The Isis | Human | HT20 by The Isis

The Isis

human

cover photograph: S. Parke

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editors’ letter success for sale a year in protest

12 tasbih 14 paraiso 20 handover 26

stockholm syndrome

27 icebergs 29 lost at sea 34 swiping white 38 whitby harbour 39 portrait of female empowerment 40 hand: form and constitution 41 where are you from? 42 aesthetic unease 46 characters in four acts 48 a ghuí ar a croí 49 somewhere in düsseltal

neil natarajan & annabelle fuller nat cheung the isis antonio lópez kavya deshpande the isis; photographs by isaac pockney jules desai yii-jen deng maggie wang chung kiu kwok jemima swain abigail hodges holly anderson isla chaplin margot harvey sasha mills matthew price holly abrahamson

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EDITORS’ LETTER

he foundation of every organisation, every political movement, every system, and every shock to that system is people. Our common humanity binds all of us. It is our responsibility to explore human behaviour and its effects on our planet. It is our responsibility to recognise the rights and freedoms of every person: every protestor, every refugee, every politician. It is our responsibility to ratify what we share. We must love what defines us instead of what divides us. We must question our allegiances and examine why we believe in what we do.

Moving through 2020, it seems that the structural strengths of the UK are on the brink of collapse. Our democracy is called into question at every turn, and we demand accountability while being denied true systematic change. This term, we saw St John’s lawn occupied in a plea for divestment, the Radcliffe Camera used as a backdrop for outcry against sexual violence, and the steps of the Bodleian filled with people fighting for a secular India. The places and people we know are threads in the wider fabric of political engagement. Behind The Isis HT20 is a team of 59 people (or 60 if we include Mostyn). We have made new friends, many mistakes, and, finally, a magazine. Human is in your hands. Annabelle & Neil

Editorially, however, Isis didn’t know where it was going. It’s got to be wanky, it’s The Isis. Unfortunately, I am no longer going to be able to make it tonight.

Oxford Type, 1984 Oliver Nixon Ben Smoke

$ $ E C SUC E L A S FOR *names have been changed for anonymity

ichelle* leaves me a voice message. She must be on a bus or coach; I can hear faint noises from the engine. I can’t hear a word she’s saying. She sends me a text: “We are in Mexico On a trip from Arbonne Having a blast” Michelle is a National Vice President at Arbonne, a multi-level marketing (MLM) company that sells vegan health supplements and cruelty-free beauty products. Anyone who signs up to sell Arbonne’s products becomes an Independant Consultant for them. An NVP is the highest level that an independent consultant can reach. Consultants work to a

strategy, or ‘SuccessPlan’, which is dependent on the team of consultants that they recruit under themselves, dubbed a ‘SuccessLine’. The game is to earn commissions from them and help them rise through the ranks too, moving ever closer to promotions, company holidays, and the elusive white Arbonnebranded Mercedes-Benz. By definition, multilevel marketing relies on participants recruiting friends who themselves recruit more participants, until they resemble the nefarious sister of the MLM – the pyramid scheme. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority says that, by definition, pyramid schemes (which are illegal) “depend upon new members being recruited to

pay in”. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defines a pyramid scheme as generating income “based mostly on how many people you recruit, not how much product you sell”. But these definitions create a conveniently grey area which allows financial compensation to fly under the radar. This means companies like Arbonne can rely on payment in kind – such as an all-inclusive holiday in Tulum, Mexico. Arbonne only rewards recruitment when sales goals are met, and, in doing so, avoids the label of a pyramid scheme. But the top-level consultants earn extortionately more than their low-level counterparts, funneling revenue in a way not

dissimilar to pyramid schemes. Team leaders have the right to take 35% of their recruits’ revenue in commission; consultants are then encouraged to invest what money they have left back into Arbonne stock. In 2017, Arbonne and five of its executives faced a lawsuit in California, in which the lead plaintiffs called the company a “pyramid scheme masquerading as a direct seller”. The case was brought after a series of complaints from consultants who had earned nothing, or even lost money, under the MLM scheme. An independent investigation into Arbonne’s 2017 and 2018 income disclosure statements reveals that 88% of participants had made either net-zero profit or a net loss. Only 301 people, which

“For many of these women, their decision to join Arbonne was made at a time of emotional vulnerability.”

corresponds to only 0.178% of all the Arbonne reps in the US, made a five-figure salary every month. The case was dismissed in 2018 after an undisclosed settlement. Last October, dietary supplement company AdvoCare was ruled an illegal pyramid scheme by the FTC. In an official press release, they stated that inflated income claims like those seen on Arbonne’s income disclosure statements are a “hallmark of an illegal pyramid”. AdvoCare failed to take consultants’ expenses into account on their statements; Arbonne goes even further by failing to include data from any consultant who didn’t make a profit. The difference between the legal Arbonne and illegal AdvoCare is that in the case of the latter, consultants have to spend between $1200 to $2400 to be promoted initially, while in the case of the former, promotion is based on product sales and the earnings of a consultant’s chain of recruits. Arbonne is perhaps better at toeing the legal line which AdvoCare has crossed. Previously married to an Advocare consultant who is still in the scheme, Adam* blames MLMs for “stealing away his wife”. Like the other women I talked to, Adam’s wife struggled with her body image and was a financially vulnerable 23-yearold when she joined. Investing in the $500 starter juice cleanse seemed like a good idea at first. But, with the mounting pressure to upscale her venture from the woman who recruited her, she applied for a credit card and racked up $5000 in debt without Adam’s knowledge. He attributes her choices to their

Surrounded by military wives, suburban mums, and college students – three groups which dominate the MLM demographic – his wife was in constant contact with eager colleagues who offered the gushing support that he was too skeptical to give her. Eventually it turned into an echo chamber of – to borrow his phrase – “the ‘anyone who doesn’t support your dreams doesn’t belong in your life’ argument”. Don’t be fooled: Arbonne’s consultants are very self-aware. They have addressed every doubt already raised in this article on their Instagram stories. They admit that they’ve been judged and lost friends. Every current or previous Arbonne participant I interviewed told me that it took them months of consideration before they finally committed to signing the Arbonne contract. Lucy*, a law student, dwelled on the decision for five months. For Savannah*, a Canadian dancer, it was three years. For Michelle, the highest ranking of the three, it took six. Savannah, 22, says that her epiphany moment was realising that “‘the universe had asked me to look at this opportunity and go for it… all I had to do was block out the outside voices and listen to my own”. Lucy claims that she did it for her “self-growth”. For many of these women, their decision to join Arbonne was made at a time of emotional vulnerability. What they’re selling isn’t just

herbal moisturiser and protein shakes; it’s a lifestyle available by subscription. Arbonne’s highrisk investments are marketed as a lifeline – potential consultants are told to ‘get empowered,’ ‘gain the support of an incredible community,’ and ‘live the life of [their] dreams’. That life is the dream of a generation – the tenacious, hard-headed entrepreneur, perpetually grinding to break away from the corporate machine and become their own boss. Scrolling through the #Arbonne hashtag on Instagram, I can see plenty of testimonies about dropping out of college and quitting your day job to do Arbonne. That feeling of independence is enough to outweigh the risks of MLMs. It’s not that our generation has become unaware of those risks; it’s more about the fact that the definition of ‘legitimacy’ in business has become more accommodating. I ask Lucy whether she would put her title as an Arbonne District Manager on her CV. She replies positively: “Yeah, because this demonstrates to law firms that I am commercially aware and can interact with clients”. I bring up the issue with Michelle. She directs me to an IGTV video she made with her father, Michael*, and assures me that, since he’s worked in corporate finance for 45 years, he knows what he’s talking about. “It really is the smartest business model out there,” he says of MLMs, “not just for people sitting at the top of the ladder, but for the people who continue to build that ladder”.

