vhcle
ISSUE 18 FALL 2015 / VHCLE MAGAZINE
Featured Articles: The Ideal & the Ordinary – The Human Body in Art, FM Radio: Where the ‘Oldies’ are No Longer Golden / Vhcle Books: Wolf in White Van, Lionel Shriver’s Unlikely Heroines, Hot Feminist, The Circle / Featured Artists: Jennifer Hoyden (The Fashion Donkey), Matthew Swartz, Zaria Forman
contents VHCLE MAGAZINE / ISSUE 18
art
02 contents
music film
03 MASTHEAD
photography Design
04-05 Contributors
fashion life
06-11 The Ideal & the Ordinary – The Human Body in Art
books
By Tim Sunderman
Recommendations
12-17 FM Radio: Where the ‘Oldies’ are No Longer Golden By Marc Ingber 18-37 VHCLE BOOKS 20-23 Wolf in White Van Reviewed by Jamie Thunder 24-27 Lionel Shriver’s By Emma Davies
Unlikely Heroines
28-31 Hot Feminist Reviewed by Amelia Forsbrook 32-37 The Circle Reviewed by Jamie Thunder 40-99 FEATURED ARTISTS
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42-57 Q&A
with Jennifer Hoyden (The Fashion Donkey)
58-73 Q&A
with Matthew Swarts
74-99 Q&A
with Zaria Forman
masthead MASTHEAD / CONTRIBUTORS
Charlie Lee / Founding Director charlie@vhcle.com Editorial
Cassie Lee / Founding Editor cassie@vhcle.com Jamie Thunder / Books Editor, Sub-Editor jamie@vhcle.com Designers
Raoul Ortega / Visual Director raoul@vhcle.com Thomas Adcock / Visual Designer thomas@vhcle.com CONTRIBUTORS
Tim Sunderman, Marc Ingber, Jamie Thunder, Emma Davies, Amelia Forsbrook, Jennifer Hoyden (The Fashion Donkey), Matthew Swarts, Zaria Forman Cover: Jennifer Hoyden (The Fashion Donkey), City Block Vhcle Books: Illustration by Thomas Adcock -Vhcle Magazine Tel: USA +1 415.364.8568 Email: charlie@vhcle.com Issuu: issuu.com/vhcle / Twitter: @vhcle / Facebook: Vhcle Mag / Instagram: instagram.com/vhcle -Published by Charlie Lee: Vhcle Magazine, www.vhcle.com. All content copyright 2015. All rights reserved. Without limiting rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission from both the copyright owner and the publisher of this magazine. Vhcle Magazine is not responsible for the return or loss of, or for any damage or injury to, any unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.
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CONTRIBUTORS / al phabe t ically by las t name
– Vhcle — United Kingdom
emma davies / writer Emma Davies is a journalist from the south-west of England. She likes books, red wine and her duvet, and is at her happiest when managing to combine this trio of good things. – Vhcle — Brooklyn, NY
zaria forman / artist Zaria’s inspiration for her drawings began in early childhood when she traveled with her family throughout several of the world’s most remote landscapes, which were the subject of her mother’s fine art photography. After her formal training at Skidmore college she now exhibit’s extensively in galleries and venues throughout the US and overseas. In addition to exhibitions, recent projects include a series of drawings served as set design for the classic ballet, Giselle, ten drawings used in the set design for the Netflix TV series House of Cards, and led Chasing the Light, an expedition sailing up the NW coast of Greenland, retracing the 1869 journey of American painter William Bradford and documenting the rapidly changing arctic landscape. Continuing to address climate change in her work, she spent time in the Maldives. www.zariaforman.com – Vhcle — London, UK
amelia forsbrook / writer Amelia Forsbrook is an Associate Editor at Bare Fiction Magazine, and a freelance critic and arts commentator across a number of publications. With particular interests in regional arts, South Asian performance, twentieth century European theatre and quirky little numbers involving improvisation, emotional outburst and abandoned buildings, Amelia is also part of the judging committee at London Off West End Awards, and is currently editing the Casting Call Pro Actors’ Handbook. – Vhcle — United States
Jennifer Hoyden (the fashion donkey) / illustrator Jennifer Hoyden is an illustrator. Hand-drawn line of distinctive delicacy. And she is a hoyden (look it up), www.thefashiondonkey.com and a donkey.
