The Menteur 2016 Issue by The Menteur

LUX The Menteur

is an arts and literary magazine

written, edited and produced by the University of Kentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Humanities MA students. Launched in 2012, the magazine adopts a different theme each issue, which inspires a rich variety of poetry, prose, non-fiction, art and photography submissions year on year. The editorial team has taken an inter-disciplinary approach for 2016 and sought submissions from both students

and Parisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; arts and writing community to produce a magazine with exciting content and wide readership appeal.

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur â&#x20AC;&#x153;She is tossed by the waves but does not sinkâ&#x20AC;? Motto of the city of Paris

Keep your friends close, but your books closer. Join the world's first online book club. For your first free book, enter code: kent thepigeonhole.com

Vital Cycle #1, 2014 by Riccardo Angelini

Contents

8 Contributors 11 Editorial Letter 12 Poetry 20 Fiction 36 Non-fiction

Sarah Bolwell Editor-in-Chief

Silvestre Natalia Art Director

Rachel Foulger Assistant Editor & Proofreader

Emma Cheshire Assistant Editor

Ellie Martin Poetry Editor

Simon Millward Poetry Editor & Proofreader 8

Ayanda Mutere Assistant Art Director

Jack Haddow Poetry Editor

Rebekah Mays Fiction Editor

Ryan Brown Poetry Editor

Anne Loupy Fiction Editor

Frances Morton-Campbell Website & Proofreader

Rawaa Talass Social Media 9

CONTRIBUTORS

Adam Merzel Fiction Editor

Match Piece (Film No. 1), 1966 by Yoko Ono Â© Yoko Ono

2016

has been a year of flux for the Menteurs thus far. Each member of the editorial team has uprooted and moved to Paris, some for a few months, some longer. Looking out of the window on the Eurostar from Kent to Paris it’s not possible to see the “Calais Jungle” we read and hear about on the news, but the extra miles of newly-constructed fencing remind us that whilst 2016 has been a year of movement and change for us as students, it pales in comparison to the state of flux that millions have found themselves in following the conflict in Syria and other parts of the Middle East. On page 39, English and Comparative Literature student Ryan Brown interviews David Herd about his Refugee Tales project, which gives a voice to those who have sought asylum in the UK and hopes to stimulate national discussion on the subject. In ‘SEA-scape’ (p. 33) by London-based writer and artist Tamsin Koumis, the discussion of physical displacement is augmented by a focus on the displacement of guilt and blame – subjects rarely mentioned amongst those privileged to live in stability. As well as external factors, internal forces can foster a state of flux. Several artists and writers in this issue explore how we can never really divorce ourselves from this sense of perpetual motion. It’s temporal, it’s spatial, it’s emotional. MA Creative Writing student Anne Loupy explores these themes in XXY (p. 31). I’m also pleased that this edition of the Menteur raises important questions about gender fluidity in a world which is becoming increasingly aware of gender issues.

And flux is not always a cause for despair. To be in flux is also to be on the offensive, it’s an attack on stagnation. It’s to be ever in search of solutions and resolutions – to s’ameliorer. Just as we must struggle to find peace in a world full of chaos, so too, must we harness a kind of stability within the confines of our ever-fluctuating surroundings. This stability can only be achieved by embracing flux, which, like the wind always manages to negotiate even the most obdurate of opponents. Try though we may to neatly tie up the loose ends of life, flux reigns supreme. And to be honest, we’d rather not envision an alternative. We are thrilled to be able to bring you a revamped issue of the Menteur for 2016, with a fresh re-design and new paper. We believe that this minimal aesthetic lets the illustrations and artworks stand out and brings the publication up todate with current visual trends of the ever-changing publishing world. We hope you enjoy.

Sarah and the Menteurs 11

Little Girl on a Fake Beach, 2015 by Daniel Gentelev

POETRY

Life Map

Four directions: This (now), That (then), There (ahead), and Here (always). 1. Now-Then Between This and That, the streets seem orderly, pre-planned. Few shifts have happened yet. The streets would be where you expect them, with childhood, Britain, tri-state area, their story, my story, these stories. Distinct roads, sometimes crossing. The difference between family, friends, self. Some deadends: dancing, law, chemistry. The renamed streets: Ex-Close, Left Street. 2. Now-Ahead Between This and There, the streets follow a river. The river is Change. The river changes its name, and is later Being. A path cuts through the park called No Path. The buildings are where you want them to be. A few things repeat: Music, books, laughter, voice. A graveyard for what has been given up: greed, judgment, immunity, obsession.

There are smaller trees in the park, young, new to the light: wait, watch, learn, unlearn. The current house is consistent. 3. Ahead-Always Between There and Here, things align. But less than half is mapped so far. 4. Then-Always Between That and Here, a few things are firmly rooted: what I want more than life is to see love in these hands. A garden with small plants. A knowingness. Of how and what to tend.

By Emma Sedlack

Glance

Cloud-tractored sky shafts glare from gathered mud, magic towers of Dublin shine factory silvers, set in clean sun, air shoals encircling still silent columns tell the stopgo constant flux of life I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop looking at your eyes

By Tom Tracey

Lothian Road

An end to this seems too tidy, too complete for someone rooted in the ground of waiting. But finally, it happens. The traffic opens in a widening silence. Step out into this emptied river, wade through the space between things. Consider this carefully: now is the chance to change course. The current washes past, compels you nowhere, but carries you here.

