Thursday, May 15, 2025
Blog Page 657

Protesting Bannon doesn’t legitimise aggression

Zahra Farzanekhoo
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Protesting Bannon doesn’t legitimise aggression

On Wednesday, the Oxford Union announced that Steve Bannon would be giving a talk on Friday, giving protesters two days notice to mobilise. And mobilise they did.

However, the methods adopted by the protesters were ineffective and downright disgraceful. Preventing entry to the Union came at the severe cost of alienating their peers, losing the opportunity for challenging questions to be asked, and incurring a massive cost to the police.

Though I would have preferred for Bannon to not have been invited, the simple reality is that he was. The behaviour exhibited by protesters on Friday, namely in preventing members from entering the Union and accusing the police of being Nazi sympathisers, was childish, embarrassing, and ultimately undermined their goals. There is a vital difference between peacefully and effectively protesting against an ideology, and personally attacking fellow students and law enforcers.

The first issue with the protest was the blocking of people from entering a building they had paid substantial sums to be able to enter, to listen to a speaker they wanted to hear and engage with in debate. Merely protesting disapproval outside would have been acceptable but physically blocking entry was arrogant. Whilst the protesters have a right to protest, the students trying to get in also have the right to exercise their membership rights and go inside the Union. The line must be drawn when one group begins to forcefully impose their own beliefs as to what is acceptable and what is not onto another.

Blocking Union members from entering only alienates them against the protesters’ cause and plays into the hand of Bannon and his supporters. We each have a right to our respective beliefs on whether Bannon was to speak or not but that right stops there: it does not entitle one group to demand the other group agrees with them. Protesters should have accepted that preventing entry would only undermine their cause and that antagonising their peers was not the most effective way to persuade.

Secondly, many protesters on Friday were plainly disrespectful. Many students simply wanting to attend the talk had cameras shoved in their faces whilst being insulted. At the Union entrance on St Michael’s Street, the protest leader repeatedly put their megaphone directly in the face of those trying to enter, which was unnecessarily aggressive and also blatantly ignored any possible health implications.

Many of protesters, though not all, were far too aggressive in their approach and lacked basic decency and respect. Most of those present were members of the University. We see each other around college and in lecture halls. There was no need to accuse those trying to enter of being racists and Nazi sympathisers, an insult which is frankly dangerous. Loosely throwing around such accusations and in particular the use of the word ‘Nazi’ is very harmful and risks distorting what the Nazi Party actually did and stood for.

Finally, the protesters repeatedly yelled at the police who were simply there to maintain public order. Chanting ‘the police protect Nazis’ and ‘the police killed Mark Duggan’ was problematic for two reasons. The former is not only inaccurate, as the police had driven from Reading to protect the protesters themselves, but also misused a very loaded word. As for the latter, whilst true, it was both irrelevant and inappropriate to chant. Misappropriating significant historical events, such as the Holocaust and the police brutality that caused the death of Mark Duggan, is disrespectful to the police present on Friday who were in no way responsible for either event.

The disapproval for Steve Bannon could have been expressed in a much more effective manner which did not play into the belief those on the right hold that the left are incapable of listening to views they disagree with. Antagonising peers, insulting the police, and demanding to see the bod cards of Brasenose students simply trying to get into their accommodation in Frewin Annexe – something which left a few students crying – shows just how poorly the protesters conducted themselves.

Of course, individuals are entirely justified in engaging in peaceful protest and exercising their free speech. However, physical obstruction crosses the line. Many Union members, including myself, felt the entitlement of the protesters to determine who should enter, or who members should be allowed to listen to, was inappropriate and ultimately undermined their cause.

Free speech is essential, but part of that requires that one can choose what speech to listen to. It becomes dangerously totalitarian when a mobilised belief group starts to dictate what speech cannot be accessed.

Blues take Major Stanley win

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Blues take Major Stanley win

Oxford University’s Rugby Blues beat Cardiff RFC 27-5 in what was a comfortable win to mark the first fixture of the revamped annual Major Stanley’s match.