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– Vhcle — Minneapolis, MN
Marc ingber / writer Marc Ingber is a communications specialist and writer for a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, MN. He was born and raised in the Twin Cities and attended journalism school at the University of Kansas. His primary interests include rock n’ roll, movies, food and drink, the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins probably in that order. – Vhcle — San Francisco, CA
tim sunderman / writer Tim Sunderman is a graphic designer in the San Francisco bay area who does most of his art without a computer, using traditional techniques in drawing, painting, photography, calligraphy, and even sculpture. He is a graduate of the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He eschews speaking of himself in the third person, as he is here, but doesn’t mind too much for shameless self-promotion. www.timsunderman.com – Vhcle — Somerville, MA
matthew swarts / Artist Matthew Swarts makes pictures with computers and cameras. He lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts. www.matthewswarts.com – Vhcle — United Kingdom
Jamie thunder / writer Jamie Thunder is Vhcle’s books editor, and he works, reads and writes in the South of England. When he’s not doing any of these he runs long distances, and is always very relieved when he’s got to the end.
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The Ideal & the Ordinary The Human Body in Art By Tim Sunderman
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Issue 18, pp6 -11
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7 The primary role of art is to hold a mirror to our humanity. It is the externalization of our internal reflection. And visually, there is no more direct symbol of being human than the body itself. For some, the body and self-identity are inseparable. We see a photo of ourselves and say, “Yeah, that’s me.” That’s how intrinsically our psyche is entwined with visual representations.
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Art has represented humans more than any other subject, but the ways in which they are represented provide a window into our self-perception. It is useful to take a look into some of these windows to uncover the underlying artistic language revealed in different stylizations of the human body.
archetypes. Representation of myths and the people in myths are constructed on generalizations to be broadly applied to many human situations. To that extent, individual characteristics and uniquenesses are minimized in favor of streamlining human representations to the common mean.
One of the most fundamental dichotomies in artistic representations is between the ideal or heroic portrayals of people and the common, everyday representations of ordinary men and women. Obviously, there are an infinite number of alternate classifications of stylizations, but in the interest of not attempting some encyclopedic analysis of world art, we will stay focused on the main subject.
However, the common mean does not refer to the way that the average person appears, but it refers to the average proportions with the least deviation from normal. In other words, ideal physical qualities.
Historically, from cave art until the European Renaissance of the 16th century, most of the surviving art is either supernatural or religious, and emphasizes, as we would expect, the ideal. The other world – spirits, gods, and goddesses – take place in the thought world, and so they are, by nature, ideal. Myth is built on
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When the Renaissance arrived, there was a movement away from the strictly religious, and toward the secular world. Art turned its attention toward real life experience. The Renaissance relied on first-hand observation and much greater value was given to mundane things. Artists like Bruegel in northern Germany led the way, painting images of common folk in common pursuits – hunting, working, celebrating. And he did not gloss over the reality of life. He presents his subjects wrinkled or fat or gaunt or toothless, because that is what he saw.
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But the mundane world represented in art did not long hold center stage. Yet, it would make inroads again and again in various historical periods and cultures. Chinese art concerned itself much more with daily life compared to India, for example. The mid to late 19th century was much more likely to depict normal bodies in ordinary living, especially with the “on location” observational style of the Impressionists. But the desire for the beauty of idealism continued to push through – from the neoclassicism of the 17th and 18th centuries to the Art Nouveau movement preceding the 20th century. And here we are now, in a new millennium, with a more complex dialogue. It cannot be argued that idealism is still our preferred form of seeing the human body, particularly in America where the human figure in popular media has become nearly estranged from normal appearance. In our movies and advertising there is greater and greater reliance on computer generated exaggerations of our human form. This is nothing new,
except that former centuries used idealization as a metaphor to represent underlying principles or archetypes that were embodied in art as human qualities to aspire to. Now we are simply presented with the idealization of a cardboard stand up – the image of a person without personality – the light-reflecting surface without the depth of character that idealism has historically inferred. Because of the lack of connection between our living experience of the human bodies around us and these flattened idealizations, we see a movement toward the acceptance of more ordinary figures to fill this humanistic desire. Normal weight, normal blemishes, and normal facial features are incredibly beautiful. Real life experience provides our visual “main course” that feeds our psyche. Over indulgence in mainstream imagery results in a kind of diabetic reaction to sugar-glossed bodies without substantive value.