By Emma Sedlack

Beckoning

Tuesday night: anonymous within the week. your words make an imprint on this untouched clay: a bee kissing a petal; bodies change into beds. I am grateful for this diversion, a welcome against days thick with lassitude, unpromising hours dribbling into space and time, fluid and useless as Daliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clocks bent around walls painted with magnolia, universal colour of anhedonic nihilists.

Curtains

Making a treasure trove with my hands, I cradle the phone, electronic glow of text like a star exploding alongside me.

The curtains draw â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Broken white caps and baritone hums Flames sway upon a pedestal of glass Copper tiptoes -And a limitless curve starts to glitter. Surrounded by dimples of the sea, the whitest of teeth begin to rise. A gentle push, the slightest glide, braced and embraced: ride my friends And we ride until the day breaks.

By Colin Dardis

By Anne Loupy

Eau de Vie

I look into an ocean of chilly blue and seafoam greenand I almost drown. With another salt water-filled breath I am pulled from the icy waters and plunged into a warm bath of honey. Sticky buoyancy keeps me still and I taste the sweetnessupon my lips holds the slightest curveand before it reaches my throat my body plunges back in to the sea. Water combusts and I fizzle down, down to the floor where I find a flat sheet of silk. Wrapped tightly inside, I push off with my feet, One hand holding the drape One hand outstretched reaching for the surface break. Inches away Where are you? I breathe in the icy salt water and taste from. Always there to open passageways but never to latch them shut.

By Anne Loupy

H20

By the haversack backtalk of rockbrook, the superficial kisses of skipped stones, through the steady catarrh of an elegant tap, or the gurgle of stovetop (on the hob)

As Far as I Can See

that weeps out its lifeblood with a pithy shriek ~ O morenita, dark little hothouse of my dreams!

As far as I can see As far as the eye can see As there is a vacancy As canticles fighting sea

runs a cable you’d wrung from your hair’s mess all while the cordless caught you barefoot in birthday dress above the broken water of a sodden cloth.

Mercantile infantile I’ll fan tie Turk man isle As for as I nose As forest ein ohs As far as I know Safari’s ion hose

By Tom Tracey

Why be afraid of earthworms They will pass on past your years Meaning is a surplus product Just like us, does not inhere Shout my name in blood on the side of language As far as I can tell As a vase is high cunt hell As father’s clientele As faster sigh tank elle Uncle’s ankles uncurl sunken

By Seedomir Jeden

Individual detainee status record - GITMO system of operations manual, 2013 by Silvestre Natalia

FICTION

Awaiting edits, my love

You infuse my folios (that mark the years). Your handwriting lurks around every corner; it threatens to jump off the page and leap down my throat into my oesophagus, where it lingers long after I turn my page, where I let you scribe your words. I remember when I first saw your script — unkempt and scrawling — like you couldn’t care less, though you could. Undated. Wispy, white beard, Silver, long hair, Beautiful, beautiful bright kind eyes. Me watching him, watching people One by one. Now he’s writing in the sand with a stick, Giving clues to the girl with dreadlocks On the bench. He’s refusing to speak. He’s all I hear. He’s tactile, humane; I want to share this with the world And keep it for myself, as fuel. Maybe that would change everything, Maybe this would change everything. He knows I’m watching, Watching him, watching me Watching him Share an orange. It’s a bad poem. Is it even a poem? I knew you then — we were friends in a foreign city. Joined at the hip. Undated. A eulogy to my dead grandma: “For Grandma Daisy.” Undated (n.b. write dates). Notes on friends talking about love, in Spanish. Sara (from Spain): “Love is where most people put most of their energy and effort, but we’re failing as a society. Why aren’t we talking about this?” Mari (from Chile): “Gay love is free love. There aren’t the same obligations, or expectations to stay as ‘a couple’. You do it through choice, in spite of all the voices in opposition. It means choosing to be with someone again and again, out of love.”

Sara: “Eric Fromm changed my life.” I think, maybe, you were there for this chat. Clearly you didn’t say anything of note. I think, maybe, I loved you then. Next: an extract from a letter, from Sartre to de Beauvoir. “I am mastering my love for you and turning it inwards as a constituent element of myself ... You are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around me and the things around me alter my love.” I was not “yours” then; I was “someone else’s” — though I don’t like to talk about possession. Once, while we were entwined and you were entering me, you told me that your arm, your leg, your finger, your hair ... it was all mine, you said. It felt a bit much to be honest. Turns out, it was. Also, a quote by Judith Butler: “One knows love somehow only when all one’s ideas are destroyed, and this becoming unhinged from what one knows is the paradigmatic sign of love.” Remember when I wrote a list of all the signs, and shared them with you? They were your signs, too, you told me, and I was so reassured. You were so reassuring. Undated. A spider-diagram: “THE FUTURE.” Then some musings about the concept of “good girls” (sexist), “bad girls” (sexist), “bad boys” (sexy), “good guys” (sweet). “You just fancy me because you think I’m a bad boy,” you once floated insecurely, during a day smoking in the sun. I disagree(d). Really — now — I wish you I’d better savoured your sweetness. I wish I’d taken all the kindnesses, and cherished them like glacé cherries from a currant bun. Till I really needed them. 22/09/13 (finally). In the park, sol, ukulele Avoiding the sense of sensation Avoiding the stench of stagnation Miradas serias y pensivas Procupacciones and haziness Yearning for clarity. I think I was stoned. 6/10/13 I feel saturated

Overwhelmed Underwhelmed I have nothing and everything to add. Don’t ask me (Ask me). I feel useless, un-used, under-used And used. Agonisingly at ease, Ill-at-ease. My skin is so soft, you say. Is it permeable? Is it delicate? When will it cease to be soft? Will it one day be calloused and brittle? I hope I’ll never be.

