tn2 issue 4, 2015/2016

DECEMBER 2015

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CONTENTS 04 06 07 23 28 30

JUMBLE SEX HOMEGROWN REVIEWS CALENDAR STAFF PICKS

ENVIRONMENTAL FILMS “There’s a lot of films in the science fiction genre where nature is represented as something that keeps society in control.”

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PHILIP TREACY

“When I was a student I thought fashion was clothing, it’s not clothing; fashion is something indescribable.”

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EDITORIAL TEAM

VR HORROR

Head editor EOIN MOORE Deputy Editor SORCHA GANNON Art SARAH MOREL HANNAH AMADAEUS HARTE fashion MEGAN BURNS JOHN TIERNEY FILM RACHEL GRAHAM CONOR SCULLY FOOD RACHEL CUNNINGHAM ANNA GORDON GAMES & TECH NICHOLAS KENNY BUD McLOUGHLIN LITERATURE TANYA SHEEHAN MICHAEL MULLOOLY music Finnán Tobin Josh Kenny fashion Elisabeth Rochford tv Oisín Vince Coulter J. Finbar Lynch

“I’m not sure either platform will change the entertainment industry per se, even if they are successful.”

DESIGN BY EOIN MOORE & una harty copy-edited by claire dowling, orla king, & emily smith cover art by MUBASHIR SULTAN PRINTED BY GREHAN PRINTERS

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WELCOME “We were working on Welcome for like two months.

Once we had the visual style, everything just came into place after that.”

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SUSAN JANE WHITE

“At first, everyone thought my healthy vibe was daft.

Five years later, I’m still a little deranged, but not daft.”

16 DYSTOPIAN TV SHOWS “The questions that postapocalyptic fiction asks are profoundly unwelcome.”

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TOPSIDE PRESS “I think it was important to give everyone a chance to physically show their support for each other.”

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GLOBE-TASTING: THE PORT HOUSE

Upon entering The Port House, situated on South William Street, you feel transported from the bleak Dublin cobbles into a Spanish grotto. The dining area’s stone walls and low lighting—provided exclusively from candles—creates a warm atmosphere.

The relaxed feel is not limited to the environment but also the meal service, with cutlery and napkins in a tin box on the table as well as paper menus.

The best course of action when eating tapas is to order multiple items and switch between plates as you eat. The dishes are small and moderately priced (averaging around €6) so getting a few to share is affordable, even on a student budget.

The Paella de Marisco, a seafood rice dish in a cream sauce served with a wedge of lemon, along with the Catalan Cannelon con espinaca, a cylindrical pasta stuffed with ricotta cheese, tomato sauce, spinach and fresh basil—reminiscent of a large ravioli—was a staff recommendation and not to be missed. Most dishes are gluten free and many vegetarian friendly. If you’re treating yourself, a glass of Sangria, made with fresh fruit, and the Churros Con Chocolate make for a luxurious end to any meal.

WORDS BY MEGAN O’DONOGHUE KlEEMAN

DUBLIN IN FILM: KISSES Kisses is a Dublin film and a Christmas film. To 11 year old runaways Dylan and Kylie, the inner city offers a refuge from their stifling, abusive lives in the dreary suburbs - the film literally changing from black and white to colour as they sail down the grand canal towards the basin.

Dublin at Christmas is initially presented as a consumerist wonderland, Jervis St shopping centre like the inside of a christmas bauble, filled with a light and warmth the kids aren’t used to as they zip around its shiny floors on their new Heelys.

When night falls, they take us down streets we’d usually avoid in search of Dylan’s homeless older brother. Through the eyes of children, the darker side of city life takes on a sense of almost pantomime villainry, and scenes we routinely turn our backs on - people puking up their Christmas pints, cruising for an underage fuck or in some cases, meeting a lonely end in the biting winter cold - take on a renewed sense of disturbing poignancy.

While the film is more than a little sentimental, Dublin is demonised more than romanticised.

The vast suburban council estate they call home is decried by Kylie in no uncertain terms as “a kip”, and the inner city is filled with unfriendly natives that prompt her to remark “there is no devil, just people”. The cinematography works against the harsh narrative, creating a sense of fairytale appropriate to the season. Streetlights, car lights, and Christmas lights twinkle and blur across the screen, lending a pronounced sense of suspended time to the bustling city.

WORDS BY RACHEl GRAHAM

IN THE GAME

The Game Awards 2015 attracted a lot of heat this year over the gender divide in its judging panel, which consists of representatives from international media. Many were outraged when the panel was announced mid-November, with only one female judge present out of a panel of thirty-two – Mashable’s Chelsea Stark. The issue swiftly gained more and more coverage, as Christopher Grant, the judge representing the gaming site Polygon, stepped down in order to allow his colleague, Megan Farokhmanesh, to take his place. “While the gender imbalance in video game journalism as a whole is certainly not a new challenge,” said Grant, before announcing his decision. “It is a challenge that we have to remain committed to taking on, as evidenced by this list.”

Kill Screen and The Guardian also withdrew their involvement in the awards in protest, with their candidates on the judging panel stepping down. While a lack of female representation is nothing new in the video gaming industry, it’s still unacceptable. Gaming culture can only benefit from more women talking about games, and with many female critics gaining increasingly large followings online, it’s long past time they were given a voice.

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WORDS BY NICHOlAS KENNy

INTRODUCING: DARK WORLD ART & DESIGN: WHY GO BALD? It’s pretty hard to pin a sound down on Dark World. It’s not a label in the strictest sense, more a collective of musicians all working together with a concertedly DIY attitude to music. The name is a reference to Yu-GiOh, and the label is delightfully (or perhaps confusingly) genre-spanning, having come from a background in punk but now interlacing that with lo-fi rap.

The artists on their roster are generally based in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the label first started off back in 2011, largely centred on the band Worms. Worms released their debut album Whirl in this same year, although later legal difficulties forced them to rename it Whirlwind. The label largely remained in obscurity until 2015, when it began to gain attention for the bizarre rap projects that their artists had begun to indulge in. The two most prominent artists on the label’s rap front are Gods Wisdom and DJ Lucas, DJ Lucas also being the bassist and vocalist for Worms. Gods Wisdom and DJ Lucas came together to release Gods Lucas just last month. The album is a frankly ridiculous but nevertheless enticing hodge-podge of abrasive beats, vocals auto-tuned to excess, and rhymes so lazy that they are almost moronic. On paper the whole thing shouldn’t work, but the duo’s awkwardness and their tongue-in-cheek humour lends the project a definite charm. The label’s most recent release is Morimoto’s For Me and Ladie, a sax-driven album of hip hop, R&B, and soul.

WORDS BY FINNáN TOBIN

A morose young man, with no hair to call his own, perches upon a wall in Dublin’s city centre. Then, seconds later, as if by magic, light rays shoot out of his scalp and hair appears, transforming the bald boy into a leering Romeo: this is the infamous Why Go Bald neon sign.

It wasn’t very long ago, in the fabled year of 1999, that one of Dublin’s quirkiest yet best loved landmarks was rescued from the jaws of the rubbish heap. Thanks to the efforts of the 20th Century Trust, the Why Go Bald neon sign, which is owned by Universal Hair & Scalp Clinic, still bathes South Great Georges Street in its warm orange glow. Since its installation in 1962, Why Go Bald has served as one of Dublin’s primary alternative landmarks, and has appeared in films such as Educating Rita and A Man of No Importance.

As well as being a primary meeting location for Dublin’s youth over numerous generations, Why Go Bald is undeniably an infamous relic of a past gone by. Neon signage, which first became popular in the early decades of the 19th century, has since gone into decline as a functional form of advertisement. However, thanks to the efforts of conservation groups, many of the world’s best loved neon signage has been preserved.

Thankfully, this was the case for Mr. WGB, because Dublin city would simply not be the same without his neon orange grin.

WORDS BY SARAH MOREl PHOTO BY MAGGIE KEllEHER

FASHION SPOTLIGHT

Dylan Kerr, JF TSM History of Art and Architecture & French

When did you start designing your own garments?

4th year in school. I entered a competition the same year and won a scholarship to go to the Grafton Academy to study fashion design.

I still do night classes there, but sometimes it’s hard to manage with college.

What designers inspire your work?

Or do you have any other influences?

J.W. Anderson and Marques’Almeida. Also nuns. One time I brought a nun’s skirt home from a charity shop and my Mum started crying.

Androgyny is obviously a big part

of your style. Can you tell me more about that?

Well I don’t see the need for conformity. I also don’t really like the idea of womenswear and menswear, I don’t think shops should be segregated like that.

You showed some of your work at Fashion Soc’s annual fashion show this year. How was that for you?

It went really well. But it wasn’t the first time my work was on show.

Grafton Academy usually displays student’s designs on Culture Night and I’ve been a part of that before.

Pleated kilt with double buckle belted waist designed by Dylan Kerr WORDS BY JOHN TIERNEy PHOTOS BY KATIE O’NEIll

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POLLING PORNOGRAPHY Eimear Sparks surveys Trinity College students on what they think about and how they use pornography.

For most people, coming to college means that porn loses a good degree of its seediness. Many students move out of their family homes, putting an end to the teenage phenomenon that is “the danger-wank”, and the liberal environment of college means that you no longer have to pretend any thoughtless mention of redtube was a mispronunciation of YouTube.

That’s not to say that every aspect of the traditional shame associated with watching porn has been removed. Many people I spoke to nodded knowingly when I brought up the expression “post-porn depression”, which is the slightly over-dramatic phrase used to denote the slump that follows immediately after you use porn to get yourself off. But what exactly precedes the slump? I wanted to take a look at porn habits in Trinity, and this is what I found out: When asked whether they felt that pornography is generally geared towards male heterosexuals and whether it subordinates women, students responded yes to both. At least for heterosexuals, who made up the majority of responses (and that one guy who put his sexuality as “I live for slaying dragons”). The idea that porn subordinates women isn’t exactly groundbreaking but what’s surprising is the acceptance of this fact. Most people seem to accept it as one of porn’s basic characteristics and few seem pushed to do anything about it. It’s possibly because of this that women get

DO YOU THINK PORNOGRAPHY SUBORDINATES WOMEN? OTHER 5%

NO 15%

YES 80%

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DOES YOUR PORN PREFERENCE MATCH YOUR SEXUAL PREFERENCE?

NO 20%

MOST OF THE TIME 25%

YES 55%

a reputation for not liking porn and, as is the case for many of the women that I spoke to, the reason that they limit themselves to girl-on-girl porn.

Of course, we have all heard vague murmurings about the pioneering movements of feminist pornography (in the Nordic countries, obviously) but this has yet to take the porn world by storm. In fact, I spoke to one girl who had watched some feminist porn (all soft lighting and passion, apparently) and she said that watching it was too depressing because it made her think of the kind of sex that she wasn’t having. It’s a good point.

For most people, porn isn’t about watching lovers have sex. Only a few of the people surveyed commented that real life porn was their preference.

