HAIR OF THE DOG. used to be where we gave ‘hard liquor shot’ (rather self-righteous) updates on what the editors were up to, but it has deliciously evolved since its inception in 2017. This is where we'll offer you a bottomless brunch of extended work from friends, editors and collaborators. Not quite a blog, not quite a sister magazine, but more like an infinite scroll of selected experiment-cum-think pieces we love very much.

HAIR OF THE DOG: A PONY KEG OF RICHARD CAPENER [29.33 L]

A feature for April Fools’, HAIR OF THE DOG. presents Richard Capener’s ‘The Greek God of Language is Also a Trickster’. In this [____________] essay, Capener humours the avant-garde, its relationship to language and this tenuous term, intermedia. Capener’s voice is underpinned by a cacophony of mouth noises and demonic voices. The avant-garde is played with. We find ourselves wondering how the avant-garde acts as a beast of its own. And how it never quite yields to its “academic unpacking”, which Richard Capener so neatly writes on, when met with its farting, hissing, spluttering chorus.

Could this essay be in and of itself avant-garde? We’ll leave that one to you.

Richard Capener currently lives and works in Bristol. His writing has been featured in Sublinary Editions, Streetcake, Overground Underground, Beir Bua, Spontaneous Poetics, Selcouth Station and Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology, among others. His debut pamphlet is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books. He also edits The Babel Tower Notice Board, curates the associated Live From Babel Tower reading series and co-hosts the Babel Parish Radio podcast.

HAIR OF THE DOG: A SIXTH OF JOSH MCLOUGHLIN [1.14 IMP PT]

McLoughlin: ‘‘I wanted to do something that uses text to weave the way Levé uses text to create photographic snapshots. I did some research and [the word] 'text' derives from the Latin textus meaning the style or tissue of a literary work (Quintilian), but it goes all the way back to the literal meaning of 'that which is woven, web, texture', from texĕre to weave. That's all a fancy way of saying that there's some common conceptual and historical ground between the printed/written text and woven textiles.’’

This is neither essay nor poem nor sculpture but the fabric of language on a loom. McLoughlin treats language as material; the weft and warp, the hem of the page (edge). In this piece, we might ask ourselves, does a conversation absorb the same movements like that of a loom? How does it look? How does it feel?

Josh Mcloughlin is a writer from Merseyside, UK. He is editor-in-chief of New Critique, a Wolfson Scholar in the Humanities at University College London, and he was shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize 2019 and the International Awards for Art Criticism 2020. His work is published or forthcoming with The Times, The Spectator, The London Magazine, The Fence, Review 31, and elsewhere.

You can find him on Twitter (@JoshMcLoughlin) and on Instagram (@tootoosolid).

HAIR OF THE DOG: A FLAGON OF TOM BLAND [1.66 IMP PT]

‘I mean, it’s remarkably easy to disturb someone’s reality.’

On an insanely hot day in August, when the lockdown regulations slackened, Tom Bland and James Kaffenberger met up in a field. In this podcast, Tom Bland counsels questions of dreams, performance, Warhol and Jung, occultism and the clown. Our biggest question: who here is sitting in the patient’s chair?

This was recorded outside so we recommend that you listen to this with headphones. Unfortunately we are unable to provide captioning/subtitles this time around for this piece, but we will work to provide this in future.

Tom Bland has a poetry pamphlet, The Death of a Clown, out with Bad Betty Press. He recently completed the MA in Contemporary Performance Practices at the University of East London where he blended poetry with live art practice. He has performed at The Solo Theatre Festival, Bar Wotever, Festival at the Edge, Velvet Tongue, and Franko B's Untouchable. His first collection, Camp Fear, will be released in 2021.

Find Tom’s Twitter here and his online magazine here.

HAIR OF THE DOG: A NIP OF EXPIREDDOG (6.66 IMP OZ)

Pain, language, trauma, horror films and cars are the talking points for expireddog, a visual writer from St Petersburg, Russia.

This ‘zine’ interview is published in the style of some of expireddog’s work which you can check out here.

Below the slide show is a transcript.

1-2

I think that nowadays I’m more like a writer now than a painter or a visual artist and this is the direction I’m trying to move to.

3-4

It’s not that I want to completely go away from visual practices because I like when language becomes something that you can maybe even touch like all the zines, self made magazines, some self made prints maybe something physical, when language becomes something physical but I think that I am really finished with my series of paintings and don’t want to continue doing it.

5-6

I’ve started doing artworks from language! Like I was very much interested in graphic design and typography and in print design but I didn’t have any tools you know for home printing. You have to have a really big studio and I don't have enough budget to be in some printing processes because it really means a lot to do it. And I was thinking how I can do do all those posters but not like digital but to make them look like they were printed so they would become physical, with materials I can use and it all started with typography on wood actually it was spray paint I was very much inspired by graffiti and graphic design you know to combine the two together and then I became more experimental I started painting and I don’t know, painting, sketching and all those sort visual stuff, visual material and I think I had been doing it because it was some sort of a challenge to me you know if I can paint like this because I had been sketching from like my entire life but I never thought of it like something serious and then I started exploring what other painters what other visual artists were doing. It was some sort of challenge like if I can do the same thing or not and once I kind of realised yeah I can do this but it wasn’t my thing so I think I’m more of a writer.