John wins a wonton wilfully.

You only love(d) me because I have soft skin. Maybe the electric heater in my room and the cold air outside made me dry, and stopped you caring. I’ll never forgive that radiator, or the winter. Unless you come back in the summer (though I can’t promise I’ll always be soft).

The dragonfly hatched first, slowly. It was about five inches long, and so delicate. Soon, it could fly and responded to its name when I called it ...

the end Then we wrote “a story” and gave up at “or ...” We passed the pen after each word there; we had so much patience then. Things were funny, with you. 7/8 Feb 2014 Dream I had a shoebox of tiny eggs — 2.4cm long. Some were tortoise eggs and some, miniature pelicans. One was a dragonfly.

When I got back (from where?), I realised that I could let the dragonfly go, and it’d survive. I didn’t want to touch it though worried it’d be crushed.

Undated.

It’s two pages, the dream*.

Objects obscured, but it’s not dark Out there on Obscurity Road, Lights bobbing past seem to be slowed And floating by could be a shark.

*With an asterisk, to add detail. You bought me a bracelet after I told you the sleep story (including the asterisk — you were really interested in me then). It had bells on it that looked like dragonflies. And it was beautiful because you were. I saw the bracelet in a drawer yesterday, and literally quivered at your so easily extinguished, scented-candle-like love.

Big fish, little fish, cardboard box, Tune! Fish! Tuna fish! Hardcore socks! Fishing for kisses, missing lips, Catching caresses on the line. Snatching a wet one — a good sign, Then to dine — d’you want chips?

Undated notes about anonymous homeless people:

Feeble fire; foes fumble, tumble And, if friend, or fee fi fo fum, Be bi, or bro, or big on bum Or boobs, I’ll love you man — mumble.

“Brief Encounters/Mere Moments: seeing and feeling on the streets.”

Need we heed these heebie-jeebies?

Then we did two mind-maps to plan a story about a lovers’ tiff. You wrote “brainstorm” and crossed it out. I’m epileptic, remember?

“Note to self: quote about empathy?”

Our handwritings are mingled (we sometimes wrote together). That was nice, while it lasted. I read that without crying. I think there was just enough of me in there, for you to be a little muffled. Haven’t heard from you in a while.

30 May 2014

Seven/one/fourteen (your writing). Then came Sally, all sodden and cold-footed (this week she had a socklessness situation). “What big boobs!” she noted, quite flustered. “Although I’m confident I’ll grow watermelons soon.” John smooched, groped and fucked Juan despite having said he despised “faggots.” Sally felt revulsion, while moistening simultaneously.

I had another seizure yesterday. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had now. I don’t remember much, as usual. I was making garlic mushrooms at the time, so it seems. I do remember, actually, feeling happy about my autonomy — ironically. Then Diego and Azhara found me on the floor with blood dripping from my mouth, groaning to breathe. I recall little of the following hour — just a mixture of made-up memories and reminders. I feel lost with this condition. Then again, I’m sure I’d feel lost without it. I’m afraid of dying and I’m afraid of losing my mind.

Notes for the Neurologist: Fuzzy cognitive function. Sudden death — decreasing risk. Heart murmur. Anxiety and depression. Life without medication. Precautions? God ... I was bloody paranoid. You cried when you first saw me fit. I came around and you were there, with your tears all over the bedsheets. I loved the way you held me when you thought you’d lose me. Sometimes I wished the helplessness would return, when pills cured me; so you would give me all of you, because I’d need it. How pathetic is that? These days, I don’t want all of you — or any of the masquerades of you. I just need the part of you that’s really you — that’ll do ... 2/8/14 You can stand in the corner, I can hover at the edge, She can screech in the middle, He can saunter at the sides — We can travel with the tides. They will joke at the centre, They might banter just behind, He’ll sex-stare across the circle — I might avert, just in time. We are in a kind of mime.

B, C; one, two, three; Baby, you and me...”

17/8/14

31/08/14, London

If all the people I love lived in the same town, would the place become drenched or would love become just a noun? Or maybe, or maybe, all our cravings would be quenched?

A truly beautiful weekend

Blank page, then: a children’s poem we wrote — long and sugary.

Great fun with great fun friends.

Why?

Turkish and Caribbean food for breakfast with you.

If I were a butterfly and you were a bee, I’d flutter by, and you’d sting me ...

Fumbling and rummaging through mishmash second hand shops.

It went from B to Z. We loved letters. You loved love letters, though I gave them all back to you. I hope I’ll get them in the post one day — with you, wrapped up in a Jiffy full of polystyrene balls soaked in regret and longing and enduring love. I’d open you up, chuck out two-thirds of the polystyrene and keep the love. I need to know where that missing “A” went, to put myself back together. And if I found it, we’d have A to Z, and it’d be “easy as one, two, three; as simple as do, re, mi; A,

Holding hands, and smiling and kissing. Fantastic sex and cuddling. Best vegetable pasta bake, including kale. Watched a film (sleepily) and drank herbal tea and ate baklava

street party. Listen to bossa nova, talk to next-door neighbour (90-something, Italian, incomprehensible and sweet). Taste the cakes in the competition (apple and caramel, Turkish, chocolate, carrot ...) Finish editing story. Glory at life. Overflowing with love and joy. You cry. Last song: “There’s nothing like this.” Submit story. Kiss goodbye. I showed you this — hysterical — as evidence not to leave. The jury was out. And so were you. 28/03/15 Notes from a conference. “We are living in a culture that breeds dissatisfaction and depression. Embracing yourself is an act of civil disobedience. Focussing outwards, not inwards.