The most popular type after girl-on-girl was porn of a particular sex act and this was followed by porn based on sexualized situations and roleplays. It’s as though people don’t want to identify with the porn they watch - it’s the fantasy that counts. It’s not a substitute for sex, which is not to say it’s not enjoyable, but few people would liken the glow of post-coital bliss to the feeling you get after having masturbated alone to your computer screen.

Perhaps it’s this shortcoming that accounts for the general decrease in porn that 60% of people have noticed since they have left their teenage years behind. Or maybe it’s just that people’s hormones have stopped freaking out. Either way, the figures show that half of those surveyed watch it a few times a week but 20% hardly watch it at all or have stopped using it altogether. If we consider the great (and often very public) lengths taken by people trying to get their hands on porn in the past, this decrease of porn viewing in such a digital age almost seems ungracious. But perhaps it’s the sheer quantity and ubiquity of porn, that is making it less attractive.

In fact, anyone with two thumbs and a smartphone can access their darkest fantasies in this age, but that is providing that they know what these dark fantasies are. With the majority of people answering that they don’t have a go-to genre when it comes to watching porn, it appears that indecision/ open-mindedness is also evident in Trinity students’ porn choices, and that most students are at the age where they’re still figuring out what exactly gets them off. That said, nearly half of the people surveyed said that the porn they watch influences their sex life. While this could lead to some interesting sexual experiments by somebody who has recently stumbled upon Hentai, it’s slightly more sobering to think of the potential effects that the porn which subordinates women could be having on students’ sex lives.

WORDS BY EIMEAR SPARKS

“It’s a hard thing to try and sum up your genre,” Gemma Doherty admits, and that certainly is the case with Saint Sister. Blending harp, synth and percussion, Saint Sister (made up of Gemma Doherty and Morgan MacIntyre) refuse to slot into an existing genre. Their debut EP, Madrid, was released in November and shows the versatility of their work in just four tracks— featuring hypnotic lullabies, rhythmic loops and eerie chant songs.

The pair were in the same year in Trinity, and knew each other from afar within the music scene. “The first time we properly met and shook hands, we were playing Trinity’s Battle of the Bands, against each other—but neither of us won!” Morgan describes, laughing at the memory. Despite “pretty much living next to each other” in their final year, it wasn’t until after college when they became close friends and band mates.

Gemma studied music, which she enjoyed, “but the best part was meeting people through societies.” She was involved with Singers from first year on and with Trinity Orchestra for over two years. Morgan studied history and political science, and agrees that music societies were vital to her college life: “I considered dropping out in second and third year to focus on music, and I remember someone saying to me: ‘You’re around all these people who will one day be the best musicians in Ireland—why don’t you take advantage of that?’ So I did, and if I had left, we wouldn’t have met—so it’s all worked out.”

HOM EGR OWN The two were struck with “post-college blues” after graduating, but were determined to do music full-time. After overhearing that Gemma played electric harp, Morgan sent her a “long, rambling message, asking did she want to meet up for coffee, and we’ve spent every day together since.”

Saint Sister have been busy since their formation over a year ago. Their first performances were with Spies in spring, and they’ve just finished supporting O Emperor and Wyvern Lingo across the country. The pair also played a “little intimate gig” at Electric Picnic’s Global Green area and were in Dingle for Other Voices this month.

Playing live has its ups and downs: ”The worst thing is the fear of losing control, like pedals not working or not being able to hear what’s going on,” says Gemma. Morgan initially struggled with nerves, but is happy to say she’s “just getting to the point where I’m really enjoying being onstage—the nerves are a complementary thing now, as opposed to wrecking a performance.”

The adrenalin makes success “hard to beat when everything goes well.”

Both their influences vary. Morgan cites “lyricheavy songs by the great storytellers” like Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash and Joan Baez, and the poet John Donne for inspiration.

The most important thing to her is “when the instrumentation is there to complement the lyrics.” Gemma’s traditional music background features in her side of things. Both agree that moments from life are what they often translate into song—be it “the way someone looks at you” or being “susceptible to the environment you’ve been thrown into.” On advice for musicians starting out, Gemma suggests “playing with and getting to know as many people as you can: writers, singers and musicians... And gigging in any kind of capacity!” Morgan’s advice is to “write loads and loads. I think every musician’s biggest fear is that they’re never going to write another song again, but just don’t believe that and keep going.”

Having played their first (and sold-out) headline gig in Whelan’s last week, the band plan to “lock ourselves away” and keep writing as much as possible in the New Year. Musically, they aim to use voices more “as an instrument” and continue to explore their current setup. Morgan goes on to say: “Every time we write a song we’re like “How can we make this a bit weirder?!’” This fearless strive for the weird is what makes Saint Sister stand out, and will continue to make their future releases dazzle.

WORDS BY Choy-Ping Clarke-Ng PHOTO BY ISAAC HARRIS

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An Entertaining Truth Film Editor Rachel Graham speaks with Dr Pat Brereton about environmental issues in disaster movies.

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lobal warming, renewable energy, pollution, carbon emissions and a host of other environmental issues have been all over the mainstream news media in the last few weeks. Protesters were arrested in violent clashes with police in Paris; Enda embarrassed the nation by pleading exceptional status for little old Ireland at the COP21 summit; and many other politicians have been seen smiling gravely and making pronouncements about the necessity of urgent action to tackle climate change. This explosion of media attention to environmental issues is unusual. You could say that the tendency to bury our heads in the sand in the face of such a huge and complicated problem as global warming is understandable. But there is another area of mainstream culture where these issues are discussed widely, variously and frequently, although not always explicitly: film.

The film that springs to mind with the words “global warming” is An Inconvenient Truth, which brought the issue to the world’s attention in 2006. Enthusiastically received in Europe, it proved incredibly controversial in the U.S., where the National Science Teachers Association declined 50,000 free copies due to the interests of its corporate sponsors. It, and other recent documentaries such as Cowspiracy (which has spawned many a vegan convert) and Carbon Nation are overtly political, stirring debate and raising awareness, but also courting controversy wherever

they’re shown. While fiction films might spring to mind less readily when one considers the environmentalist canon, there is a strong tradition of environmental disaster on screen in big-budget films: Wall-e, The Day After Tomorrow, Blade Runner, Interstellar, and Avatar, just to name a few, all derive inspiration from themes of ecological destruction.

I met up with Dr Pat Brereton, head of the School of Communications at DCU, and author of the newly released book Environmental Ethics and Film, for a chat about this tradition. When it comes to raising awareness of and sympathy for the environmentalist cause, Brereton is keen to point out the potential of mainstream fiction film to do this work. “I tend to look at more mainstream films. I think that minority interest films can push a very particular agenda, whereas with mainstream film, they’re almost covertly rather than overtly promoting an issue. Sometimes documentaries about environmental issues which are preachy are less effective than fictional narratives, which are more subtle and nuanced. People can get messages.

They don’t want to be forced into acknowledging an issue.” The tendency of documentary films to provoke reactionary backlash is also an unfortunate occupational hazard of working in the genre. “The documentary is trying to give facts and figures. If you can critique any fact, you can discount the whole documentary. With climate change, 97 percent of scientists agree, but there are always three wackos who don’t, and they can sow seeds of discontent.”

Eco-criticism is familiar in English studies, where notions of the sublime in nature has dominated popular conceptions of poetry since romanticism, and the American landscape has been a strong presence in writing of all kinds from across the pond. This type of investigation is less mainstream in film studies, but Brereton says he and his colleagues are keen to promote it.

“Eco-cinema has become quite big in film studies now. We want to make it mainstream but it’s an uphill battle. There’s a preoccupation in film studies with more psychological engagement; gender studies, other sort of esoteric debates. There’s a perception that environmentalism is too romanticised.

I would say it’s very central to a lot of film pleasure. Even science fiction spectacles are about the sublime nature. There’s an awful lot of engagement in trying to figure out how nature is represented.”

“The problem with climate change is that we can’t see it happening, it’s so long-term. Art can sow seeds, it can at least get an audience to reconceptualise things.”

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The political dimensions of climate disaster are often at the forefront of sci-fi films. “There’s a lot of films in the science fiction genre where nature is represented as something that keeps society in control,” Brereton mentions. “Blade Runner is a good example. It’s a post-nuclear society, where people are stratified into clear divisions, and nature has helped to accommodate that. So people who have money can live up away from the ruined earth, where there’s fresh air and real animals. The people who don’t have money, have to put up with artificiality of all types. It’s Dick’s thesis that environmental destruction can be used in a fascistic way to set up a schism between people.”

Brereton remarks that while there are a number of directors, most notably James Cameron (Avatar), that are famous for their investment in the environmental cause, there is a certain irony in green ideas being peddled by an industry that consumes more CO2 than aviation. The film industry was the second biggest polluter in California in 2008. “Ideologically, film is part of the industry,” Brereton says. “The big worry is that we won’t be able to solve the planetary issues, so a techno fix will be posited. Because we can stay as we are then, if we just have the techno fix. Film tends to promote that approach. It conspires in techno-centrism and the conservative approach, very much so.” Interstellar is a recent example of such a film.

Undoubtedly entertaining, it is nonetheless frustrating in the glorification of technology it promotes with its “getting away from it all” approach to human-created problems. After we destroy our home, let’s simply employ a few geniuses to take us to the next one.

Despite such tendencies, blockbusters have important potential for bringing environmental issues to the public imagination and stirring, if not activism, then at least a reorientation of values. “The big problem with climate change is that we can’t see it happening, it’s so long-term.

Politics is always about what’s immediate, it’s short term. It’s about ‘can I have money in my pocket for tomorrow?’ To try and conceptualise longer than that is very difficult. Art can sow seeds, it can at least get an audience to reconceptualise things.” In terms of presenting long-term issues in digestible ways, Brereton mentions Gravity as a film that fruitfully explores extraterrestrial environmental problems we may have to grapple with some day: “we talk about the tragedy of the commons, but there’s a commons up in space and no one gives a damn about it. They just throw up stuff and it stays there, satellites just floating around. People don’t know that, because they can’t see it. Gravity actually shows that there’s a massive problem up there: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are hitting off stuff!”

Perhaps the film that has most successfully used its big-budget, hightech, wide-reaching potential to bring the possible outcomes of societal inaction on climate issues to public attention is Pixar’s Wall-e. An earlier, more tongue-in-cheek version of the Interstellar story, it offers a satirised picture of where our current, hyper-materialist culture might be leading us if we fail to majorly reimagine our values. Despite presenting such a horrifying picture of the aftermath of planetary disaster, Pixar have denied they intended to make an environmental film. “I think their reason would be that they don’t want to be pigeon-holed,” Brereton suggests. “There’s a big American thing that if you’re green you’re just democrat, you’re on the left wing and whatever. I think that’s sad, and they overplay that. We need more hard hitting films that make it clear for audiences: these are the alternatives for us. I’m interested in recuperating the blockbuster, encouraging new films that will become a bible of environmentalism that people can actually connect with. That’s the environmental wet dream.”

WORDS BY RACHEL GRAHAM ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL TATLOW

“The worry is that we won’t be able to solve the planetary issues, so a techno fix will be posited. Because we can stay as we are then, if we just have the techno fix.”

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PHOTO BY HUDA AWAN

“I am the brand.