7-8

I don’t really like colours, that maybe sounds weird but I really like the world in black and white and I’m not referring to traumatic events in my life or something like that because what happens in reality isn’t black and white there are many colours and shadows you can’t judge everything in black and white. But when it comes to capturing the world, a camera, painting, sketching I see better with black and white and other colours they really annoy me I think that I get very overloaded by them. I was curious about trying to use those other colours and I think that it went well but somehow they annoy me and somehow I think of those colourful works and I think they’re okay but I wouldn’t like to do it again. Maybe it’s because black and white adds more contrast to the works and there is a practical moment in the choice of colours when your working with physical materials, so you need to have a lot of paint at your home studio and if you use only black and white it's really very easy and I think its about me being a bit of a lazy artist because you order like ten spray paint cans, five whites, five blacks and that's easy you don’t have to think about materials anymore and when you’re using a lot of colours right in the middle of a process like you’re running out of some colour which is absolutely necessary here. You can’t just go out for five minutes and buy it because you have to order it somewhere on some online shop and spend a week to deliver it. It complicates the process, I still use it but only sometimes. Currently I’m working on a home made zine and I realised I have only yellow paper at home, I don’t have white so I was like I’m gonna use what I have so it's actually by accident. I like to use stuff that you can just pick up very fast and easy and not really think about it. It’s also some sort of liberation when you can work with many materials and you’re not so picky with them. So yeah, I’m more of a black and white person.

9-10

When you’re limited to some colours some materials I think you’re more focused on the content of what you’re doing and that’s a good thing because you start being more picky about what you want to draw, to print, to write when you know you have some limits like some time limits, material and money you can spend on a project that’s not such a bad thing. You become more focused on what you want to say. 

11-12

It comes back to why I’m interested in language, when we think about visual images from one hand they’re very easy to be comprehended by those who look at them and we process it all really really fast with news feeds and scrolling. It doesn’t happen with a text, it takes time to comprehend a text, time to read it, to think about it. You have to make some effort. But on the contrary when we’re trying to create an image we put a lot of thought into it, I wouldn’t say more than when we use language but I mean it’s about materials, we have to, I don’t know use photoshop or illustrator or something else. Or we have to draw a picture and scan it, it’s not a complicated process but you have to have some materials for it, some tools and when we speak about language, it's very interesting that you can create these, I don’t know ideas only in your head and then its very easy to make it more visual because you have only your laptop or your phone where you can write it down, even a napkin. You can create language anywhere you go because it’s in your head and I think it doesn’t work the same way with images. 

13

A piece of wood has a very stable surface, when you spray paint on it it almost looks like your first draft. When you’re working with some objects that have some not smooth surfaces like a cassette tape you never know what the result will look like but when I was working with such objects I designed the layout on photoshop so it was very rare that I’ll work on a surface without a first draft. I think that writing down some idea on a napkin, in a sketchbook, that only I am using, I think it’s more liberating because you’re not thinking about how people would see it when you will show it. You’re doing it because you have this need to do it. You’re thinking about only what you’re writing down, not how people will interpret it. Writing in a sketchbook boosts my creativity. 

14

On the topic of writing text, there is a difference in typing on a laptop without any notes. I really like taking notes. Even if I’m making something on a laptop the hand written notes really help. They really help to connect ideas, words and sentences. It’s an exciting process. You can make it like a collage. When you’re collecting source material of some visual images, then combine them together, you get a collage. It’s exciting but I'm not really into this stuff, but I've tried it, but then I thought I could write down a lot of notes and then I can use those very short sentences and short ideas to make some short texts out of them, a very short narrative that is. That’s disruptive. It’s exciting. Sometimes when you’re looking through your notes, you really forget that you’ve written it sometime ago.

15-16

I really like stuff made with your hands. There’s some sort of human touch to it. I have nothing against vector art or digital art. It can be expressive but I don’t like making it because I don’t feel like I’m doing something real. Talking about post-traumatic stress disorder or what people associate with calling it that. Sometimes I feel like I’m a character in a book. That reality is not real. That I’m not real. That I just don’t exist. All those physical experiences like writing down, sketching, sketching very fast, driving even, handling my dog, all those physical activities. They give me a sense that I am real. That I do exist. It is happening. It’s really important for me to work with my hands. 