After a convincing 55-14 win against Trinity College Dublin, the Blues opted to rotate the team, giving some fringe players an opportunity to prove themselves with just one fixture to go before the all-important Varsity match.

Playing in white kit, an allusion to the historical strip of Major Stanley’s XV, the Oxford side started the game well, forcing the first ten minutes of the match to be largely fought inside the Cardiff half.

The early dominance of the Blues continued to show. Despite Cardiff seeing more possession than in the first quarter of the half, the Welsh outfit struggled to convert their time with the ball into distance gained.

The game burst into life just after the 20-minute mark when a penetrating 50-yard run by Henry Martin forced Cardiff deep into their own half. With Cardiff’s back up against the wall, a lapse in judgment led to an Oxford penalty when Cardiff’s no 11 was sinbinned for a high tackle on Oxford’s fly-half Louis Jackson. The resultant penalty kick was duly put into touch and Oxford turned the line-out into an effective rolling maul from which Alasdair King scored the first try of the match.

Oxford continued to dictate the game and a poor kick from Cardiff found its way into the hands of Martin. The ball found its way to Jackson, whose incisive runs caused Cardiff serious problems throughout the game, who found a gap in the Cardiff defence before offloading to Conor Kearns for Oxford’s second try. The Blues thus went into the dressing room 10-0 up at half-time, after Jackson’s boot failed to live up to his otherwise high-quality performance.

The second half saw an emphatic start. The crowd had barely returned to their seats when a scrum in midfield led to Jackson turning on the afterburners and outpacing the Cardiff defence to score Oxford’s third try in a manner reminiscent of Johnny Sexton.

Not to go down without a fight, Cardiff fought back in the 69th minute after a sustained attack resulted in a momentary lapse of concentration for the Blues’ defence, allowing the Welsh no 11 to burst through and put some points on the scoreboard for the away side. Another conversion missed saw the score at 15-5 in Oxford’s favour.

Oxford were determined to put the game to bed, and they converted their supremacy into a fourth try inside the game’s last 5 minutes after multiple scrums resulted in Dylan McGagh finding his way over the try-line. Kearns stood up to take the subsequent conversion and duly secured Oxford’s first conversion of the match, setting the score line at 20-5.

In the dying breaths of the game the Blues scored their fifth try of the match after Tom Stileman found his way into the corner, securing a deserved victory with a convincing 27-5 final score in a match that showed the depth of the Blues’ squad ahead of their clash against Cambridge on the 6th December.

Purple Turtle to close down

Greg Ritchie
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Purple Turtle to close down

The popular night club Purple Turtle is set to close down, as it failed to reach an agreement with the Oxford Union regarding a new lease.

In a statement, the club said: “As some of you may know we have been negotiating our new lease with theOxford Union over the last few months and unfortunately much to our disappointment we have not been able to come to an arrangement that would allow us to remain in Frewin Court, our home for the last twenty years. We’ve been asked to vacate the premises by the 30th of November, yep, that’s in two weeks.

“So, this week is our last, at least here anyway, we will be back once we find a new home and we hope you’ll all come along with us after all it’s never been the building that makes the Turtle, it’s the Turtle that makes the building.

“We’ve always striven to create an inclusive, fun and safe environment for you all to party and that will never change wherever we are.

It added: “We’d like to say a massive, massive thank you to all of our Staff, DJ’s, Promoters, Bands, and most importantly Customers who’ve made this one of the most special venues in Oxford.

“We hope you’ll all join us this week to give our old home the send off it deserves.”

President of the Oxford Union, Stephen Horvath, told Cherwell: “The Oxford Union and our tenant The Purple Turtle were unable to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement on a new lease, with the prior twenty year lease having expired in September 2018.

“We are looking forward to announcing our new tenant in the coming weeks – watch this space for an exciting announcement, which we are sure will please clubbers from the University and Oxford more broadly.”

The announcement follows a tough year for Oxford’s night life. The Cellar is still in a fight to save its future, while Plush Lounge announced that it was also having to change venue.

