“I will only accept being my own genre”: an interview with Porpentine
CYBERQUEEN starts with a black screen and just one word to click: ‘wet’. From there, things spiral. It starts off a simulacrum of any parser game you might imagine: sci-fi kitsch, ‘navigation chamber west’, a copious selection of guns whose capabilities are described in fetishistic detail. N
All Quiet on the Culture Front
To say that all politics is sex may seem like a rather pubescent position. A very radical albeit pubescent position. But it is not an unsubstantiated one, for in a social environment tainted by the ‘Culture Wars’ our politics is undoubtedly pubescent. The Western psyche seems to be in something
Rulers Without Robes
The recent BBC drama Marie Antoinette is an uncomfortable series to watch. The combination of off-tune music, flaking powdered faces, and menacing whispers reveals the truth which lurks behind the beautiful Versailles backdrop: it is a cage, rather than a palace, for the 14-year-old Austrian princes
Won in Translation
Translation is often seen as a necessary evil. It is the imperfect remedy to the embarrassing fact that we can’t speak all the languages, to be swept under the rug and forgotten about. Translation is merely the conduit that allows us to access writings that would otherwise remain mysterious to us.