17-21

A car really means to me freedom. It’s something very important not only relating to post-traumatic experience but something to do with genetic memory because my parents grew up in the USSR. There were no freedoms at all. There were no human rights, social freedoms, freedom of speech, nothing like that. Also people couldn’t just move to another town to another city. It was banned. Very few people had cars. I understand that it’s not like ‘I have a car! I can go anywhere whenever I like!’ It’s more complicated than that. But it really gives you a feeling that you are very free, it gives you freedom. You know with some limitations but you can go anywhere you like. You don’t have to be dependent on public transport or cabs or other people. It’s also not about freedom, it’s about being in control. When you can just drive away. Even if it’s a fake possibility and you’ll never do it but you can. Like a fake opportunity that you’ve created in your head. It gives you this comforting feeling that you’re in control. That you are in control on the road. And again it gives you this physical sensation, you know when you’re touching the wheel, when you’re pressing the pedals, when you’re attentive and focused on the road, when you have to watch your side mirrors, etc., etc. You’re doing something and again it gives me this feeling that it's real. It’s happening. It’s important for me. Why a car? I like the concept of it, it might be connected to my experience of trauma, from growing up in an unhealthy environment. My mum has a really severe case of schizophrenia, she’s not a driver, she can’t do it at all.  She doesn’t have a licence, she’s not interested in it. On the contrary my dad has spent thirty years driving. Working with cars. Now he runs a shop that sells spare parts of cars. He’s very connected to cars. My parents have been divorced for like quarter of a century. I think. When I was a teenager every weekend I saw my father. Each time he visited me we spent this time in his car, usually he’d have some business to do. We were always on the move. In the car he was talking to me about absolutely different things like economics, history, sociology and philosophy, it was always very interesting. I never felt secure at home with my mother, it was always about anxiety, fear and insecurity and being very vulnerable. It was such a huge contrast with my dad. His car, it was always safe. And now with my car it really feels like a safe place. It’s not a fancy car, it’s not luxury, it’s not a sports car but it feels very safe inside and that’s why I’m so attracted to it. You know a car, it needs to be moving, maybe. And sometimes always moving and I think that sometimes being on the move, looking forward, it’s more important than the end result. And I think that when we are talking about post-traumatic experience and how we’re dealing with it. I think that we choose some activities that make us feel real, make us feel good about ourselves. Being in control, not being anxious and it could be very different things. I think the choices we are making is probably because of some bad experiences we had. I think it is some sort of coping mechanism. I’ve been reading a lot of books about how the brain works. How it deals with trauma. Many therapists say that after a long period of being exposed to abusive behaviour we become used to it that we need that adrenaline. That’s why a lot of people go to drugs, because their brain needs those hormones. Sometimes those activities that we’re attracted to afterwards at some point I think it gives us those necessary hormones. You have to balance between an activity that excites you but it excites you so much that you don’t want to start doing some destructive behavior. Because again, driving in Russia it’s not really a safe thing to do, there are a lot of reckless drivers. The same with everywhere else but in Russia you could be doing a 15 minute drive but it’s all about being very attentive and avoiding dangerous situations and accidents. There are a lot of people who really don’t know rules and don’t use them. You have to think about it all the time. It gives me some sort of adrenaline you know. Not only speed itself although that can be some sort of adrenaline but it would in those situations, knowing that it can happen and I think that maybe it becomes some sort of you know like extreme sport. Why do people do that? Maybe it’s because they have this need. Some people use drugs for it, to cope with it but you know there are, well I mean you can choose some drug that’s much healthier and is not illegal but I think maybe for your brain it’s going to have the same effect.

21-22

It’s very easy, you know, to switch from coping mechanism to self destruction. It’s a very thin line. Somehow, it’s very important to find this balance. And to know your triggers and your stress factors. When you should stop and not cross the line. When we’re speaking about self-destructive behaviour. It’s actually a coping mechanism too. From the perspective of the brain. From what therapy is saying. When people go on drugs, or when people are hurting themselves. I don’t have an experience with drugs but I have a huge experience with, unfortunately, self harm. But from the medical point of view it’s all the same, it’s a coping mechanism. Again like, when people get on drugs every friday. It’s probably more socially approved but they’re doing it to cope. I understand that self harm is a very scary for people who don’t know anything about it. And it should be like that because it’s how our bodies interpret all that scary stuff. Actually it’s not that different from getting drunk or getting engaged in some reckless behaviour. Like constantly having sex with strangers, etc., etc. It’s all about coping but somehow you have to find less dangerous ways of coping. 

23-27

I was trying to find that book but I couldn’t find it. It was some book written by an American therapist for self therapy. It was something like that. They’re more or less the same. I don’t recall the author though. It was some very basic stuff about trauma. What you can find in articles online. It wasn’t a bad book, there were exercises and so on. I’m not a massive fan of reading self therapy books. But it was nice to finally be able to read about and get a little help in the terms of therapy. And the other part of your question, the funny thing is, many of my friends or ex-friends were very pushy about me getting therapy, it was quite annoying. They kept telling me that you have to start therapy. It was a bit annoying because I felt like in many ways our society wants to not make us comfortable but to make us more convenient for society. And then finally I said I’ll try it because maybe something good will happen. And at least I read some books about therapy because in Russia you can’t get therapy in like state medical institutions you can only get meds. We have state medical insurance. (Cont. next column…)

expireddog has been published in A5 Magazine, Average Art and Wotisart.

HAIR OF THE DOG: A TUN OF RICHARD ZEISS (216 IMP. GAL)

In this experimental essay, Richard Zeiss contemplates the order of things. Can life and nature be an arbitrary measurement, or can it be easily categorised as we do with the books we keep on our shelves? How do algorithms measure and categorise our queries? What’s the pattern in thinking?
And perhaps, could it be that any classification in the end just seems arbitrary in the grand scheme of things?

RICHARD ZEISS
Is it better to speak, die, or have a water meter?

A few Saturdays ago, I woke up feeling abundantly lazy, and I was not looking forward to my morning exercise routine at all. (I never am, but was particularly unenthusiastic that day.) In an effort to appease my conscience, I decided to consult the internet if I could legitimately spread my one-hour routine over the entire day, and whether that was perhaps not actually more beneficial (I knew it wasn’t).