The power of silence: the art of Marina Abramović

Grace Morgan
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The power of silence: the art of Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović is known for producing unconventional art. Throughout her career, the self-professed ‘grandmother of performance art’ has persistently subverted the conventional, challenging and redefining the boundaries of what constitutes art.

Using the artist as a medium, her work occupies an odd, and somewhat unclear space between reality and performance, as the body becomes a vehicle through which the message of the piece is conveyed. In her early career, Abramović pushed the physical limits of her body to extremes, creating work verging on the self-destructive. Her infamous piece ‘Rhythym 0’ (1974) invited the public to do whatever they wanted to her motionless body, using any of the 72 objects she had arranged on a table: these included a saw, paint, scissors, perfume, and a loaded gun. Sacrificing herself to the decisions of the audience, the work makes a profound comment on the corruptibility of human nature; the performance was stopped after six hours, as participants became increasingly violent towards her body. Her silence and stillness throughout fulfilled the accompanying statement of instructions: ‘I am the object’. She has since described how the audience then left immediately after she began to move, unable to face her as a human, rather than a passive object.

As her career has progressed, Abramović’s work has increasingly focused on the capacity of the mind. In ‘The House with the Ocean View’ (2002), she spent 12 days living in three rooms, raised on platforms open to the public, in the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. Audience members could watch her sleeping, washing, drinking, and urinating. She neither spoke nor ate for the duration of the performance. Describing the work as an experiment, Abramović has explained the piece as an attempt to subtract meaning from time, claiming that whilst they watched the performance audience members would find hours had passed instead of minutes.

This use of silence and ritualization to enhance concentration underpins Abramović’s ‘Counting the Rice’ interactive installations, which often feature in her retrospective exhibitions. Members of the public surrender their mobile phones and watches, to sit at tables and count individual black lentils and rice grains from large piles, all the while wearing noise-cancelling headphones. This project forms part of Abramović’s focus on gaining back free time by immersing oneself in long durational activities, in which there is no sense or even understanding of time.

Abramović believes that “the hardest thing to do is to do something that is close to nothing, because it is demanding all of you”. It is no surprise, then, that she has described the aptly named ‘The Artist is Present’ (2010) as her most ambitious work. This was performed in accompaniment to her major retrospective exhibition of the same name, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This piece was essentially a reinvention of the earlier ‘Nightsea Crossing’ (1981–87), which was performed with her then lover and fellow performance artist, Uwe Laysiepen, commonly known as Ulay. The pair sat separated by a table, in total silence, for eight hours a day. The MoMA rendition replaced Ulay with a member of the public, so that Abramovic sat opposite an empty chair, in which anyone could sit, for as long as they wanted.

The premise of the performance may sound simple when compared to some of her more outlandish work, but this brief explanation belies an extreme feat of both mental and physical endurance. Abramović sat motionless and silent, for nearly eight hours a day, six days a week, for three months. In their original performance, Ulay stood up prematurely, so intense was the pain brought on by days of fasting and sitting still. In Matthew Akers’ documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, which records the run up to and duration of the show, the curator suggested that she end the performance early, given the physical toll it was taking on her body. Yet Abramović refused to even contemplate this possibility, such is her commitment to her work.

Audience participation was essential to ‘The Artist is Present’; the curator warned her before it opened that the chair opposite her might remain empty for the majority of the performance. But it was never empty: people queued for hours, with many sleeping overnight outside the museum to be first in line the next morning. 78 people returned to sit more than 20 times.

Communication and silence form a central part of this monumental piece. The mutual gaze between Abramović and the audience member is a silent interaction, a form of unspoken dialogue. In the documentary, Ulay comments on the pertinence of the performance, claiming that inactivity and silence are becoming increasingly discredited. Removing all distractions from an interaction, including dialogue, Abramović created a vacuum in which reflection and observation became the focus, protected from the noise and movement of the museum. Watching the footage of the piece is bizarre, but surprisingly transfixing. Many participants, and even the artist herself, became overwhelmed by emotion. Abramović has explained the power of the work by saying that she became “just the mirror for their own self”, and that she “never saw so much pain”.

