge, the right to nourish our own bodies with the food that is to many people easier, cheaper, and tastier to eat.

We all have to work to nurture our planet back to health. But it would be foolish to think that we all have the same amount of time and resources available to devote to this goal. In a world where the neutral or easy option is invariably to harm our environment and its inhabitants, it is necessary to make our own decisions about how willing and how able we are to prevent and reverse this.

When I decided that abstaining from animal products was one of the best ways I could do this, I was motivated by this thought. It is easy to downplay the role an individual can play, swamped as it is by the role of the industry, the corporation, the collective. The millionaires and billionaires of society, the top 1%, can do far more than any of us.

And yet, in a global context, I was in this category. Much of the world’s population don’t even have enough to survive, let alone contribute significantly to climate change. In contrast, the richest 20% emit disproportionately soaring levels of CO2eq: 70% of all lifestyle emissions.

As a student living in a rich city in a high-income country, I felt an even stronger responsibility to reduce my consumption and nurture the planet that I was not only disproportionately damaging, but the effects of which would primarily be felt by those who were not contributing nearly as much to the problem and did not have nearly as many resources to face the devastating effects of climate change.

It is true that taking this step is not always an easy or an accessible decision. But for me, it was a decision that I could take quickly and easily in an accessible city, and so it was all the more important that I did.

One thing is clear: the level at which we currently farm and consume animal products is, by definition, unsustainable. And yet, despite this, the numbers are increasing every day. We know the urgency with which we need to take a stand and nurture our planet, our species, and the countless other beings that live with us. The advent of ‘clean’, lab-grown meat that is ethically and environmentally superior is coming. But until then the direction of travel is set: a plant-based diet is needed. In the face of climate change we all need to adapt and act. One of the best ways we can nurture ourselves, our planet, and our fellow animals, is to abstain from animal products and go vegan.

Nurturing the wonder: why questions matter more than answers

Written by Matteo Celli Photography by Noemi Duroux

The fact that our planet is suitable for living beings depends on a number of physical constants and values, and if at least one of them was out of place, life as we know it would not be possible. Philosophers and scientists describe this arguably miraculous alignment of circumstances by saying that the universe is ‘fine-tuned’ for life, and argue whether such a striking concomitance of factors stands in need of explanation. Imagine a monkey hammering on a computer keyboard: both “ljhsvcòv jh ljhasvf p97BDBPO” and “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”, given the vast amount of possible combination of streaks of letters, are each comparably unlikely. However, the fact that the latter is the incipit of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway strikes us as odd, and maybe even miraculous. Is it just a random event, rationally equivalent to the monkey writing “ljhsvcòv jh ljhasvf p97BDBPO” or “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”, or is there a reason behind it which is worth our enquiry?

Either way, there is a strange fact that carries along something marvellous, and the wonder that we feel makes us formulate and compare questions. In this regard, Plato wrote that “wonder is the only beginning of philosophy”. The person that uses this idea in the most interesting way, however, is the American philosopher Robert Nozick (1938 - 2002): not so much because of any philosophical theory per se but mainly because of how it relates to the development of his intellectual life. “Philosophy begins in wonder” is the first sentence of his book Invariance; its last concludes that “It never ends.”

Taking such a refrain merely as a literary device would mean wasting a valuable intellectual opportunity. To see why this is the case, we need to have a look at the preface of his masterpiece, Anarchy, State and Utopiaarguably the most sophisticated libertarian manifesto of contemporary political philosophy. After an outline of the core ideas of the book, Nozick dedicates some paragraphs to witty criticism of any attempt to formulate ultimate, leak-proof philosophical theories. He compares any such attempt with “pushing and shoving things’’ into a fixed perimeter that cannot contain them all, so that as we press the content on one side it bulges on the other, until we find a perspective from which we cannot see any protuberance, and we quickly take a snapshot from a distance. He shows how hard it is to admit the limits of your lines of thought, and explicitly states that he is not going to provide any sort of answer to the questions he raises but merely ideas and contributions to the development of the debate. Nozick changed between various philosophical interests and positions throughout his life, and always strived to push the boundaries of the subject and constantly evolve.

Put in this context, “Philosophy begins in wonder. It never ends” can be seen as the mantra of an ever-curious, never-settling, and vibrant mind. Hence, philosophical wonder is at the same time the most childish and the most mature of mindsets. On one hand, there is abandonment to awe and curiosity for its own sake, while on the other there is the awareness that no answer

is set in stone, and what really matters is the activity of questioning itself. Philosophical wonder goes beyond the specific subject of philosophy, or in other terms, we do not need to be trained philosophers to do philosophy, nor do we need to define the boundaries of the subject. Its core underlying theme is in fact an endless pursuit of wonder that does not necessarily need to be useful, nor to provide any ultimate solutions to our questions.