“That life is the dream of a generation – the tenacious, hard-headed entrepreneur, perpetually grinding to break away from the corporate machine and become their own boss.”

environment at the time: “Spokane, Washington has a large military presence (which I know to be a factor) due to the air force base and army reserve base there. There are three major colleges in the area as well, so MLMs are pretty common.”

Michael adds that, to a generation more dependent than ever on e-commerce,

Consultants argue that many of their costs go towards products they would have needed to buy anyway. As Michael stresses: “You have people using the product themselves and educating people about how it works, and that relationship is the absolute strongest asset of this company”. This gives us a clue as to why many notorious MLMs (like Herbalife, AdvoCare, or Amway) sell health-related products. Health and body image are intimate issues. When a consultant like Michelle tells me one-on-one that the products have improved her gut health and muscle gain and posts pictures of her own body to prove it, it seems like

she’s giving me authentic advice rather than a rehearsed pitch. She talks frankly about money too: “To be clear, I didn’t need the money. I have a sixfigure income with my job at SoulCycle. It really came down to the fact that I was already using these products. The brand and the business fully aligned with my values”. It makes sense that Michelle thrives on direct selling, otherwise called ‘network marketing’, as a Senior SoulCycle instructor and Lululemon ambassador, with 17.1k followers on Instagram. Her feed is typical of influencers and other high-level consultants: Californian beaches, tanned skin, ab gains, and motivational quotes. She seems to have the network, image, and steady income required to be successful in this business. In her opinion, though, she’s nothing more than a ‘natural connector’. “I’ve spent seven years building my network as a fitness professional, so I’m just utilising that network,” she says. “Having a network is essential, and if you don’t have one, you have to build one.”

“It’s an industry that lends itself to financial and emotional exploitation, and is both economically and politically problematic.”

the MLM business model has never made more sense. The requirements of maintaining a brick-and-mortar business – which normally takes up twelve to fifteen per cent of costs – are removed. Each consultant is their own ‘influencer’ for their own products, with full control of their own sales cycle. Michelle even calls it a “startup that only costs you $79”. That entrepreneurial dream and fantasy of fame takes away the sour taste of having to pay to work.

Having a ‘network’ is an unrealistic prerequisite for those who are investing in the program for extra income. If you aren’t from an affluent background, it is much harder to find people willing to spend £47 on ‘Pomegranate Energy Fizz Sticks’. Ex-consultants Madison* and Sarah* signed up when they were both twenty years old. They say that all their peers felt immense pressure to find a ‘side hustle’ to save up for their student loans. Their socioeconomic status proved to be a psychological obstacle; not only did they lack the capital to build up stock, Madison says, but, as a self-confessed “broke college kid,” she “would have felt so terrible asking other broke college kids to buy stuff”. Both women chose not to renew the

yearly fee which consultants pay to sell Arbonne products after one year, even though Sarah had already lost £750 by then. Michelle, touting her six-figure salary on social media, might believe that “Arbonne is a level playing field and anybody can get to the top,” but the people who need the money the most are rarely the ones profiting. The ‘Arbonne girl’ lives a life that very few can afford. The legality of MLMs is illusory when, in real terms, there is so little to distinguish them from an illegal pyramid scheme. It’s an industry that lends itself to financial and emotional exploitation, and is both economically and politically problematic. Especially for young women, raised on the

narrative of the Girlboss, MLMs suggest that they will elevate their consultants to the status of the women they respect. To those who feel left out of that modern narrative of female empowerment, MLMs present another chance at doing and becoming something of their own. But founding one’s own business is not cheap at all. When women pressure other women to ‘join the hustle’ and subscribe to new lifestyle choices in the name of empowerment, it indulges a narrow but selfassured kind of feminism that comes from a place of blatant privilege. Later, Savannah sends me a DM saying: “You should definitely consider the opportunity yourself since you now have all the info :)”. I firmly turn her down.

“The ‘Arbonne girl’ lives a life that very few can afford.”

I once called you rosario, a crucifijo clenched in the hand of abuela

Tasbih

whose lágrimas are a stuttering lluvia que cae al rancho. It cuts carretera-stones, prays for the roadside skulls of drunken sons.

I want men to stop leaving her: for Abuelo Güicho to rise from cerro-cemeterio. To lift his sombrero from the living room, and wrap a handmade concha in his bandana – a token for the labores of Mictlán. To stop seeing grandchildren’s English hit her face like the steam of store-bought Maizena.

(I don’t want this poem to be in English)

To take this poem and blanket her for winters in el norte.

I am afraid to join this male’s betrayal, to open my palms and expose these polished orbs. Where I recite Allah’s names: Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, Al-Malik… I asked an imam, What is the madhhab of Mexicans who pray at the feet of a woman, whose hands jamás did not fold for an absent man, and instead sunk their nails in the corn’s earth. Who slabbed together tortillas to feed her diez hijos, sang to the mockingbirds perched on thin chilitos. The Gentle, before you call her too, bless this tasbih that rattles my neck. Make me think of her every time I hear its rain.

Paraiso

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere. Philip Larkin 14

n Tanjong Rhu Road, it also jacuzzis,” said the property parcelled Singapore, a cluster of is hard to know where broker who showed my parents expatriate enclaves, like a townthe water begins. Geriatric taxi around one of the flats. map rug on a kindergarten drivers will tell you that the floor. Leaving the house meant tarmac you’re travelling on used For decades, it was water that going to an international to be jetty, and the tarmac up brought people and money to school, the shopping district, ahead a sticky pocket of bay this area, and little changed the rugby or riding club. They where rotting wood and bilge after redevelopment. In the early grew up knowing that at water collected. Singaporean 2000s, corporate executives eighteen they would get on a planning records identify this transferred to Singapore flight to start freshers’ week in place varyingly as dockyard or settled in Tanjong Rhu’s real London or Boston or Sydney. harbour; either way, something estate, populating it from the In high school, they stopped that had to be removed living in Singapore and during the sterilisation of started living in constant *** the country’s landscape anticipation of departure, in the 1980s. The taxi they stopped living in Singapore made manifest by foreign and started living in constant uncles elaborate. I have, on college tours and dispatches occasion, been told, “Back from undergraduates who anticipation of departure. then, police never come reassured them that there here, so everything can. was so much more to do *** Opium can, whore can.” top down in search of high wherever they had gone. The balconies. They brought with swimming pools remained, for 40 years ago the wharfs were them those parts of their lives the most part, empty. cleared, and along with them that were possible to displace: the dens and brothels. Patches of decorative lamps, weddingThis ennui can only emerge bay once coated in ship oil were gift dinnerware, children. An in a life of convenience, and in turned into land. Tanjong Rhu integral part of the moving Singapore, lives of convenience now rests on an unknowable process was acclimatising your are not made in nuclear boundary between old coast crying six-year-old to their new households. Things move and imported Cambodian home, carrying them down too quickly. Things cost too sand. The only reminder of palm-shadowed condominium much. People work nine-tosequestered water is found in walkways, pointing out the nine and want to come home the eight swimming pools of the swimming pool. These children to cooked dinners. Their kids eight waterfront condominiums would come to say that they grew need collecting from afterthat flank the street. “There are up in Singapore, but theirs was a school ballet classes. Dogs need

walking, surfaces polishing. In the end, all of this is achieved because of another person, someone not present in the family photographs on the coffee table. In every residence on Tanjong Rhu Road, behind every kitchen, is a small sitting area, bedroom, and en-suite. This space is left unaccounted for when the flat is marketed as a four-room property. Lyn moved in behind the kitchen when I was seven years old. She was tall, and remains taller than me to this day, and arrived wearing a pink blouse and tinted lip balm. I remember these details because it was the first time I had seen make-up so tastefully match an outfit. Years later, Lyn told my mother she thought she would have to wear a uniform. I did not immediately know how to place her. I had never met someone from the Philippines before and was thrown by the sudden introduction of a new