An incredibly moving moment of the performance was when Ulay, her former lover and collaborator, sat across from her. Their relationship, which lasted over ten years, was a period of intense and passionate creativity, resulting in some of most pioneering and seminal performance artworks ever made. They referred to themselves as parts of a ‘two-headed body’, creating relational works of extreme intimacy, such as ‘Breathing In/Breathing Out’ (1977), in which they both blocked their nostrils with cigarette filters, pressing their mouths together so that they only inhaled each other’s breath. This symbiotic artistic and romantic partnership came to an epic conclusion with ‘The Lovers’ (1988), a 3 month project in which they each walked from one respective end of the Great Wall of China to meet the other in the middle, and finally say goodbye. They did not speak for the next 10 years. Ulay’s appearance at, or perhaps participation in, the MoMA performance was evidently a surprise to Abramović, whose implacable composure was unsettled when she saw him. The communication that takes place between them in this moment, though silent, is palpable as Abramović’s eyes fill with tears. The poignancy of the interaction is reinforced by the way in which the scenario exactly recreates ‘Nightsea Crossing’, performed at the height of their relationship. Such is the intensity of this moment that Abramović reached forwards, breaking protocol, to clasp Ulay’s hands.

In this work, Abramović renders the conventional totally unconventional. She stages an ordinary scenario, in which two people sit across from one another, but removes it from any we have known before: silence becomes a new mode of communication, a context for observation and, crucially, self-reflection.

Table Manners Preview – ‘reworked in a highly engaging manner’

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Table Manners Preview – ‘reworked in a highly engaging manner’

There’s something about the claustrophobia of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays; the light-as-a-feather humour, the acutely observed relationships, that makes them particularly suited to the Oxford stage. Breathing new life into such well-trodden and familiar material is no small feat, and it is one such feat that Antonia Hansen and Flared Productions have managed to pull off skilfully and intelligently.  

From Monday to Wednesday of 7th Week they will be bringing Table Manners, the play that forms one third of the trilogy known as The Norman Conquests, to the Crisis Cafe on George Street. The plot is intricate and complex; but it’s enough to know that it concerns an extended family and their weekend in the countryside, as secrets and lies come to light under one small roof. It’s an intriguing piece, set in the 1970s amongst the cutlery and polite conversation of a dining room table, where private fears and public tensions are blended together to form a theatrical cocktail of humour and subtle nuance. As director Hansen tells me, theatrical space has been a preoccupation of hers in this production: if Table Manners is staged end-on, then we lose so much of the human interaction that makes this drama so compelling. Thus, Flared Productions have chosen the Crisis Cafe on George Street to create this tension-filled dining room. I think it’s a winning choice – the audience surround the actors and the central dining table, sit in the same chairs as the characters, and even smell the toast being made during the production. The sheer proximity of onlookers to the action is immersive, and helps to create a sense of the uncomfortable tensions which are so important in the play.

There were intelligent performances from the entire ensemble cast: Lara Deering brought a dynamic, bustling mania as Sarah, the wife of the put-upon Reg (Frankie Taylor). A nice contrast was provided with the watchful, angular performance of Antonia Mappin-Kasirer as Ruth, her sister-in-law. All of these characters felt rich and detailed, and the whole company expressed to me their desire that the people we observe round this dining table are more than just tropes. There is a subtlety and subversion to the norms of Ayckbourn which was pleasing and very refreshing. Martha Harlan’s Annie has been brought to the fore of this production, and although the men are not simply reduced to comic foils (although Jed Kelly provided some well-calculated physical comedy), Hansen is clearly attempting here to imbue these women with a power that counters the tone of previous productions. And I think she succeeds – Flared Productions’ piece begs the question of the women of Ayckbourn have not been particularly well serviced by directors of the past. The shift in emphasis of narrative power from Cameron Forbes’ Norman to Annie is a clever decision and it really works for this production.

Hansen and her cast have taken Table Manners and reworked it in a highly engaging manner here. Don’t miss it.