Inquiry in its most general conception, be it through the arts or the sciences, is thus a process of nurture of our philosophical wonder, which in plain English means developing a love for questions. Like children, who innocently ask “why?” when they get puzzled by some new discovery, but also like grown-ups of the wise kind, who do not presume to acquire eternal truths. Nurturing philosophical wonder also means educating our minds to understand and appreciate other people’s opinions without necessarily endorsing them, as we acknowledge that everything is part of a process that grows more and more complex from an elementary state of curiosity.

What matters the most is enjoying inquiry as a game that ends in itself, rather than a race. This kind of intellectual playfulness has also an important political spillover; the first being its natural tendency towards tolerance, but the signature quote of German economist Albert

Hirschman can give us a cue for a deeper dive into a more subtle implication. Hirschman is in fact famous for his idea of “happiness of pursuit” - as opposed to the more famous “pursuit of happiness”. While the phrase is a clear indicator of Hirschman’s liveliness as a thinker, it might be surprising at a first glance to see it used in an economics essay about organisational behaviour. But, in the context of Hirschman’s economic and political writing, it expresses “the felicity of taking part in collective action”.

The “happiness of pursuit” can be seen as the practical equivalent of the nurture of philosophical wonder: while on one hand there is enjoyment in engaging with collective inquiry and research, on the other we have appreciation of political participation. Caring more about questions than about answers is not simply an antidote against populist oversimplifications. Nurturing the wonder, through the political happiness of pursuit, can translate into nurturing the democratic process and enjoying it in itself, rather than because of its success.

Learning How to Love Again

Written by Tricia Teo Artwork by Beca Summers

During the second season of the pandemic I drew away from my friendships. I had just recovered from a falling out with my best friend at the time, who’d ended things with a simple “I just think we don’t make each other happy”. She was right: we had shared a tumultuous and suffocating two years of friendship despite enjoying each other’s company, so much so that we were often mistaken for each other. At the same time I struggled to reconnect with friends from my childhood who, in anticipation of adulthood and for other reasons, made moral exceptions in their lives that I could not reconcile with. I found a few outlets: I stayed offline and read books, I baked and sang to myself in the shower. I felt a gnawing loneliness, like there was an ever-expanding hole inside of me.

I know I’m not alone. In an era of distrust and misinformation, the notion of love is met with sceptical eyes and critical tongues - we are simultaneously loveless and unlovable. I find this disconcerting: is the human experience not distinguished by its capacity for self-reflection and morality, and by extension of that the nurturing of love? I spent the rest of the pandemic grappling with such thoughts until August 2022, when I opened my copy of All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks.

hooks begins her seminal work with the anonymous quote: “The search for love continues even in the face of great odds.” She herself was grieving the separation from her partner of fifteen years at the time, and employed the quote as an anchor to continuing her daily life. Written in 2000, the book describes in disappointment our pessimistic world; one that rejects the notion of love as naive and unrealistic. In rectification, hooks emphasises honesty as a pillar of nurturing love.

“There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has beenmade to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.”

- bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

Dishonesty, hooks writes, begins at home, where children learn to lie in response to adult authority figures. As children, we may learn that it is a powerful tool to withhold or modify knowledge to avoid facing responsibility for our actions and sheltering us from the pains of reality. We see this reiterated through patriarchal messages such as ‘boys don’t cry’, which teaches children to disengage from their emotions in obedience to gender roles. Encouraging children to suppress their full range of emotions inhibits them from expressing them later on in life - even children raised in loving and encouraging households learn social cues about being ‘tough’ or ‘ladylike’ from school or online. Inspiring honesty in children is vital for them to explore how their feelings can manifest in many different ways. Allowing children room for honest mistakes is crucial to their development as is fostering an environment of love and understanding for them to flourish in.

hooks writes that young boys who learn to mask their emotions at home carry this into their adult relationships, where the patriarchy encourages them to be dishonest or indifferent in order to become powerful and unconstrained. Media personalities, such as Andrew Tate, have gained an alarming following of young men by promoting the misogynistic treatment of women as a sign of power. This discourse can create a dangerous disconnect between young boys and their emotions, who learn to believe emotional vulnerability or intimacy weakens them, whereas belittlement and misogyny makes them strong. Similarly, ‘locker-room talk’ and the ‘perfect’ victim are patriarchal constructs that serve to protect men from facing the consequences of their actions. Yet, inwardly, the fear of being unlovable persists. Love takes time, honesty and empathy, which the patriarchy does not encourage men to possess.

Language is a powerful tool; it leads us to knowledge that is as equally empowering as it is destructive. By using language to conceal ourselves, we fail to directly face what needs to be corrected. To be honest is to set a strong foundation of trust so that difficult but truthful conversations can encourage growth, whilst respecting each other’s capacity to handle harsh realities. In the same vein as advocating for critical race theory to be taught in school, it is important to encourage honest dialogue amongst youth, where candid discussions can

take place no matter how uncomfortable they may be. Committing yourself to being honest lays the necessary groundwork to live consciously, meaning that you seek to practise awareness and to critically reflect on the world we live in and the friends we surround ourselves with. Being honest takes effort that can provoke unwanted feelings or conversations. In my teens I was passionate about intersectional feminism and thus faced ridicule in the classroom. When I drew away from friends who did not align with my conscience, it was difficult and extremely isolating. But in time I have become more fulfilled, and I have learned to separate what I allow to define my professional and personal relationships.