language to the house. Tagalog has no close etymological cousin; it is loaded with consonants, spoken rapidly, and sounds distinctly foreign. I would hear its staccato when she called home while cooking dinner, or carried through the kitchen when she talked to her friend Diane, who worked next door and had a window facing hers. I was wary, as all children would be when presented with a stranger whose job it is to look after them. I was wary when she warned me to be careful on the monkey bars in the condominium playground, wary when I was handed my packed lunch in the morning and told off for returning it uneaten in the afternoon. “I already have a mum,” I complained to my mother when she came home from work one evening. “Yes,” she replied, “and she already has daughters. So be kind”. Not long before Lyn began working with us, I had started to suspect that there was a limit to

what could happen on Tanjong Rhu Road. Lethargy ripens in a place of perpetual summer. Siblingless and without much talent for company, I used to sink into the after-school hours’ afternoon heat, roaming barefoot around the condo’s tropical gardens. Sometimes, if she had finished drinking her coffee, Lyn would ask if she could come along. I always said yes. I know now she offered so that I would have someone to talk to, but at the time I thought it was because the landscaped grounds reminded her of home. I longed for the stories that emerged during these walks, touching-distance memories of colour and warmth. A miniature palm grove was reminiscent of the jungle where a spinster aunt lived, rumoured to have never married because a ghost fell in love with her as a teenager and left fruit on a palm frond at her doorstep every morning. Pea flowers growing by the condo gates would have been used back in the province to

*** Lethargy ripens in a place of perpetual summer. ***

A body was found floating here a few years ago. A strange, half-apologetic excitement seized Tanjong Rhu for a week.

pigment rice and serve it pale blue with steamed milkfish. Early on, I told her what I had heard my parents mention about Tanjong Rhu being built on water. My mangled, halfforgotten narration must have made it sound more precarious than it was because she gasped and asked whether we ever had floods. “In the Philippines, we get big, big floods during the rains”. Then, gesturing towards the bay, she said, “You see the water there? The river gets so big sometimes, it comes up to here”. I looked down to where she was pointing at my ankles. I imagined them submerged, and, because it was a hot day, the idea was nice. I didn’t imagine anything else submerged, or broken and dispersed. Over the next fourteen years, Lyn came to occupy a liminal

space in my mind. She wasn’t my mother, but she was a mother, and she did for me everything that mothers do when they can be present. My own always made it a point to emphasise the similarities between them. Whenever she booked Lyn regular plane tickets to visit home, she called them tokens of gratitude “from one working woman to another”. But there were differences, too, and I understood these as the dulling will to leave and go elsewhere intensified at school. Lyn’s Tanjong Rhu was pieced together in a way that mine was not. Hers was located in a family of strangers in a strange land, women from the Philippines who had found each other while walking dogs or running errands. The street was a living, connective tissue of favours and personal histories, anecdotes and

advice. A woman in the other block could deliver presents and parcels for the others on her next trip to the Philippines; another worked in a house where a puppy had fallen from the balcony, so Lyn put up a mesh before we adopted ours. They all knew the names of the elderly couple that ran the condo mini market, with whom Lyn had formed such a rapport that she was always the first to be told when freshlymade curry puffs were being sold. These I usually found as a surprise in my lunchbox the next day, and I ate them for years without being aware of the networks of solidarity and companionship through which they had arrived. Lyn’s best friends, Pearl and Shelly, became familiar presences in our lives. Every afternoon, they took turns cooking Pinoy dishes and dined by the poolside while our dogs napped beside them. Sometimes I would join. Lyn would make me a box of macaroni fruit salad which I ate in contented silence, surrounded by a cascade of Tagalog jokes and gossip in plastic paradise. It was on one of those afternoons that I recognised the hubris of deeming a whole street or neighbourhood or country to be a nowhere-world, of thinking

that water was more real than reclaimed land. In late October of last year, Lyn left for good. Her father was suffering from an undiagnosed heart condition and she could no longer bear listening to her mother’s distant distress during late-night phone calls. At the end of the month, she got on a red-eye to Manila, and from there took a sevenhour bus journey to her village in the province of Zambales. I call her once in a while, but frequent typhoons batter the signal and communication is sometimes dead for weeks. The last time I phoned, we spoke for an hour. She has opened a convenience store and spends her time manning the till. On hot days – and there are many – it provides both shade and light, and her neighbours amble over for a chat. I want to ask if she thinks she’ll ever come back, but now she is telling me that the shop has started selling homemade burgers. She’s planning to expand to curry puffs, and wants to know if I would like the recipe. I say I would, and don’t ask anything else. It seems unnecessary. Something feels like it has passed. It is peaceful work, she says.

Every August, on Singaporeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s National Day, an airforce flypast thunders directly above us. On television, it looks beautiful. In Tanjong Rhu, walls and dogs tremble, kids ask their parents if they are going to die, and Lyn videos the skies on her phone with perfectly still hands.

When I was six, all the kids said a murderer lived in the condo across the road. One evening, we climbed the gate to watch him come home from work, but as he got off the bus we lost interest. He looked too tired to be a murderer.

Above: Jeevan wears bangles from a bazaar in Shirdi. Right: Rose wears her great-grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emeralds from Iraq.

Left: Emilia wears a locket from her great-grandmother. Above: Daisy wears earrings and a necklace from her grandmother, Marion.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME Three fish are bored.

(Genesis 1 :26 )

They pass the time thinking. “Why are we here?” one asks. Another answers:

ea”

s, so that they may rule over the fish in the kenes

“If “ if we were not, then who would force those simple sea snails to endorse His gift to us – which He designed – the virtuous values of fishkind?” The third thinks but stops, its thoughts displaced by turgid verse. “He above, who rains us manna, made us and entrusted us with all He hath created.” I watch, rippled, from far above, My fractured face obscured by sky.

ur l i ge , i n o

I see their babble-bubbles bloat to burst beneath My buckled nose.

a im

The opaque glass – the firmament – it insulates their world from Mine.

our

ind i

I’m never bored.

ke mank us ma

I pass the time thinking:

et , “L

“silly, simple, foolish fish! If only you could think enough to think you’re wrong!”

G en Th

id d sa

(wryly smiling)

My fish, their thoughts, are safely hostage in My tank. They’re here to amuse Me.

ICEBERGS: CLOSING SOON

Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Ice Watch,’ Tate Modern, 2018

e had come for the melting icebergs. We came early, clutching phones and children, to our space before the Thames, where the artist had assembled those lumps of cold whiteness. A menagerie of endangered specimens of ice – it wanted something, over there, trapped. It did not fool us: life was missing. Here were the teeth of some defanged animal. Animal – alive? Something flails up, trembling. A figure near the ice, a blot upon the white, we heard it singing as the teeth rose up into our vision. Whilst we gazed and tried to process such pieces of environmental wisdom, it was sing-wailing – BREATHE – It was unclear to whom this was addressed, but certainly it was aesthetically problematic, a thing to be edited out of the landscape, once we had finished with the ice. Now, he was on the ice. This was terribly unfortunate. He, a

blurred tangle of eyes and limbs, sprouted from an iceberg. Purple fingers bloomed, open-close, offering absurd strings of red balloons. His feet gnarled. Here, the head gaped open, exposing a fossilised fish of a tongue. It cracked a smile, cavernous. If it – he – was staging some protest (foolish, we knew), this was undermined by the balloons. They wheezed weakly above his head in tired speech bubbles, giving him the air of a misguided poet. Lyrical salesale-sale – fresh air bottled and ballooned, air trapped in the ice, vintage air, centuries old, completely authentic. This is not a load of hot air, although the atmosphere was heating up, more bodies trickling over, in spite of the calls to – BREATHE AND BREATHE – that emanate from the curious mass on the ice. Listen to the ice crack and pop.