Glory ahead for St Peter’s?

Joe Sibley
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Glory ahead for St Peter’s?

Division Two side St Peter’s continue to blaze a bright green and yellow trail through the Cupper’s tournament this season, knocking out Premier Division opposition for a second consecutive round. They have reached the Quarter-Finals and earnt themselves a shot at downing the holders Worcester.

After toppling league leaders Catz in their own backyard in the first round, Peter’s travelled into the heart of Cowley to face Jesus College, again rating as underdogs away from home.

That they reigned victorious – in the process overturning a losing situation at the break to win 4-3 – has created a buzz about the side back home in Central Oxford.

Victory over Jesus, 4th in the top flight, leaves the side with 4 victories from 5 games this season. Just as importantly, they are in possession of a centre-forward in red-hot form: Owen Ace blitzed all 4 versus Jesus and has also added 3 more in a further 3 appearances.

There’s nothing quite like a cup run to bolster the bonds or summon the spirit within a team; it’s a fact that the college will know only too well after the recent exploits of their armoured rugby side, and a home tie only teases further the possibility of another giant-killing materialising.

Olly Cobb netted a hat-trick for Worcester. Ultimately, the team proved too strong for Brasenose in their second round encounter: a flurry of second-half goals against the Black and Gold takes their tally to 14 in this year’s edition and, ominously for their rivals, already eclipses their exploits in front of goal from the string of tight-fought encounters that took them to the title last season, despite the absence of Blues’ enforcer Sam Hale.

Worcester know what glory tastes like but you sense that St Peter’s are beginning to catch the scent. In the same half of the draw Exeter, benefactors of a first-round-bye, defeated St Anne’s 3-2 to move a step closer to an impressive triumvirate of back-to-back semi-final (albeit never finalists) appearances in the competition.

They face an austere assessment to get there however, as they take on leading contenders New College in a second successive all-Premier-Division tie for the Holywell Street outfit.

In their eagerly anticipated and well-hyped matchup, New consigned St John’s to a painful repeat second-round exit from the competition, prevailing through a sole goal from Tom McShane.

Captain Ben Gregory was keen to emphasise the financial disparity between clubs and praised the potential effect a lucrative TV windfall could have on the season ahead: “We all know John’s are well endowed, but I guess this just proves that money can’t buy happiness, or a gritty 1-0 Cuppers win at home.”

In the top half of the draw Christ Church remained unbeaten for the season, disposing 3-1 of a free-falling Balliol College side that are struggling to re-find the form that led them to the top of the pyramid in the festive period last year. Christ Church will travel to face Hertford, who edged past St Hilda’s 1-0 to earn their place in the Quarter-Final line-up.

The Catte Street College will face off against strong opposition, and a wealth of experience: of the 7 sides confirmed in the next round, 5 have reached the Semi-Finals at least once in the past two editions.

Within the same bracket Wadham remain the sole Premier Division side in contention after totally battering of St Hugh’s.

The light blue Cuppers’ veterans have the feel of a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde duality about them this season: regularly struggling with player availabilities and yet to claim a point in the league but displaying their full repertoire with merciless Cuppers results.

Centre-back Alex Coonar points to the effect their wide Merryfield home pitch has on their game, accentuating a style based on building fluidly from the back; indeed, Wadham are the only Premier Division side to boast a better home than away record in the past two seasons and, crucially the side have been handed a home Quarter-Final draw once more.

The identity of their opponents is yet to be decided as Teddy Hall and LMH face off at Uni Parks this Saturday. LMH have started the season in good form, finding themselves wedged between Hertford and St Peter’s in Division Two, but face up to the stat that since 2015 Teddy Hall have either won the competition (2017) or lost to the eventual Champions (2016, 2018).

“That’s the way people that don’t understand football analyse football, is with stats…”

The QuarterFinal round fixtures will now be scheduled, with the competition reach a climax next term.