I’ve been doing it for twenty-five years so I’ve got a style and I’ve got an approach.

I sell dreams to people.”

The Reluctant Provocateur Fashion Editor John Tierney speaks to experimental milliner Philip Treacy about working with Alexander McQueen and the nature of fashion.

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pening the show at Philip Treacy’s 2013 runway presentation, Lady Gaga introduced the Irish hat designer as “the greatest milliner in the world”. This is something that Treacy seems to be slightly embarrassed about as both himself and the audience in the GMB watch a recording of the show: “I didn’t get her to say this. This was of her own accord”. Whether he would like to admit it or not, Philip Treacy is the most influential milliner in the world and a real force in the world of fashion, having collaborated with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Valentino and the late Alexander McQueen for the duration of his career. He is also The Phil’s latest selection for their Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage, awarded to individuals who make an outstanding contribution to their field.

At the ceremony, Treacy spoke at length about his relationship to McQueen. “He was different because his talent transcended,” he recalls.

“Today everyone is a designer [...] But what’s very difficult in fashion is to be original.” He went on to say that: “Original people are the people that stand out [...] When I was a student I thought fashion was clothing, it’s not clothing; fashion is something indescribable.” A huge part of McQueen’s work, and his collaboration with Treacy, was the fantastical narrative that was created through the runway presentation. When asked whether Treacy thinks the art of the runway is something that could be revived in the digital age, he replies: “Well, I hope so. I’ve noticed in the past few years there’s a trend for massive, extraordinary presentations but the clothes are just okay but the presentation is amazing because they spend ten million dollars building some extraordinary thing in the middle. Then the models come and they’re wearing knitwear.”

According to Treacy, what was different was that “the presentation was everything for [McQueen]. That fifteen minutes every six months, he lived for that, because that’s the moment, that’s what he’s saying [...]

That type of self expression is difficult to come by because you need the incredible clothing to back it up”. He pinpoints McQueen and Lagerfield as the only two designers he knew who “design everything”. Today there are “20 assistants designing the clothes” at every other fashion house, clearly gesturing to the new model of design the industry has generated in the wake of accelerated sales tactics. “At Alexander McQueen he cut the clothes [...] Every season there was a different take on what clothing can look like. So he believed in newness [...] There’s fashion weeks all over the world at the moment, and it’s all good but it seems like there’s A LOT of clothes and A LOT of fashion and some of it is just clothes, but we need clothes.”

What Treacy and McQueen share is an irreverence toward the the trendgenerating commercial world that ostensibly keeps fashion moving. “See, I didn’t know anything about business when I started and I still don’t [...]

Students are very concerned about marketing and all those different aspects but really most importantly you need something to market.” Treacy points to the now famous hat that he created for his mentor Isabella Blow, which was inspired by an illustration of a woman with a ship emerging from her hair created during Marie Antoinette’s reign. “[Isabella] said ‘everyone is going to want one’ and I thought nobody is going to want a ship. So she was right. I could have sold hundreds of ships […] Commercial isn’t just t-shirts. I have a fun time making uncommercial things commercial.” You get the sense from hearing Treacy speak that he connects his success to a clear and uncompromising point of view. “I am the brand [...] I’ve been doing it for twenty-five years so I’ve got a style and I’ve got an approach.”

For Treacy it’s all about escapism: “I sell dreams to people.”

Fantasy is something that drives Treacy’s work and his almost Warholian love for pop culture acts as a constant source of inspiration for him: “I like to be inspired by popular culture; the 21st century rather than the 16th century”. For his 2013 collection, Treacy paired his hats with the clothes of Michael Jackson, which he loaned from a friend in Los Angeles who does celebrity auctions. “It was so moving to see these iconic moments [...] it was like pop history [...] We grew up on Top of the Pops. Before there was social media or before there was internet; 7:30pm on a thursday night you were transported to another world.” He recalls some of the models crying after getting off the runway because they got the chance to wear pieces like Jackson’s thriller jacket: “Little things like that are really what

inspiration is about, it’s what makes you tick.” The power of the entertainer is something that fascinates Treacy, whose otherworldly designs have attracted the attention of equally outlandish performers such as Lady Gaga and Grace Jones. “The meaning of celebrity is celebrated. These people have something special and that’s why they are who they are.”

What attracts Philip to performers like Gaga may also be their lack of seriousness. When asked if the casting of exclusively black models for his 2013 show was a conscious move he simply cites a meeting with model Grace Bol as the sole inspiration for the casting decision. “Fashion is quite a light-hearted industry. It comes across as something very serious and heavy but there’s nothing really serious or heavy about clothing, it’s just self-expression”. Instead he focuses on models in a different light. “Models are the unsung heroes of the fashion industry [...] They are entertainers, they are performers.” He argues how the seemingly glamorous life of a model is actually quite lonely, moving between hotel rooms all over the world to make beautiful images for us to appreciate. “Really of itself, it is a performance.”

This is not to say that provocation must not take on a political role.

Rather, it should never come at the expense of visual entertainment for Treacy. “An idea is an idea and hats have always been provocative. Hats are provocateurs and they always have been since the beginning of time.” He quickly reminds us: “I’m not trying to provoke by the way. It just happens,” laughing off his own comment. “Alexander [McQueen] loved to provoke, he got a kick out of that.” Suddenly his tone lifts: “What’s wrong with that?

That’s part of your job and what you do here [at Trinity College]. You’re not here for complacency, you want to change things?”

As the discussion is ending, Treacy goes into great detail about a hat he saw in the Hermitage Museum while visiting Russia for an exhibition on his work. The simple grey bowler was worn by Nicholas Romanov on a state visit to Japan but had a big slice taken out of it when one of the emperor’s guards stuck him on the head with his sword. “The hats are still there but the people are gone,” he remarks. This anecdote speaks to the enduring nature of Philip Treacy’s work. His hats always speak their own spectacular narrative and exist outside of their capacity as mere clothing. Most importantly, however, his work is never disposable as so much fashion is today and that is a provocation in itself.

WORDS BY JOHN TIERNEY

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THE HORROR OF IMMERSION Games Editor Nicholas Kenny examines the rise of virtual and augmented reality, and their relationship to horror, with Trinity College’s Dr Mads Haahr.

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mong the many things showcased at this year’s Web Summit, there was a particular emphasis placed on the rising technologies of Virtual and Augmented Reality — hardly a surprise, given that a number of VR and AR devices will be launched next year.

Samsung’s Gear VR has just been released, and the Oculus Rift, HTC/Valve Vive, and Sony’s Playstation VR will be coming out in 2016, earning it the tentative title of “the year of VR”, while Microsoft’s HoloLens will lead the charge for AR. To explain the difference between these two technologies, virtual reality presents an artificial 3D world through a headset, which tracks the user’s head movements to create a sensation of full immersion.

Augmented reality, embodied in Microsoft’s aforementioned HoloLens product, enhances your view of the real world by overlaying a virtual one on top of it.

“Eventually AR and VR technology will converge and combine. You’ll wear it all the time or carry it around with you all the time [...] it’s going to be more ubiquitous than the smartphone,” said Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR, during his talk on Web Summit 2015’s Centre Stage. “I’d be very surprised if fifty years from now we’re still all carrying around slabs in our pockets when you can just project a virtual environment.”

While still believing that VR and AR have huge potential, Dr Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics here in Trinity offers a more cautious take on things. He harbours certain reservations about AR, in particular: “Many major players have (or will have) offerings in this space, and as opposed to the VR we saw in the 1990s, the technology is really mature enough to pull it off this time. [...] In comparison, AR has been taking a long time to catch on — a lot longer than anyone would have predicted 4-5 years ago when there was a lot of excitement around

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smartphone-based AR and later Google Glass. [...] Only Microsoft really seems to be making a big investment in AR tech at the moment with the HoloLens technology. HoloLens looks extremely exciting, but I think a widespread adoption is further out than a widespread adoption of VR is.”

However, he’s not quite as ambitious as Luckey with regards to VR and AR’s future. “I’m not sure either platform will change the entertainment industry per se, even if they are successful, but there is most certainly a place for them. If we go back to the last generation of consoles, the big innovation was motion controllers (WiiMote, Kinect, Move) which looked like they were going to change the way games are played a lot. However, motion controllers really seem to have taken the back seat on the current generation of consoles. For this reason, I’d be a little careful about heralding revolutions on the basis of VR and AR yet.”

With Sony branding their VR headset as the Playstation VR, it’s not surprising that the future of VR has been heavily connected with video gaming. As more and more VR and AR systems are rolled out at conventions, it’s also become very clear which particular gaming genre will make the most of the new tech: horror. You’ve possibly seen some demos of people trying out horror games on VR devices — Alien: Isolation, for example, or maybe Slender: The Arrival — and the true horror of this medium quickly makes itself clear: immersion. With a horror movie, you passively view the action on the screen — you are a voyeur, with no control over the events before you. It’s much the same with horror literature; while it involves a little more action on your part, through the act of reading, your role in relation to the story is still passive, still outside the action, and limited to the power of your own imagination. However, with conventional horror games action is required, as you take control of a character and steer them through the events of the game, making a conscious choice each time to forward the narrative. A film will progress without you — a game, generally, won’t. “When done right, games can provoke a sense of fear and dread that surpasses anything possible in books and movies,” said Thomas Grip, creative director for Frictional Games, claiming that games are the best medium for horror that we have.

“I agree video games do horror extremely well,” Dr Haahr agreed. “And there are some really key titles in the history of horror games, such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and more recently The Last of Us. If you look at fiction, I think one of the things horror writers like Stephen King does extremely well is put you in the head of the characters, get you to sympathise with their thinking, even if it’s the antagonist. In a similar fashion, games can

“When done right, games can provoke a sense of fear and dread that surpasses anything possible in books and movies.”

put you in the body of a character, but there’s still a challenge to convey the character’s thinking to the player, or perhaps more accurately, get the player to think and feel things that are aligned with the story progression.

Games do this through game mechanics and environmental storytelling, which is a very different way to tell a story than pure description, which of course doesn’t work so well in games.”

In the previously mentioned videos of people trying out horror games on VR devices, the terrified gamers can frequently be seen attempting to clap their hands over their eyes, to shut out the terrifying images, only to find the headset in the way. They then place their hands over their ears, but since they’re wearing headphones, this act is just as futile. While they can close their eyes and await the inevitable, there’s no escaping the noise, and in many cases, the audio lends more to the terror than the visuals themselves.

After all, what would Psycho have been without Bernard Herrmann’s iconic score, or Jaws without John Williams’ ominous, minimalist theme?

Often, this results in the inevitable reaction — the gamer tearing the headset off, and pulling the headphones away from their ears, breathing heavily, heart racing, terrified. “By playing a game we extend ourselves into the virtual world,” Grip also claimed, but with the introduction of VR technology, we not only extend ourselves into that world, we immerse ourselves. This can lead to a form of terror that we’re unfamiliar with, as, despite ourselves, we feel as though we’re in real danger in these virtual worlds. Indeed, the immersiveness that VR has the potential to create has led developers to concede that death-by-horror-games will be an inevitability. “When the commercial version comes out, somebody is going to scare somebody to death — somebody with a heart condition or

something like that,” Denny Unger, the Creative Director for Cloudhead Games said, during the VR panel at Unite 2014 in Seattle. “It is going to happen. Absolutely.”