Flux #1, 2015 by Hannah Mumby,

Addiction is the ultimate manifestation of reaching for consumption to fulfil a need or fix ourselves.” Is that what your addiction is (the one that helped to break us): a fix? Anyway, we both know there was a lot more to it than that. Love isn’t magic, but it felt entirely miraculous. You deny that now —

and chocolate tart. The candle smelt wonderful. (Sleepy) sex.

“You’ve made me happier than anyone ever has,” has become: “You were an odious influence.”

Woke up in the night with a stomach ache. It was horrible and it hurt, but I was happy. Too happy to be made unhappy.

“You’ve shown me how to live,” has become: “You ruined my life.”

I moved into another room, so’s not to disturb you. You joined me in the morning, panicked. Huge vegetarian breakfast (toast, poached egg, avocado, baked beans, garlic mushrooms, orange and mango juice, coffee). Rest of film, with coffee ... shower.

“I will wait forever until our time is right,” has become: “Fuck off.” “You are everything,” has become: “You are a former love, little more.” Yes, words were our motif. And you’ve said them all.

I wear a white dress. You say I look like “a vision.” I give you head. Go out and join the street party.

But you haven’t got our story straight — so I’ll keep making revisions. Waiting for you to send me yours …

Go to pharmacy, then to a café to edit our children’s story. Head home (16 Mill Road) ... wonder at the wonderful carnival

by Sophie Hemery

Cobbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hill, 2015 by Meagan Castelein

Here Jerry Garcia died up here. Alright, fine. But he did for many who unexpectedly found themselves that night with candles in hand, staring at each other’s feet, mulling over the lyrics that might sum his spirit up best. I like to imagine this vigil… the kind of funeral that doesn’t concern itself with the body, or eulogy. I sit here now, myself, fantasizing that my own be like that someday. However, today is filled with life, not death. I’ve got my back to the (in)famous reservoir that marks the summit of Cobb’s Hill Park: one of two eyes with which Rochester stares back at whoever flies, or in Jerry’s case lies, overhead. In an apparent nod to antiquity, the Water Authority has erected a self-congratulating monument at one end. Looming radio towers pretend like they get along with the trees down at the other. I choose not to look in today; I just imagine it full. I think about how it’s only ever the two extremes. To the brim, or barren with only the nefarious metal nipples interrupting the naked concrete. They greet pleading eyes peering through iron bars that withhold the reservoir’s secrets. But maybe that’s all Cobb’s Hill is meant to be: A secret, a something I’ll never quite get. I mean, who the hell is Cobb anyway? And exactly which of the many wooded and grassy slopes around these parts are supposed to constitute his hill? I look down at the grass between my legs and wonder if Cobb ever even sat here. If he ever stared out at this singular vista, appraising his own existence… Here, safely out of the skyline’s depressed reach... Here, mocked by the smoke stacks secreting their pillows of waste… Here, in the echo climbing its way up Cobb’s bush from the playing courts below… Here, just off from the tracks supporting trains no longer supporting you or me. Here, tortured by the white noise only highways can produce. 390, 490, 590. All of them converging down there. Funneling. -A warbler whose native state eludes me flutters down from a tree just near where the lookout drops off. It’s got it good up here. Shade or shine whenever it pleases, and the view. “I don’t want you getting too close to the edge, I said.” Well I didn’t say it. That was a concerned Grandmother demanding her little legacy follow orders. Grandpa totes the other enfant along the same lines, but he lets this one negotiate more of the edge than the younger could. “Some view,” he tosses out over it. I then see him point downtown and exclaim, “There’s Rochester.” That’s just foolish, I thought. I looked around to see if anyone else had caught the remark, looked for the bird. Surely he’d’ve taken offense. This is Rochester.

by Adam Merzel

Nosebleed, 2015 by Hannah Mumby

Short Days

My best friend assured me it would have always happened, because he’d been watching my knees in a coffeeshop with longing. Later, when we touched each other, I was amazed with the ease of it.

a mark on my chest and tell me you had noticed it days ago. In the U.S. I always bought Forever Stamps with self adhesive backing to them, like stickers. In France, I was excited that they don’t make Le Monde stamps with self adhesive, and instead every letter I sent someone would be with a small sample of my DNA – the thing that pushed it from country to country. Except I could never get them to stick. I had to affix every stamp with the aid of a gluestick.

Lovers linger in your senses even after you’ve stopped thinking about them. I find that smell is where they stay longest. The other day I smelled your deodorant on the metro. It was like you were laying on top of me again, your weight pleasurably suffocating. We are in a park together, and you are trying to get me to leave the bench and come into the sunshine. You ask me if this is what being in love is like.

I watched my best friend watch me fall in love, recognizing at once all the complications of watching such a thing. I had felt them too when I had watched her tumble head first months ago, but I had kept them private, finding them embarrassing, ridiculous. I wished I had shared them so that she would have been prepared to watch me.

If you miss someone very much, it is possible to feel physical symptoms. There is a dark ache that surrounds your middle. It slowly swells up through your chest until it becomes caught in your throat. It’s like choking while being able to breath just fine. I am reading the things you told me to read. I am touched by the intimacy of our eyes resting on the same line, the same sentence, the same letter. It feels like holding hands.

