At first glance, a 17-year-old student living with her family in a small suburb of Chicago might seem, to Cherwell readers, as an odd choice for our Profile interview. I’ve reached this conclusion, because every time I tell one of my fellow students on the paper how giddy with excitement I am about my interviewee, their response is usually just, “Oh, isn’t that the teenage girl?”

Our Skype call is scheduled for 4pm CST, so that she has time to come home from school. Tavi Gevinson has an ordinary student schedule, but her extra-curriculars are a lot more exciting than any student I know.

She started out with fashion writing on her blog Style Rookie, which fast became phenomenally successful due to her eccentric style and dry humour, and saw her seated front row at New York Fashion Week, next to Anna Wintour. But she quickly tired of aspects of the fashion industry, as she “realized how that world can make you so caught up and anxious about how you come off that you can’t really see outside of yourself”. Now she’s Editor-in-Chief of her own publication, Rookie, an online feminist magazine for teenage girls, and produces a physical annual ‘yearbook’ of content with publishers Drawn and Quarterly. She’s starring in a Hollywood movie, Enough Said, which is enjoying a flurry of four and five-star reviews. In her spare time, she’s also going about the small task of completing high school and applying to college.

“It’s a bit of a stressful time. I really want to go to New York, so I can study and continue with Rookie and other things. You can get really impatient sitting in high school when like there’s so much else you have do in your life. I just try and appreciate that I can have that kind of experience as much as possible. It’s a good balance, and I mean I write so much about being a teenager that high school is an experience that I want to have.”

Although she’s keen to move on — the majority of her friends and her boyfriend have already graduated — Tavi has a keen sense of the future nostalgia she might experience after leaving school.

“I’ve found many ways to appreciate growing up in a suburb and there’s something very special about it. Being a teenager is a very precious time! Leaving that part makes me sad. This is going to sound name-droppy but I was emailing Lena Dunham, and I was like ‘Senior year sucked!’ and ‘Highschool’s dumb!’, and she was like, ‘I hated school, I didn’t really like college but I found myself missing them in ways I did not expect. So appreciate it as much as you can.’ I’m just trying to do that.”

The universality of these experiences is part of what makes Rookie a global success: the majority of its young audience are not just passive or casual readers. Though there is a dedicated staff of permanent writers, photographers and illustrators of all ages, Rookie thrives on submission, often showcasing work sent in by readers, and every piece is underscored by a stream of enthusiastic comments. There are regular events: last year Tavi and other staff members did a cross-country road trip across the states where they spoke to readers, held exhibitions, and signed copies of Rookie Yearbook One. Readers even set up meet-ups with each other of their own accord, in cities the world over. Rookie is not just a magazine, it’s a community of young feminist women with diverging interests and shared passions. I ask her what its like to be a figurehead for such a devoted group of young people.

“It’s amazing! Its the most gratifying thing! I worked for years behind a computer, just talking about myself, and then I was like ‘Oh! I should, like, not talk about myself! I should create a space for other people to talk about themselves.’ My blog was very much, ‘I don’t care what you say! This is for me!’, and with Rookie it’s for the audience, it’s the opposite. But even then, you still work behind a computer, and although you get to see all these responses online and it’s great, you don’t feel it on a human level. And then to see these people and just think, ‘Oh my god! They’re all humans and they have personal histories, and childhood memories, and, like, tastebuds and stuff. They’re real!’ It’s just so amazing.

“I can think of times when girls have said to me, ‘This article convinced me to tell my parents I have an eating disorder’, or, ‘This article helped me come out’, or, ‘I’m a sexual assault survivor and this helped me’. That’s when you realise this is actually much bigger than me and us, this is about these connections people create.”

Part of Rookie’s appeal lies in its diversity: topics covered range from ‘Literally the Best Thing Ever: The Sims’, to guides on how to call people out if they say something racist or misogynistic, from nail painting tutorials to personal essays on what it’s like to grow up transgender. Both these types of content, the silly and the serious, are given equal prominence, and there is no snobbery about pop music or fashion. There is a smattering of articles on style and beauty, but an even bigger focus on body acceptance and self esteem. Articles like ‘Do It Yourself’, a guide for young women about masturbation featured in Rookie Yearbook One, have received criticism for being ‘inappropriate’ for such a young readership.