Listen, we loved this. The creature and the ice – it was beautiful when we framed it in our phones. It made us so subversive, so interesting. When we adjusted our filters to capture the gleam in his ice and their sunken shadow, overlaying the tone in emerald or indigo, it was worth hanging on a platform in the ether. Some of us began asking indulgently ‘What is this for?’ or ‘Why are you here?’ or even ‘Is this a lucrative business, selling air?’ We stood slyly to one side and captured him clutching his red balloons. His mind had cracked; he had dead hands. It was admirable really – how long he managed to stay on the ice. Yet he was too expressive for us, with his hollow-thin voice going – BREATHE PLEASE BREATHE PLEASE BREATHE – and really, it rankled. He was overdoing it. He had flung his hands up in theatrical despair. The ice was melting, just as the artist promised. There was a certain satisfaction in this

fulfilment; as we observed the puddles spreading underfoot, merging with our shadows to become reflections. Still, he was weeping. See this ice, all this ice! All for us to stare at, stroke, taste – this was ice. We knew, but he was sitting there, becoming smaller and melting the ice, our ice, faster and faster while giddily bawling – BREATHE – disrupting our photos and our peace with his exhortations that we – BREATHE AND PLEASE KEEP ON BREATHING, and when, to our fright, he shifted and almost slipped, flinging out his dead hands into nothingness, we backed away. At a safer distance, we snapped him up, scrounging for pieces of his eyes and words; collecting them in our memories, digital or not. His words were fading; we could see his breath

in the cold air – vanishing, visually defying his BREATHE PLEASE BREATHE, as he gasped, grasped at nothing, at us watching in a voyeuristic thrall, all this writhing on and on, this pink mouth gaping and closing, this ice melting smaller. And then a tremor was rippling down his face, past purple fingers and gnarled feet, passing away into the ice. And away, in the distance, we saw a little stricken man running towards us from the gallery. Faintly, we heard him – CLOSING EARLY PEOPLE SORRY WE’RE CLOSING EARLY LOOK OUR CLOSING TIME CLOSING TIME IS NOW NOW

You Cannot Touch The Ice

LOST AT SEA T

he morning of 7 July 2018 dawned like any other at the whaling station of Hvalur hf, Iceland’s last extant commercial whaling company. Until it didn’t. The night before, one of the company’s whaling boats had returned from sea dragging its usual catch of a fin whale on one side, and something much more disconcerting on the other. The sun rose to reveal what appeared to be a blue whale lying on the ground surrounded by workers hurrying to harvest its meat. The species of this whale – Whale 22, the twenty-second catch of Hvalur’s whaling season – remains a subject for debate. Genetic testing carried out by the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland (MFRI), a government institute operating within the Ministry of Industries and Innovation, determined that the whale was “a hybrid of a fin whale father and a blue whale

mother. However, numerous members of the scientific community – including a biologist at University College London and a researcher from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – disputed this claim. Their doubts stemmed primarily from the whale’s appearance: its bluegrey colouration, light dorsal fin, and all-black baleen are typical traits of pure blue whales. The distinction between hybrid and non-hybrid status is important because of a legal inconsistency that’s often overlooked – killing a blue whale is illegal both in Iceland and internationally, whereas killing a hybrid is only illegal under international law. This is not because hybrids are less valuable than blue whales; in fact, they are exceedingly rare. Hybrids cannot reproduce, and, because they do not belong

explicitly to either species, they are not clearly protected by regulations concerning species with endangered status. The Icelandic government used this complexity as reasoning against protecting hybrids and condemning Hvalur’s actions. Some have argued that, regardless of Icelandic law, Hvalur ought to have faced consequences for this killing. After all, the MFRI report details that the samples used for comparison in the genetic testing of Whale 22 included genetic material from four proven hybrid specimens, all killed by Hvalur since 1983 and some, if not all, without a proper license. Only a month after MFRI released its controversial report, Hvalur was accused of killing a second blue-fin hybrid, though this second killing seems to have slipped under the radar of the scientific community.

This controversy provides a unique moment of insight into the extended conflict surrounding whaling in Iceland. Hvalur survives largely due to the determination of one man: Kristján Loftsson. Loftsson, now aged 76, has controlled Hvalur since his father’s death in 1974. He grew up surrounded by whaling and first went to sea at thirteen, just as the industry was first booming. His company uses a refined version of an exploding harpoon designed in the 1860s. Despite the alleged conclusions of a 2013 report, which has never been released to the public, Loftsson refuses to discuss whether his killing methods cause pain to the animals he targets. A Google search for Loftsson’s name produces gory photographs of him posing with dead whales at his whaling station. He has never been one to shy away from controversy; again in the summer of 2018, he readily admitted to having killed eleven pregnant fin whales. Because Loftsson is one of the few remaining whalers in the world, it is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about whether or not his practices are conventional. But his actions and claims scorn

the possibility that whaling ethics and techniques in the 21st century ought to have evolved from those of the 19th. Loftsson’s determination and confidence have not gone unchallenged. His chief critic for the past 35 decades has been Sea Shepherd, a marine conservation group with branches in twenty countries and projects including sea turtle conservation, wild salmon research, and hurricane relief. The group’s antiwhaling campaign, Operation Mjölnir, has released photo and video documentation of Hvalur’s activities, shot from a hill above the company’s whaling station in Iceland. Sea Shepherd has played a key role in directing media scrutiny towards Hvalur. However, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, another group advocating against whaling in Iceland, Sea Shepherd’s techniques are no longer effective. Patrick Ramage, Director of Marine Conservation at IFAW, suggests that “while doubtless wellintended, ‘old style’ campaigns which attacked Loftsson and Hvalur historically had the unintended consequence of

Icelanders circling the wagons, increasing resistance, and delaying the end of commercial whaling”. Few Icelanders speak out openly against Loftsson, and even his enemies admire him for his resilience. While Loftsson may be the main figure behind Icelandic whaling today – and a charismatic figure at that – the industry has much more complex roots, and successful advocacy in the future will require a fuller understanding of their nature. Loftsson may have many enemies, but the system that has allowed him to evade them includes just as many supporters. Contrary to popular belief, Ramage explains that “whale hunting is not a longstanding cultural tradition in Iceland. Icelandic commercial whaling only started after 1935, when new legislation stated that only Icelanders could hunt in territorial waters. The industry really only commenced in 1948”. Yet Loftsson has managed to use rhetoric and his influence as a member of Iceland’s wealthy elite to sustain support for his whaling enterprise. Iceland was a founding member of the International