However, Dr Haahr dismisses this idea. “I don’t think there’s a real risk that horror games will become too horrifying. Horror (especially Gothic horror) has always tried to blur the boundary between fact and fiction — it is one of the hallmarks of the genre. [...] Dracula takes the form of a collection of evidence, and Blair Witch Project was presented as found footage. VR and AR simply offer a new way to do this, which is very exciting for people working in horror games.”

Horror games have risen in popularity over the last five years, as games like SOMA and Until Dawn have all achieved mainstream status. With the introduction of VR and AR, it’s likely that the horror genre will only grow in popularity, and there’s already signs of companies moving in this direction, with Sony announcing the VR spin-off Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. “VR is a science fiction technology,” said Luckey during Web Summit 2015. “It’s right up there with space travel and time travel and artificial intelligence and flying cars.” And the line between science fiction and horror can so easily be blurred, as we’ve seen so often in films like Terminator and Alien, and in games like SOMA, Doom and Dead Space.

It all depends on how you use it.

WORDS BY NICHOlAS KENNy ILLUSTRATION BY AISlING REINA 13 13

instrumental

Finnán Tobin speaks to Paddy Harkin and Hugh Mulhern from Welcome about their experiences over the past year running one of the most exciting clubnights in Dublin.

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elcome is an independent club night that was founded in September of last year by Paddy Harkin, Hugh Mulhern, and Axel McHugh, and exists now as one of the most exciting nights in Dublin, standing as a bit of an outlier in a city that is oversaturated with nights trading in house and techno. The three met while in school in their native South Dublin, and accrued experience from involvement in other nights before forming Welcome. Their impetus in bringing the night together was largely to create something that catered entirely to their own tastes. They were appreciating what was happening in Dublin in terms of nightlife, but felt that they could add to it by creating something unique and representative of the music that they were listening to. “We were working on Welcome for like two months,” Paddy says. “Once we had the visual style, everything just came into place after that.” Finding a home in the Twisted Pepper (“RIP” Hugh quips at one point), Welcome had Kildare act Two Charming Men to headline and did “house in one room, techno in the other, and then hip hop in the café.”

Things moved quickly after their first show, and Eoin Cregan from Bodytonic approached Welcome after the night to ask as to whether they would be interested in hosting the grime, garage, and everything-inbetween DJ Oneman as part of the Beatyard festival in the Twisted Pepper.

Paddy says: “I didn’t know Oneman too well at the time so I looked him up and checked out his Boiler Room sets and fell in love with his selections and his way of blending genres. I especially connected with his love for hip hop — specifically the trap sound. I wasn’t listening to grime within the context of club music at the time but I was definitely feeling everything

“A lot of the time people will come in and say they don’t like grime, but then they’ll be dancing to some Murlo and stuff and be like ‘Oh, is this grime?’”

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Oneman was playing. He was a gateway for us and helped us realise where we could really go with Welcome in terms of expanding out into different genres, and for myself personally to play far more genre-diverse sets. It’s weird when we look back because obviously all of these sounds work, and are even made for being played in a club, but we were by no means the first to do it in Dublin.” With encouragement from Eoin Cregan and with a new confidence to blend genres as befitted their tastes, Welcome from this point on embarked on a new direction, and from thereon in they adopted what could now be called the signature Welcome sound — emphasising instrumental grime, taking in strains of underground hip hop, trap, and garage, but really, above all, embracing an attitude of openness to all forms of club music. Since then, they’ve hosted some of the biggest and most exciting names in instrumental grime, including Murlo, Mumdance, Glacial Sound, MissingNo, and Shriekin.

The division of labour in Welcome is in a sense trifold, although Paddy is quick to assure that “we’re all involved in every process” and that “nobody just goes off and does anything without talking to the others.” However, each member of the team has his own area of specialisation. As mentioned above, Paddy DJs and produces his own music, now under the moniker Tjugo Lax, while also managing bookings. Hugh handles video and media, and in the earlier days filming sets. Axel then designs the completely characteristic posters and graphics. Axel was unfortunately absent for the interview, but Paddy is right to describe him as “crazy talented.” His promotional posters and graphics are perhaps the best in Dublin, noted for their vibrant colour palette and bold feature imagery.

The Dublin take on grime, as promoted by Welcome, is subtly different to the mainstream sound as centred on London. With regards some other nights in Dublin, Hugh says: “there’s almost this attitude where some people want to try and bring Berlin to Dublin. And we never really thought consciously that we wanted to bring London to Dublin. This is a Dublin experience. Obviously we’re taking music, and bringing over producers and stuff, whatever, and like the scene in London is huge and amazing,

“There’s almost this attitude where some people want to try and bring Berlin to Dublin. And we never really thought consciously that we wanted to bring London to Dublin.” and we’re more niche over here. Well, maybe not anymore — it’s a growing thing. You’re seeing grime being played at a lot more shows, and Paddy is getting asked to play more sets, particularly grime sets as well.” Dublin has its share of producers and DJs, but as of yet it hasn’t really witnessed an upsurge in people from Dublin taking up microphones as MCs. This is something that Paddy expects to change: “It’s cool that this stuff hits home in Ireland, and grime definitely is getting popular now. So there definitely are going to be Irish MCs popping up.”

Welcome is anything but a business for the trio. They only book acts that they themselves are genuinely excited about and would want to see themselves, rather than attempting to pander to a crowd. Paddy explains: “These slightly more underground acts might even be at the very start of their career and are easier to book, so we don’t have to break the bank and charge ridiculous prices on the door to make it happen. And at the same time we will be just as hyped about bringing over someone with zero fanbase as someone into house or techno might be about bringing over a huge name like Ben Klock. It’s great to introduce people to new music; a lot of the time people will come in [to Welcome] and say they don’t like grime, but then they’ll be dancing to some Murlo and stuff and be like ‘Oh, is this grime?’ With the way genres fuse with each other nowadays more than ever it’s important to not get caught up in the ‘what’s what’ and to just have an open mind.” This faith in their own tastes has generally paid off; they held their biggest party to date back in October when they hosted Murlo and Deadboy in District 8. Hugh laughs as he explains that: “We don’t make money! We make a bit of profit or whatever, but it’s not a job. We do a party a month, and the money we make from it is not justifying a month’s work. Initially yeah, we had the idea that we could do something we love and make a bit of cash on the side; now, that idea is gone.” Rather than being a source of revenue for its founders, Welcome has offered the trio instead a chance to flex themselves creatively. Paddy is now looking to start releasing his own music as Tjugo Lax and talks about his ideas for his own record label. Hugh has already done music videos for the likes of Dah Jevu and Luka Palm, and in July filmed a soon-to-be-released music video for Bobby Basil. In the coming spring he is going to be working with an as of yet unannounced artist from the UK. As such, it’s been an independently created and curated springboard in which they’ve given themselves a chance to nurture their own artistic talents and to kickstart their careers.

Reflecting on their experience with Welcome thus far, Hugh says: “I think with Welcome we’ve had a great year, it’s been really good. We were really excited about last year, and I don’t think we expected the year to go where it went so quickly, and to have met all the people we’ve met, and all the friends we’ve made. But what we’re more excited about is the next few years, and about where we go next. For us, the last year was just one step into something a lot bigger.” The resounding message from Welcome is that if you want to do something creative, just go for it. Dublin in 2015 is a receptive city — we could even say a welcoming city — and if you have passion for what you’re doing, an exciting idea, and maybe a little bit of luck, then you’ll find your space.

Welcome host their next party, Drillmas, on December 16th in the Opium Rooms garden. Doors are at 22:00 and tickets are €6 with a student card.

WORDS BY FINNáN TOBIN PHOTOS BY ELLIOT BROWNE

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Healthy Food Made Fun Food Editor Anna Gordon talks to Susan Jane White about her newest cookbook, The Virtuous Tart.

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n 2014, Susan Jane White shot to success with her bestselling cookbook The Extra Virgin Kitchen, and has recently released her second cookbook, The Virtuous Tart. Following its launch, she went around the different branches of Dubray Books, signing copies with personalised messages to the people who would purchase and pour over her recipes. After all, there is something unique and personal about a cookbook. It is different in the way that is not a book that you read and put away for a long time. If it’s worth its salt, then chances are that you will dip in and out of it, trying various recipes, for years to come. Susan Jane’s blend of quirkiness, imagination and talent make for an excellent recipe in the kitchen. In our follow up email correspondence, I got an automated response that read “I’m gallivanting in NYC until Tuesday 24th November. Just don’t tell my boss. Or my husband.(GSOH!)” I had to look up what “GSOH” means, too (Good sense of humor). I’m getting old. In the accompanying pictures, the one with the cake didn’t make the final cut, but Susan Jane sent it on to tn2. She gave this some context saying “V for Vegan. V for Victory. V for Vuzz off it’s mine!” In an interview with Susan Jane, she claims that her food philosophy is to “Count nutrients, not calories”.

Susan Jane’s health journey hearkens back to her college years of bad eating.

Susan Jane described a diet of “Cereal and milk for breakfast, biscuits, cakes, scones for snacks, sambo for lunch, pizza or pasta for supper, followed by hot milky drinks and more white-flour, white-sugar snacks. Where’s the excitement in that? I even counted pepperoni as my one a day. And coffee is basically a bean, right?” She went on to say that: “Giving up these foods for a while offered me new taste buds and a new lease of life. It’s the opposite of restrictive - it’s the most liberating thing I have ever achieved.

Suddenly I was exposed to hundreds of outrageously tasty ingredients that I never knew existed. Chestnut pancakes, soba noodles, buckwheat waffles, chickpea falafel, courgetti noodles, Mexican chilli bean”. Susan Jane’s online fame took off from her. As she says: “I started blogging about this nutritional ‘pilgrimage’ to share my recipes with others. That’s where it took wings. I guess sharing my work strengthened my career.”

Her new cookbook, The Virtuous Tart, is all about sweet treats. For anyone with a sweet tooth, Susan Jane’s recipes will have an appeal. They are a way of assuaging our guilt at munching on sweet things. This cookbook is about turning Susan Jane’s “pesky sugar cravings into a nutritional slamdunk, and giving my taste buds something to rave about.” Susan Jane’s vibrant and energetic personality seeps through the pages of the cookbook. As she says: “I’m pretty cheeky and potty-mouthed. So there’s a lot of sass in this book, and taking the mickey out of the ‘clean eating’ trend.” Susan Jane says that “The Virtuous Tart helps you service your sweet tooth, without the boring stats or dietary instructions” and that she would “rather neck a glass of sneeze than go on a diet.” Let this be a motto for all of us. Scrap the diet, and learn how to eat right.

The difference between The Virtuous Tart and The Extra Virgin Kitchen lies in the division between savoury and sweet. Susan Jane asserts that: “Apart from the world’s best BBQ kale crisps, everything else contains some form of natural sugar such as raw honey, dates, coconut nectar or maple. I can’t accuse any sugar as being healthy, but these are better choices to tickle my sweet tooth.” She lists examples of some of her homemade sweet treats, such as Honuts (healthy donuts), boozy chocolate cupcakes and chewy teff cookies, all made with natural sugars and battery-boosting flours.