Reading hooks’ incisive take on how to invite love into daily life was momentous for me. She answered questions I did not know I had, and reassured me that the things I want to stand for and believe in are not futile. As I continue to cope with all the people I’ve loved and lost, her words have been a lighthouse in guiding me towards leading a more fulfilling and loving life. I hope that you might feel the urge to do the same, or even pick up your own copy of All About Love: New Visions.

Pi Media x UCL Photo Society

Photography by Noemi Duroux

Photography by Gabrielle Ndonkeu-Yidjeu

Photography by Noemi Duroux

Photography by Noemi Duroux

Dream In Bengali

Written by Antara Basu Artwork by Sophie Hoet

Language and food are perhaps the two most common ways in which families pass along their traditions to their children. For me, there is something so inherently comforting about being able to prepare perfectly cooked fluffy rice to accompany the মসুর ডাল (masoor daal, red lentils), infused with fragrant aromatic spices, that my mother would send me packed with after a long day. The iconic Dal-Chawal (lentil rice) duo is a staple in the typical Indian household, one of the most basic dishes because of how easy it is to make; and yet living in London, it is my pride and joy. I find immense solace in the simplicity of this meal, or the simplicity of being able to express myself in my native tongue.

I speak English fluently, having mastered the art at a young age. It commands automatic respect in India: a sign of intelligence (and privilege). But it is while speaking Hindi I feel most at ease, and it is in Bengali that I dream, cry, and feel the most profound happiness.

Having lived most of my life in India, it was a wonderful yet overwhelming transition moving to a new country for university. London is an amalgamation of different identities; a truly massive pot of melting cultures,

languages, and identities. But many, and I include myself in this list, have often felt conflicted over how Indian can or should they be. Treading the fine line between being ‘Western’ enough for the West while still being rooted in your culture and traditions is common to the South Asian experience abroad. While this is a gross simplification of social intricacies and identities, it is hard to be able to fully embrace a culture that has often been globally ridiculed and minimised to funny accents and spicy food.

You can be ‘too’ Indian or ‘not’ Indian enough. This constant categorisation intends to gauge your ‘Indianness’ or ‘South-Asian-ness,’ something I was not aware could be measured. Just the other day, a waitress at the place I work part-time was visibly surprised to know that I grew up in Delhi. Her shock stemmed from the fact that I did not have an ‘Indian accent’. Her perception of an ‘Indian accent’ aligns with another one of our colleagues who speaks with a thicker accent than me but is from a different part of the country and has a mother tongue different to mine. I can say with utmost certainty that I do have an Indian accent, but according to her, I did not.

Within a stereotypical Western umbrella gaze as long as you look like me you will be grouped under the ‘South Asian’ moniker. Within South Asia, there are political, cultural, and social boundaries in place which solidify the differences between our similar yet distinct backgrounds: Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans to name a few. Without nuance, it is difficult to understand the diversity of South Asia’s languages, cultures, histories, socioeconomic positions, and religions. It is relatively easier to club all South Asian communities together, which ultimately contributes to the erasure of identities and experiences of our diverse backgrounds. A refusal to acknowledge this diversity stems from ignorance and apathy towards the Global South.

It would also be a huge misstep on my part if I fail to acknowledge that my experience stems from the privilege of my caste and socio-economic position. Caste is deeply ingrained in the societal fabric of India, and the experience of a Dalit person is very different from that of a Brahmin person. The diversity of the South Asian identity is unparalleled and I cannot authentically embody this identity or experience in its entirety, and to suggest otherwise would be a disservice to the varying experiences of South Asians all over the world.

In London, I am grateful for every little interaction that reminds me of home. I love strolling around East London streets, reading the shop signs brightly lit with Bengali calligraphy while surrounded by the chatter of familiar conversations; or the Sikh man who approached me and my friend at a Morrisons in Stratford to let us use his discount code because he heard me on the phone speaking in a language familiar to him; or the childlike excitement with which I call my father to narrate which vegetable native to India (and not easily available in big chain grocery stores like Sainsbury’s) I discovered that day while walking past the shops in Whitechapel. I ground myself in my ‘Indian-ness’ in the big and the little things - be it celebrating festivals or listening to my Bollywood playlist as I walk myself to and fro from seminars.

Cultural identity is an integral component of people’s personalities and individuality. In this interconnected world, where difference risks being grounds for attack, it is crucial to foster an environment where everyone can honour and nurture their roots while simultaneously transitioning to life in a foreign land. UCL has a strong international student community that comes from states across the world. While studying abroad, most students are exposed to, learn about, and embrace new cultural traditions. My Dal-Chawal recipe has gained an adoring fan in the form of my Hungarian friend, who in return, has shown me what authentic Hungarian Gulyás tastes like.