The Spotify syndicate

Becky Cook
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The Spotify syndicate

Spotify recently celebrated its tenth birthday and over its decade of operation, it has been established as the titan streaming service of the music industry, a labyrinthine behemoth boasting an immense library that includes popular music and offbeat indie artists alike.

The death knell of the CD and download era, when the possession of music was a treat for many, has been rung in by Spotify, which has essentially made music freely available to all those with internet. Beyond that, it can be largely credited for the recent industry profit surge, particularly in the wake of the record label financial stagnation of previous years.

It seems that the physical ownership of music, whether it is as a vinyl, disc or audio file, is not as valued as convenience. Millenials are a renter generation both in terms of the housing market as well as on the music scene.

Audiophiles declaim how the sound quality of Spotify is infinitely lower than the likes of a CD, owing to its data-preserving technology. However, the average listener clearly seems to neither notice nor care.

The fact is that most people are not sitting down just to listen to music and do nothing else; it is generally a background to some other activity, and a way of setting the right mental mood for the real task at hand. Work, exercise, sex, whatever it may be, Spotify primarily caters to this aloof listening majority and does not pay much heed to the noisy protesters of its monopoly.

Similarly, while there are dissenters of the Spotify algorithm that compiles a list of suggested music based on the tracks you have been listening to, for those who do not invest the same time and energy into reading up on music as audiophiles do, it is superb. It caters for the less eclectic tastes and, in doing so, can spotlight obscure back catalogues.

The adverts which plague those who refuse to pay for the monthly Spotify subscription provide the most striking of juxtapositions between stylistic artistry and the truculence of the capitalist agenda, as well as denying the listener total absorption. However, uninterrupted listening is available for a paltry fee of £9.99 a month, the rough price of purchasing one lone CD.

While the benefits of the streaming platform for the average listener are undoubtable, so too are the dangers it poses of liquefying music into indeterminate sludge at the expense of the album and the assiduous artists.

The royalty rate is unashamedly low, leaving artists with a slim slice of the revenue. However, like an intimidating mafia don, musicians know it is better to court Spotify’s patronage than to attempt to fight against it. They need it more than it needs them.

As is expected, the streams are dominated by the artists of popular culture and their charted singles; after the release of Ed Sheeran’s ÷ album, 16 of the tracks appeared in the Top 20.

Spotify’s part to play in certain artist dominion can’t be underestimated. It dictates the music tastes of many of its listeners in part through the acts it decides to promote, strategically placing certain artists on prevailing playlists, which account for a large proportion of the streams.

After a healthy tussle a few years ago between the likes of Pandora, Rhapsody, Google Play, Tidal, Apple Music and Spotify, the latter has unanimously come out on top, with Apple Music somewhere not too far behind and the others lost to the streaming service ether. Spotify’s monopoly power means artists, especially the less well-known, are forced to make nice with the company. It it either that, embarking on gargantuan tours, which hinder any further creative output or, worse still, they risk falling into utter obscurity.

The exploitative influence Spotify wields over listeners goes deeper still. In an article written for Watt, Liz Pelly points out this fact, saying “Not all Spotify playlists are created equally”. Sony, Universal and Warner all own a stake of Spotify. This company combination is geared towards mutual financial success, naturally. The consequence of this platform integration for the listeners of Spotify’s playlists is that several are curated by the record labels themselves.

If you look at the playlist covers, several feature the Spotify watermark in the corner, but several others are embossed with other logos: Filtr, Digster, Topsify. Each are playlist brands, with Filtr owned by Sony, Digster by Universal and Topsify by Warner. Furthermore, these brands don’t have to pay the artists anything, or even ask their permission, to feature their music under their company banner.

The hidden underbelly of Spotify is essentially a financial alliance with these three heavy hitting record labels. Beyond the financial concerns, the playlists themselves are at risk of usurping the album as they have essentially altered the manner in which the majority of people listen to music.

Spotify’s algorithm of amassing similar songs, beyond the simple genre headings of hip hop, R&B and the like, accounts for minute variations between tracks to compile recommendation lists based on the music you are already listening to. Spotify has cashed in on the success of this fundamental function of the platform, and subscribers cite this as a main draw, allowing them to easily discover new music they like.