When asked about her process, Susan Jane says that: “I just turned my greed into something fruitful, actually. If I can’t turn my virtues into a career, my vices will have to do!” She claims that she wanted to help readers understand all the types of sugar alternatives available on the market, and provide “kickass recipes to make the switch easier.” She goes on to say that: “I suppose you could say I start with a theme in mind.” When asked about her favourite recipe from the book, Susan Jane responded: “Ah jayney!

You can’t ask me that! It’s almost like having to choose a favourite child.

Each one is The Snazz. But if you were to make just one recipe from the

“I’m pretty cheeky and potty-mouthed. So there’s a lot of sass in this book, and taking the mickey out of the ‘clean eating’ trend.” book, make it the pomegranate halva. Life-changing stuff with just four ingredients, and takes just 60 seconds to make. It will have you feeling more virtuous than a canonised nun.” Adding on to this, when asked where Susan Jane gets her inspiration from, she says: “My fridge! I always try and use up everything in my fridge. Must is a great master.” When asked what she always has in stock in her kitchen, she says: “Soya sauce.

I’m an umami whore.”

Susan Jane also has a food column in the Sunday independent. She’s been writing for them for over six years, and says: “Naturally I airbrushed my profile pic to give me cheekbones. Who wouldn’t?! – I was put next to Rachel Allen every week.” Being next to Rachel Allen is also a clear indicator of Susan Jane’s success. As well as this, she was somewhat ahead of the stampede of healthy eaters, but managed not to get trampled underfoot: “At first, everyone thought my healthy vibe was daft. Five years later, I’m still a little deranged, but not daft. Healthy eating has become mainstream so I don’t have to apologise anymore for loving buckwheat noodles or roasted asparagus.”

From her early achievements in food writing, it is clear that Susan Jane has been honing her craft over the years, and it has certainly paid off. She says: “Food writing needs to be sharp and punchy. Cooking should be fun. Food writers should either dazzle you with their writing, like Nigel Slater, or crack you up like Allegra McEvedy. In between is just grey and matted. I constantly remind myself of that middle, and try not to get clamped there. It gives me The Fear.” In food writing, visuals are of the utmost importance. When asked if she placed a lot of importance on the relationship between words and images, particularly in a world that is so driven by the visual, Susan Jane says: “Not particularly. If I have a strategy, it is to be different from all the other moronic tomes out there that feel so prosaic in the kitchen.” She praises the brilliance of blogs, in the way that “visuals can enhance the reading experience. There is a swathe of talented photographers out there who aren’t hugely known or celebrated, but whose talent is above and beyond mainstream media. Just look at Farmette or Green Kitchen Stories for example. Extraordinarily gifted, and driven by visuals.” Susan Jane lists the people she loves following on Instragram, such as Inge Dittsen, Amy Chaplin, My First Mess, La Tartine Gourmande, Golubka, and Dagmar’s Kitchen. Susan Jane says: “All these ladies are impossibly talented in the kitchen, marrying exciting flavours and weird-sounding ingredients. Instagram and blogs are a cheap way of gaining daily inspiration. Think of them as your cheerleaders, willing you to make better food choices.”

So, the golden question. Since Susan Jane is working within the food industry, does it enhance her love of food or has cooking in her leisure time become a different experience? She says: “It’s all one. I’m like Kermit the Frog on LSD in a playground. Everything is amazing. Even after ten years.”

WORDS BY ANNA GORDON 17

WHAT’S THE POINT IN GOING ON? From the total annihilation of The Walking Dead to the subtler tragedy in The Leftovers, TV Editor J. Finbar Lynch takes a look at the implications of postapocalyptic tv shows.

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ost-apocalyptic fiction often asks us whether our lives or values are worth pursuing when society falls. Shows like The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica give us worlds with ever-dwindling populations, constantly hinting at the futility of our existence.

The point of fiction is to ask questions about ourselves in the present, and while post-apocalyptic fiction is certainly capable of this, it requires a very inflated kind of hyperbole. It is perhaps too far removed from reality. Set 3 years after an inexplicable event in which 2% of the world’s population inexplicably vanished into thin air, the landscape of The Leftovers is by no means post-apocalyptic, despite what you might expect from its title.

When 10/14 happens, there is a great deal of shock, confusion and grief.

But ultimately, the world makes the collective decision to move past these events and to get on with their lives. People still go to work; the schools don’t shut down. It’s business as usual. The Leftovers is able to ask us these questions more seriously because it’s much easier to accept that our lives

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are meaningless when faced with a band of 5 or 6 fending off a nation of walking corpses than it is in a world that more closely resembles our own.

The suggestion that we may not have a purpose becomes a far more bitter pill to swallow. The Leftovers is an exhilarating counterpoint to dystopian fiction, providing intriguing and provocative answers to the genre’s questions regarding the meaning of our existence.

Battlestar revolves around a fleet of 50,000 people that becomes increasingly small as they are picked off by the Cylons, artificial intelligence that has surpassed that of human capabilities. In The Walking Dead, a small group of human survivors fight inevitable extinction across the vast American landscape. In both, the characters experience an internal conflict between nihilism and optimism. In both, the characters struggle against an unconquerable enemy, forever trying to convince themselves that it will be worth it; that the human race can be salvaged, but we never truly believe it. The Leftovers’ nihilism finds a voice in the form of the Guilty Remnant, a cult that emerges in the aftermath of 10/14. They don’t see how everyone can pretend like their families and livelihoods might not be decimated again, at any given moment, without warning, cause or discrimination.

While post-apocalyptic fiction is invariably nihilistic in and of itself, its protagonists must be optimistic; they must believe that their continued survival is for some greater purpose. Otherwise, why would they bother?

In The Leftovers, each philosophy is given a voice, in the form of the nihilistic Remnant and the optimistic townsfolk.

The Guilty Remnant, the Cylons and the zombies are all allegorical representations of the subconscious. They are each an initially suppressed part of society who become an undefeatable enemy. Their rise to prominence is justification for taking on a nihilistic philosophy. Yet, even some of the bleakest post-apocalyptic landscapes opt for a glimmer of hope

“The point of all fiction is to ask questions about ourselves. The questions that post-apocalyptic fiction asks are profoundly unwelcome.” at the story’s end, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. This is because the absolute futility of life is a dangerous thing to admit to ourselves. In The Last Man on Earth, the lead character attempts suicide in the pilot as he believes himself to be the sole survivor of the apocalypse. Again, this is hyperbole; while many of us might experience isolation and loneliness, we don’t experience it in the same way as Will Forte’s character does. In a post-apocalyptic landscape, the sense of futility and meaninglessness is overwhelming. In The Leftovers, because the Remnant are still in a minority when we first meet them, this feeling of insignificance is, like in life, a niggling doubt in the back of one’s mind. Furthermore, the show suggests that while denial is a stopgap, it is perhaps a necessary stopgap.

Repression is defined by psychologist Lynn B. Myers as the methods by which we “avoid experiencing negative emotion, especially anxiety”.

The Leftovers suggests that human connection, optimism and love are all forms, or at least permutations, of denial and repression. They are a distraction to keep us from going off the deep end, the means by which we convince ourselves that we have purpose.

The point of all fiction is to ask questions about ourselves. The questions that post-apocalyptic fiction asks are profoundly unwelcome. Perhaps this is why the genre is necessary, to make us consider the big questions that we would rather ignore. Perhaps the reason anyone writes post-apocalyptic or dystopian fiction and asks these questions in the first place is to provoke the rest of us to come back and say “yes, life is worth living!”, but only after we’ve weighed up all of the options. After all, if you truly believe that life is pointless, how do you motivate yourself to create anything? The problem with much of post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction is that it is too extreme a viewpoint and this is why The Leftovers offers a nice reconciliation of nihilism and optimism in dystopias; it acknowledges the valid concerns inherent within nihilism while acknowledging our basic human need for optimism, even if only for the lack of a better alternative.

WORDS BY J. FINBAR LYNCH

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TOPSIDE PRESS Deputy Editor Sorcha Gannon talks to Cat Fitzpatrick, Imogen Binnie and Casey Plett about Topside Press, the politics of representation, and the power of self-publishing.

“A lot of the trans women were publishing online, and that was really formative and important, and wouldn’t have happened without the internet.”

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“Eventually you can’t help but figure out that, while gender is a construct, so is a traffic light, and if you ignore either of them, you get hit by cars.”

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opside Press, was founded in Brooklyn in 2011 with the intention of publishing literature by, for, and about transgender people.

Topside recently went on the Never Mind the Hormones tour, which sought to “bring the vanguard of trans writing in North America with their European counterparts.” The press release for the tour describes the “revolution in trans literature” of the past few years, which is both “a central part of the accelerating political change around trans issues and an important literary development in its own right.” Two writers published by the press, Imogen Binnie and Casey Plett, read alongside a rotating selection of writers, creating the largest series of trans writers reading together to date, and providing a platform for conversation, community, and creativity across Ireland and the UK. Topside were in Dublin on November 17th and 18th, performing at UCD and Tenterhooks gigspace in Newmarket Square. Tenterhooks was packed out on the evening, which was hosted by co-founder and poetry editor of the press, Cat Fitzpatrick, who began the readings with a poem, performed with the participation of three audience members. Fitzpatrick afterwards spoke about the role of a press that publishes literature that not only has trans people as subjects, but also as authors and audiences, and how this affects various transgender narratives. One of the problems with fiction published by cisgender (aka non-transgender) authors about trans characters, is that the narratives become about the fantasies of cis writers and cis readers. The prevalent genre of such narratives is what Fitzpatrick terms the transition memoir, which is essentially an exercise in titillation and speculation, a gratuitous and ultimately harmful fantasy of what it might be like to transition for someone who has never had such an experience. On the other hand, the writing of literature that has transgender people as its author and intended audience, as well as its protagonist, creates what Fitzpatrick terms “an extension of possibility and reality” for trans readers, and she believes that such literature has the potential

to “change lives.” Fitzpatrick cautions not to underestimate the power of seeing a humanising representation of oneself, or the repercussions that a lack of such representations can have.

Imogen Binnie read from her book Nevada, which follows twenty-nine year old Maria as she leaves her job, girlfriend, and life in New York, to embark on a trip of self-discovery across the US. Maria’s dark humor, introspective internal monologuing, and cynical punk attitude excellently conveys her experience as a queer trans woman in New York: “Eventually you can’t help but figure out that, while gender is a construct, so is a traffic light, and if you ignore either of them, you get hit by cars.” Nevada has been credited with inspiring the current flow of trans writing. Casey Plett cites her as an influence on her debut collection of twelve short stories, A Safe Girl to Love (2014), winner of a Lambda literary award, which follows twelve young trans women navigating family, work, sex, and friendship.