I am also painfully aware of the historical relationship between Britain and South Asia. The context of foreign migration, cultural disconnect, and the need for social acceptance drives many individuals to reject traditional norms to fit into stereotypical Western identity standards - especially reflecting on South Asia’s colonial history. Decades of oppressive European colonisation have sustained internalised notions of White superiority. But societal integration should not be conditional upon having to tweak cultures to fit Western standards. I have embraced London, as it has me. Balancing two cultural settings and honouring your roots in a foreign land is never easy but I have never felt freer than when I walk in London in my mother’s white-indigo Kantha stitch saree.

Nurturing Your Individuality

Written by Amber Gainsborough Artwork by Nell Wedgwood

While Following the Mainstream

It is a common misconception that people who adopt trends lack genuine style, and quite frankly, it’s pretentious. You can be ‘on trend’ and simultaneously nurture your unique style. To me the whole ‘cultivate your personal style’ thing should be a never-ending journey. Perhaps it’s my youth showing, but I’m reluctant to commit to a ‘unique personal style’ out of fear that once you get there there’s no going back.

Maybe the expectation to have a consistent personal style comes from the comfort we get from the status quo; some people are quite simply at peace with having locked in their style for good. They don’t follow trends because it’s not on their agenda, let alone their goal. And nine times out of ten, they look great doing it.

Meanwhile, like a lot of my Gen-Z peers, I’m a sucker for trends. Social media has revolutionised how we consume trends. Like just about everything these days, we can engage with how people interpret and set trends at our fingertips. The seemingly effortless transitions between outfits in a reel or on an Instagram story makes us want to replicate the seamless trend-hopping in real life. Sadly, life is never quite as effortless as an Instagram reel. However, regardless of whether you’re militantly anti-trend, or in favour of all things fickle and fleeting, everyone can have a unique style. We shouldn’t feel guilty for falling victim to the Lolita ribbon trend or the return of the Ugg boot. Trend-hopping is not a crime, but rather a process of regular experimentation that helps us see what works for us on an individual level. It enables us to discover something in the process, like a new-found love for the beret. When it comes to my personal style, I’m in no way ready to reach the finish line. Fashion should be fun and fluid forever.

It is possible to nurture our individuality at the same time as hopping on the bandwagon but the secret is in how you do it. Our Instagram and TikTok dominated world is a risky one when it comes to developing personal style. The prevalence of brand deals meant I saw the same new Isabel Marant bag on about 20 different influencers in the space of a week. I don’t doubt that I’m following too many influencers of a similar ‘type’, nor did I give enough credit to how each individual styled the bag according to their personal vibe. Even so, something about seeing the same bag on countless content creators riled me up and prompted a spring clean of who I follow on Instagram, which I think is a healthy habit anyway. There is a vast scope of content creators out there who don’t straight jacket themselves to this season’s ‘must-have’ Zara blazer, so tailor your feed to give you inspiration you care about.

There is danger in adopting every micro trend that comes our way. Now more than ever we have to hold ourselves accountable for the climate crisis. Fast fashion retailers have perfected the toxic cycle of mass producing trendy items that no one cares about three months down the line. We must engage with fashion sustainably which means we should shop second hand to satisfy our styling and trend-hopping desires. So when we see a look we love and want to try out, what can we do? Firstly, we can pause. I am guilty of immediately scouring the Internet for the exact hat, coat, necklace, or whatever it may be. But, by pausing, you have a moment to ask yourself whether you identify with the item you’re looking at. Perhaps you haven’t tried the style before but you want to: sometimes challenging your own status quo means you discover a new part of yourself. However, we should still pause for thought and be selective with the trends we try.

Searching for trends in charity shops is a labour of love. Ask yourself: how can I make this trend more ‘me’? Possibly it needs an alteration if it’s going to work with items I already have in my wardrobe. Finding trendy items in charity shops demands an open mind about what the trend could look like. If you go in looking for an exact replica, chances are you’ll leave empty handed. Charity shopping is often a lot of leg work and little reward. You’re faced with problems of sizing, shape, and the ‘not my colour’ myth. But there are solutions: wear a top as a dress, turn it back to front, inside out, or add a belt. Nurture your creativity: a belt doesn’t have to be a belt, it might be a scarf or a long, chunky, beaded necklace. If you have the luxury of time, shopping preloved is the most rewarding way to be creative and experiment with trends.

Committing to shopping preloved does not mean waving goodbye to trendhopping. What it does mean is that your interpretation of the trend will be original. Your take will be reflective of you and what you’re about. If three, four, or even six months later you realise the trend isn’t up your street after all, give it back to charity or sell it on. That’s the beauty of circular fashion. Trust me, you’ll have a lot more main character moments if you give some extra thought to how you approach trends. This is not a foolproof formula for being trendy and simultaneously cultivating a timeless personal style. It’s about embarking on a new, exciting, and long-term journey that appreciates the potential for style and trends to work in tandem.

