You’ve Got a Sweet Voice: Police, Guns and Protest Songs
On the 27th of October, this year, American singer songwriter Kevin Morby released his new single, ‘Beautiful Strangers’, and the next day, Vic Mensa, one of the biggest new names in hip-hop released the video for his song ‘16 Shots’. Although the two songs could not be further apart in thei
“Rescued by the grace of a miracle”: An Interview with Yen Siow, former Vietnamese Refugee
It was an average rainy August morning in Singapore when The Real Singapore Expat Wives (RSEW) online Facebook forum was woken by a rather out of place post from a woman by the name of Yen Siow. “I’m looking for help translating a letter to Norwegian as I’m writing to a lady who might be [&hel
Over a week with Jean-Paul Mulot, ex-editor of Le Figaro
In April this year I went to stay with Jean-Paul Mulot and his family on the Île de Ré, a French island off the coast of La Rochelle, famous for its oysters and sweeping light. I was there for a tutoring job, but I took the opportunity over the course of ten days to quiz […]
“We comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted”: an interview with David Walsh
“7 X TdF champ.” Lance Armstrong’s Twitter bio bears none of the signs of contrition one might expect from an exposed elite sportsman. Despite world outrage when proof of his drug-cheating was uncovered, Armstrong’s crimes seem to have dipped in significance, and his blatantly incorrect clai
“An artist is just a regular person”: An Interview with Koki Tanaka
Koki Tanaka is perhaps the contemporary art world’s quietest radical: a man who, since being selected as Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year in 2015, has proceeded to gently undermine the very concept of ‘the artist’ in favour of encouraging collective action and historical re
“I call myself an artist that writes with poetry”: An Interview with Robert Montgomery
I pick up the phone to Robert Montgomery and start speaking in the same manner as I would to someone I have known for years. ‘Hey, how are you? Have you had a really busy week?’ I ask him, rather abruptly. He humours me, and decides to talk me through his schedule that week. ‘I’ve […]
Victoria Viatorum
I first met Maria on Friday. She stood in the street and talked at me in hurried Greek, and then when I didn’t reply, accused me of ignoring her. ‘You speak Greek! I heard you at the kiosk.’ Being ignored was a problem that she seemed to face a lot, dressed in a cast-off T-shirt, […]
Body of Evidence
She had a tape recording. In it, his voice was muffled, slurred from a night of heavy drinking, and at times inaudible from the rustling of the coat pocket in which she’d hidden the phone during their last conversation together. In it, her voice was noncommittal, quiet, deferential, almost apologe
Whippersnapper
You called the dog Whippersnapper because you could not remember its name. You were friends, allies of sorts, with your illicit trades under the tabletop: a corner of your cake slice exchanged for a wag of the dog’s tail or a stroke of its black head for a friendly grin. But you could not even [&h