The writing of both features queer characters, which also contributes to deconstructing cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions about the relationship between gender, sex, and sexuality. In terms of her influences, Binnie mentions Kathy Acker (“The first time I read Kathy Acker changed my life”), Denis Cooper (“Whoa this dude is so far disappeared into his own thing, and he’s just committed to it. That really affected me.”), and Sybil Lamb (“who changed everything for me, in pretty serious ways”) who is also published by Topside.

When asked about the role of the printed book, when so much publishing takes place online, Plett replies that “I don’t think a lot has actually changed that much - I mean I work in a bookstore and lots of people still want to buy books”. She thinks that as a platform for self-expression and publishing creative work, the internet “Is great - I feel like both of us cut a lot of our teeth reading and writing stuff that was being published online. A lot of the trans women were publishing online, and that was really formative 21

and important, and wouldn’t have happened without the internet.” Binnie also retains faith in the printed book: “I have this idea for something I want to create, and I think, will this work best as a poem, as a song, as a short YouTube video… there are, like, so many media that you can do things in, and I think that books have really specific strengths.” One of the strengths Binnie sees in books is their “static nature”: “you know, Nevada came out like two-and-a-half years ago, and people keep discovering it, but it keeps on being the same book, and so somebody who read it twoand-a-half years ago can talk to someone who read it today.” This isn’t the case with the internet, because “you’ve got the timeline, and stuff falls to the bottom”, but when publishing on the internet you get “that immediate feedback. I definitely appreciate that.” A public reading like the Never Mind the Hormones tour gig in Tenterhooks creates another kind of space, which Binnie describes as “like a conversation, the text in conversation with other people who are in the room” and when she reads her work, she focuses on “how to make people want to pay attention. It definitely feels like a performance, in a way that can feel like human connection.” Plett’s favourite thing about reading her work, is that “there are a few lines in my book which like I never thought were funny, that everyone always laughs at every time, and I’m like ‘That’s not funny, but okay, awesome!’”

Nevada and A Safe Girl to Love both clearly fall outside of the kind of fiction that Fitzpatrick speaks of, written by non-transgender authors about transgender characters. With regards to writing an experience that is not one’s own, Plett sees a difference between, “writing characters who have something about them that is an oppressive experience that you don’t have, versus trying to write about that particular kind of oppressive experience”, that she thinks tends to get confused. Binnie frames this similarly, in terms of her own experience as an author: “I do think about it too, in terms of ‘am I writing about people who experience this, or am I speaking for people who experience this thing,’ and feeling like it’s pretty fucked up to be like, ‘I’m going to speak for this group that doesn’t share my oppression.’ Whereas writing about someone who has an oppression that you don’t share feels super possible to me.” Plett wrote a blog post for The Walrus called Rise of the Gender Novel, about cis authors who write books about trans characters, citing four such books as the basis for her critique: For Today I Am a Boy (Kim Fu) , Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (Shani Mootoo), Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides), and Annabel (Kathleen Winter). Despite the arguably good intentions of the authors, Plett points out in her article that “they often rehash stale, demeaning tropes: a coy mix-and-match of pronouns; descriptions of trans women as fake and mannish; the equation of gender with genitalia and surgery; a fixation on rare intersex conditions that allow for tacked-on, unrealistic transition narratives.” Her blog highlights how such writers often overlook

“transgender life as it is actually lived”, failing to write characters for whom “being trans is just one aspect of their whole, holistic beings”.

As Binnie puts it, “Cis people writing about what it is like to transition, is often what would it be like if I, a cis person, decided to transition. But it’s like, you’re a cis person so you’re not going to transition, so therefore that thought experiment takes you to wrong places.” Plett agrees: “When it comes to fiction I think it does kind of get tricky sometimes, because you can’t sort of insert that identity in there, and expect it to have no bearing […] So I’m not saying that it’s a completely easy thing, but there are very obvious missteps as well, that people make.” Binnie raises another point about cis authors writing about trans experiences: “it’s like no, back off, you do have to do the work, in order to write about someone who has this experience. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means that actually pay attention to what these people are saying about their own experiences instead of just making up what it would be like for you with this different experience, an experience that you don’t have.” Binnie raises the issue of consent and representation, so often worryingly absent from depictions of transgender characters in books and other media which don’t consult the lived realities of the those they pertain to represent, raising again the issue of such writing which plays to the cis imagination and normative stereotypes.

Even if such books have the ostensibly good intention to educate and inform cis readers, by doing so they recentre a cisgendered position in both the production and consumption of such writing, which is not the authentic representation that Topside aims for. Despite the recent surge of trans visibility in popular culture and mainstream media, the experience of those whose gender identity falls outside of hegemonic paradigms is contextualized by hostile social attitudes, a lack of legal recognition, discrimination, violence and transphobia, which as Plett’s blog post points out, warrants more than a simplistic or uplifting transition narrative, and a neat ending. In fact, both Nevada and the stories in A Safe Girl to Love are characterized by ambivalent, ambiguous, and open endings. As Fitzpatrick, Binnie, and Plett illuminate, authentic representation has to be done on its own terms, hence self-publishing by an independent press like Topside is the most effective way of producing such literature. They also show how literature about trans characters has to ultimately be also by and for transgender people, in order to resist normative assumptions and provide humanising representations in their place.

“Am I writing about people who experience this, or am I speaking for people who experience this thing?”

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WORDS BY SORCHA GANNON PHOTOS COURTESY OF TOPSIDE PRESS

REVIEWS NU. LAUNCH NU.

●●●●○ As we are becoming more and more aware of the conditions in which the people who make our clothes work, as well as the environmental impact of our society’s tendency towards “disposable fashion”, many of us have begun to question our shopping habits. But a solution to these issues, save from swearing off shopping altogether, is often difficult, leaving us all at the mercy of high street retailers. The startup Nu is hoping to change this. They aim to create a community where people can “Share, Swap and Steal” clothes, and also provide a service to rent ethical clothing: a way for people to still have a constantly changing wardrobe, with minimal environmental and ethical impact.

home. Each garment was also judged to be either “Basic” or “Bling”, so there was little chance of being short changed in the swapping process. The selection of clothes on offer was good, and was essentially a chance to change up your wardrobe for free. As well as this, upcycling and also clothing repair workshops showed guests how they can make the most of clothing they already own.

Nu’s launch party, held in The Workman’s Club, was a promising glimpse into what this venture can become. Organic, hand-printed t-shirts and tote bags were available to buy, and guests were encouraged to bring clothes to swap. A token was provided for each item brought, which allowed people to take a different item

The company’s ethos was also important to the event. This was made evident through elements such as a screening of the chilling documentary, The True Cost, which brings home the impact of our rapacious consumption of clothing on the workers who make it for us. Oxfam representatives were also present at the event to

provide further insight into these issues which Nu are taking small steps towards combating.

Despite these serious issues forming the premise for the event, there was still a buzzing atmosphere, with drinks and DJs ensuring this was a place for people to mingle and chat, and not just focus on the clothes. Overall, Nu seem to want to create more than a place to get clothes: they’re fashioning a community, a move that is key in escaping the rapid consumption we are currently used to. This slowing of pace that Nu advocates, encouraging us to consider where our clothing is coming from, is vital if the fashion industry is ever to move away from its currently damaging system.

WORDS BY MEGAN BURNS

REFUGE RESTROOMS ●●●●● Refuge Restrooms is an online initiative by transgender activists based in the U.S. It’s also an open source app that allows trans*, non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming users to both add and find their nearest gender neutral and accessible public toilets. Why restrooms?

The use of public toilets is a battlefield for trans* people, who regularly are shunned from using the toilet that matches their gender identity and the toilets for their assigned gender alike.

According to the website: “Many transgender individuals face still face both verbal and physical harassment simply for using the restroom. Nobody should have to face that, and that’s why we created Refuge.”

The slick, minimalist designed interface allows users to see bathrooms near them that are accessible, identified with a pin on google maps.

There is also a search feature, so one can plan journeys in advanced around their access to safe toilets. Not only are the pins identified on the map, but users can add directions to the toilets once in the building and a comments section

allows for extra useful tid-bits of information, such as “this establishment accepts paying customers only”.

The user-generated feature of the restroom listings means that Dublin users can add their own knowledge of gender neutral and accessible bathrooms around the city. You can also help out if you are a coder and notice any bugs in

the feature, since the app is open source. The core team of operators of the service such as computer engineers and graphic designers are unemployed trans* people. No one should have to work for free, so donating can help keep this innovative and much-needed service running smoothly.

WORDS BY HANNAH AMADEUS HARTE 23

KANNON SUN O))) ●●●●○

Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson are the two members of Seattle drone metal band, Sunn O))). Kannon is their seventh LP and their first solo release since Monoliths & Dimensions in 2009; its sprawling multi-instrumentalism, has been replaced by the bleak sparsity of their earlier work. Since then, O’Malley and Anderson have separately gone on to form other bands, score films, and set up record labels, so Kannon is not only a reunion, but also a stylistic return to earlier work. With only three songs and clocking in at barely thirty-three minutes, Sunn are playing fast and loose with the tag “album”. Sunn have always embraced religious symbols by dressing in robes, playing live shows in cathedrals and singing in Gregorian chant, but they seem to be taking this idea further still by naming the album after Kannon, the Buddhist God/Goddess of compassion and mercy. It’s a clear statement about their music.

While on first listen, it may seem farcical to equate this brooding and imposing album with compassion or mercy, there is certainly solace to be gained from being engulfed by this powerful and patient creation.

The three tracks faithfully illustrate Sunn’s modus operandi: namely, playing chords so loudly and for so long that the listener can hear and appreciate every little change and inflection. Achingly slow guitar and reverb wrestle, churning like a choppy ocean, with the writhing vocals of Attila Csihar (Hungarian-born singer for Norwegian black metal band Mayhem) snaking its way around the monolithic sounds. This heaving body of noise would be a hot mess in the hands of some, but its containment is accomplished in no small part thanks to the refined production

of Randall Dunn. The main detraction from the album is that it is hurried in places. For a band that specialises in emphasising the most minute details in noise, a lot of the most intriguing sounds are pushed to the fringes and not developed properly. The album is short but the length of each of the tracks really allows you to explore the murky and cataclysmic world which O’Malley and Anderson have meticulously constructed.

relationship was marked by abuse. As such Mr Crampton has seen neither wife nor kids for eighteen years, until their accidental meeting in the play. Tangential to this relationship is that of Gloria and Mr Valentine (Paul Reid). Their relationship questions society and feminism.

Reid and O’Malley cope remarkably well with the quick-fire dialogue.

place. His extravagance ensures that every scene with him is a treat, and highlights Morrison’s emphasis on humour throughout. This is a truly hilarious play that ensures equal doses of entertainment and reflection.

WORDS BY JOSH KENNY

YOU CAN NEVER TELL THE ABBEY THEATRE ●●●●○

In what many regard as a biographical look at his own life, You Can Never Tell is the fourth in the Abbey’s series of plays by Bernard Shaw - the first being Pygmalion in 2011. Directed by the award-winning Conall Morrison, known for directing both Sive and She Stoops to Conquer with success in the Abbey last year, this production marries well the humour and social commentary that have marked this work since its debut at the Royalty Theatre in 1899.