The best place to have a profound experience of emotion is on public transportation. She is bringing the groceries home, he is going to the doctor, she is going to school, he is coming home from a long trip, you are crying.

The first place we kissed each other was your dining room. Your neighbours were watching us from their balcony. You kissed my hands. Later, you would touch

I know exactly where I was when I decided I could be in love with you. It was in a coffee shop while you were staring at my knees.

by Sarah McEachern 29

Kopfinko preview 1, 2016 by Silvestre Natalia

XXY Lilly woke up this morning but she didn’t take her usual shower. She didn’t make tea or snack on a lactose-free vanilla yogurt cup. Lilly got up this morning, shoved the covers off. Ran her hand through her hair. Pulled out the pair of baggy jeans she wears when she’s painting. A white t-shirt that hung off her petite body in waves of cotton. She didn’t wear her heavy woolen pullover today. Lilly yawned and took a piss. She ripped off a bit of baguette and dipped it in the tub of margarine and ate it. Lilly didn’t feel like doing much today. She watched T.V. while she drank a soda. She decided that she needed a sandwich. She left her phone in her room and didn’t bother grabbing it on her way out. Sneakers. Old converse shoes like the ones she wore as a sticky child running around the baseball field in circles making noises. Lyle walks with long strides and a slight side-to-side jaunt. He often sniffs and wipes his nose with his left hand at the same time. He only smiles at the clever and the cunning. A typical vacant stare with a slight grimace that deters unwanted chatters. Lyle is confident. Lyle doesn’t have to worry about what others think of him. He farts in public and then laughs. He is the kind of guy girls want to fuck and other guys want to hate but can’t because Lyle isn’t a bad guy. Rather charming. When he walks his mind is free of his surroundings. He is light and his view is much sunnier than the weather outside. When Lyle no longer felt like wandering he went home. He opened the door and stepped inside. Took off his sneakers and his zip-up hoodie. Took his laptop into his room with him because he wanted to roll a joint and watch movies until he fell asleep. He took off his jeans and hopped in bed. His phone rang but he didn’t bother looking at it. Movies high were always more enjoyable. It’s always easier to sleep after a little bit of playtime and he reached down. Hand sliding. Belly. Pelvis. Panty line. Clit. She gasped. Closed the laptop. Put on the pullover. And fell asleep.

by Anne Loupy 31

Collage #2, 2015 by Tamzin Koumis

SEA-scape

The sea is a complex arena, fraught with spatial ambiguities - an in-between place, an endless horizon. This counterstage is often frequented by those cast-off and fleeing the shore. It is a space of contradictions. It is the slippery to our solid, the transience to land’s permanence. A barrier and a passage, our oceans both divide and connect the world. Boundaries drawn upon the cartographer’s map are less physical than they are socially and institutionally reproduced, especially at sea. There are no gates, only imagined lines guarded by patrol boats. These hazy and permeable borderlands create opportunity for the ‘creative art of living’: their fluid nature multiplies the potential for their subversion. No wonder pirates have an aptitude for taking advantage of such misty plateaus. Let us consider a chase: whilst roads and tracks offer limited pathways, the ocean offers a blank plain on which infinite routes may be taken. It is the ultimate platform of multiplicities. Like the bleeding lines from an ink drawing dropped into a basin of water, so too do the rules and regulations by which we live our land-lives dissolve and warp at sea. The social relations which dictate our movements and our actions are suspended, as all are made equally vulnerable on a fragile vessel.

The primordial force of the ocean resists our physical and social impressions, dis-allowing our controlling arm to dictate its structure. Waves upturn flotillas, whirlpools engulf pontoons. These tempestuous tides are the life cycle in which we are caught. Or does this naturalisation of the sea act as a velvet curtain on a puppet theatre, hiding the hands that pull the strings? The un-markable nature of the ocean disguises the power impressions which dent this seascape. There is no visible fortress, no flag to identify the controller. And yet here are human powers at work, of the most nocuous and invisible kind, which have a hand to play in altering evenness of this seemingly neutral playing field. The disjunction between varying moments of regulation at sea highlights our potential to control what goes on in our waters, whilst revealing inconsistencies in the application of such power. Vast illegal fishing trawlers chug into the seas of Senegal undetected, helping themselves to the rapidly depleting fish-supplies. Meanwhile, clandestine wooden fishing boats seeking passage to Europe are heavily criminalised and penalised within the same waters by European coastguards. The distinction between legality and illegality blurs as the flow of commodity continues un-impinged, whilst unwanted human-cargo is halted in its tracks. One nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s explorer is anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trespasser.

the ordinary is paused in motion. In their rich ambivalence, they are ruptured from our day to day. Upon a lone migrant boat, out at sea, those onboard literally and symbolically move forward, tossed through space and personhood. Dislocated from their normative social fields, they are propelled into an uncertain future. Identities are left on shore, as they become illegal, become migrants, become swimmers. Moments of sea-violence, born of an invisible power, adopt a characteristic invisibility. Blood washed, bodies sunk. It is hard to point the finger when the violence is an absence, when a single accident cannot be attributed to a single site. The sea. A placeless place. One of overlapping regimes, rights and wrongs. Unpredictable. Our ultimate scapegoat. Like a dog we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t control, the sea is something to blame whilst we go unpunished for our own lack of discipline.