So, I took my phone and ran a Google search. The idea was to run a query like “Is it better to exercise once or often per day”, and my hope was that the guy in the internet knew what I meant and would promptly get back to me, no questions asked. Instead, the predictive text stopped me in my tracks:

Is it better to speak or die, rent or buy, be single, have a water meter, or have two dogs? My imagination was captured by the seeming arbitrariness of the suggestions. Was it arbitrary, though? As in, would the vast majority of society regard this array of questions as suggested by the Google algorithm as arbitrary, and if so, why? A thought that at first glance seems trivial – “of course” – but that is so defiant to analysis that it has spawned literature like Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, in which he pretty much talks about nothing else. What are the underlying patterns of thought, action, and material, if any? Finding the one common rationale that forms the function for the above-cited questions of the speak/die- rent/buy-variety seems futile at first. It is this intuitive notion of futility, this “WHY do we intuitively feel that this is a dead end” that has got numerous thinkers busy over the centuries.
The first time I was confronted with what seemed like the question for an underlying world formula of thought and material was when I was 17, and we were reading Goethe’s Faust in literature class. So fervently is the protagonist looking for “was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält” (“that of which the world consists in its core”) that he signs a pact with the Devil. Myself, during ten dubious years in the finance industry (and long before escaping into Art) , I was looking for underlying patterns in the financial markets (but with a significantly less noble motive), a quest later mirrored but much amplified in artistic prowess in the 1998 independent film Pi by Darren Aronofsky. In this movie (which was, incidentally, shot on 16mm black and white film), the protagonist, a mathematical genius, is obsessed with the idea that the Kabbalah holds the clue to the underlying pattern of the stock markets.

Back to Foucault’s “The Order of Things”. Ironically, my key takeaway was a short passage in the book’s preface, where Foucault quotes an essay by Jorge Luis Borges, though not by title. (N.B. The essay turns out to be “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language”. Welcome to the Rabbit Hole.) In that essay, Borges talks about one John Wilkins, who apparently in the 17th century tried to create an analytical language from scratch. Wilkins divided the universe into 40 categories, which were then subdivided into species. Every species was assigned a monosyllable of two letters, and more letters were added on to attain the desired level of specificity (e.g. “de” meant element; “deb” was the first of the elements, i.e. fire; “deba” was a portion of the fire, i.e. a flame; etc). Needless to say, that language never took off. The ambiguities much like the arbitrariness of some of the categories and sub-categories later led the German translator of Chinese novels, Dr. Franz Kuhn, to liken its structure to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia called “Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge”, to my mind the beautiful gold standard of arbitrariness. In it, animals are classified thus:

1. Those that belong to the Emperor.

2. Embalmed ones.

3. Those that are trained.

4. Suckling pigs.

5. Mermaids.

6. Fabulous ones.

7. Stray dogs.

8. Those that are included in this classification.

9. Those that tremble as if they were mad.

10. Innumerable ones.

11. Those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush.

12. Et cetera.

13. Those that have just broken the flower vase.

14. Those that, at a distance, resemble flies.

I got up and decided to run with these thoughts rather than to exercise. I had long been fascinated with the problem of library categories. “By subject” seemed to be the common denominator, the least arbitrary of all the possible arbitrary structures. I decided to rotate the matrix by 90 degrees, to invert the function, and to possibly introduce mermaids or suckling pigs into my bookshelf.

You may doubt the functionality of any of the alternative versions of my bookshelf. In other words, has the arbitrariness of structure dented the library’s librariness? To this I say: I have had two friends asking me whether I could come by and re-arrange theirs by colour, too. It would seem the question of categories is less trivial than it looks at first glance after all. (No takers for the “by exposure to society” one yet though.)

Richard Zeiss is from Vienna, Austria, and now lives in London. He holds an MA in Fine Art from CSM (London) and an MPhil in Painting from the RCA (London). His practice is also informed by his earlier (lacklustre) career in the finance industry and by an MSc in Finance (Vienna University) as well as by an MBA (IESE Barcelona). He has also shown his work internationally, among other places at solo shows with Georg Kargl Fine Arts (Vienna), Gallery Asbæk/AAC (Copenhagen), Da Wang Culture Highland (Shenzhen). He participated at the 2019 Lagos Biennial and has been featured at Frieze (London), ARCO (Madrid), and AKAA Fair (Paris). 

Find more on Richard and his work here.

HAIR OF THE DOG: TWO JACKS OF MALIKA BOOKER (5.0 fl. oz)

In this interview, Malika Booker asserts that the eldest members of a family having experienced colonial trauma are the most resilient, which can manifest in silence on the matter of colonialism, and severity towards loved ones. This trauma is then passed down, like genes, to the next generation where children cannot ask their parents questions about colonial trauma for fear of it being met with adversity. It is then up to the grandchildren to then tell that story. Booker is one such grandchild dedicated to writing the stories of the Black Caribbean women in her family in poetry.

This interview is a film, which features mostly a blank screen. The viewer is advised to watch the entirety of the blank screen so as to not miss pertinent details that pertain to the interview’s subject matter and the interviewee, which appear randomly. Looking away from it in this case renders the viewer ignorant which is the problematic factor that is being discussed within Booker’s work and personal philosophy. 

Unfortunately it has not been possible to provide captioning/subtitles this time around for this piece, but we will work to provide this in future.

Malika Booker is a British-Grenadian-Guyanese writer and multi-disciplinary artist. Booker is the author of Pepper Seed, which was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. She is currently a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at the University of Leeds, a Creative Writing Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Slate Award recipient for research and development of a new play she is currently writing. Malika’s storytelling is focused on the anthropological research of the Black Caribbean experience, particularly in women, and communicating these narratives to a wider audience.

HAIR OF THE DOG: A PUNCHEON OF RACHELLE TOARMINO  (72 imp. gal.)

Lydia Hounat interviews Peach Mag's Rachelle Toarmino on teaching, writing and the Internet.