Morrison’s emphasis on comedy is immediately apparent from the opening scene. We first encounter Dolly (Genevieve Hulme-Beaman), while she is frolicking through the beautiful water feature that remains a constant in the production. Created by set designer Liam Doona, it gives the stage an almost mystical element from start to finish. Dolly and her brother Philip (James Murphy) almost act exclusively as a pair and their exploits are marked by flamboyancy.

The latter is successful thanks to their costumes, for which Joan O’Clery gets credit.

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Mrs Clandon (Eleanor Methven) is the mother of Dolly, Philip and Gloria (Caoimhe O’Malley).

It is Mrs Clandon’s relationship with her estranged husband, Mr Crampton (Eamon Morrissey), which is at the heart of the play. The

The star of the show is Walter Boom (Niall Buggy), the waiter who oversees all that takes

You Never Can Tell runs at the Abbey until 6 February. Tickets start at €13.

WORDS BY RORY O’REGAN

STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT EA

●●●○○ DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront was always going to be laden down with the baggage of its predecessors, and could never hope to match the expectations placed on it by the fans of the original Battlefront games. However, it still manages to succeed in many ways — not, perhaps, as the successor to Pandemic Studios’ series, but as the first title in a new Star Wars series, delivering its own, unique, experience, with its own successes and failures.

Never before has a game so accurately and authentically immersed you in the Star Wars universe, boasting breath-taking graphics, easily-accessible gameplay and a score that really crunches down on the nostalgia factor.

Battlefront is a shooter stripped of most of the baggage of the genre, providing an ease of accessibility unknown in today’s world where titles like Call of Duty and Destiny dominate.

It’s a game that caters to casual gamers, perfect for spending an hour on at the end of a long day to unwind, but a lack of depth means that it’s unlikely to satisfy those with more dedication.

The game boasts a mere ten hours or so of gameplay before all maps and modes have been exhausted. While it looks like this will improve with the launch of downloadable content, including the recently released (and free) Battle of Jakku DLC, it’s more than a little frustrating that a game with so much promise gives you so few options to explore.

The lack of gametypes becomes immediately obvious, and what makes this worse is that there

is considerable overlap between some of the versions on offer. Cargo, Drop Zone and Droid Run are all, essentially, capture gametypes, and while they do offer slightly different varieties of this mode, the differences don’t seem to be enough to warrant the presence of all three.

Similarly, the existence of the Blast gametype seems unnecessary — why anyone would play it over the larger-scale Supremacy or Walker Assault is a mystery. Fighter Assault offers a fun, if short-lived, alternative to the constant ground battles, as you take to the skies in a beautifully rendered TIE fighter or X-Wing, though it doesn’t quite capture the spirit of the large-scale space battles in the older Battlefronts.

On the plus side, the graphics truly are spectacular, using the Frostbite 3 engine to create the illusion that you are stepping into the world of the films, creating a more visually authentic and impressive game than others that previously held the Star Wars name. While many of the gametypes can be underwhelming, when you find one in Battlefront that you can truly sink your teeth into, it delivers an experience like no other. Walker Assault is such an example — a game in which you either have to protect or destroy two Imperial ATATs, pitting two teams of forty players against one another. It combines the best Battlefront has on offer, from thrilling ground combat, a wide range of both ground and air vehicles, and the ability to play as iconic characters from the original trilogy (or “heroes”), allowing you to play to your strengths, whatever they may be.

The game also offers an improvement on its predecessors in how it handles its heroes and villains. Luke, Han, Leia, Boba Fett, The Emperor and Darth Vader are all playable in

several of the gametypes, as are the Millenium Falcon and Slave I in Fighter Assault. While there was a far larger selection of heroes and villains in Battlefront II, Star Wars Battlefront really nails the experience of being one of these characters, and each play very differently to each other. While the voice acting is a bit stilted and not quite as accurate as one could wish, never before have you been able to step into the shoes of one of the characters from the films to this level, slashing your way through hordes of stormtroopers/rebels with a lightsaber.

However, if you’re looking for a strong single player campaign, this is not the game you’re looking for. While Battlefront does offer a few single player options, these essentially fall into two types — short, easy tutorial style missions, or a basic horde mode, which provides an hour or so of fun before exhausting its content. At times, this does feel like a real let down on DICE’s part, but unfortunately it seems to be the trend for video games in this era — see: Titanfall, Evolve, Destiny, etc.

While Battlefront is by no means a perfect game — its glaring lack of single player, the repetitiveness of some of its gametypes, the handful of maps — it still manages to deliver an incredible experience for those already invested in the franchise. Those who love Star Wars will love this game. For those who don’t, the game just doesn’t provide enough content to warrant its price tag.

WORDS BY NICHOLAS KENNY 25

PEEP SHOW CHANNEL 4 ●●●●●

It’s been three years since Channel 4’s longest running sitcom last graced our screens. That’s a long time to wait, and there’s no doubting that the suspense only added to the pressure of delivering a final season that would appease the show’s devoted viewers. You might worry that, after that amount of time, it would have lost some of its magic, but it’s clear that the show’s unique humour is very much still there.

The dysfunctional, codependent relationship between the two main characters has always been at the heart of the show, and as soon as season 9 begins, we’re reminded why it’s so brilliant. The years Mark and Jez have spent living together manifests itself in an intricate knowledge of each other’s eccentricities- to such an extent, in fact, that they could never really handle living with anyone else. Their rapport is perfectly captured not only in the writing, but also in the way Mitchell and Webb play so well off of one another.

The individual storylines of the characters are also still strong, remaining fresh yet compatible

THE MAN IN HIGH CASTLE AMAZON ●●●○○

Based on the eponymous Philip K. Dick novel, Amazon’s new television show The Man in the High Castle begins from a central premise: what if the Axis powers won the Second World War? From this it conjures up an alternative 1960s where the United States has been partitioned between a Nazi-controlled east and a Japanese Empire-controlled west, and then follows an intricate web of characters stretching across the continent. The instigator of the plot is a series of mysterious “newsreels” that seem to show an alternative world where the Allies won

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with the personalities that have been so well developed and defined over the course of the series. While Mark’s routine of being dangerously obsessive over his love interests does seem a bit overdone at this point, Jez’s childlike, carefree attitude is kept interesting and entertaining with a well-written change of direction for the character.

Crucially, the dialogue is as clever and hilarious as ever. Its humour is subtle and underplayed, and this is what makes the show so relatable the war. Our two main characters, Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) and Julianna Crane (Alexa Davalos), both come into possession of these newsreels and then embark upon a relatively traditional narrative journey.

The Man in the High Castle is perhaps the peak example of current television trends: released entirely online, one season accessible from the get-go and taken from another work of fiction.

It’s all the better for this, drawing heavily from the source material while still being very much its own beast. This willingness to adapt is embodied by the newsreels, which replace a book from the original novel. This alteration works very well given the visual medium.

and entertaining. Along with the excellent use of characters’ interior monologues, this enables the writers to put the characters in the outlandish and cringe-worthy scenarios that the series is renowned for, while maintaining the believability that the show needs in order for its humour to work as well as it does. Season 9 delivers everything that has made Peep Show so great, and gives the cult classic the send-off it deserves.

WORDS BY SINÉAD HARRINGTON We are introduced to a richly designed world, to a level that belies its television budget. This world-building is easily the most compelling aspect of the show, which along with the central mystery of the newsreels makes a strong case alone for giving it a watch. However, it must be noted that it does fall down on some key areas; the acting is subpar and it takes most of the first season for the characters to really develop.

Instead, we get broad sweeps of character exposition and sometimes-clunky dialogue delivered poorly.

Perhaps the most damning problem is the lack of humour throughout, though that seems justified and inevitable considering the subject matter, which is treated with suitable care.

Subtle but harrowing scenes touch upon issues ranging from a far greater Holocaust to the state-sanctioned murder of children. Much of the mysticism of Dick’s work is stripped away, but the newsreels and the “I Ching” – a kind Chinese prediction book – remain, adding considerable flavor and hinting at metaphysical questions behind the façade. These questions are brought to the fore as the show continues and finds its feet in the last three episodes, and leave us at the end, much like the show: reaching for something.

WORDS BY OISÍN VINCE COULTER

SPROUT & CO

comfortable and spend a long afternoon here; it is better placed as a spot for a quick lunch.

DAWSON STREET ●●●●○

The awkwardly-shaped unit on Dawson Street which once held Café Sol has seen several iterations since that business closed in 2013.

The short-lived, concept store The Walter Mitty Coffee Project, with its graffiti wall and urban décor, had been known for its latte art before it vanished in favour of a city centre outlet for Greystones-based Café Gray in early 2014.

Café Gray had earned a loyal clientele for its high-quality coffee and its fresh sandwiches, and many students seemed apprehensive at the prospect of yet another tenant.

Sprout and Co. had already developed a strong reputation as a supplier of juices to outlets across Dublin. The company website boasts that Elle Macpherson is a fan, and with cold pressed offerings including the kale-rich Supergreen and Beetroot based Mr Beattie, the juices pack a flavoursome punch. This reputation in tow, it was curious to see that the new Sprout and Co. Kitchen would not be a mere juice bar, but would be a new food concept, spinning traditional expectations of café food on their head.

Whereas the previous tenants in this unit posited coffee as the main event, with food offerings there to complement the espresso, the Sprout Kitchen food is very much the focus. The high quality of coffee is maintained from its predecessor Café Gray, thanks to the maintenance of Dublin supplier 3FE, and a

THE AGE OF REINVENTION KARINE TUILL ●●○○○

The Age of Reinvention: A Novel by Karine Tuil, published by Scribner, is an international bestseller and a finalist for the Prix Goncourt.

The praise it has received in the French press has created high expectations, which the book does not live up to.

The novel focuses on the interwoven stories of Samir, Samuel and Nina. Samir is a successful lawyer living in New York, married to heiress Ruth Berg. However, his seemingly charmed life is built on a lie. When two of his old friends, Samuel and Nina, discover his deception, his past begins to catch up with him. Although the plot is reasonably well-crafted, it is tired and clichéd. Many of the central plots in the novel, such as attempting to keep one’s past a secret

retention of many of Café Gray’s staff. Some aspects of the establishment seem somewhat excessive. The potted herbs and various leaves seen on shelves and counters all bear labels, which presumably are solely for the benefit of the staff, making the experience feel overtly educational. The choice to provide only biodegradable plastic cutlery and paper cups rather than reusable alternatives seems odd.

Raw Protein Balls, at around €3, are unlikely to cement themselves as part of the coffeeto-go experience, and the choice of stools at high tables mean that it’s quite difficult to get

While moderately more expensive than other student food haunts, the prices are very reasonable considering the high quality, with all meals ringing in at well under a tenner, and a variety of options on offer. The recipes for their salad bowls and wraps make use of fresh, mostly Irish ingredients, with leafy greens like kale, rocket, and spinach featuring heavily.

