Let’s begin at dusk, perhaps in rural Britain, at the turn of the 19th century. We enter as the frost settles on a quiet meadow after nightfall, and the land is still, ungated, open, natural, and the world is largely unknowable. Animals sleeping and trees flowing gently in the night air. Your heart is beating… Continue reading The gated clock and the permeable soul — how industrial time shaped the world
For many years, hobbies were a simple escape from the chaos of daily life. People would dedicate hours upon hours to hobbies they enjoyed, regardless of how efficient or productive they were. However, activities such as cooking, exercising and even resting have recently become a “race to completion”. We as a society are no longer… Continue reading The optimisation of everything — our pursuit of perfect leisure
“It’s bad,” I look to Cerys in the most deadpan way, “No, I know it’s bad because I’ve started getting those Tarot card readings on my For You page, and now I watch the full thing.” She looks at me, amused, “Yeah, you’re done.” It’s how they get you. In your most vulnerable moments when… Continue reading Tortured by Tarot — the online Tarot phenomenon
I walked out of The Immortal Man grieving a character that never existed. The film beautifully presents us with the unwrapped gift of death. Of confrontation. Of full realisation. The immigrant circle of life, so to speak. And yet even with the finality of Tommy’s mortality, we as an audience are left with a sadness… Continue reading The complexity and reality of mortality of the Peaky Blinders
It is a regular, boring and average night at my house, and I am in bed, doomscrolling as always on my phone on Instagram. My eyes are heavy, and my thumb is on autopilot as the lingering thought in the back of my mind says to me, “I should really be going to sleep right… Continue reading All roads lead to Rome — the White Rabbit meme and Gen Z’s ironic search for meaning and completion
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and was key in the development of German idealism. Hegel’s work varies from idealism to the concept of the “Geist”, the philosophy of art and metaphysics. Therefore, Hegel is not easy to read nor is he easy to… Continue reading Hegel’s dialectics and Marxism in Europe
In A Girl’s Story, Annie Ernaux, in a somewhat self-indulgent practice, recounts her girlhood: all its desire, shame and vulnerability that encircles the years of female adolescence. Ernaux’s creative ability to place herself into the body of her 18-year-old self means reliving sexual and emotional trauma. She delves into the summer of 1958 when she… Continue reading Journey to the self — detangling adolescent desire and conditioned female shame in A Girl’s Story
Around the fifth century BCE, in ancient China, one notorious commander declared that “all warfare is based on deception”, and ultimate success purely stems from tactics of evasion and subtlety. The work which this quote has been acquired from, The Art of War, is attributed to Sun Tzu; however, by 1469, the year Niccolò Machiavelli… Continue reading The art of the prince — Machiavelli and the endurance of deception
For as long as we can recall, philosophers, poets and scientists alike have grappled with the seemingly impossible task of defining the essence of love, and as an extension of this the essence of humanity. We now live in a society where technology is entrenched in our everyday lives and the question is taking on… Continue reading What it means to love — humanity and artificial intelligence in Klara and the Sun
There are nights when the rain sounds like it’s trying to speak to me. It taps on the window in hesitant rhythms, as if unsure whether I’m listening. I slip into my darkroom with a roll of film in my pocket, nothing remarkable, just small moments I wasn’t sure were worth remembering, and close the… Continue reading Hopper and the art of being alone