Rachelle Toarmino (@rchlltrmn) is from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the chapbook series of paparazzi poems, Graphic (Ghost City Press), and the chapbook of embroidery poems, Personal & Generic (PressBoardPress, 2016). Her writing has most recently appeared at McSweeney’s, Metatron, Shabby Doll House, and other places online and in print. She was longlisted for this year's Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize with guest judge Tommy Pico, and was Buffalo Seminary's 2018 Elizabeth McNulty Wilkinson Poet. She is the cofounder and editor in chief of Peach Mag, and recently served as an assistant editor of My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX, 2017). She lives in Buffalo, where she teaches Spanish at an elementary school and is pursuing a master’s degree in education.

hair of the dog: a Solomon of Oscar Lyons (20 L)

Edward May discusses futurism and politics with Oscar Lyons.

Edward

Do you think you could describe your practice to me?

Oscar

So far I have primarily produced video work, but my main interest lies more so in the material physicality of set productions. I’d say filming has become more of a tool for recording performative constructed scenarios. I explore themes surrounding the utopian impulse, with references to science fiction and amateur world building. Amateur means ‘the intent to create something in which you have no traditional training’, as well as its alternate meaning which is to be ‘a lover of something’. I want to visualise the link between how a utopian and an amateur producer thinks; they are both dreamers wanting to create a reality far beyond their means.

Edward

You are interested in politics and the way in which society functions. Do you think you could outline your views as concisely as possible?

Oscar

I’m interested in how people perceive and interpret the future. At the moment, people more often than not believe that the world will only ever get worse. I guess I’d say that in comparison to others, I probably have more of an optimistic belief in the future. Sorry if I sound like a self help book, but I think that by envisioning alternative futures, this shapes how we live our lives and if we don’t believe there is a future there wont be one.

Edward

How have these views influence the work that you make?

Oscar

I try to position my work in discussions on how the future could be, or how others perceive it will be. My fascination with amateur world building comes from an interest in obsessive thinkers, who dream up improbable ideas. This comes down to my own frustration with the lack of societal progress and an urge for a return of grand narratives (i.e. some future to aim towards). Amateurism is a good place to start.

Edward

What's the most recent piece of work you've made? Do think you could describe and explain the work?

Oscar

The last completely finished piece would probably have to be ‘Orbis’, which was a film piece produced in collaboration with Venta. It followed the conflicts on the fictional planet Orbis between the utopian groups that we envisioned would live there. With each group representing a certain common utopian attitude apparent in contemporary politics, we questioned how these groups would live their lives based upon their beliefs, (i.e. more globalism vs. more localism, collectivism vs. individualism, the preservation of nature vs. technological progress). Also, due to the political climate surrounding Brexit, we wanted to use the format of a fictional referendum, to demonstrate why these groups struggle to communicate, understand each other and collaborate on one singular common goal (or better yet, a common utopian vision).

Edward

How has your practise developed over the course of the past few years since starting your foundation at the Royal Drawing School? Where do you see it going in the future?

Oscar

I think even at Drawing School my works always had a strong materiality to it, as well as following themes around futurism. I think I’d like to progress to making work not only about our relationship with the future, but also our past, and possibly delve deeper into concepts surrounding the retro-futurist aesthetic .

EDWARD MAY

23/05/18

hair of the dog: A Methuselah of thinking (6 L)

Jonathan R. Parsonage documents the culture of 2018 in this prose-poetic personal essay.

It’s easy to see. There are bicycles lining the streets. Councils invest in them, they aren’t just a trend anymore. It’s a way of life. Your coffee is artisan. Your tobacco is loose. 

You can hear it too. Walking into a record store, it’s vinyl that greets you. Overpriced, smiling out of the windows at the cold street. You can smell it in the incense that’s all the rage.

You can feel it. The vintage clothes, unwashed, baggy on your arms. Pressing against your skin as a gust of marijuana-air limps towards you and asks you for change.

And that’s the word: change. It has been apparent for quite some time that there is a quiet war. You look at your phone. You take a photo of your post-vegan-pre-organic-liberated-kale-buddha-bowl. You turn to your friend as he rolls his American-Spirit-lime-moistured-liquorice-wrapped-clipper-lit roll-up. Your Ray-Bans dent your nose, your dad’s nose was thinner. Yours got wider over a loo-seat as the bus-ticket-ball-wrap-ink-stain-pink-powder filled it.

It’s immediacy. That’s clear. The argument against constant stimulation is so old-hat I’m surprised people still talk about it. Knowledge is a flirty whisper to your iPhone away. We’re all having an affair with Siri. 534 people in the world liked your post, your friend’s post looked ‘pretty much the same’ and he got 634. That’s a hundred people that will never be on your friends list, block them.

Imagine 100 people bursting into your room as you lie in bed. Giving you a thumbs-up. How surreal. A small army standing in a student flat, glued together and nameless.

Not all’s lost. The love of the tangible is creeping back. You may order your vinyl online, but you drop the needle, play it, raise the needle, flip it, drop the needle, play it, raise the needle, flip it, and look at it: side A, then side B. You hold it.

You put it away, on a wooden shelf, you sit down and open a wooden window, and you fumble in your ripped jeans for a rizla. You hold your rizla, an open envelope. You filter it; safety over sepia. You fill it, you roll it up, you lick the gum, you put it to your mouth. You send that envelope 1st class. The urgent letter, waiting in your mouth. Nicotine knocking at the door to your lungs and, of course, you let it in.

Immediate gratification in real-time. No ‘likes’ stealing the lime-light as you sit there alone in a tangible silence, on a real chair, with real polluted air rising around you.

It’s easy to see. From your window you see a bike go by. Another one, then another one.

You hear the spokes spinning. Tick-tock, smoke rising.

You feel it. The nicotine shakes your brain’s pink hands.

And just when the moment is real. Just when the room is hugging you, just as the chair is solid, just as the mood is moving.