“I’ve been at a book signing, or I’ve been sitting at book fairs with the Rookie Yearbook One in front of me, and a woman will come up with her kid and flick through it, then get to the masturbation article and be like,” she takes on a tone of po-faced, tight lipped sarcasm, “‘Okay, thanks…’, and put the book down and guide their daughter away.

“I once went on a talk show on Access Hollywood, so it was supposed to be very, y’know, light and sound-bite-ish. The male host was like, ‘Now I was sitting in bed reading this with my daughters; it can be a little racey!’ and I was like, ‘You’re reading it in bed with your kids? You put yourself in that situation!’

“I continually say these are things teenagers already talk about. In Yearbook Two there’s an article about sex and body myths, that answers questions like ‘Can a tampon get stuck up inside of you?’, things like that. You need a source for these questions that isn’t like, Yahoo Answers. The author, Lola, is an OB/GYN [gynaecologist] who studied at Yale. If teenagers are already talking about this, at least Rookie is a voice that speaks from personal experiences, and women like Lola are obviously very educated.”

The dedication and enthusiasm with which so many girls embrace Rookie’s content, the books and films and music praised on it, and the advice it gives, shows that although Tavi has a wonderfully original voice, and bags of wit and drive, it is wrong to consider her an anomaly — a rare mature or smart teenager – as many media outlets do, through labels like ‘wunderkind’. She provides a funny, warm, yet rigorously informed voice for so many intelligent young people who are often dismissed as hormonal fangirls. Why does she think this category of teenage women are so often sneered at?

“There will always be people who consider young female artists more self-indulgent than male artists, and I’ve definitely like dealt with that feeling of wondering if I’m selfish or arrogant or something, so I’m very happy to see someone like Lena Dunham exploring these issues. But when I interviewed Sophia Coppola for Rookie, I asked her why she mostly makes movies about teenagers, and she said that when you’re a teenager you have this luxury where you have this time to be really introspective and think about things, you don’t have the same obligations an adult does and you have a lot of free time.”

Tavi is a teenage girl who is starting to experience the obligations and time commitments of adult life a little earlier than most. Her debut acting role in Enough Said — which she calls “a really simply honest movie” that’s not “trying too hard to be gritty” — is just reaching audiences, and it’s an experience she’s said she’d love to do again. What creatively excites her most right now, and does she still have time for the introspective writing she built her name on?

“I’ve actually learned that journalling is a thing that I have to do to be happy. It just one of those things for me that I really have to do to keep your brain in like, a good place. I can see going to college and, you know, there are a lot of writing classes that I want to get on. Sometimes I do wanna write something and then I think it’s too personal for me to put on Rookie. But, in the future, I do think I’ll share those throughout the years again.”

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Saved certainly doesn’t save you from any aspect of human nature. From the death of a baby to sexual promiscuity, this play does leaves no malignant element of man unscathed. Its characters are on the dole and have grown up on council estates.

Edward Bond wrote the play in 1965 and Lord Chamberlain deemed it so immoral it was censored; I question why it didn’t stay that way. The play itself is rather ridiculous. Bonds’ message that men on the dole are inherently malevolent and bestial to the extent that they randomly kill a baby is absurd: the play lacks any sense of empathy or reasoning and the plot line itself is rather tedious.

Pam who has had a child with the heartless Fred. Pam tries desperately to make Fred pay her attention and help her with the child, but Fred is ever absent. Upon meeting in the park Pam leaves the baby with Fred and his friends. The friends, and Fred, proceed to punch the baby in the pram and rub its own excrement in its face. The plot follows Fred as he goes to prison, comes out of prison and Pam figuratively goes in and out of her imprisoned state of mind.