The Biological

Burdens

Written by Lilly Tozer Photography by Noemi Duroux

The concept of biological inheritance as we know it today was famously ‘discovered’ by Austrian monk George Mendel and his peas in 1865. This came shortly after the publishing of the even more famous work of Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, in 1859. The crucial imaginings of these previously unknown geneticists quickly reverberated throughout the world; concepts that are now so ingrained in our society and understanding of modern biology that it is hard to imagine otherwise. What would our world look like without the concept of Mendelian inheritance or Darwinian evolution? Without nature or nurture?

It goes without saying that the supposed discovery of a wholly new way of passing down biological information caused quite a stir in the scientific community. Starting as a subsection of genetics, the field now known as epigenetics has been studied rather quietly for the better part of six decades. Unlike traditional genetic inheritance, where the code of the DNA itself is passed down through generations, epigenetic inheritance describes the chemical and structural modifications made to DNA in response to our environment, without changing the code itself. The idea of this ‘soft’ inheritance – the passing down of traits acquired during one’s lifetime – has been around for a long time: it was even proposed in the theories of Aristotle himself. Although his hypothesis that a foetus’ sex can be determined by the weather wasn’t exactly correct, the idea that more than just genetic code can be biologically inherited from parent to child is one that has permeated through society since his time.

An explosion of attention ignited interest in the field when a handful of studies linked the inheritance of epigenetic modifications to the passing down of intergenerational trauma. Despite criticisms, the claims still filled headlines. Children exposed to famine during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-45 in early pregnancy were more likely to develop obesity later in life due to epigenetic marks that changed the function of a gene involved in growth. The offspring of Holocaust survivors were found to have inherited a different epigenetic pattern to those who hadn’t, which increased their vulnerability to PTSD and depression. The hypothesis goes that these adaptations are passed down as a result of the response to these extreme conditions to improve the odds for survival; conditions which no longer pose a threat to the children born from them. Considering the immense psychological and emotional toll that these people have endured, it does not sound so far-fetched to think that these biological scars would pass down to the next generation.

While believers signalled a new paradigm shift to the very foundation of biology, cautionary critics

still debated its validity. Problems arose as quickly as the praise: a reasonable reaction to such bold claims. Issues like the experimental methods they used, the small sample sizes, and the inability to exclude other explanations for the findings were - and still areused to argue against its possibility. One major issue with accepting epigenetic inheritance in humans is that no one has quite managed to explain exactly how it happens. When fertilised eggs begin to grow in mammals, DNA undergoes what is known as reprogramming, where all the modifications made to it are removed. For these marks to be passed onto offspring they would have to somehow avoid this reprogramming or somehow be reinstated afterwards. Our knowledge from studying other species may give us some suggestions – zebrafish embryos only remove the maternal epigenetic pattern and retain the paternal one; whereas in fruit flies, there are molecules which guide the cell to where to reinstate these markers after reprogramming. However, how this might work in mammals, let alone in humans, remains a mystery.

Valid criticisms aside, the fact that epigenetics plays a role in the inheritance of traits for other organisms, like plants and simpler vertebrates, means it isn’t implausible that it might affect us too. But would the inheritance of our parents’, grandparents’, and even great-grandparents’ experiences change the way we look at the age-old question of nature vs nurture? These marks are our bodies’ way of trying to protect against the hardships faced by our predecessors, despite the fact that it can seemingly turn against us and cause our own problems as a result. In some ways it is not too dissimilar from the way our upbringings affect us. If what the research shows is true, inherited epigenetic modifications might be the bridge that binds the two together, as the experiences of our lifetimes would be passed down not only through ourselves but through our biology.

As we move towards considering both in combination, it seems that most people today would accept that it is no longer a question of nature vs nurture, but rather to what extent both influence our lives both physically and mentally. It is somewhat too easy to use science like this to explain it all away. In a similar way to the popularisation of genetic research in the early 2000s, sensationalist claims about finding the gene for criminality or homosexuality were made without much consideration for the nuances of the science. It would seem as if people were too eager to find biological answers to societal questions; to feel like these things are predetermined by our biological script. But, in reality, our lived experience is just as important. So, despite the line between nature and nurture seemingly thinning, there remains some realms for which we should not look to science to provide all the answers.

Written by Conor Walsh

Photography by Noemi Duroux

The Need For Nurture: Can We Really Feed the World?

According to consulting firm McKinsey, almost one third of food produced annually goes to waste - and yet food poverty, deprivation and insecurity are a global phenomenon. In 2020, the UN reported that 2.3 billion people - roughly one quarter of the world - lacked adequate access to food. The effects of this are most drastic among children; Action Against Hunger, an international food charity, reports that 45% of deaths among under-fives are linked to undernutrition. Similarly, the data-driven publication Our World in Data shows that 22% of those under five are stunted in growth due to a lack of nutrition. The need for nurture could not be more pressing.