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But What of Nudity in Art? Again, a broader world-wide perception may provide a clearer perspective, particularly for Americans who are pressed between the distorting lenses of our puritanical heritage and our anchorless Hollywood image makers. In older more established cultures, there is a more matter-of-fact acceptance of the naked body. It does not drag along quite as much luggage of social taboos as in America. In many places, a breast can just be a breast without triggering the sophomoric over-reactions of overt sexuality or moral indignation seen in the United States. Now, let us set aside the idea of nudity in the context of medical or scientific reference and hold the focus on the artistic reflection of the human form. Artistic nudity is certainly not limited to beauty. There are many more stories to tell, from the introspective plainness of Andrew Wyeth’s “Helga” paintings to the profane and grotesque (albeit strangely beautiful) human aberrations portrayed in Peter Joel Witkin’s photographs, to the unflinching gaze at aging in Leonard Nimoy’s art.
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Statue of the Aphrodite of K nidos, 2nd centur y A.D. ( Wik imedia Commons, PD)
The contemporary art world has been so open to the spectrum of body images for such a long time that it would be difficult to create something shocking. Besides, shock is a fleeting reaction. A more effective measure of artistic quality is its honesty and the depth of perception provided by the artist’s insight. By this metre, we need not choose between the ideal and the ordinary. The human body, bereft of all interceding entrapments – the tailored cloth that immediately reduces it to a social role – the body in its pure form,
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elicits a flood of responses, not least of which engages our sense of sexuality and those other hard-wired primal reactions. This confronts us immediately with our own humanism. The act of portraying a body in a composition compels us to confer meaning into the image, and in this way, the mirror to self-understanding is illuminated. Do we respond with empathy, revulsion, desire, or unease? Does it affirm our experience, arouse curiosity, threaten, or inspire? It matters not. For it is the mere exercise of being engaged in the process of navigating through the presented landscapes of inferred meaning that connects to self-awareness.
Others may find it in the glorification of enlightenment found in Tibetan tonka paintings. Some may see it in the sensitivity of West African ebony portrait sculptures. And some find it in the supernal grace of underwater photographs of ballet dancers. Do not allow the jaded cynicism of our postmodern weariness to turn your attention away from idealism. There is much to recommend it.
Image 1, p8: Edouard Manet, The CafĂŠConcert (Wiki-media Commons, PD)
But do not mistake idealization for superficiality. Most people would agree that the highest form of beauty is to be found in the human body. And its portrayal reaching the heights of human aspiration is the crowning apex of art. For some, it is found in the triumphant heroism of Greek marble.
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vhcle / music
FM Radio: Where the ‘Oldies’ Are No Longer Golden By Marc Ingber
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Issue 18, pp12-17
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13 Like a lot of kids who grew up in the suburbs, I spent a large amount of time in my pre-adolescent years riding around in the backseat of my parents’ car, listening to FM radio. My parents had little interest in the contemporary pop music of this time period – a mix of artists like Debbie Gibson, Milli Vanilli and “hair bands” – so 99 percent of the time our radio was tuned to the Twin Cities’ local “golden oldies” station, 107.9 KQQL, aka KOOL 108.
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For them, the oldies were simply the music of their youth. However, thanks to their constant presence in my life, they ended up becoming the music of my early youth as well. The concept of musical preference, taste, or anything like that was foreign to me at the time, but I do remember liking the majority of the songs that KOOL 108 played.
nowhere to be found on the station – or anywhere else on FM radio – while I am driving my 3-year-old daughter around the city. In their place, KOOL 108 usually treats me to Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend” about five times a day.
Looking back now, I can’t blame this version of myself. Oldies back then were a mix of early rock n’ roll (Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly), Doo Wop, British Invasion (early Beatles, Stones, Animals, etc.), surf music (Beach Boys, Jan and Dean), Motown, and other pop chart-toppers. All the songs were super catchy and about two minutes long, so the station could seem to cram in about 20-some songs an hour. Simply put, KOOL 108 was a home for many of the greatest pop singles ever recorded. Why wouldn’t a kid like it? Which is why it’s such a shame that even though KOOL 108 still exists in Minneapolis, it does so in name only. The oldies that I loved so much as a kid are
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Today, the station’s tagline is “Minnesota’s Greatest Hits.” Based on my unscientific research, this more or less means hefty amounts of Loverboy, Poison, Journey, Bryan Adams, and Wings - lots and lots of Wings, Paul McCartney’s sort-of-tolerable band from the 1970s that is a far cry from that other band he was a part of in the 1960s. I write this not to pick on KOOL 108 specifically – its transformation over the years is similar and indicative of dozens of other radio stations’ evolutions all across the country. I realize FM radio has way more competition than it did 20 years ago, stations have to get advertisers to survive, and they need listeners in order to get advertisers. Apparently there must be some demand for what they play, or they wouldn’t do it.