Whaling Commission (IWC), a multilateral organisation respected as the ultimate international authority on whaling, when it was established in 1946. In 1982, the IWC adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling – a development highly unpopular with Icelandic policymakers. The country left the IWC in 1992. When attempting to rejoin in 2001, Iceland set forth a reservation to the moratorium on commercial whaling, meaning that it would refuse to abide by the moratorium and would continue to whale commercially at its own discretion. At the Commission’s 2001 meeting, the representatives for Iceland explained that it had withdrawn from the IWC because it believed the body “had become a non-whaling commission rather than a whaling commission”. It felt encouraged to rejoin because it saw “signs that support is increasing within IWC for sustainable whaling in some form” and wanted “to have an influence on the discussions taking place”. Several countries objected, but Iceland argued

that its reservation to the moratorium fell within the bounds of the IWC’s mission. Among the countries that defended Iceland were Norway, Japan, and Russia, all of which have an extensive history of commercial whaling. The matter was not resolved at that year’s meeting. In 2002, a designated meeting of the IWC took place to further discuss Iceland’s membership. It culminated in a vote granting the country full membership of the IWC and accepting its reservation to the moratorium, which passed by a slim margin at nineteen votes in favour and eighteen against. Neither Iceland’s membership nor the accompanying reservation ever gained widespread acceptance. Sixteen countries maintain a formal objection to Iceland’s reservation, while three others consider the country’s membership invalid. Of these countries, the United States is the only one with a significant whaling presence. On the other hand, few support the idea that Iceland’s pursuit of whaling might be unethical or environmentally dangerous. Even the countries that do

question Iceland’s activities have failed to translate their politics into practice, as most maintain trade agreements and strong diplomatic relationships with Iceland. In the last twenty years, the financial prospects of the Icelandic whaling industry have never been rosy. Almost all of the meat harvested by Hvalur is exported to Japan, where the consumption of whale meat has been in steady decline and will likely decline further following the controversy of Japan’s own withdrawal from the IWC. Few shipping companies are still willing to transport whale meat, and Japan’s restricted food safety standards have become increasingly difficult for Hvalur to meet. Outside of Japan, Hvalur’s main prospects lie in selling whale meat to tourists in Iceland, but this, too, is no longer a particularly promising business strategy. In the summer of 2001, IFAW launched the “Meet Us Don’t Eat Us” campaign alongside IceWhale, the Icelandic Whale Watching Association. The campaign aims to decrease the consumption of whale meat among tourists and render whale hunting

economically unsustainable. So far, over 100,000 visitors have signed the campaign’s pledge – a success no doubt driven by the increased popularity of whale watching as a tourist activity. Ramage is confident that IFAW will continue to “promote whale watching as a sustainable alternative and encourage Icelanders and visitors to enjoy living whales in their natural environment”. In polls conducted by IFAW and Gallup in October 2019, 89% of Icelanders said they had never eaten whale meat, while only 1.2% said that they ate it six or more times in a year. Many Icelandic restaurants have stopped serving whale meat, and even though there is still a market for it, eating whale no longer has significant economic or cultural weight. Despite increasing nationalism in Iceland and elsewhere, whaling seems to be one issue, Ramage suggests, where Icelanders are looking forward and outward: “Icelanders increasingly perceive [Hvalur] as representing the old ways of doing things. Hvalur

uses outmoded nationalist arguments to try and rally support for an unsustainable, uneconomic activity that undermines Iceland’s actual interests. Those arguments no longer cut ice, even in Iceland”. Kristján Loftsson disagrees, and he has continued to search for new ways to keep his company alive. He has invested in whaling in Norway, and is reportedly considering turning whale meat into a nutritional powder. In reality, Hvalur’s financial success no longer comes from whaling; in 2014, the company’s whaling operations made a loss of £4.8 million. Its overall profits of £14.3 million that year were attributable to its ownership of Vogun hf, which, in turn, owns one-third of HB Grandi, a prominent fishing company. Perhaps the success of Hvalur’s investment in fishing has actually encouraged Loftsson to persist in his whaling enterprise. Since 2007, Hvalur’s catches have averaged 141 fin and 38 minke whales, excluding years when each type was not

hunted. Norway also continues to hunt around 500 minke whales each year, but unlike fin whales, minke whales are not endangered. Due to difficulties in obtaining a permit for the season, Hvalur did not whale in 2019. It has yet to announce its plans for 2020, but, either way, tensions between Loftsson and the advocacy community are not going to disappear. Loftsson may face international criticism, but the Icelandic government continues to tacitly support him. Ramage predicts that “permanently ending Icelandic whaling has to be a genuinely Icelandic decision based on Icelandic leaders’ focus on their country’s interests”. Most likely, it will be economic factors that eventually force Loftsson to abandon whaling. This might take years. In the meantime, Loftsson will continue to use nationalist arguments to legitimise pseudonationalist activities which are less than a century old. He will continue to pay millions of króna to slaughter ecologically pivotal creatures, and he will thrive on adrenaline and the

‘whale blood’ which he claims is running through his veins. In Iceland, after all, his career is comparable to that of a beef or chicken farmer in Britain. Sigursteinn Masson, project leader for IceWhale, explains that “for Icelanders, there is nothing obvious about […] the unethical nature of killing whales. This is to people here debatable just as other animal killings are”. To some Icelanders, whaling represents national agency and human control over the natural world. The International Union for Conservation of Nature may consider fin whales endangered, but advocates cannot take the impropriety of whaling for granted. Protecting whales is tantamount to ensuring the stability of marine ecosystems. For the foreseeable future, though, Loftsson and the Icelandic government will continue to look to culture, history, and self-interest to justify the killing of whales.

Swiping

White

hen Pittsburgh-born author Celeste Ng tweeted that she didn’t usually find Asian men attractive because “they remind me of my cousins,” she couldn’t have foreseen that she would be castigated anonymously as “another white-boyworshipping cunt” and accused of raising the next Elliot Rodger. Ng’s comment may not have been the product of malice, but it fed into a troubling trend. She became the target of an East Asian ethno-nationalist backlash targeted against ‘race traitors’: Asian women whose supposed colonial mentality induces them to partner with white men. Eleven per cent of all interracial marriages in the US are between a white man and an Asian woman, while only four per cent are between a white woman and an Asian man. The difference is even more pronounced in online dating. On platforms like Tinder and OkCupid, white men and Asian women easily receive the most matches. In 2014, OkCupid found that users of all races were significantly less likely to

start conversations with black women and Asian men, showing little change from the statistics published five years prior. Controlling for other factors, a study at Columbia found that an Asian man would have to earn a staggering $247,000 more per year to become as desirable to a white woman as a man of her own race. A Cardiff University study on perceived facial attractiveness found that Asian women were rated the most attractive compared to white and black women, while Asian men placed last.

“Dialogue alone won’t balance swiping statistics, but it is a step towards reclaiming an identity that has been tainted as much as that of Asian women.” In the US, it is not uncommon for Tinder profiles of white women to include the two little words ‘no Asians’, dashing the hopes of men who otherwise tick every one of their boxes. Meanwhile, Asian women are barraged with messages that often betray an uncomfortable fixation on their race. I’m thinking of eating dinner alone in France a few years ago, and a man coming up close to

shout “konichiwa” at me (I’m not Japanese), or my casual date assuming I want to take selfies with him because I’m Asian (I hate selfies). I wonder how much worse the casual reduction of my person to an implied racial trait can become when a man wants to form an emotional connection with me because he believes I am more pliable, more loyal, more mature. Maybe there’s a certain mystique around me because of what I represent: an exotic culture far from home. Maybe I’m supposed to be nerdy – the kind of girl who’s into maths and anime but not politics and therefore won’t bring up pesky opinions in conflict with his own.

of being hypersexualised and infantilised because of their small bodies and soft voices, as well as the baggage accompanying a history of colonialism and misogyny. Enter an interpretation of ‘yellow fever’ floated by numerous think pieces: men insecure in their masculinity seek out a woman who can make them feel in control, taking the mental shortcut (consciously or not) toward Asian women.