War and natural disaster are the most common causes of malnutrition and food insecurity. Food waste, however, is also a substantial problem. Whether it be at source or at the point of purchase, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year. The reality is we do produce enough food to feed the world. But since so much of this food is wasted, any goal of international food security seems impossible. If we wish to end global hunger - especially among children - then we must ask more serious questions about where our food comes

from, how it is produced and transported, how much of it we buy, and even what we buy.

Food waste is not the only obstacle on the road to ending global hunger but it is certainly an area in which we can all do better.

There are, of course, instances when food waste is almost impossible to avoid. It is only natural that food will get damaged in transit, and in our consumercentric world it is impossible for businesses to align supply exactly with demand. Phenomena like lockdown restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic - during which farmers were forced to waste thousands of litres of milk due to the shutdown of the hospitality sector - are also unavoidable. But there are many other areas in which food waste is a preventable outcome. Take India, for example. According to commentator Jeremy Erdman, 30-40% of food in India is wasted due to a lack of cold storage in shops and wholesalers. With subsidisation of or investment in energy or storage units, much of this waste could be avoidable. Can we eliminate it completely? Of course not. But we can, and should, be doing more.

Tackling food waste is a daunting task. But we can consider two great examples of zero-waste initiatives, both internationally and locally, at UCL. These initiatives should act as a ray of hope in an otherwise sea of darkness.

In 2022, the Washington Post reported that Japan throws out around 40kg of food per person every year. The country is hoping to cut this number in half by 2030. Japanese companies are at the cutting-edge of new technologies and initiatives, recycling food waste into entirely different products. In Takachiho, a town of 12,000 people, an open-air train has been built which provides breath-taking views of the local countryside, whilst operating on fuel which is entirely sustainable. It’s made up of wasted lard and cooking oil that would have otherwise ended up as waste.

Meanwhile, Fabula - a Tokyobased start-up - is using leftovers to produce concrete. Concrete is paramount in construction, but its primary component, cement, is responsible for up to 8% of global carbon emissions, according to the think-tank Chatham House. By repurposing leftovers - including everything from orange peels to coffee - Fabula can produce an alternative form of cement, and a more sustainable form of concrete that has lower carbon emissions.

Locally at UCL, there are also many initiatives which aim to reduce food waste. Zero Food Waste UCL is a student-led initiative which collects food waste, often leftover sandwiches from student cafes, and redistributes it amongst the community. Again, this initiative is a win-win, reducing waste whilst also redistributing food to those in need. Waste from kitchens and catering facilities across UCL that isn’t distributed is separated from other rubbish and incinerated - repurposing the waste into electricity and preventing it from rotting in landfill.

Similar redistribution schemes operate across the country, especially in soup kitchens. Most weeks I volunteer at St John the Evangelist, a church in Finsbury Park, where I help run a soup kitchen and food bank. In the grand scheme of things, we are a small operation. But we still play a big part in combating food poverty in the local community. Every Tuesday and Sunday

our merry group of volunteers chop and prepare fresh produce that has been donated by local grocers, all of which has gone unsold or is damaged and would otherwise have been discarded. Although this can lead to some inconsistency in what we produce - we often receive eclectic combinations of items, leading to somewhat ‘creative’ recipes - this is yet another great example of repurposing perfectly good food so that it is accessible for those who need it most. The joy that this brings to those who use our service is hard to describe; it is so lovely to know that you have made a positive difference, both for the individual who would have otherwise gone hungry and in saving good quality food that would have otherwise gone to waste.

Food waste will never be eradicated, nor is it the only factor behind food poverty and insecurity. But by taking initiative at a variety of levels - local, national, and global - individuals have the power to make a difference. By asking questions about what we produce, how we produce it, how it is transported, how much of it we buy and whether we need to buy it at all, we can begin to eradicate food waste.

Eliminating world hunger has historically been viewed as idealistic. But, in a world where we produce enough food to feed one and a half times the global population, it is a realistic one. Tackling unnecessary food waste is a step in the right direction - all of us can and must do more if we hope to feed the world.

Written by Dominic Butler Artwork

Time has experienced three major transformations over the last 150 years. The first occurred in the natural sciences whereby, thanks to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time was no longer taken as a constant; time became relative. The second occurred in the human sciences whereby new disciplines – anthropology, sociology, and psychology – began to draw attention to how individuals experience time; a new phenomenology of time had appeared. The third, and most recent, occurred in the realms of politics and society: the emergence of neoliberal time. This latter form owes a lot to the former two; indeed, it could not have emerged without them. Nonetheless it has proven unique in reshaping the dynamics of society through accelerating everyday life to produce a fast-paced world whereby new expectations and perceptions of time have emerged.