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I can even accept the fact that, on some level, Poison and Bryan Adams songs are technically “oldies” in 2015. But how and why I can’t find the Temptations, Buddy Holly, The Supremes – even early Beatles songs – anywhere on FM radio in one of the bigger media markets in the country is beyond me. Am I the problem? Does everyone else agree that hearing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” 34 times a week is a perfectly acceptable reason for wiping Marvin Gaye from our collective musical memory. It’s one of those self-centered outlooks parents like myself have sometimes, but I want the opportunity for my daughter to grow up listening to the true golden oldies just like I did when I was her age. She’ll listen to whatever she wants when she gets older of course, but I think schooling her in early rock n’ roll, R&B, Doo Wop, etc., is a good way to show her the blueprint for what is on the pop charts today. Much like history classes teach about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to give a
basis for how modern government came to be, oldies can offer a similar blueprint for the current state of rock and pop music. But on FM radio (which is the only thing I get in my “not new” car), there is sadly and shockingly little rock music played that was recorded before 1970. Even 92.5 KQRS, Minneapolis’ classic rock station that has been around for decades, has altered its playlist over the years. Whereas it used to play plenty of what I think of as classic rock – Hendrix, Zeppelin, Stones, Doors, Allman Brothers – today it seems to rely more on artists like Billy Squire and .38 Special than any of the classic ‘60s bands. I am fully aware that with satellite radio and Spotify, I can easily listen to just about any song ever recorded within seconds, so the concept of complaining about what gets played on FM radio is pretty archaic. However, I see the gradual phasing out of this music on mainstream channels in cities across the country as an indicator of a larger cultural problem.
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It’s not that there is anything that harmful about what does make it on FM radio nowadays. The issue is what doesn’t make it. If I have trouble finding the effing Beatles on my FM radio, then what chance do Del Shannon, the Platters or the Tremeloes have of making any sort of impact on my daughter’s generation?
Obviously, this music I speak of won’t be completely forgotten. There will always be a segment of the population that is into it, regardless of its age. But 30 or 40 years from now, I fear it may be awaiting a similar fate as jazz. Prior to rock’s emergence in the 1950s, jazz was the most popular music in America. But today, it’s a niche interest at best with the Millennial generation. Mention Charlie Parker or Dave Brubeck to most 20- or 30-somethings and you will likely be met with blank stares.
It would be one thing if this generation of music was a mere footnote of history – an innovative yet rudimentary preamble to greater things, like an Atari or Apple II computer. But that’s not the case at all. I would make the opposite argument – that, as far as the pop charts go, a large chunk of the singles that have come out in the last 40-plus years are derivative and inferior to the songs that came out in the first decade of rock history. Don’t believe me? Listen to the top 10 songs on the R&B Hot 100 chart today and then put 10 songs on at random from a Motown playlist. Tell me which ones you like more. Do the same thing with today’s Billboard Top 100 chart and the songs from the American Graffiti soundtrack.
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It’s not inconceivable it will be the same blank stare I’ll get many years from now when I mention James Brown or Otis Redding to my daughter’s future college roommate. Ain’t that a shame, as Fats Domino would say.
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Issue 18, pp18 -37
/ Illustration by Thomas Adcock
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Wolf in White Van John Darnielle
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Reviewed by Jamie Thunder /
V hcle Book s, Issue 18, pp20 -23
Culture and fandom can do strange things to people – something that John
Darnielle probably knows better than most. As the man behind The Mountain Goats he’s no stranger to obsession, whether his own or that of his own fans’ devotion, hunting down crackling early live tapes as though they have restorative properties. So it’s no surprise that this, his debut novel, features a seventeen-year-old outcast with a fascination with tales of Conan the Barbarian. Conan himself echoes Darniellean themes of justice and legend, and the story that unfolds in Wolf in White Van is classic Mountain Goats fodder: hope, redemption, and pressing on regardless in the desperate promise that somewhere just beyond the horizon lies safety. Lying in hospital recovering from a horrific, disfiguring injury, Sean Phillips creates a world of his own. It becomes a choose-your-own-adventure game, played by post by a small band of participants, all hoping ultimately to find the Trace Italian – a safe haven somewhere in an irradiated post-apocalyptic United States.