‘You’re such a fucking asshole’

Someone’s come into the room, but you’re on your own. Someone’s kicked in the door. Someone, somewhere, was thinking of you, asshole. Your phone doesn’t have a doorbell. No one comes to check on you anymore.

Edit out your eyebags. No one needs to know.

JONATHAN R. PARSONAGE

16/05/18

HAIR OF THE DOG: a tun of Tom Austin (216 imp. gal.)

Edward May interviews Tom Austin about his art practice and what motivates him to create.

Edward

Do you think you could describe your practice to me? 

Tom

My practice covers a range of mediums; I use everything from painting and sculpture to video and performance work. This allows me to explore whatever ideas I am interested in, in a variety of different forms. Sometimes these separate practices feel like islands, I’m always trying to make sure these islands are interconnected.

Since graduating however I have focused more on video and performance work, this is partly to do with not having any space, but these are also the two mediums which are the most exciting to me at the moment.  They mirror each other nicely, the video work involves props, costumes, sets, and some bad acting. In the performance work I am normally just being myself, attempting some kind of process or activity, and exploring ideas live.

Edward

What is the motivation that you have for making work? Are there any major artistic influences? Or other influences not connected to the arts? 

Tom

I like to make artworks because they help me figure things out in my own head, I hope that my artwork could someday do that for someone else. My practice is very inspired by a bunch of American artists from the 80s, people like Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, and Ericka Beckman. These guys really made a lot of breakthroughs in the way they approached video and performance work, I am especially interested in how they began to blend the two. By using masks and costumes they were really key in moving these genres of video and performance away from the focus on the artist’s body and actual reality and towards something more constructed and playful. Along with them I am also a big fan of Jeff Koons, I really admire the way they all used humour, violence and kitsch within their work.

Edward

What is the most recent piece of performance art that you have shown? Do think you could describe and explain this work?

Tom

I did a piece called Flow of Energy, it was performed in an art space in Toulouse called IPN. It was a combination of speech, diagrams and me interacting with some objects I brought into the space, bin bags, a hose, some whistles.

I think the performance went well actually (despite the fact no one understood it because everyone only spoke French). It achieved what I want my performances to achieve; an idea was slowly explored, live, through speech, diagrams and actions. I am happy with the piece because despite the fact people didn’t speak my language I still got the feeling people understood it, perhaps because I was exploring these ideas in many different dimensions.

Edward

How did your work change whilst you were at art school? And how has it changed since leaving?

Tom

Towards the end of my time at art school I began to take an interest in fabrics and sewing. I have kept making costumes and slowly over time they have become more elaborate and my sewing abilities have improved. I really enjoy costume making, I’m currently designing and making all the costumes for an upcoming film I’m working on in collaboration with VentaCorp.

Edward

You are part of the artist Collective, Ventacorp. Could you give me some more information about how the collective came about and past and future projects?

Tom

Yes, the collective consists of four members (myself, Robert Ive, Oscar Lyons and Edward May); we studied together and have a very similar set of interests. The collective came together very organically, a lot of time spent together talking about art and science fiction. We were collaborating together and organising exhibitions together before deciding to make a feature length science fiction film together, Orbis.

Since graduating we have each moved to different places, so things have slowed down a little but now we are working on a new project, we are producing a film inspired by the writings of the 20th century Russian philosopher Nickolai Fydorov. It’s still in the early stages so I don’t want to give too much away but it should be out at some point in the second half of 2018.

EDWARD MAY

09/05/18

HAIR OF THE DOG: A jigger of Robert Ive (1.5 fl. oz.)

Robert Ive creates artworks which explore the physical environments that surround us and how they influence the way we view the world. His work explores the effects of contemporary technology and its position in ‘designing’ the world. He uses science fiction as a way of exploring this through an experimental process spanning film, drawing and painting. He is currently based in Bristol. Since graduating in 2017 from Falmouth University, he has completed a residency at Spike Island and exhibited with Circle Triangle Square and the Newlyn Gallery.

Edward

Do you think you could describe your practice to me?

Robert

I have been making films, drawings and paintings that explore environments and investigates the ways in which thinking happens through them. How does architecture affect ideologies? When does nature stop and landscape begin? I have been interested in the differences between place and space for a long time, and while my work is not purely about this one question; I keep coming back to it, and I see most of my art as linked to it in some way. When making art, I will often experiment with a certain medium and see how I can shape it to examine these topics.

Edward

What is the motivation that you have for making work? Are there any major artistic influences? Or other influences not connected to the arts?

Robert

One of my main influences is science fiction. I am fascinated by its exploration of the human condition. It allows us to speculate about how the future will be. This is important for art making as it is often technology that drives shifts in Art history. Good science fiction really illustrates how humans are linked to nature and what happens when we may try and shape it; be it through utopia or space travel. I think that I try and question the position of technology in our world through my artwork and investigate the problems which crop up when technology attempts to redesign the world.

Edward

What is the most recent piece of work that you have completed? Do think you could describe and explain this work?

Robert

The most recent piece of work that I have completed is a completely abstract painting, which is unusual for me, but I was compelled to paint it after spending a week in Cornwall with a group of Concrete artists. I wanted to see if I could make work in their way. The design for the painting is based on a code that I wrote which generated moving shapes; a lot of my work comes through a process of image finding and I gather images to shape what I want to make.

Edward

How did your work change whilst you were at Falmouth? And how has it changed since leaving?

Robert

While I was at Falmouth my work became a lot more digital in its nature, maybe as a reaction to the attachment to traditional practices at Falmouth University. I was using computer animation to generate virtual spaces, and with virtual spaces I would create films. These virtual renderings were stages for peculiar happenings, as the objects inside them will shape shift, roll around clipping through the walls and set on fire.