In its crudest form, neoliberalism can be understood as a certain way of organising society based on the elevation of market principles to all domains of life. Market ideals become embedded across society, with notions of competition and efficiency influencing how we act and interact with others. This, according to some, is the story of how politics has evolved across the world since the 1970s. Of course, not all countries got a say in this story; whilst some chose to implement neoliberal reforms, many were coerced. Nonetheless, neoliberalism spread quickly and opened up the world like never before.

Across a similar timeline, the world experienced a series of revolutions in technology, with developments in transportation, computation, and communication fundamentally changing how we live. New technologies emerged that would flatten spatial and temporal barriers, democratise information, and facilitate new versions of reality. To be sure, technological innovation is not a new phenomenon; our modernity, for example, is often traced back to the fifteenth century with the invention of the printing press. Nonetheless, the rate of innovation has become near exponential over the last fifty years and it is difficult to find a historical precedent for the current moment. The emergence and growth of the internet – the so-called ‘network of networks’ – typifies such developments, although other technologies have also played their part. So too has neoliberalism.

It is difficult to separate the developments in technology from the dynamics of neoliberalism. These two phenomena are deeply intertwined and have operated in tandem to accelerate life through their unifying logic of progress. In physics, acceleration is calculated by the change in velocity over the change in time; the acceleration of life is thus dependent on temporal alterations. This is why acceleration has been so pronounced in neoliberal time: through combining market logics with technological innovation, processes become much quicker, and with that, expectations change; life becomes immediate.

by Cecy Park

Fifty years ago, looking up information, communicating from various locations in the world, or buying food required a certain investment: one’s time. Now, however, these processes are instantaneous. Information is found at the click of a button, communication is simplified by digitised media and the universalisation of time (network time), and food can be delivered in minutes thanks to new delivery systems. Time need not be invested in these processes anymore; it can be spent elsewhere.

Why, then, do we feel as busy as ever? The answer is phenomenological: our perceptions and experiences of time have been distorted, with neoliberal time producing new normative expectations about how long things take. Our modern cultures – especially in the West – have come to be defined by urgency and, in turn, impatience. We constantly find ourselves frustrated at things that take too long: a delayed package, a queue at the self-checkouts, or a buffering webpage. We constantly look for shortcuts too, and often give up if things get too time consuming.

Not all things necessarily fit into this new formulation though; many things still require an investment of time. For one, it takes years to perfect a martial art with several setbacks along the way. Raising a child takes time too – eighteen years in most cultures – and there are seldom shortcuts to this process. Indeed, the process of child-rearing is where we derive the word ‘nurture’ from, with the Latin verb nutrire (to nourish) often used in relation to upbringing. Embedded within the concept of nurture, therefore, is a certain temporality: to nurture is to follow a process of development, a series of acts that occur over time, and that take time.

Nurturing, then, operates against the immediacy of neoliberal time, but this need not be problematic. On the contrary, acts of nurturing can help us reflect on the realities of our time, teaching us to be more patient in a world where impatience has become the norm. This is important; as Hegel once noted, “impatience asks for the impossible, wanting to reach the goal without the means of getting there”. Nurturing helps to overcome this by returning the process of taking time to achieve a certain end. It encourages us to relearn patience, to invest time, and to nurture the things that matter most, whatever they may be.

To be sure, this is not a call to return to a previous time; no, we should still embrace the marvels of our modernity. Yet we must also embrace the temporality of nurturing, which helps remind us that not all things are immediate. Take this article as an example. Thanks to new technology, I can research and write as quickly as ever, however, the actual process of writing takes time and should not be rushed. A balance must therefore be struck between saving time and taking time, between urgency and nurture.

For decades nurture has been placed in a binary with nature. Yet as recent developments in epigenetics have shown, this biological binary is a misnomer; the picture is much more complex. Perhaps, then, we should reorient the concept of nurture toward a more social and temporal understanding, placing it in relation to neoliberal time as a contrast to the urgency of modern life. In doing so, we may remind ourselves that sometimes, patience is needed; sometimes, things need to be nurtured.

Aftersun

And How We Remember Love. (spoilers ahead)

Written by Hannah Mildner

After my grandmother’s funeral, my sister brought out a box of photographs she had found under piles of dust-lined books and yellowed sheet music. For the next hour, we flicked through them almost hungrily, staring at faces we had always known and yet never seen before. Our parents, however, ignored the photos, busying themselves with anything else. Maybe they were embarrassed by the flares and the 1970s hair. Maybe they preferred to avoid the thought that, soon enough, we would be poring over these photos simply to remember them – just as we had done to remember their parents. While I have always been acutely aware of my parents’ age, being one of the only 9-year-olds in my school with parents over 50, this is not a thought I’m familiar with. When you’re a child, it doesn’t occur to you that your parents had lives before you; it doesn’t occur to you that there is a life ‘after’ your parents. Eventually, though, all we’ll have are photos and memories. Aftersun director Charlotte Wells grapples with this beautifully in an outstanding directorial debut.