The play has absolutely no meaning. It is random and shocking: not shocking because it touches the core of our emotions, but because who on Earth randomly starts killing a baby? Evil does happen, but Bond does not justify these actions and, if it is his desire to castigate the welfare state, his play is so utterly hyperbolic as to be ineffective. Bond appears to be suggesting that all lower-class men want to go to the park all day and kill their babies. Weird.

However, Macaroon Productions certainly saved what they could of Bonds’ play. The cast all had moments of authenticity that struck the audience. Pam (Madeline Walker) although reminiscent of Eliza Doolittle at times, created moments of sincerity and pity. Similarly Fred (Jack Flowers) is so intense in his physicality the perplexed state of Freds’ mind is powerfully reflected. Despite being a character that embodies evil the audience empathises with Flowers’ extreme panic. Len (Marcus Balmer) and Mary (Lara McIvor) truly engaged the audience; their acting was so realistic that one forgot they were in the Burton Taylor studio, and truly felt a part of this bizarre world of violence and sex.

Edward Bond is clearly not my favourite writer, yet I would still recommend seeing the play. Not only for the well-cast actors, but also to engage with ideas of human nature. Does living in a council estate make you more likely to be violent? Bond’s play is timeless in this respect: the script allows the audience to extract a moral message and ponder on the state of our own society.

Saved will be performed at the BT Studio until Saturday 9th November. Tickets are available here

In 1975, the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader sailed out to sea in a tiny sailboat and was never seen again. 10 months later, his boat was found submerged off the coast of Ireland; his body never turned up. He titled the performance art piece In Search of the Miraculous. That same year, American psychologist Raymond Moody coined the term ‘near-death experience.’

A year prior, Friedrich Kunath spent his first hour on earth in Chemnitz, Germany. More than 30 years since Ader’s final disappearing act, Kunath’s first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery – fittingly titled Raymond Moody’s Blues – is currently on display at Modern Art Oxford. 

The protagonist at the heart of the installation and accompanying short film, You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Crazy (2012) is an ageing LA artist whose life in a state known for its materialism, perennial sunshine and endless downtime begins to unravel, leaving him as emotionally adrift as Ader’s lost boat.

For Kunath, who moved from Germany to LA to live and work fulltime, feelings of displacement and loss strike particularly close to his own artistic path. In this large-scale exhibit, he plays with the notion of what he refers to as “sad optimism,” or the discovery of life after death – of a relationship, of a connection to one’s home, of a former self – and the seemingly quotidian objects that become infused with nostalgia after they, too, become displaced.

Upon entering the space, the senses become engaged by various stimuli, from dark piano chords to the feel of walking on bright green tennis turf, subtly transporting the viewer into Kunath’s world where any boundaries between conventionally “happy” and “sad” emotions begin to blur. His melding of mediums, from audio and film to sculpture and painting, complement one another and enhance the melancholy mood that permeates the space; yet each piece also stands alone, largely due to their memorable titles. A rainbow-striped sweater stretches from one black chair to another, the fabric reaching like a long arm to hold hands with the other side: this is The Closest We Will Ever Be. A pair of lifesized, scuffed-up loafers, one weighed down with sand, the other holding an oversized orange with a carved leering face, appear to have trudged many miles before settling: this is Honey, I’m Home (Orange). 

Clear connections between the mishmash of things animate and inanimate – What A Difference It Makes When It Doesn’t Make Any Difference Anymore features two otters with human feet laying on either side of Barbara Streisand’s People vinyl record, each clutching a tennis ball – do not necessarily emerge upon first glance. But look closer: what appears to be a conglomeration of random images, strange figures, and cheap objects starts to feel more like a garage sale of the protagonist’s (perhaps the artist’s?) mind, cluttered with memories of both the bitter and sweet variety.

Kunath also celebrates the tiny fragments of one’s childhood that often get pushed to the side upon entering the Adult World: helium balloon strings, leftover from a birthday party, and black-and-white home video footage both find a place here. The comical converses with more macabre juxtapositions, such as Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I balanced on the nose of a performing seal. On the oil, acrylic, and colored pencil mural Life After Life, swaying palms and a perfectly blue sky are overlaid by doodles, transforming them into narratives subject to each viewer’s wandering associations: Rodin’s despondent Thinker sitting atop a globe, a midnight bicycle ride, an overflowing bathtub.