Closer to home, advanced European technologies enable the tracking and detection of boats at sea. But who chooses which boats are rescued? And why is it that so many still drown? Many boats criss-cross this treacherous sea. Human craftsmanship rides on the dynamism of the ocean-swells. These noble ships epitomise both spatial and temporal disruption, as the normal and

by Tamsin Koumis

Collage #1, 2015 by Tamzin Koumis

Turkish Woman Lying, 2015 by Daniel Gentelev

NON-FICTION

Waterfall, 2015 by Ryan Dean

WALKING WITH REFUGEE TALES On Thursday 11 February, David Herd gave a lecture at the University’s Paris Centre at Reid Hall entitled ‘Countering the Silence of Indefinite Detention: Walking with Refugee Tales’. Picking up some on the issues addressed in the lecture, Ryan Brown put the following questions to David.

Ryan Brown What is Refugee Tales? David Herd Refugee Tales is a walk in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers and detainees. It ran for the first time in June 2015, with the walk going from Dover to Crawley via Canterbury. The walk followed the North Downs Way and was modeled on The Canterbury Tales. At every stop along the route there were performances of two tales. The first was the tale of a refugee, asylum seeker or former detainee, for instance ‘The Migrant’s Tale’, or ‘The Detainee’s Tale’. The other was the tale of somebody who works with refugees and asylum seekers, for instance ‘The Interpreter’s Tale’, or ‘The Lawyer’s Tale’. In each case the work was a collaboration between an established writer (Carol Watts, Ali Smith, Michael Zand, Abdulrazak Gurnah, among others) and the person behind the tale. The purpose of the route was to link up two immigration removal centres: Dover and Brook House. The overarching objective of the project was, and remains, to call for an end to indefinite detention.

RB How is indefinite detention possible and maintained? DH Under British law it is not permissible to detain a person indefinitely. In normal circumstances the maximum period a person can be detained without charge is 24 hours, rising to 96 hours, ‘if a serious crime is suspected, such as rape, murder, or other crimes which could cause severe harm to an individual or the security of the State.’ The only exception to these limits relates to persons suspected of terrorism, who, under special powers granted by the 2006 Terrorism Act could be detained for up to 28 days. This length of time was fiercely contested at the point of its introduction and the temporary powers granting it were allowed to lapse in 2011, the period of detention reverting to its pre-2006 limit of 14 days, being the point beyond which the interests of the individual cannot be overridden by the interests of the State. Unless, that is, the individual is held in immigration detention. The question, as you rightly observe, is how is it possible to maintain such a situation, which is to ask how it is legal? The reason it can be deemed legal, even while it contradicts UK law, is that as a practice it falls under immigration rules which, curiously, can follow different principles to those enshrined in law. But it is important to set those rules in context. Britain is the only country in Europe which does not have a time limit on immigration detention. In doing so it contradicts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the document that underpins other fundamental statements of rights), the ninth Article of which states that, ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile’. Shortly before the last General Election, and following a lengthy parliamentary inquiry, a cross-party panel of MPs called

RB What is indefinite detention? DH In theory, a person is held in immigration detention at the point at which they are imminently to be removed to their socalled country of origin. This arrangement is, in theory, designed to be temporary. It is also, however, indefinite. The consequence is that a person who is not at that point charged with any crime can be detained for months and years. Following that period of indefinite detention some people, less than half as it turns out, will actually be removed. The others will be ‘released back into the community’.

for an immediate end to indefinite detention on that grounds that it constituted cruel and inhumane treatment. As yet there has been no action. RB There seems to me to be a certain sliding between various words that are used to define refugees - refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, immigrants. Migrants and immigrants suggest voluntary movement, but is there a functional difference between refugees and asylum seekers? DH You are certainly right to observe a difference between the terms. The word migrant is very much present in the language just now, of course, and means, in a literal sense, a person who moves. The key distinction, as you say, is between ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’. There is, in a fact, a world of difference between those two terms, or rather, between the different statuses those terms ascribe. Thus, to have refugee status in the UK, which in practice these days lasts for at most five years, is to have all the same rights (of work, movement etc) as a British citizen. The real question, however, is whether a person is recognized as a refugee, the legal process towards which can take years to resolve. An asylum seeker, so called, is, to all intents and purposes, somebody who is in the process of seeking refugee status and, by contrast, such a person is denied rights. Because people seeking asylum can’t work they receive a form of relief, paid not in cash but in the form of vouchers, called an Azure card. Among its various conditions of use, it can’t be used on public transport. There are other functions of the Azure card, more symbolic, to do with the relation it establishes between the ex-detainee and the currency. A person using the card in a supermarket is quickly picked out as somebody outside the cultural norm, like wearing a badge, a visible marker of difference. The restriction on public

transport, however, is among the most material effects – to be relaxed once a week, or fortnight, or maybe once a month, depending on the frequency with which the ex-detainee has to sign in at a Home Office Reporting Centre. The effect is to fix a person in a given location, often for months and years on end (over a decade is not at all uncommon). Except that with this stasis – again, part of the lexicon of detention – comes the risk that at any point they might be ‘dispersed’ (relocated to another part of the country), or re-detained (which is common). The total effect of such treatment is that people seeking asylum have a deeply (and structurally) compromised relation to public space.