“When you were 11, what did you think you’d be doing now?”, Aftersun’s Sophie (Frankie Corio) asks her dad Calum (Paul Mescal). This is perhaps the biggest question asked in the film, which traces a father-daughter holiday in Turkey in the late 1990s. Calum is only 31 but quietly hides self-loathing and a fear of ageing behind a façade of tai chi-propelled calm. Sophie has just turned 11 and is seemingly on the precipice of adolescence. She scoffs when Calum suggests she introduce herself to a group of “kids”, preferring instead to trail behind the rowdier teenagers she meets. She watches and listens as the teenagers around her explore love and sex; she runs away for a night; she has her first kiss. But Aftersun is about more than growing up – it’s about growing up to become your parents.

Within the first 10 minutes of the film, masterful editing suggests Calum and Sophie are more similar than one might think a 31-year-old man and an 11-year-old girl could be (a sleeping Sophie morphs into her father the next morning). Wells’ quiet but powerful writing takes this further. We see the two applying after-sun lotion to each other’s faces, literally caring for and protecting each other. The scene in which Sophie takes on the caretaker role comes later, implying that she’s learning from her father. Whether she’s learning how to parent or just how to love is unclear - perhaps there is no real distinction to be made. One of the more heartbreaking parallels between the two is made when Sophie is reluctant to go out and explains how she feels: “you [feel] tired and down, and it feels like your bones don’t work. You’re

Artwork by Beca Summers

just tired and everything is tired. Like you’re sinking.” Corio delivers the line masterfully, nonchalant while still revealing that she’s experiencing something that’s all too familiar to Calum. He reacts by brushing it off before glaring into the mirror and spitting at his reflection: no matter how much after-sun he buys, he can’t protect his child from this.

The only problem here, of course, is that Sophie could not possibly remember these moments. Wells hints at this, as shots of Calum are initially upside-down in this scene, mimicking Sophie’s perspective as she hangs her head off her bed. But as his anger is revealed, the camera is flipped. We’re no longer looking at a memory but an interpretation. Though the film is interspersed with camcorder footage that – it’s eventually revealed – Sophie is watching 20 years later, this is not an accurate record of the holiday. One of the most telling signs of this is the recurring rave that Calum escapes to. Throughout Aftersun Wells cuts to Calum dancing almost painfully under strobing lights. In a child’s visualisation of her father’s struggles, Sophie appears both as a child and an adult desperately trying to hold onto her dad. The attempt is ultimately fruitless and the rave becomes a home for both Calum and Sophie’s troubles.

Going through that box of photos I realised just how much I look like my mother. Aftersun reminded me that this resemblance is more than skin deep. Kudos should be given to Mescal and Corio, who perfectly portray this with the smallest micro-expressions. Mescal stuns

even as he sobs in a minute-long shot of his back. But Aftersun’s poignancy is also dependent on Gregory Oke’s cinematography, which captures the saturated colours and unfamiliar details that children are wont to remember. The sound team also contribute a great deal, portraying seemingly accurate memories through naturalistic sound editing, as well as dreamlike hazes with haunting renditions of Blur’s “Tender” and Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”.

While Aftersun’s tension ebbs and flows as much as the sea on which Wells zeroes in on, the film is never distressing. After all, one of the first scenes provides constant reassurance: Calum records Sophie as she waves goodbye, skipping and smiling giddily. This is the image of a child who loves and is loved; who, in the end (of the film at least), will be alright. It’s also an image of comfort: Wells ends the film with this clip, panning to an adult Sophie who is watching the video, finally and already Calum’s age. The camera then reveals an impossible memory of Calum, who closes the camcorder and retreats back into the rave, doors swinging shut behind him. While this is certainly not a hopeful scene for Calum – who it is implied was never again seen – it remains a testament to his love for his daughter. Though Sophie can now imagine and understand her father’s pain, those doors were closed when she was a child, leaving her only with care and love.

Committee

Magazine Editors-in-Chief Anushka Ray & Joshua Jones

Design Officer Manca Rakun

President Nell Wedgwood

Treasurer Hannah Chen

Welfare Officer Saad Hafejee

Diversity & Inclusion Officer Vanessa Tsao

Social Media Officer Eda Yildirimkaya

Marketing Officer Sasha Huang

Online Editors-in-Chief Aiden Dennehy & Shayeza Walid

TV Editors-in-Chief Ludovica Ardente & Tony Yang

Design Team

Manca Rakun

Beca Summers

Cecy Park

Rebecca Weigler

Section Editors

Camille Koebel

Ludovica Ardente

Oana Gavriloiu

Abel Kjaersgaard

Isobel Knight

Kate Peacock

Conor Walsh

Alex McQuibban

Josh Schongevel

Syn Ong

Sama Rabab

Harvey Nriapia

Benedicte Vagner

Lilly Tozer

Nick Read

Front & back cover

Noemi Duroux