Dozens of widely shared articles bemoan the problematic stereotypes behind ‘yellow fever,’ a derogatory term signifying the sexual fetishisation of East Asians. In the Western world, they are always the ‘other’. Just under half of all participants in Harvard’s Implicit Association Test automatically associate European Americans with being American and Asian Americans with being foreign, indicating fertile ground for typecasting. Women share their experiences

USC study showed that AsianAmericans represent only one per cent of leading roles in Hollywood, compared to six per cent of the population. The few instances in which Asian women did appear reinforced the historical façade of an exotic porcelain doll who offers an experience unattainable with the women back home. Madame Butterfly, one of the first famous Western portrayals of an Asian woman, is a fifteenyear-old geisha who waits for

One widely suggested supporting factor is media influence. Until recently, Asian women have been nearly absent from Western politics and popular culture. A recent

her American lover for years after he’s moved on with a wife from home. She eventually attempts (as in the short story) or commits (as in the opera adaptation) suicide when she learns of his betrayal. Nearly a century later she graces the stage in a more palatable incarnation as Vietnamese bargirl Kim from the hit musical Miss Saigon, now seventeen and still the lovelorn ingénue. Actual women of colour were often pushed out of their own stories. Until 1956, the Hays Code governing major studio films in America banned depictions of interracial romance. Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood star, was passed over for the female lead of The Good Earth in favour of a white actress. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that we focus on alt-right and incel men who are unable to attract the attention of ‘emancipated’ women. Prominent Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin once posted a video featuring his Filipina ‘jailbait girlfriend’, an Internet term referring to a woman who looks young enough that pursuing her would be considered a crime. Despite embracing white supremacy, these men see Asians as a ‘model minority’ – honorary whites

“Although dating is treated as a wholly private choice, it does no good to continue blind to the structural forces at work behind who we find attractive. The naked declaration ‘no Asians’ bears a disquieting resemblance to the ‘WHITES ONLY’ signs ubiquitous on Jim Crow storefronts.”

worthy of their affections. At the same time, they buy into the submissive yet hypersexual stereotypes dissected above. A number of men undoubtedly fall into this camp, but it does not tell the whole story. Most white men who have a thing for Asian women are not misogynists, fascists, or racists. Most of them may not even crave a power imbalance. ‘Yellow fever’ cannot be examined as a one-sided affair. Critics of the mediabased analysis point out that the women who reciprocate problematic advances themselves bear responsibility for their ‘white fever’. In Japan, the term ‘gaijin hunter’ ridicules a woman who intentionally seeks out white men as companions, often with the implication that she is a gold digger pursuing a romantic relationship. Some white men who exclusively date Asian women acknowledge that they do so because Asian women have lower standards for them. The literature on whitepreferring racism in East Asian countries is nowhere near as extensive as that concerning the US or UK. It is so entrenched in society as to go unquestioned; too much a fact of life to merit

academic study. Take the case of Sarah Moran, a writer hired as an English teacher in Hong Kong without experience on the condition that she never reveal her mixed heritage. A year later, it comes out that Moran is half Filipina. One of her students pulls out. Wander through shopping malls from Delhi to Tokyo and you will find that the vast majority of ads depict models who are white or conform to white beauty standards: tall, light skin, large round eyes with double eyelids. In former British colonies, where English is the language of the elite, Received Pronunciation is a status symbol. Any untrained listener can hear the difference between the speaker who learned their English at boarding school and the one who picked up their fresh-off-the-boat accent from local tutoring centres and YouTube. The ultimate badge of respectability is a degree from the West, ideally Oxbridge or Ivy League. All too often, whiteness confers prestige, and prestige confers desirability. Although dating is treated as a wholly private choice, it does no good to remain blind to the structural forces at work behind who we find attractive. The naked declaration ‘no Asians’

bears a disquieting resemblance to the ‘WHITES ONLY’ signs ubiquitous on Jim Crow storefronts. Even now, those of libertarian, right-wing, or merely racist persuasions argue that private businesses should be allowed to limit service to whomever they please, ignoring that such permissiveness primarily enables systemic prejudice. A restaurant refusing to serve black people reinforces a structural injustice that permeates every area of life; a white woman (or worse yet, an Asian woman) refusing to date Asian men surely does the same. Doesn’t it? ‘It’s okay to have a type’: a refrain commonly heard in our sex-positive feminist community. But if attraction is a kind of magic, it’s a potion whose main ingredients include subconscious value judgments we are fed from childhood. Recognising this is crucial to confronting the very real legacy of racism that underpins seemingly innocuous dating trends. Will Tinder one day be urged to implement affirmative action into its rating system? I doubt that such a proposal will ever be taken seriously. We remain

“A study at Columbia found that with other factors normalized, an Asian man would have to earn a staggering $247,000 more to become as desirable to a white woman as a man of her own race.”

“Enter an interpretation of ‘yellow fever’ floated by numerous think pieces: men who are insecure in their masculinity seek out a woman who can make them feel in control, and (consciously or not) take the mental shortcut toward Asian women.” fiercely protective of our sexual and romantic choices, which are viewed as amongst the most sacrosanct of the private sphere. Dating preferences don’t change at will, and taking responsibility for the ways in which mainstream perceptions fail both Asian men and women, as well as men and women of other minorities, is far from a straightforward task. Not every relationship between an East Asian woman and a white man is toxic. In fact, some studies have found them to be amongst the marriages with the lowest divorce rates and highest educational attainments. Of course, this raises the possibility that the trope of the white guy in tech with an Asian girlfriend is not a point of shame, and that what needs to change is the inferior position which Asian men face in the perceptions of peers of all races. Asian American writers, activists, and public figures have begun pushing back against damaging notions of Asian attractiveness with a frank and often uncomfortable dialogue that acknowledges troubling biases without succumbing to vitriol. They debate the deleterious effects of applying Western standards of masculinity to Asian men, conventionally fictionalised

as effeminate or nerdy in ways incompatible with the character of the romantic hero. They praise Crazy Rich Asians, the first major Hollywood studio film to feature a majority-Asian cast in 25 years, for representing a desirable Asian hero while calling out producers for casting a biracial actor to do so. Dialogue alone won’t balance swiping statistics, but it is a step towards reclaiming an identity that has been tainted as much as that of the Asian woman. Nevertheless, the entrenched prestige of whiteness manifests itself much more explicitly in Asian societies than it does in progressive Western ones, and faces higher barriers in communities less used to confronting social injustice. There are no simple solutions. How do you convince a young mother who’s just trying to get the best education for her daughter that the Chineselooking Londoner will teach English as well as a whitepassing peer? Through this lens, the biggest issue with ‘yellow fever’ may not be incels or neo-Nazis, but the ingrained attitudes of societies which need to find a way to pursue what’s admirable about the West without elevating whiteness itself.

Whitby Harbou

You can’t quite put a finger on it – whetted, held up to feel the wind. Maybe it’s something on the – lift your head to chase it – sea spray, that skates across the mudflats and weaves between the salt-rotten wood-stump groynes. The abbey – count the steps: up

up up down down

– looms over the town. Clouds brood between its ossified remains; a fissured shale sky. Up up one hundred and ninety-nine ship timbers creak as the wind catches stories through the rain-soaked stone. The harbour breathes

down

– chase it through the steep and narrow streets – and the waves carry voices out to sea. Ships draw brushstrokes through the harbour walls. Maybe it’s something – chase it through the slate-dark bay – between the buoys that mark the cobbled roads, or spliced between the rigging, or a ripple through the breeze. The red-roofed, white-washed houses line the hills as ammonites curl deeper into sandstone. Feel the whetted wind.

And you still

can’t quite put a finger on it.

Portrait of Female Empowerment

Winner of The Isis visuals competition

Not London.

Cities with other litanies: Snow Hill, Nechells, Harbourne, Lozells. The late bus from Birmingham, cupped by the fierce hand of the Black Country, and house-proud Solihull, stealing looks, stuck out on its own down the Chiltern line, to Marylebone.

HAND: FORM AND CONSTITUTION

Where Are You From?

Cities with other rivers, other bridges to stand on and consider Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fairness, or the price of a bitter. While the Commonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; talk goes round and round What do they dream of in commuter towns?