As a matter of urgency, the public should be made aware of the experiences that indefinite immigration detention produces RB The tales involved various authors representing someone else’s story. Why deny self-representation? DH This is a very pressing issue, the implications of which the organisers of the project were acutely aware. The question is why should people not simply have told their own tales? There are two principal answers to this question. The first is that, in a number of cases, the person concerned remained so traumatised by the events that had caused them to make their journey, and also – subsequently – by the treatment

they had experienced in the UK, that it would have been inappropriate (not possible in practice) to put them in front of an audience of between one hundred and two hundred people. The second reason was that, given the constant risk of re-detention, those who had been detained did not want their names attached to their tales. Anonymity was at a premium because in the UK people in the asylum system have a justified fear of reprisal. Plainly it must be the objective of a project such as Refugee Tales to question any aspect of mediation, including its own; that it must seek to create the circumstance in which anonymity is not a shaping conceit. In other words, it is the explicit aim of Refugee Tales to help generate the circumstances in which those caught in the detention process are enabled to tell their stories. Equally plainly, however, it is very important that the public should be made aware, as a matter of urgency, of the experiences that indefinite immigration detention produces. RB Is story (or tale) even an appropriate word? Does it fit the severity and seriousness of these experiences? DH In one sense neither the word story, nor tale, is equal to the experiences that lie behind the accounts. By the same token, however, the words are very resonant in this context. As a number of the people whose tales were being told said, it was great relief to be in a situation where it was possible to tell their story in a setting in which it would be listened to. This is because it is a very common experience of people seeking asylum that their stories are disbelieved or distorted by the authorities. So while the terms ‘story’ and ‘tale’ might seem unequal to the gravity of the situation, equally the situation is such that a full telling of the person’s story is of no small significance.

RB How does one write without collapsing the otherness of these experiences into sameness and yet ensure they are communicable? DH I think there can be no single answer to this question. The crucial aspect of the Refugee Tales process was that the writers collaborated very closely with the people whose tales were being told. What came out of this process was a range of different tellings, all seeking both to recognise and communicate the difference of the experience in question. In the context of the project and the book, I think it is perhaps the radical variation in the ways of telling that best registers the differences of the experiences. In other words, there is an implicit acknowledgement across the book that no one form of expression can capture the kinds of experience being presented. Rather, there are different tellings born of close listenings, one effect of which listening, as many of the writers have observed, is that their relation to the language has been significantly altered. RB The aim would be affect but in which ways is this created? DH The aim of the project is to help effect the end of indefinite detention. It seeks to do this by giving as full an account as possible of the stories that lie behind the policy so that those who maintain the policy are obliged to reflect on its consequences and implications. To this end, we are inviting policy-makers to the opening forum of the next iteration of Refugee Tales. That opening event (which takes place on Sunday 3 July at the University of Kent) is entitled ‘Being Detained Indefinitely: A Day of Thought, Performance and Action’. Refugee Tales is published in April 2016. Full details available at refugeetales.org

Vital Cycle #2, 2014 by Riccardo Angelini

Riccardo Angelini is an Italian artist living and practicing in Paris. These works are taken from his ‘Vital Cycle’ series of 2014-15. Much of Angelini’s work is an attempt to capture a sense of the ephemeral – the transience of everyday life, whether this be a glance, a moment or a feeling. However abstract his works appear, they are fundamentally rooted in the figurative. Here, using blood as ink, Angelini succeeds in making a physical marker of corporeal time. Ruminating on the idea of flow and continuum in the human body, the ‘Vital Cycle’ pieces in spite of their somewhat sinister undertone, can be seen as an exhaltation of the female

Vital Cycle #3, 2014 by Riccardo Angelini

form. As a man, working with actual menstrual blood, Angelini forces an emotional disconnect between artist and medium. Arguably, his sex negates any personal narrative that might manifest itself. Had the maker of the works also been the maker of the medium, the pieces would tell a different story. This dynamic affords the viewer a deeper appreciation of the formal qualities of the Vital Cycle series. Angeliniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s appropriation of bodily matter as medium allows him to focus on the physical properties of the blood and notions of human presence and absence, rather than making a gendercharged statement. - Sarah Bolwell

Cut Piece, 1965 by Yoko Ono Performance at Carnegie Recital Hall, 21 March 1965 Photo: Minoru Niizuma. Courtesy Yoko Ono

As a major retrospective of Yoko Ono opens at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, Sarah Bolwell discusses the artist’s complex relationship with the Fluxus art movement...

“Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, ‘intellectual’, professional & commercialized culture.” So reads the first line of George Maciunas’ Fluxus manifesto of 1963. This vitriolic scrawl came as a response to many things, among them, the increasing power of the art market, institutionalised art criticism and the white male-dominated Abstract Expressionist movement that had popularised the 1950s. The word itself connotes the unfixed and rational irrationality – properties that in Maciunas’ eyes could serve as an antidote to the prescriptive state of art-making in the mid-twentieth century. Maciunas and the large group of artists and writers with whom he associated wanted change, but one that would continue indefinitely, eternally self-redefining. To him, the principal tenets of flux – movement, flow and chance, were the only things that could and should be certain in life. Maciunas saw this philosophy as the means of effecting long-term epistemological shifts, which sets the tone of his manifesto, meanwhile hinting at an underlying sense of aggression.

The manifesto also establishes the Fluxus movement as inherently concerned with deconstruction, placing it on the trajectory of ‘negation art’ championed by DADA some decades prior. But to define Fluxus as, at base, antagonistic and destructive, is wrong. Fluxus artists were playful and collaborative. Thus, idealistically, through the lens of conceptualism and the ‘fusing’ of revolutionary cultural, social and political cadres, the increasingly tight elitist grip on art would loosen. An art for the people was the goal. Emancipation and reclamation through assembly and play is central to this movement.