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The few players we meet – via Sean’s recollections of the messages they include with their choices each turn – have the own reasons for playing, which we can only glimpse at. They represent Sean’s primary contact with the outside world, a world that doesn’t know how to deal with the chaos of his reconstructed face. In such circumstances Trace Italian is a refuge for Sean, and the scrawled notes from players represent his primary contact with the world outside. But when the hermetically-sealed world Sean thought he’d constructed begins to bleed into the real world he has to again confront the blurred and shifting lines between fantasy and reality. As the inside jacket immodestly puts it, Darnielle is widely considered to be one of the best lyricists of his generation, and there are lines in Wolf in White Van that could easily have found their way into recent Mountain Goats records rather than here: “Work through the ant-leg limbs of the star layer by layer until you find the shining heart, get there at last. Stay there.” Part of fandom always comes with fear, particularly when your idols move into new areas. But the shift from tightly-packed lyrics to the more expansive requirements of a novel works well – rather than just a really, really long Mountain Goats song, he ports across the underlying sympathy and understanding for his characters, however messed up they might be. The plot itself is winding and flits between time periods, meaning the whole piece only becomes clear afterwards. But there’s no huge payoff, nothing that suddenly reverses your perception of Sean or the story so far. Just the final pieces falling inevitably, devastatingly into place.
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It would be no surprise, and oddly fitting, if Trace Italian were to cross over into the real world; it’s easy to imagine a diehard Mountain Goats fan replicating and expanding the turns in the book. But that would only reinforce the message of this unyielding, insistent novel – that your imagination and the world it creates are not quarantined from reality, however hard you try.
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Lionel Shriver’s Unlikely Heroines --
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V hcle Book s, Issue 18, pp24 -27
We Need to Talk About Kevin ’s Eva Khatchadourian is not an entirely likeable
woman. Having been ambivalent in the extreme about the idea of motherhood from the very beginning, she is cold to her son, never willing to give him any benefit of the doubt. Nor is Double Fault’s Willy Novinsky an easy woman to warm to – unable to view her husband as anything other than smug competition, even as he seeks to support her. So Much for That’s Glynis Knacker, too, is prickly and stubborn. Angry and caustic as she battles mesothelioma, she is nothing like the brave-faced, inspirational cancer sufferer of stereotypes. In fact, very few of Lionel Shriver’s female characters are straightforwardly loveable, instead often prickly, conflicted and selfish. And this is no bad thing – in fact, it’s a very important one.
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Parenthood, marital discord and terminal illness are resolutely not what defines these women, however. Eva runs a travel-book company, having started her own business from scratch and turned it into an empire. Willy is a professional tennis player, striving to break on to the WTA touring circuit. Glynis is a talented silversmith. These are the means by which they choose to define themselves. They are all strong women, refusing to remain within the confines of the traditional molds of femininity. Women, in reality, are not always passive, sweet and docile. We are ambitious, complex and argumentative. Not all of us want to bear and raise children. We may not relish having to share the spotlight with another who mirrors, and betters, our own achievements. Some of us will rage against the dying of the light with ferocious spirit. All of these types of women – and more – deserve as much of a place and a voice within fiction as they do in the world itself. Shriver’s depictions of these less-commonly examined aspects of femininity are unflinching, and all the more rewarding for it. Consider, for a moment, Gillian Flynn’s runaway success Gone Girl. Diary Amy – trying to force herself to be a ‘Cool Girl’ she doesn’t truly believe exists, aware of her own flaws and limitations, trying to make the best stab at things – could almost have been lifted from one of Shriver’s novels. But the truth revealed by the twist? She wasn’t real; instead, the actual Amy was a bunny-boiling psychopath who veered far into caricature territory. I am sure I am not the only one who felt cheated by how the rug was pulled out from under me – at how a character like Diary Amy was not allowed by the novel to truly exist. What’s more, Shriver’s characters always feel solid, three-dimensional, human. They make for compelling leads and supporting characters, their thought processes and motivations captured in exquisite detail that doesn’t shy away from ugly truths – and this should be celebrated. I would rather read a character who feels like a real person
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I might not like that much, than a cardboard cut-out who wants to be my friend. In presenting such characters, Shriver’s writing defies the cultural idea that women exist for external approval. Eva, Willy, Glynis and their ilk may not always be ‘nice girls’, but you’ll end up identifying with – and rooting for – them anyway.