Aesthetic Unease

om Collister was twenty years old when he was sentenced to two and a half years at HMP Camp Hill, a sentence cut short by his suicide in 2010. Before the government shut it down, the prison was infamous for its incompetency and nicknamed ‘Concentration Camp Hill’ by its inmates. Human rights controversies in 2008, stemming from an overcrowding crisis and rising concern about the number of inmates denied vocational work, placed Camp Hill on the map as one of Britain’s worst institutions. Tom Collister hanged himself in his cell using a belt he should not have been allowed to keep. His body was found by officers who had neither read the relevant policy nor been trained in first aid. His parents called his death unintentional, a cry for help rather than a true suicide attempt. Their belief that their son would not have died had the place been properly run is

difficult to deny. Yet the inquest concluded that “the tragedy of the case was the decision to imprison Tom Collister in the first place”. Collister’s crime was not murder or theft; it was weekends spent spray-painting with his friends. Graffiti and street art have become a staple element of urban noise since their modern emergence in Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Nowadays, street art is admired by many for its refusal to fit within the conventions of any defined art market. Its location is fundamental to what it is. But this hasn’t always been the case. Many see graffiti as antisocial, with the beauty of Brick Lane, Bristol, and their counterparts only being accepted into the mainstream in the last few decades. Our laws have failed to catch up with this cultural shift. Where ‘damage’ is anything less than £5000 worth, The Criminal Damage Act 1971 and Malicious Damage

Act 1861 permit up to six months’ imprisonment; when it crosses that threshold, the period of imprisonment shoots up to a maximum of ten years – equal to that for committing sexual assault, or creating child pornography. Realistically, this maximum is very rarely reached, and even then is only usually given out to those who have committed irreversible damage to property. Shorter prison sentences are not uncommon for graffiti artists, though. The classic penalty is six months, and the harshest seems to be capped at two and a half years. This elasticity is useful in a sense, as it provides flexibility for the courts to match their response to the seriousness of criminal damage in question. But the maximum sentence also permits, and arguably encourages, custodial sentences for street art in a way that no other countries in the West do. The ethos behind this overstep is simple enough: the threat of a prison sentence will reduce vandalism, and that is a win for the taxpayer. Every year £100 million in public funds is spent cleaning up forty-five football pitches’ worth of graffiti which would otherwise coat Kensington and Chelsea council estates. Imprisonment acts as a deterrent and authorities make ‘examples’ of prolific artists to push this agenda, under the justification that we will all save money. The British Transport Police has recently reformed its vandalism squad, claiming to combat an 86% increase in London’s graffiti crimes since 2016. They cite the introduction of overt and covert CCTV,

highly visible police patrols, and “anti-graffiti technologies” in their plans to bounce back. Colin Saysell, unofficially elected ‘graffiti bogeyman’ and ex-poster boy for the hi-tech pursuit of artists, endorses heavy prison sentences. His descriptions of graffiti artists are littered with words like ‘evil’ and ‘ferocious’, and he is not alone in his dislike. Brian Cooke, former TFL board member and recently suspended member of the Conservative Party, calls graffiti artists “common scum”. Members of the police force have publicly compared their hunt to a game of “cat and mouse”. The ‘Broken Windows Theory’, initially developed by sociologists George Kelling and James Wilson, forms the backbone of anti-graffiti action. The argument is that tackling small acts of anti-social behaviour prevents a climate of crime and thus reduces the chance of more ‘serious’ crimes being committed. But policing of this nature arguably creates more problems than it solves, typically resulting in discrimination against minority communities and unnecessary strain on the system. The idea faces significant criticism. A 2016 report by police officers Peters and Eure found that in New York City the crackdown on low-level crime disproportionately affected areas occupied by black and Hispanic residents, with white residents left largely unaffected. They also established that the fall in felony crimes, which had been credited to broken windows policing, did not cease when this policing was phased out. They blamed “broad

generalisations” and a lack of empirical evidence for the theory’s initial influence. Legal theorist Bernard Harcourt was one of the first to shatter ‘broken windows’ in 2005, citing the countless social, cultural, and economic factors which impact the prevalence of crime and had been largely ignored by Kelling and Wilson. The stimuli historically responsible for increases in serious crime include poverty levels, job availability, and average population age, amongst others. The ‘broken windows’ hypothesis, in abstract, seems somewhat sensible, but in practice, the presence of graffiti is hardly going to urge someone to rob a bank, nor is it remotely likely to be a deciding factor. His account, still somewhat controversial, has been widely rendered untenable since the early 2000s by criminologists. Kelling himself says that his theory has been “often misapplied” and regrets the actions that have been taken in its name. Built-in social prejudice might make one feel more nervous on a street coated with tags than on the clean streets of Knightsbridge, but this prioritises certain demographics over others. Aesthetic unease does not justify extensive prison sentences for young people. The argument isn’t that street art should be decriminalised. ‘Malicious mischief ’, as the courts describe it, should not be a free-for-all. As it stands, though, the policy of ‘punishment to fit the crime’ is being completely disregarded. Street art constitutes a crime which is non-violent and, since 72% of it appears on public rather than

private property, effectively victimless. The law’s response fails to reflect this. One artist, known as Zerx, found himself incarcerated for twelve months in 2012 in the most high-risk wing of a Category B prison, normally reserved exclusively for long term and high-security prisoners. The 23.5 hours a day he recalls being locked in his cell each weekend were broken up by the educational courses he took with “people who had murdered their wives and were doing 28 years in jail”. He says in interviews following his release that, even though he wasn’t “robbing a bank, killing anyone, or committing serious grievous bodily harm…” he was still sharing a prison block with murderers and rapists. Many graffiti convicts claim that time in prison criminalised them more than graffiti ever did, reporting a network of criminal contacts, lack of work ethic, and no real hope for rehabilitation upon release. Collister’s case demonstrates just how severe these consequences can be. The hypocrisy of this disproportionate response would be laughable if it weren’t disturbing. One artist recalls being asked to paint a mural for the prison in which he was serving a two-year sentence. Murals, sprinkled across cities and Instagram feeds, literally illustrate the irony of the law’s rejection of unsolicited street art. Artists who have made their name breaking the law

are paid to create legal works by those who admire them. DPM, a prolific London graffiti collective, went to court in 2008 on the day the Tate Modern opened an exhibition titled Street Art, featuring selected perpetrators of criminal damage. When this was pointed out to the judge, he called the group “self-indulgent” and promptly read out their sentences. There have been dozens of examples of high profile arrests over the last decade. In recent years, custodial sentences were given to the Barton Hill Boys and Sesk, contemporaries of Banksy in Bristol. Statistics suggest that almost a thousand street artists are processed annually for graffiti damage offences. Colin Saysell believes that graffiti artists are essentially bullies. He argues that imposing one’s will visually on other members of society constitutes bullying, and that street art boils down to an imposition of will. If forcing the public to look at things they would rather not look at is worthy of criminalisation, such a definition surely extends to those who are paying for ad spaces and filling them with images people don’t want to see. The distinction seems to be that there’s money on the table in one scenario and none in the other – a distinction that could also explain why criminal damage is acceptable when it suits mainstream tastes but otherwise warrants a decade in jail time.