I have recently moved to Bristol and this has made my work less computer based. I am also trying to work around making things with less resources than were available to me whilst I was at art school.

Edward

What are your plans for future works?

Robert

Venta, the collective I belong to are creating a film based on Cosmism, an old Russian philosophy that wants to bring everyone who ever lived back to life and have humanity join together to colonise space.

I am also helping to put on a science-fiction themed dinner party with a group called Uncollective, who also studied at Falmouth, as part of Bristol's food festival in June; the event will be a mixture of a meal of strange foods and a performance that will send the audience through a turbulent world of the future.

I am also starting a new series of Zines called "Symbio" which will be a combination of images and texts that jostle for attention; finding ways to contrast them to produce a disorientating narrative. All these projects, while unrelated, seem to all be exercises in world-building.

EDWARD MAY

26/04/18

HAIR OF THE DOG: A HeFTy GROWLER OF ALEX CAMPBELL (64 fl. oz.)

Taking inspiration from confessional and psycho-somatic art, and with a strong belief in the power of art therapy, Alex Campbell, 24 is forging her way as a freelance artist. Alex, who is known by her friends as ‘The Latex Queen’, talks about her life in a pretentious art-world that really, really, pisses her off.

This is the first interview that Alex Campbell has ever done, yet she’s anything but nervous. Could it be the wine we’ve been sharing since the early afternoon? Perhaps, but there is a confidence simmering under the surface of her skin: and it’s certainly stronger than our corner-shop Shiraz.

Alex rolls her cigarette quickly. A tuft of tobacco sticks out of the end. She puts a strand of her autumnal hair behind her ear as she lights it. 

A deep toke, a long exhale, and then:

‘I’m quite a quiet person. I speak quite quietly.’

She begins to talk about how her mum helped her make collages of leaves when she was younger, how she was forever doing potato printing, but thought nothing of it.

‘I wasn’t ever destined to become an artist, it’s just something I wanna do. I never really engaged with it until GCSE, when I was like, ‘fuck it, I’m gonna do Art’. I was shit at Art, like, crap, absolute crap. I traced everything, got an A*, and was like ‘fuck it, I’m gonna do it at A-Level.’. She lights a cigarette, she doesn't breathe out the smoke. Instead, it oozes between her words,

‘I didn’t have another avenue to go down.’

The quietness has clearly gone out of the window, unlike the smoke that hangs in the air. The smoke presides over us and then parts as she sits forward and says,

‘When you’re institutionalised you’re taught how to perceive art, how to critique art, how to create art, which I think is really damaging. You’re limited. I want to make things that are aesthetically pleasing, you see a painting and you engage with it because of how it looks; brushstrokes, whatever. I’ve never gone in for the, ‘I did three lines on a page and that’s about fucking veganism’, that’s just bullshit. At uni I’d always say, ‘Girls, I’ve made this artwork and I’ve got no idea what it’s about’, and I’m not sure it matters.’

‘I went to uni as a painter, but I was told to experiment with different mediums. No one else was using latex. Now I make latex sculptures, and they all call me the ‘Latex Queen’. Getting up at 4am and making sheets and sheets of latex is like a ritual. Stretching latex over a frame, ripping bedsheets. It’s tactile.’

All of the associations people make about Latex may be misplaced in certain cases, but Alex’s social-media accounts are full of images of vibrators and dildos. On this, she says, ‘Yeah, that’s a part of me. You shouldn’t be judged on those things. Everyone is so different. The only concern I have is people who feel like they have to create a persona to be successful.’

I top up her wine, and ask her about her persona, and whether being the ‘Latex Queen’ is a monicker she’ll always want to be associated with. She replies curtly, ‘My work is a process of finding out what I want to do and progressing. I used wool originally. ‘Wool Woman’ is worse than ‘Latex Queen’. Maybe that’s why I changed.’

She talks quickly but calmly, she is at once completely engaged and indifferent.

‘Latex is really human. It’s like skin. It’s quite feminine. It’s maternal. It comes in a liquid form in a tub. You paint it. You add pigment. You talc it. You peel it off. You pierce it.’

Just as her eyes begin to widen, they shrink back again. She laughs, and in a faux-posh giggle whispers:

‘I’m from a small town. No one from there has ever even got on a train to go to London. Genuinely, my brother has only been three times to go raving. My mum went and had a panic attack on the tube. Now I’m eating houmous while talking about latex. This is the artiest thing ever...’

When asked which artists she likes she simply says, ‘Porous Wanker.’

Her friends are coming over, and the night is young, so we leave it at that.

JONATHAN R. PARSONAGE

15/04/18

hair of the dog: Three shots of circle triangle square (25 ml)

The shapes of the Circle, the Triangle, and the Square, comes from a movement of thinking that it is these three forms that represent the universe in its entirety. The Circle is representative of the earth, the Triangle is representative of human interaction and the Square is representative of the tools and objects we have developed, which have in turn, separated us from other animals and have allowed us to create art. Our organisation, ‘Circle Triangle Square’ has been named after this concept that directly ascertains this artwork that is produced.

During my time at Falmouth University in Cornwall I found myself surrounded by artists that intrigued me. I wanted to create an art platform which would provide exposure and support for these artists.