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Hot Feminist Polly Vernon
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Reviewed by A melia Forsbrook /
V hcle Book s, Issue 18, pp28 -31
Now I’ve finally finished my copy of Polly Vernon’s Hot Feminist, I can boast a
strong understanding of the story of modern Western Feminism – warts and surgical lack thereof. I know that women can be sexy go-getters, without acting in opposition to the sisterhood. They can wear seductive clothing, and make a ritual out of their hair removal techniques. They can flirt shamelessly, and shout with pleasure over the riotous bed springs that bear their short-lived romances. After bringing Vernon’s lessons into my own life, I now know that I can impress the opposite sex with what I choose to wear, without completely objectifying myself. Hell – what’s more, I’ve even learnt that I can impress men with what I choose not to wear, without slipping out of my feminist principles. Unfortunately for those who love a good narrative curve, I also knew all of this before. I appreciate a decent blusher and a smooth armpit, as much as I love beating my other half at a thumb war and mastering a new DIY hack. I know that the gender pay gap, together with the all-too-frequent instances of sexual abuse on women by men, makes for a huge stain on British culture. I’m also fully aware that, while the Sun’s Page Three constitutes quite the conundrum for feminists who want their tabloid papers to be heavier on the news than on the nipples, 2D fantasy is not the most pressing problem on the feminist agenda.
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So, aside from a couple of tips about hassle-free exercise and a lesson in getting the perfect fringe that, crucially, works as an homage to pop culture while keeping you on the right side of fancy dress, Hot Feminist teaches us little about what we don’t already know. If, ladies, you’re keen to rev up your sex appeal while championing gender equality, I recommend buying some leather leggings and curling up (as much as your new clothing allows) with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For those who’ve fully embraced the glossy worlds of Maybelline, Hugh Hefner, Coco Chanel and Tyra Banks, yet who don’t lose any beauty sleep over how these references bear an ideological incompatibility with traditional feminist values, you may find comfort in this self-aware, smug and splendidly manicured pat on the back. And just as she spends the beginning of every day protecting her inner thighs from the onslaught of ugly hair, Vernon spends the start of this book spotting and mowing down any intellectual uprisings. She draws on her experience of seeing things getting ugly on social media to immunise herself against a similar response to this book. With her proud face staring out from the cover, boldly claiming the book’s title as her caption, Vernon lifts a thin, yet beautifully presented, shield towards negative judgement. Her stance is brave, but Vernon is recycling arguments that were gathering dust when the mini skirt was invented, and she does little here to spruce these ideas up. Her flippant tone, peppered with a tween’s monthly quota of apologetic “cray”s, “like”s and lost Americanisms – “a spectacular belt is like an exclamation point holding up your pants” – does little to drive her cause forward. Men, those easily-swayed creatures that stare at your breasts and make you do their washing, are painfully underestimated here. After making it clear that blokes would struggle to belong in her exclusive, well-preened “feminist” club, Vernon patronises the men in her life – hinting that they get a very different treatment to the ladies around her. There is one enlightening moment where the writer directly addresses men, sympathising with their reluctance to give up the social privilege gained from thousands of years of patriarchy. That said, if a mountain of xy chromosomes managed to get past page three without throwing the book at the wall due to the lack of soft porn and abundance of feminine ditziness, we can assume that he’s already pretty committed to the feminist cause. Or maybe he just has a seedy
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attraction to liberally applied italics, or rhetorical questions that like to get around a bit? “Does some part of us seek to protect [men] from the feminist revolution we’re simultaneously perpetuating elsewhere?” asks Vernon, inconclusively, in a stream of questions that, if this dated book was in fact written in the 90s, would surely make it the inspiration for Carrie Bradshaw’s pen-chewing journalism. This book is indebted to the style of the magazine columnist, and Hot Feminist is best when digested in small chunks. Unlike her fellow feminist pop-nonfiction writers, Vernon oozes none of the friendliness that can hold a book like this together. Vernon records tipsy instances where her girl mates put the world to rights, and relates candid chats with her colleagues about the state of modern feminism. In these moments. Vernon is someone we might want to be friends with, but her exclusive anecdotes ensure that her readers remain on the peripheries of all these intimate conversations. There’s a point where Vernon name drops Lena Dunham, author of 2014 bestseller Not That Kind of Girl, describing her as “an oracle on life [. . .with] a big brain and a sharp wit and heightened emotional intelligence quotients”. Through Vernon’s reverence, Dunham forges quite the cameo, breezing into London for 4 pages, settling down to some green tea at Soho House. Here, she collides “cool” and “feminist” within the same sentence without adopting the tone of a cold caller or exasperated secondary school teacher who’s desperate to hype up the mundane. Now there’s our hot feminist.