High profile cases of street art selling for extortionate sums make headlines. ‘The Creative Foundation v Dreamland Leisure’ was a ground-breaking legal case that consisted of a fight over who owned a chunk of wall Banksy had ‘vandalised’ in 2015, with one party ordered to pay £100,000 in damages for their attempt to claim it. A year before, similar drama ensued after Banksy painted a piece in Clacton-on-Sea in the wake of a village’s UKIP victory, essentially calling out the residents for ingrained racism. Resenting the implication, the Council scrubbed the piece, but was quick to announce that Clacton would be “delighted” should Banksy return to commit another act of criminal damage. Cities like London and Bristol use graffiti to haul in substantial tourism revenue. In 2010, David Cameron presented Barack Obama with a piece by Eine as diplomatic gift. The trend becomes obvious. Despite the courts stuttering that artistic merit is not a defence, in effect, street art is seen as both a criminal offence and a cash prize. Motivated by money and ambivalent about whether artists are vandals or visionaries, the system continues to hand out unnecessary legal sanctions. In its current state, the justice system prioritises the property over the person, and, worse still, creates a structure in which prosecution occurs only where there is no profit to be made. Street art is evidence of a disturbing hypocrisy which must be outgrown, both de facto and de jure.

Characters in Four Acts

A Ghuí ar a Croí

a translation of WB Yeats

Dá mbeadh brait gréasacha na neimhe Maisithe le solas airgid óir, Iad gorma, dorcha, agus séimhe, ‘S mise amháin ina sealbhóir, Chuirfinn fútsa na brait gan agó; Ach, níl a’am ach brionglóidí bochta; Chuir mé mo bhrionglóidí fútsa fadó: Céimnigh orthu go ciúin, cosnochta.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

SOMEWHERE IN DÜSSELTAL

he young woman pays Frau Manuela Grobbel the 200€ deposit. Well, she follows Frau Grobbel through the house with the money scrunched in her hands like a Monopoly player about to pass GO. Her name is Ebba. After paying the deposit, she receives a ring with two scratched silver keys. One is for the front door, and the other is for her downstairs bedroom. Frau Grobbel tells her which is which, and leaves the cool metal in her palms. At midday Ebba leaves the house. She locks her bedroom door and the house door, then walks a few steps down the driveway before turning around. Ebba returns to the house to retrieve her coat and scarf. It is a cold October day, and she makes sure to lock both doors behind her before heading out. Later, when Ebba returns home, Frau Grobbel is waiting for her. It is Ebba’s choice what she wants to do, insists the Frau, and here Ebba is inclined to agree. However, Frau Grobbel

continues, it would be better were the houseguest not to lock her bedroom door. Ebba understands that it may not be completely necessary to lock her bedroom door, that the front door will quite suffice. She knows that anyone who comes to the house with an axe in his hand (for it would be a man) would not fail to break down the front door, or any other door, in order to act on his deranged desires. But she wonders what, then, is the purpose of her key? Shouldn’t she give it one, by using it? But Ebba is a good girl and does as she is told. The next morning, Ebba does not lock her bedroom door, and when she returns home in the evening, she finds that the lights in her bedroom no longer work. Ebba stands in the doorframe and flicks the switch up and down, up, down, up... she is trying to trick light into being. But the room remains dark and the night peers in indifferently. Using the light on her phone Ebba, investigates. It is not long before the mystery is solved:

the lamps are connected to the light switches, and have all been switched off at the base. All Ebba needs to do is turn these on and she will be the Godhead commanding light into the world. It seems obvious that the Frau has intervened. To reach the institute each morning Ebba has two options. Either she jumps aboard the 721 bus from Karl-Geusen-Straße and alights at Prinz-GeorgAllee before crossing the road to Eulerstraße, or she can take the 79 U-Bahn train to HeinrichHeine-Allee and walk from there. Today Ebba takes the bus because it means she will not have to walk in the rain, even though it isn’t raining heavily. It is what her grandfather would call a monkey’s wedding. Usually this thought would make Ebba smile, but today she thinks that the monkey should have married at the weekend. The bus pulls up and Ebba asks to buy a ticket. Where to, the driver says. A few stops, somewhere in Düsseltal, says Ebba. She has not memorised the name because it is written down on her phone. The driver, suspiciously now: is it in Düsseldorf? And Ebba says: yes, of course, it has Düssel in the name, only she does not say that. Yes, it’s only a short

journey, she says. The driver: a short journey is three stops and 1.30€, but you’re going to have to pay 2.80€, and she says: of course, I meant – but Ebba has the change ready and just hands it to the driver. After taking a seat, she feels as if she is being watched. Ebba shifts her rucksack so that it is resting on her lap. She lacks the confidence to remove her coat and scarf, though, and by now she is really too warm. She will be sweating by the time she arrives. At the institute Ebba enters an office. Here, she is handed a form to fill out for a discounted public transport ticket and told where to buy one. She asks: will I be able to buy this tomorrow? The woman at the desk meets her gaze. She says: you can buy one anytime from Monday to Friday, between the hours of 8am and 10am or from 12pm noon til 2pm, as is clearly stated here. Ebba is relieved. Unfortunately, Ebba will not be able to buy the ticket tomorrow, because tomorrow is the day of German reunification and therefore a public holiday. Disappointing, but Ebba has exciting news. Now it is time to mention the scholarship she has received. Tentatively, Ebba asks about her grant. She is told: you

owe us 40€. It does not cover everything. After class at the institute Ebba walks into the old city, pavement turning to cobblestone. She finds a diner and orders a pizza topped with garlic. The man serving her is impatient with her accent and repeats the word ‘garlic’ back at her. He does this many times, till he is shouting: GARLIC. Ebba is primly offended. She moves to eat, standing, at a small high table in the corner. Customers wanting a chair must pay a euro more! Back at the house, Ebba is in the dark. Lately she has been feeling inarticulate and believes that a spell has been cast on her. Upstairs, Lotte (a vicious terrier) is barking loudly towards the front of the house. Frau Grobbel, who sleeps upstairs, lets it go on – or perhaps she is dead. All at once, after an eternity of insistent yapping, the dog becomes quiet. Ebba thinks of the man who followed her through the old city and lingered when she did. Ebba is perceptive, even when someone has cast a spell on her. She caught on to what the man was doing at a pedestrian crossing. Rather than cross the road, Ebba paused for a

moment, unsure whether to turn right onto KĂśnigsallee or to head across the river. Do you know the old city of DĂźsseldorf? If so, you will be familiar with the KĂśnigsallee. It is a beautiful tourist spot. Two long, wide boulevards on either side of the Rhine, with shops selling clothes Ebba cannot afford. The long river, its central passageway, is glittering and opaque tonight. Ebba crosses while the light on the crossing is still green. She pauses on the bridge as if wanting to look out over the water for a moment, then takes a photo. She sees the man waiting behind her; it brings to mind a young child hovering by his mother while she speaks on the phone. The child is content to be patient for now. He anticipates her full attention soon.

Where everything connects Come to our

Postgraduate Open Day Saturday 14 Mar 2020 (9.30am-4pm) at SOAS University of London RSVP E: study@soas.ac.uk www.soas.ac.uk

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NATARAJAN

JOSH

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ANNABELLE CHUNG

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BANKS DAY

GERDA

KRIVAITE

LUCY

ZHANG

CHARLOTTE

COPEMAN

LEO

GEORGE

PHILLIPS

PERMAN

LAUREN

BENNETT

LIMBU

THYNNE

PAGE

LUCY

HARRISON

KRISZTINA

JEDLOVSZKY

SRUTOKIRTI

BASAK

SHUTTER

NOEL

LOW

RITA KIMIJIMA-DENNEMEYER

JANE

KATIE

IMOGEN

MALPAS

NAT

CHEUNG

LAURA SOFIA ERIN

LAURA

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MCGRIELE AGUILAR

COURVILLE NEWEY

PATRICIA

ZHAI

KALLI

MOSTYN

DOCKRILL

TURTLE

PIGGOTT

The Isis

Hilary 2020

Anywhere but London, Along the Tanjong Rhu Road, Or somewhere in DĂźsseltal.

human

Emeralds, Icebergs, Protests, Pyramid Vegans.

HT20

And Poems (that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to be in English).