Circle Triangle Square is an art platform as opposed to art gallery. A platform implies a sense of a permanent theoretical space for the artwork, as opposed to a gallery which has a permanent physical space in which artwork is interchanged and sold. An understanding of start up culture and the importance of the minimum viable product also influenced me to start a platform which could avoid some of the problems that the traditional gallery model face.  Equally the term ‘platform’ derives a permanence that complements the nature of the Circle, Triangle and Square, universally. The artwork that we work with is lasting, wide-reaching, and expansive. I felt it also would provide a more manageable supporting network of and for artists in the chaotic technological climate that we find ourselves in.

I decided that in this venture, it would be good to have others working alongside me. Veronica Cappelli, an architecture graduate with a great understanding of space and installation and Bruna Lago, a design and visual arts graduate and former long-time assistant to the renowned Brazillian artist Cadu are now working together on the development of Circle Triangle Square.

We presented our inaugural exhibition, Chaosmos: Robert Ive and Harriet Foster between February and March at the Christmas Steps Gallery in Bristol. The exhibition consisted of a series of futuristic, apocalyptic drawings and a short film produced by Robert Ive and two dimensional and three dimensional abstract paintings by Harriet Foster. Their work differed significantly in aesthetic and meaning, hence the exhibition title 'Chaosmos', a word used to describe the literal chaos of our world. Ive’s pieces work within an alternative media tied together by a loose but consistent narrative of natural and man-made constructions. Foster’s painting use colour and shapes in an abstract form, yet other works venture into sculpture and performance. 

Circle Triangle Square aims to organise visually and conceptually interesting exhibitions that span a wide range of mediums and themes. It continues a collaboration with like-minded artists that complement the ethos behind the platform, and achieves a new dimension of art that previously has been untouched in territory.

The next Circle Triangle Square exhibition, titled Readymades and Remades will take place in July in London.

EDWARD MAY 

10/04/16

HAIR OF THE DOG: A LARGE GLASS OF ANNA MACARTHUR (8 fl. oz.) 

Anna MacArthur, 23, is a Bristol based actress and model. Anna has always led a double life, her training was concurrently as an English scholar and an actress. Now, working as a young artist in a creative landscape which can only be watered by the sweat from a furrowed brow, she works incessantly in both of her chosen fields. 
Our Editor Jonathan R. Parsonage caught up with Anna MacArthur in Bristol to interview her on leading an interdisciplinary career.

After weeks of phone calls and e-mails, I have finally managed to get in a room with Anna MacArthur, an actress and model who has become adept at spinning plates. None of these plates are falling and smashing. She’s sitting on her sofa. She’s lay back, thinking of sleep, but never closing her eyes. I ask her when her creative life started, she sits up and says: ‘I came out of the womb dancing. I just literally slipped out... I was an easy baby’. 

We talk about displacement, and how her early training was more of a hindrance than a help: ‘I wanted to quit my degree.’ She pauses. She laughs. She has a sip of wine and looks up at me, ‘but I don't think it’s a good idea to leave anything that you start.’ Of course, like most of us do, she’s suffered rejection. She confesses that in the past she’s ‘wailed in her room’ for two hours. Of this she says, ‘It feels like losing a sibling. It’s horrible.’

In those moments, as the horror and wailing subsided, she thought ‘fuck it, I’m just gonna do it’. She navigated networks and made her own opportunities, and quickly found herself being an extra and doing commercials. These are, of course, the main ways of getting a pay-check in the acting world. But the most impressive thing about Anna’s budding career is the way that she seems to always keep the jobs rolling in. 
 

‘Don’t re-create. Always
make things relevant to
         what’s happening in the now.’

She stands up says, ‘scratch that bit about rejection... in fact, don’t. It’s fine. I still beat myself up, I leave auditions prepared for it. It’s the waiting more than anything, your mind plays tricks on you. I’m killing myself over auditions. It’s always a ‘what if, what if?’’.

Just as she seems to be descending into triviality and trope, she pulls herself back. And just says, ‘They’re just thoughts. You watch them go, and they’re not real’. She begins to squirm in her seat as I ask her about modelling. ‘There isn’t a change in the modelling industry.

HAIR OF THE DOG: SOBER. A PITCHER OF ISSUE ONE (1.8 L)

SOBER. has been very quiet recently, and that's because we've been putting together Issue One: Identity, which is now finally ready. 

Issue One will be available for viewing and marvelling on 10th February. Featuring work from amazing artists, Alexis Papatzaneteas, Amy Byrne, Anna Floyd, B P R Greenland, Brontë Palmer, Christina Diakou, CRIME, Jimi Backhouse, Joe Fenwick-Wilson, Keith Bloody Mary, Luca Shaw, Shailee Mehta, Tom Stockley, Tonjë Mørkestøl, and Thomas Neil-Banks. We're so excited to show you guys real, interdisciplinary art. We didn't think we'd receive as many submissions as we did for a new zine ran by a few graduates, and we thank everybody who submitted to us. 

Our thumbnail artwork has been designed by the incredibly talented Rupert Phillips.

In other news, editor Eddie May is curating his arts organisation Circle Triangle Square, with an exhibition opening in Bristol this month. We'll update with links soon. Lydia Hounat has had her photography published in Bad Pony Magazine, the issue is due to be released soon, links to follow. REALITY BEACH has released Issue 5, which you can view here.

We won't be opening for Issue Two submissions until May, so in the mean time we'll be providing you with articles to wet your whistles.

For now, we hope you love this issue. 

Love,

SOBER.

HAIR OF THE DOG: A HALF OF SOBER. (1 HPT)

HAIR OF THE DOG: PINT OF SUBMISSIONS (1 PT)

HAIR OF THE DOG. #1