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The Circle Dave Eggers
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Reviewed by Jamie Thunder /
V hcle Book s, Issue 18, pp32-37
If you brought a man from twenty years ago to the present day he would be astonished at how connected we are. The shift in human communication from face-toface or at least with some trace of the interlocutor – a signature, a voice – to significantly online has been the greatest phenomenon of the 21st century.
It’s also one that has occurred with little mainstream, general discussion. We can debate child safety, or piracy, or incitements to terrorism, but these are side issues to the fundamental ways in which our interactions and social (media) lives have changed. The history of society is the history of communication, and in the last decades it has changed beyond recognition. At the time of writing I have sent close to 24,000 tweets – an average of 14 a day over the last four and a half years to friends, strangers, celebrities, companies, and no-one in particular, a level and reach of interaction impossible in any other era of humanity.
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But perhaps the bigger change has been the communication of our selves to the ether, ready to be extracted on demand. Typing my name into Google Maps returns a university at which I studied; my name (probably unique) has 1,750 search results. My 652 Facebook photos are an index of where I’ve been, with whom, and what I’ve done – combining all this would tell you about my work, living arrangements, shopping habits, interests, friends, family, relationships, mental health, and political views. Dave Eggers’ The Circle takes a small step into the future and brings today’s social and technological trends to their logical, if not inevitable conclusions. The Circle itself is an online monolith, an amalgamation of Apple, Facebook, and Google that has integrated itself into the daily lives of millions of users. For its ten thousand staff, it’s a nirvana – the most innovative, exciting, benign company the world has ever seen. And for the public it’s a convenient portal for just about everything. So when Mae Holland arrives in the Customer Experience department she’s thrilled. The focus on targets, the pervasive system that ranks her engagement in the Circle community against her colleagues, even the hurt chiding she receives for the unsocial act of missing voluntary activities don’t dampen her enthusiasm. The joy of being connected, of always having an audience, of sharing is intense. The Circle breeds hypersociability, in which to be disconnected from the network is to be obnoxious, and a Pavlovian dependency on positive ‘zings’ is unavoidable (if you’ve ever felt the quick sugared rush of repeatedly checking your retweets column or likes for your latest profile picture you’ll understand). Mae rises quickly through the hierarchy, and adopts The Circle’s philosophy of transparency completely. Her every action is watched by millions – but rather than the stuff of dystopian nightmares, it’s a glorious opportunity to share, to bring to others experiences they could never have. Each new technology or application is a marvel, and each makes reversing the dominance of The Circle more impossible.
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While soaking up the little details I barely noticed the plot, which chugs along without distracting from the rich world Eggers has created. This is a book unashamedly of its time. Ten years ago it would’ve seemed far-fetched; in a few years’ it will be seen as horribly prescient, quaintly concerned, or laughably wrong. But the seeds are there, and it’s excellent fun to see Eggers poke fun at the more idealistic digital evangelists (sending frowny faces to the Guatemalan army was a deliciously barbed example). In the battle between the Luddites and the brave new world, Eggers smartly positions the reader on the fence: Mae’s faith hardly wavers, yet we, a step removed, can sense something a little sour. The doubters she encounters are greeted with confusion and clumsy attempts to help them to see the wonder of The Circle. If there’s a mis-step in this engrossing book it’s in Mae’s lack of empathy here, her overzealous response to the few who urge caution, and it leaves Eggers open to charges of having ducked the central showdown of ideas by casting the believers as wide-eyed naïfs. The Circle is an intelligent, plausible novel, free from hyperbole. No-one does anything evil, and perhaps it’s because of my own experience of the shallow end of The Circle that I found its explanations persuasive; I found myself repeatedly tugged towards a kneejerk ‘so what?’ reaction to many developments. What’s wrong with registering all Circle users to vote automatically? Why shouldn’t the every conversation of elected representatives and their staff be recorded? Why wouldn’t you want known criminals to be literally highlighted to police? Anything else would at surely best portray a deep cynicism, an unhealthily negative view of humanity, progress, and ultimately democracy. But it’s this unreflexive groupthink and the latent possibility of evil that makes The Circle so sinister. On every page you wait for the mask to slip. Perhaps it never will. But if it did, the results would be catastrophic.
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The Circle has an obvious predecessor in 1984, and nods to it in Mae’s claim that “secrets are lies, sharing is caring, and privacy is theft”. But there’s an important difference. The most insidious tactic fascist regimes have used to control their publics has been to encourage individuals to spy on each other, sowing mistrust and fear, and creating a modern day panopticon in which no-one dares step out of line just in case someone is watching. Only now, we’re all watching.
