What does the “yes” vote mean for women in Turkey?
As the last votes of the Turkish referendum were counted in April, and they watched President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan celebrate his victory, many Turkish women feared for their homeland. Turkey had become a twisted orchestra, as a chorus of “yes” campaigners roared for Erdoğan’s new-found execu
Stories from Ukraine: Mezhyhirya Part I
Mezhyhirya is an estate on the outskirts of Kyiv where former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, lived. When he fled Ukraine at the end of the Maidan protests in 2014, protestors entered his house and occupied it. This film is about the two people who are still there, now running the house as a
MACRON VERSUS LE PEN
On the 23rd of April, France chose the winners in the first round of voting. By a slim margin, they turned out to be Emmanuel Macron, from the populist movement En Marche! and Marine Le Pen, from the infamous Front National. Mr. Macron is running on a neoliberal platform, emphasizing financial dereg
Requiem for the Simulation Generation
‘Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying’ The fatalistic lyrics from Joy Division’s Decades couldn’t have been more appropriate. The clementine hegemon was stood atop the rostra in Washington, regurgitating sound bites on a bleak mid-winter day. I was reduced to a slumped spectat
FOR THE PARTY, NOT THE NATION
The Conservatives may be ready for a general election, but the country isn’t. In the past week, the Conservatives have been placed twenty-one points ahead of Corbyn’s Labour Party in two polls. Many Labour MPs have accepted that not only do they face no real chance of forming the next governmen
Birthright and Need: the Politics of Belonging
In a world of Trump, Brexit and Marine Le Pen, national identity is key to making sense of people’s choices. A law passed by the Spanish government in June 2015 allowed anyone with genealogical proof of being related to a victim of the 1478 Spanish Inquisition is entitled to dual Spanish citizensh
A hierarchy of death: why do black lives not matter in the media?
The rapper M.I.A. has controversially criticised the media coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, suggesting that in contrast with the attention received by police brutality against black people, consideration of violence against Muslim people is not only neglected, but is actively whitewashed
The Embryonic Tale: Hugo, Enjolras and Les Misères
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables has travelled far from its father’s pen. Eager for material, contemporary culture seems to regularly lead it astray, projecting simplification (or mere fabrication) onto its surface. However, as it rolled from the press in 1862, Hugo’s novel had already strayed fr
“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