Superficially, Spotify appears to be geared towards the consumer above all else. Yet, this capability of the service again promotes the listener passivity, denying any variation in taste and instead endorsing a barrage of indistinguishable songs that blur into one another.

This stream of unsurprising streams appears unimportant, people can listen to whatever they want, but it has an effect on the output from musicians. With a demand for more of the same, artistic breadth and innovation is being cut short.

Tracks are being tailored for the streaming market, with hooks strategically placed earlier in songs in order to combat the risk of being easily skipped. Singles are tailored into a familiar mid-tempo pop mould that mixes strains of EDM and rap in order to be more likely a pick for popular Spotify playlists.

There is no better example of this than in the truly inexplicable success of the Migos hip hop trio and their inexplicably dull album Culture II as well as the continued chart success of Drake. The Spotify algorithm encourages such artists to churn out swathes of mediocre carbon copy singles.

Despite its pretense of neutrality and authentic dedication to promoting music Spotify maintains, the artists it spotlights are loaded with implication. It was criticized earlier this year for having censored R Kelly and XXXTentacion due to allegations made against both of violence against women. Complaints were centred around the restriction of black male artists alone, when similar accusations have been made against white artists who received no such censorship. Furthermore, Spotify demonstrated its rather flexible moral compass when it boorishly promoted the work of XXXTentacion in the wake of his death during the summer.

Drake’s global artist takeover of the platform, the first of its kind on Spotify, saw brooding pictures of him alongside his music canvas the streaming service and its playlists in order to coincide with the release of his Scorpion album.

The blatant pushing of an artist in such a manner morphs the platform into an echo chamber in which popularity and support breeds more popularity and support. While dissenters of the service are under no illusions that drawing attention to its failings will cause a widespread boycott, it seems of great importance listeners are aware of the exploitative influence Spotify exercises over artists and consumers alike. Hopefully as a result we can be more authoritative streamers of music, and make efforts to ensure it does not dictate the music we listen to unbeknownst to us, while intimidating and silencing the artists that allow the platform to exist.

‘Beneath the music from a farther room’

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‘Beneath the music from a farther room’

The National Portrait Gallery is one of London’s quietest spaces. Countless junior school trips to museums, collections and galleries have taught us that our voice is no match for several hundred years of tradition and peeling acrylic.

The fundamental purpose of this universally enforced silence is to create a sensory space in which art can be experienced. This extends far beyond the bounds of literal space; we are also expected to be silent in our interactions with the artist. In the modern era, the fourth wall is poorly cemented, and can often be razed by a single Tweet.

This potential for interaction between artist and audience is a recent phenomenon, sprung from mass literacy education. Prior to the twentieth century, les beaux arts were principally reserved for those possessing sufficient economic and social capital to either purchase or attend viewings.

Alongside the fine arts on this pedestal, one could also find a well-respected and authoritative academia. The artist was not the institution tasked with interpretation or judgement, regardless of social status or ritual admiration.

Today, there is a closer relationship between artists and their audience. The role of the artist has been subject to a huge shift. It has gone from being a clutched brush, lurking behind a piece, robed in private education, to being an element inseparable from the meaning and experience of visual artwork. Increasing visibility and public awareness has prompted a shift of focus from a work itself to the signature in the bottom corner.

Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst stand at opposing ends of the spectrum when it comes to commenting on their own works. Koons, famous for his $58.4 million ‘Balloon Dog’, consistently refuses to comment on the significance and interpretations of his pieces.

Cynics amongst us may view this as a marketing strategy. It does cultivate mystique, but it also serves a far more important role: the abstract nature of his work is given the opportunity to develop and grow via natural processes. Meaning is not tethered to a socio- political stance, or public celebrity. His artwork is released into society as an artefact of both reflection and commentary, a mirror designed to highlight and elongate certain features, but ultimately reflect a different image back to each observer. To quote Koons himself, ‘the dialogue…goes outward and is shared with other people’, a symbiotic and organic mechanism of interaction that would be robbed of potency and true significance, if connected to an agenda or specific identity.