One also has the option of choosing to create one’s own salad bowl, picking a protein, various leaves and other fresh salad ingredients and dressings, for a filling meal. A similar option is offered for soups, with a Build Your Own Miso option listed on the menu. The portion sizes themselves seem excessive, in bowls significantly larger than the ordinary salad bowl, easily large enough to feed two. A hearty wrap costs €6.95, and paired with a soup comes to €9.95. I ordered a neatly-rolled falafel wrap and an Indian Lentil Soup, and was surprised at the clean texture, rich in kale and carrot and devoid of oil, marking it as a healthier way to eat falafel. The soup was a delight in itself, with the choice of spices not overshadowing the base flavour of the red lentils.

The Sprout Kitchen is a welcome addition to the area. Burrito-weary students would be well-advised to spend the extra euro and drop in for one of their wraps.

WORDS BY FIONN McGORY Photo by huda awan

or writing a novel, are such overused tropes that it is difficult to approach them from a fresh perspective. The main characters, although often presented as interesting, alluring and dynamic, actually come across as quite bland.

The novel attempts to deal with a wide range of important contemporary issues, from race relations in France, to the aftermath of 9/11, to social media and identity. While these are interesting and relevant topics, it is disappointing that these issues are not approached from an exciting or original perspective. Furthermore, the ideas are often put across in a manner that is quite repetitive and heavy-handed, which creates the impression that the reader is not trusted to draw their own conclusions. The novel appears to be an earnest attempt to deal with some relevant issues, but the stale plot and characters make for a lacklustre execution.

WORDS BY TANYA SHEEHAN

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DEC 16

DEC 18

DEC 19

StartUp Grind Hosts Richard Barnwell

Christmas Bashment

Queer Punx Party

Dublin Rave Market

The Foundry, Barrow Street, €15

Wigwam, Middle Abbey Street, €5-10

JIGSAW, Belvedere Court, €8 suggested donation

The Palace, Lower Camden Street, prices vary

Richard Barnwell, the founder and CEO of the Dublin-based DIGIT Game Studio, will be speaking on his experiences as a video game developer at an event held by Startup Grind Dublin on December 16th, 2015. Founded in 2012, DIGIT is the largest game development studio in Ireland, best-known for developing Kings of the Realm, which had the biggest game launch in the history of the Irish gaming industry. Before founding DIGIT, Richard was CEO at Jolt Online Gaming (part of the GameStop network), and prior to that was a member of the senior management team at Jagex (a leading developer of MMO titles, including RuneScape). Richard is currently a Board Member of Games Ireland, a not-for-profit organisation working to support, promote and drive sustainable growth for the games industry in Ireland. The format of the meetup is a one-to-one fireside chat between Richard and David Scanlon, director of StartUp Grind Dublin. It’s entirely unscripted, with no slides or pitches, intended to explore and celebrate the grind of being an entrepreneur in the world of video game development.

Sim Simma have developed quite the reputation both among Dubliners and further afield with their commitment to a reggae and dancehall vibe which brightens up dark and wet Dublin evenings.

Returning to the basement of Wigwam (FKA Twisted Pepper) for their Christmas party, they are hosting some of their most exciting bookings to date, Murlo and Platt. Platt is one half of Swing Ting, a group of DJs from Manchester where they run a night of the same name. Expect a diverse range of sounds from dancehall to garage. Murlo is one of instrumental grime’s leading lights and has had a year to remember. After releasing a collaborative EP with Dublin’s own Gemma Dunleavy earlier in the year, the producer dropped the enchanting Odyssey EP in November. Getting to see these two diverse acts is a real treat and a snip at €10.

On December 18th Jigsaw will be hosting the Queer Punx Party, featuring live bands and DJs ‘til late. The night will see performances from Cruising, Sissy, Alien She, Surge and Eris. The party is also a fundraiser for Dublin Housing Action (DCHA) which is focused on a community response to the housing and homelessness crisis. Check it out for an evening of punk music, dancing until late, and donate to a good cause while you’re at it.

Bopping while shopping at the Dublin Rave Market is the only way to get you through the panic of last minute Christmas gift buying.

Inspired by the rave markets of Madrid, the event will include yoga, dancersize, pigon-a-spit, retro games room, bindi-jewellery, facepainting and more to be confirmed.

Drop into The Palace on lower Camden Street for what is certain to be an original Christmas market experience. There will be DJ sets, a vintage market and, best of all, cooked tapas and artisan coffee stands. Plus, entry is free which makes it the perfect early present from you to you.

WORDS BY NICHOLAS KENNY

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DEC 18

WORDS BY JOSH KENNY

WORDS BY SORCHA GANNON

WORDS BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM

DEC 19-20

JAN 1-16

ONGOING

ONGOING

Shaw Xmas Flea First Fortnight Weekender

You Never Can Tell

Merlin James & Serge Charchoune

Bernard Shaw, Richmond Street, prices vary

All over the city, prices vary

The Abbey Theatre, From €13

Douglas Hyde Gallery, free entry

In celebration of the festive season, The Bernard Shaw are holding a weekend-long version of their ever-popular monthly flea market. Full of “extra Christmas surprises”, it’s the perfect opportunity to pick up some truly original Christmas gifts. There will be different stalls across the two days, as well as the usual food and drink offerings to keep you fuelled while you shop. With vintage clothing as well as countless vendors with handmade art, crafts and jewellery, there’s no excuse for giving anyone a generic bath and body gift-set this year.

Founded in 2009, First Fortnight is an arts based mental health awareness group committed to challenging the stigma attached to mental illness through creative media.

The New Year is for many a lonely and difficult time, where internal struggles resurface and any hope of understanding is lost among the turmoil of the January sales. First Fortnight are hoping to ease the transition into the New Year by putting mental health issues into the spotlight with a two week arts festival featuring plays, performance pieces and meetups, all with the aim of promoting open and frank discussion about mental health. The Festival will be kicking off on January 1st with a Proclamation on mental health and wellbeing at Christ Church for the upcoming year and will run for the remaining fortnight.

Until the 6th of Febuary George Bernard Shaw’s play, You Never Can Tell, will be showing at the Abbey Theatre, directed by Conall Morrison. The play follows Mrs. Clarendon as she returns to England with her family and sets up residence in a seaside hotel: “I have always said that the great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.”

Family and romantic politics ensue - “Can a mysterious waiter help them all to live happily ever after?” For some theatrical entertainment over the Christmas break check out this comedy from one of Ireland’s most beloved playwrights.

The Douglas Hyde plays host to two painters this winter.

Gallery 2 will be showing Meeting at the Building, a series of paintings inspired by and incorporating small models of buildings Merlin James began making with scraps from his studio floor.

James exhibited in Gallery 1 in 2012, and was instrumental in bringing the paintings of Franco-Russian artist Serge Charchoune to the main space for this exhibition.

Born in 1888, Charchoune is usually thought of as minor, eccentric Modernist painter, but his influence exceeds his reputation. For a look at the paintings of this often overlooked painter and his contemporary advocate, visit our own campus gallery anytime before the end of February.

WORDS BY MEGAN BURNS

WORDS BY SORCHA GANNON

WORDS BY RACHEl GRAHAM

Full listings: www.firstfortnight.ie WORDS BY EMIly SMITH

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STAFF PICKS

Baroque Christmas hits, festive window displays, and a modern addition to the pantheon of Christmas movie classics.

MUSIC THE MESSIAH, GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (AS PERFORMED BY THE ENGLISH CONCERT AND CHOIR) The Messiah is an oratorio written by George Frideric Handel in 1741. An oratorio is a large musical composition involving an orchestra, choir, and soloists. Written in English and first performed in Dublin, the piece which focuses on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ has become one of the most well-known and often-performed choral pieces in classical music. While it was originally performed at Easter, nowadays it has become synonymous with Christmas. On the 13th of April 1742 it was first performed in the old Great Music Hall on Fishamble Street, near the modern day George Frideric Handel hotel. Sections such the Hallelujah Chorus have become a touchstone in popular culture. Handel was originally from Halle, in the Duchy of Magdeburg, but made his name in London. He began writing operas, but moved onto oratorios later in the Georgian period. Handel was invited to perform a series of concerts from December until February 1741/2 by the then Lord Lieutenant, the 3rd Duke of Devonshire. The Messiah featured in none of these concerts, but it was presented for the first time at a charity concert in April. In the three hour composition, the bass solo, The Trumpet Shall Sound, accompanied by wobbling trumpet and the poignant chorus, Behold the Lamb of God, are highlights. This particular version was recorded in 1988, performed by the English Concert and Choir and conducted by Trevor Pinnock. The soloists were the Soprano Arleen Auger, Contralto Anne Sofie von Otter, Tenor Howard Cook, and Bass John Tomlinson. Pinnock and his fellows performed a Messiah stripped of the two hundred years worth of extras which it had accrued and focused on the original Baroque instrumentation and ornamentation which was to become one of the standard performances of the later 20th century.

WORDS BY JOSH KENNy

ART/FASHION BROWN THOMAS’ CHRISTMAS WINDOWS It’s easy to get lost in the overwhelming sea of Christmas advertising as every shop vies for the attention of the shopped-out shopper. Certain motifs - be they fake Christmas trees, baubles, snowflakes or stars - are repeated in shop after shop, merging into a green, red and gold blur.

Somehow, however, the much-loved Christmas window displays at Brown Thomas remain a cut above the rest with their wondrous, dazzling displays. It’s safe to say that the windows have become a key addition to Dublin’s annual festive chaos, almost as famous as Grafton Street’s lights or the Stephen’s Green Christmas tree, especially for those who love something a little bit different. It’s like Christmas, but with an exceedingly contemporary twist. This year, the theme revolves around that of ‘’The Shop of Wonders’’, fairytales and storytelling being the nuclei around which each of the designs rotate. Gigantic books, poodles and reindeer share the window spaces with the vacant gaze of mannequins. Fantastical women in beautiful clothing traipse around the technicolor dream world, showcasing the best of what Brown Thomas has to offer. Indeed, visual advertising doesn’t get much better than this.

WORDS BY SARAH MOREl

FIlM A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS There’s something incredibly tacky, commercial, and cheesy about the “Christmas special” variety hour. Celebrities gather together in the Christmas spirit supposedly to display authentic goodwill and affection in the form of awkward on-stage banter and pre-rehearsed Christmas numbers.

The seriously meta premise of Netflix’s A Very Murray Christmas immediately addresses this: Bill Murray is supposed to host a Christmas special, but a blizzard has shut down New York so none of his guests can arrive. By couching the apparently light-hearted cheer of the Christmas special in the commercial grimness of a tanking live production, director Sofia Coppola initially seems set to skewer the somewhat bizarre tradition for its undeniable issues. However, over its hour-long runtime, A Very Murray Christmas slowly embraces its roots, converting its cynicism into a kind of postmodern sincerity. Drinking away his sorrows in the hotel bar, Murray strikes up conversation with the guests and staff (all played by celebrities in heavily lampshaded cameos). Things naturally, and rapidly, develop into a sing-along, and whether it’s due to the mopey charm of Bill Murray or the unmistakable delight of hearing celebs (often badly) belt out classic Christmas hits, A Very Murray Christmas successfully conveys the kitschy joy of the holiday special even while highlighting its flaws. If you can take the in-your-face self-awareness, you won’t find better Christmas entertainment 30this year.

WORDS BY EOIN MOORE 30

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