The middle gallery plays Kunath’s 17-minute film You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Crazy, reintroducing familiar images (plastic fruit and tennis courts all make an appearance) before an LA backdrop. A haunting string score by the Calder Quartet in collaboration with Kunath supplies a dynamism to even the quietest moments. While the loose plot works in tandem with the physical aspects of the exhibition, it does not tie up all the loose knots. The film – and the exhibition in its entirety – works precisely because Kunath does not instill in his audience a hard-and-fast sense of pity for the artist: we don’t know, may never know, as he bobs along on his sailboat, whether he revels in the quiet solitude or laments it. Kunath suggests that the answer, if any exists, is a bit of both.

Thanks to Nick Wood at Modern Art Oxford for providing insight into the exhibition and Bas Jan Ader. Raymond Moody’s Blues is on until 17th November at MAO. Admission is free.

2007’s break-out nu-rave sensation, Hadouken!, are keen to escape the label of being 2007’s break-out nu-rave sensation. “Hadouken! exist on our own terms”, lead singer James Smith assures Cherwell during our intimate meeting in a cramped dressing room backstage at the O2 Academy.

Earlier this year, the grindie gang released a new album (it missed out on a Cherwell review, but the NME gave it 7 out of 10). “Every Weekend is about losing yourself and letting go”, James tells us. It drags the nu-rave vibes of their 2007 debut kicking and screaming into 2013 via high-tempo dubstep drum patterns and aggressive drum & bass synth lines. We tentatively suggest “nu-nu-rave” as a label for the record- but James is less than impressed. “I have absolutely no concern whatsoever with genre. It bores me. If I give myself a genre I’m putting myself in a box, which is just constricting for an artist.”

“When Hadouken! go about making music, we don’t think about constraints”. Genre for Hadouken! is a tiresome limitation, a mere obstacle to be overcome on their quest to bring music to the masses. “Genres have superstars in them but they live and die”, whereas James hopes that Hadouken! exist on a plane beyond these passing concerns- and beyond nu rave. Despite these admirable sentiments, the album is not entirely divorced from all that has gone before it. James acknowledges the influence of “all the EDM vibes from the west coast.” Specifically, he namechecks one of the great electronic artists of our age. “Skrillex started that whole thing… at least for me.”

One way for Hadouken! to distance themselves from their nu-rave roots, we suggest, could be to drop their jaunty exclamation mark. After all, Panic! At The Disco briefly ditched their own punctuation mark in 2008, to the outrage of their fans and the utter indifference of literally everybody else. This is not a sacrifice Hadouken! are willing to make. “Actually, we stole our exclamation mark from Panic! At The Disco”, James tells us.

Our conversation does not solely focus on their artistic endeavours, but covers a wide range of nu-rave bases. James is unequivocal in his assertion that he “prefers a wall of death to a moshpit”, but unexpectedly tells us that he’d “rather be a beanie than a glow-stick”- a shocking admission, and something of a scoop for Cherwell. The question of which historical character he would most like to be in a moshpit with proves more difficult to answer. After a pause of some seconds, he opts for “the Minotaur”. In contrast, if he could be any Skins character, he would “probably be Effie. She’s fit.”

He also provides Cherwell with advice on how to keep nu-rave in drab, post-recession Britain. “If you want to stay nu-rave while doing day-to-day chores around the house, do them naked with glow paint”. However, not all his comments are so uplifting. The computer game attack move from which they derive their name provides a platform for some searing social commentary. “If I could Hadouken anyone, I would Hadouken the person that gives me all the traffic warden bills from the local council”, he tells us, in a grim illustration of Broken Britain.

When we ask him to summarise his band in 3 words, James goes for “in your face”. It is doubtless this rock-and-roll attitude which led him to get a skull tattooed on his bicep. “I like skulls… they are associated with death but that reminds me to celebrate life”. Despite Hadouken!’s attempts to distance themselves from the term, the nu-rave flame is clearly still burning bright in their fluorescent yellow heart.