Perhaps one of the most playful artists associated with Fluxus is Yoko Ono. In 1960-61, Ono began work on her ‘Conceptual Instructional’ pieces. Her conceptual approach to art-making is indelibly inked onto the landscape of visual art. For Ono, “the instruction brings the concept of time into painting […] and breaks with the excessive solemnity of an original.” The reciprocity that these works expose 48

and celebrate is not to be underestimated. The interplay between audience and artwork that Ono provokes is substantiated by what she herself refers to as ‘infinite transformation’. This spirit of continuum is synonymous with flux. Her practice undoubtedly influenced Sol leWitt and his experimental wall drawings. Additionally, the idea of concept over plastic art is echoed in the work of the pioneering music theorist John Cage. Ono and Cage first met in 1961 when Maciunas gave Yoko Ono her first solo exhibition at his newly opened gallery. There were only five people present at the exhibition’s premiere but crucially this group included John Cage. The two quickly became friends and would continue to influence each other over the course of the next two decades. At this first exhibition Ono presented her instructions in the form of paintings: Painting for the Wind, Shadow Painting, Painting to Be Walked On etc. indicating that whilst her practice was rooted in the conceptually abstract, she still considered herself first and foremost

a visual artist. The MAC Lyon exhibition features several pieces from this early period, including the work Lighting Piece, 1955 (pictured). As the chosen pieces at MAC reveal, light is a continuing theme in Ono’s oeuvre. From her early experiments with matches, to her work with television screens (a nod to her friend Nam June Paik’s quest for a new utopia through television), light is an inherently conflicting notion for Fluxus. Scientifically dependable, light seems at odds with the notion of chance. However, light is humourous. By 1965 Maciunas had rephrased what he considered Fluxus to be. In his Broadside Manifesto of that year, he described Fluxus as, “the fusion of Spike Jones, Vaudeville, gags, children’s games and Duchamp”, thus placing greater emphasis on play in art-making. But in this statement he simultaneously alludes to the cross-referencing and sense of belonging to a wider network that took Fluxus beyond its reliance on plasticity. 49

Though she never accepted Maciunas’ official invitation to join the Fluxus movement, Yoko Ono was integral to its maturation and remains key to its longevity. In the early years Ono and Maciunas collaborated sporadically, staging events and exhibitions of art, performance and music.

artists and works, particularly Ono, that Fluxus finds its lasting legacy. The overwhelming sense of play in Bottoms (still from Film No. 4), 1970 is fuzzied by the work’s concurrent deconstruction of the internal and external, public and private divisions. This suspense of the publicprivate binary is echoed throughout her career in the way she encourages interaction and participation. Perhaps nowhere else is this so evident than in her best-known work Cut Piece, first performed at Yamaichi Concert Hall in Kyoto in 1964. Sat alone on-stage, audience members approached Ono, taking it in turns to cut pieces from her clothes. Questioning the neutrality of the viewer-object relationship, Cut Piece promotes reciprocity as the key means by which we engage with art. All the while, Ono’s (female) body is presented in utter vulnerability. Embracing the human body as locus of action blurs the distinction between art and life. This is ultimately what makes Cut Piece so salient in the Fluxus canon.

It’s important to stress that all Fluxus art was not necessarily made in response to Maciunas’ manifestos. His manifestos should by no means be taken as authoritative, but what he did do was cohesively vocalise a strong trend in artistic thought, one that encompassed the work of many of his colleagues and compatriots at the time.

Fluxus is a shift from a society constructed around industry and capitalism to one that thrives on the exchange of ideas, information and experience

Maintaining a steady creative output, Yoko Ono continues to be the subject of major exhibitions even as she enters her ninth decade. As such, a number of her new works will be shown in Lyon. Over the last 60 years her art has taken many forms – from sculpture to performance, to painting and video, not to mention the three musical albums under her belt. The spirit of flux which colours all her work is celebrated at MAC Lyon this summer. Overwhelmingly positive, flux encourages laughter, interaction and curiosity. And whilst it may be uncertain by its very nature, it is only within this inherent paradox that we find sureness in the unsure and stillness in the flow.

The Fluxus network was vast but Maciunas nonetheless sought firm control over its output. He would excommunicate artists from his circle for their involvement with events and exhibitions not explicitly sanctioned by himself. Arguably more dictator than curator, many famous names fell in and out of favour with Maciunas over the years. Furthermore, there were many practicing artists committed to Fluxus who resented the portrayal of it as an anti-establishment, anti-art movement. Fluxus should be seen rather, as a shift from a society constructed around industry and capitalism to one that thrives on the exchange of ideas, information and experience. It is arguably in the spirit of these

Yoko Ono: Lumiere de l’Aube is showing at MAC Lyon until 10 July 2016. Full details at mac-lyon.com

STUDY IN PARIS, IN ENGLISH Students don’t need to speak fluent French to study at the University of Kent in Paris as all modules are taught in English. French lessons are provided by the University, both in Canterbury and in Paris. Living in the city itself helps students gain valuable language skills and experience. HISTORIC SURROUNDINGS The University of Kent in Paris is based at Reid Hall a beautiful 19th-century building in the heart of Montparnasse, just minutes by foot from the Sorbonne, Jardin du Luxembourg and Saint-Germainde-Pres. With trips to major landmarks, museums and galleries most weeks, students can easily experience the very best that Paris has to offer. TOP FOR RESEARCH Consistently praised as one of the UK’s top universities for its research intensiveness, Kent continues to lead the field at its European centres. Running a variety of postgraduate courses in Paris, Brussels, Athens and Rome, Kent affords its students access to Europe’s cultural epicentres, whilst maintaining links to its world-class research departments in Canterbury.

To find out more visit kent.ac.uk/paris