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featured artists Issue 18, pp40 -99 -
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Tell us a little bit about yourself My name is Jennifer Hoyden. And I am a hoyden (look it up), and I am a donkey. I don’t like talking about myself. I like to observe and think and generally be in my head. I am a compulsive maker and problem solver. Even drawing is a form of problem solving. What is the inspiration behind your work? I am compelled through a desire to explore and express my thoughts. Inspiration is a constant. I am an open window where the wind blows in everything (sounds, images, ideas, thoughts, memories, dreams, words), and what comes out again is a drawing. I draw the way I see, so when you look at my drawings, you are seeing through my eyes. What do you think is the artist’s role in society?
make of the art changes the meaning of what the artist is, to them (entertainer, bane, muse, provocateur, guide, instructor). What superpower would you want and why? When I was a child, I used to have dreams where I could fly. It felt very natural and proper to be able to lift up into the air when it suited me. I don’t know if this desire is about escape, about showing off, or if it has some transcendentalist implication that I should explore, but it still appeals to me. I’d like to be able to fly, when it suited me. Favorite drink? The quintessential: water.
Image (Lef t): Donkey
Artists are all doers. They do. They do not owe anything to anyone but themselves. Their role or relevance to the larger world is, however, defined by the audience. It’s out of their hands. Some people seek and are entertained by art; some are confused; some are inspired; some are bored; some threatened; some are comforted; some are educated. The artist can only do. What people
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90 Degrees Outf it
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Face, Totes
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Outf it with Splatter
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Outf it with Shawl
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Beans, Writing Supplies
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Vase, Barrette, Big Band
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My Birch Trees
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City Block
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Bedside
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Carrying Things (Lef t), Camper
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matthew swarts Matt hew Swa rts / V hcle Issue 18, pp58 -73
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Untitled , 2014. From the series: Beth 4
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Tell us a little bit about yourself I studied philosophy in college, but pictures seem a more direct way of re-examining experience. But it’s simple: Love, then art. Plus daisies. What is the inspiration behind your work? It’s an adventure with cameras and computers and networks and printers, and so far every day has been interesting. What do you think is the artist’s role in society? To balance and represent feeling and reason, and to probe the unanswerable. What superpower would you want and why? Perfect (meta)vision. Favorite drink? Gimlets on a spring afternoon.
Untitled , 2014. From the series: Beth 3
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Untitled , 2014. From the series: Beth 1, 2 (opposite page)
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Untitled , 2014. From the series: The Alternatives 1
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Greenland, Israel , M aldives / V hcle Issue 18, pp74 -99
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Tell us a little bit about yourself I grew up in Piermont, NY, which is about 30 minutes north of NYC. I went to Green Meadow Waldorf school from 6th grade through high school - a very small school with an alternative approach to education, with which art is greatly infused. After my formal art training at Skidmore College I now exhibit extensively in galleries and venues throughout the United States and overseas.
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What is the inspiration behind your work? The inspiration for my drawings began in my early childhood when I traveled with my family throughout several of the world’s most remote landscapes, which became the subject of my mother’s fine art photography. I developed an appreciation for the beauty and vastness of the ever-changing sky and sea. I loved watching a faroff storm on the western desert plains; the monsoon rains of southern India; and the cold arctic light illuminating Greenland’s waters. What do you think is the artist’s role in society? Artists play a critical role in communicating climate change, which is arguably the most important challenge we face as a global community. I have dedicated my career to translating and illuminating scientists’ warnings and statistics into an accessible medium that people can connect with, on a level that is perhaps deeper than scientific facts can penetrate. Neuroscience tells us that humans take action and make decisions based on emotion above all else. Studies have shown that art (and in particular drawings, paintings, photographs, and film) can impact viewers’ emotions more effectively than an essay or newspaper article. My drawings explore moments of transition, turbulence, and tranquility in the landscape, allowing viewers to emotionally connect with a place they may never have the chance to visit. I choose to convey the beauty, as opposed to the devastation, of threatened places. If people can experience the sublimity of these landscapes, perhaps they will be inspired to protect and preserve them. What superpower would you want and why? The ability to fly. Who wouldn’t?! Favorite drink? A smoothie with coconut water, avocado, pineapple, basil, lime and vanilla. Greenland #69
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vhc le I ssue 19 coming SOON
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