Hirst is a diametric opposite of Koons. I am yet to see him waste an opportunity to speak about his series and collections. But this has not been to positive effect. For an artist whose work is at least broadly comparable to Koons’, he has resisted the charms of all subtlety of public expression, sacrificing artistic power for minor celebrity.

His flippant approach to the interpretation of his work, embedded in totalising generalisations about modern art of specific, seemingly contrastic evocations of deceased figures, shows how artist-audience interactions can fail.

When gifted the ‘silence’ they demand, artworks stand a much greater chance of achieving any form of atemporality. If not grounded by a specific position or interpretation, art becomes much more relatable, as individual reception is prioritised over propagandist or jingoist depictions of niche views of society. We become far more aware of our own presence in art when the space is not occupied by the original producer.

However, it is important to note that the modern emphasis on personal response to art does not entail freedom from power structures. When an artist comments, we listen, often with reverence and adoration, as if any utterance is some gospel of our day. We need only look to the cult of quotation surrounding Andy Warhol to see this in action, or the media obsession with discovering the true identity of Banksy.

As the Instagram society, we are now more focused on authorial influence than ever before. An image, be it a fourth plinth installation or a Facebook profile photo, is a representation of an individual, but it is detached from them by an observable, silent gulf, bridgeable only by comments from artists themselves.

It is silence which allows an autonomous function of art, but it is also silence which spawns the frenzy of identification and classification surrounding modern creatives.

Strange creatures: monstrosity in Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’

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Strange creatures: monstrosity in Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’

The world of literature is abundant with monsters: physical monsters, psychological monsters, benevolent monsters, evil monsters. However, there is hardly a monster as puzzling and fascinating as Kafka’s ‘Ungeziefer’ in The Metamorphosis.

Before even considering the symbolism and psychology, we must consider the physicality of Kafka’s monster, which is both vaguely important and importantly vague. It is vaguely important in the sense that Kafka devotes substantial passages to describing the physical experience of Gregor —his protagonist that for absolutely no reason turns into an Ungeziefer and gets locked in his room. The physical experience, then, in subtle but definite ways, transforms the psychological experience of Gregor. As he gains more control of his body, he becomes more and more identified with his bug status and comfortable with his new habits, actually enjoying sticking himself onto the ceiling. In a way, Gregor gives in to the arbitrary metamorphosis; but one could also argue he adapts to it by finding new ways to pass time, to be alive. Kafka seems to link physical experience to identity: the body, often belittled by (especially idealist) artists and thinkers, becomes just as important as the abstract will. On the most superficial level, the message is that really, looks matter. More subjectively, the way we utilise our body to interact with the world involves a will and the dualist conception of the human being — trying to subordinate the body to the will — has been misleading.

The important vagueness of Kafka’s monster is a point of translation and reputation. Most English readers imagine Gregor as a beetle-ish bug, although the German term, “Ungeziefer”, doesn’t exactly mean this. This points us to two important issues in literature: the first is, how much is lost in translation? And the second: how much is lost when a work is so famous that we already have some image of it in our mind before opening the first page? The Metamorphosis not only occurs within the book, but also with the book itself through translations, adaptations and interpretations.

The brilliance of Kafka’s creature — the characterisation and situation of Gregor — is that it is at once surreal and ultra-real. It is illogical and bold enough to support an engaging plot line, but also illuminating and relevant enough to make us think. The monster represents the misfortune of a family, thus invoking questions like how much a family and a society is bound by moral reasons to take care of its members; the monster also represents economic inequalities, as even in his bug form Gregor tries, absurdly, to keep his job. The Metamorphosis, despite its brevity, is incredibly rich, exploring many key interests of human existence ranging from power to taste.

After all, in depicting monsters, authors are often trying to say something about ordinary human beings. There is monstrosity in all of us; what literature does is to help us define that monstrosity and investigate its relationship with our rationality.

Should Philip Green have been named and shamed?

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Should Philip Green have been named and shamed?

Yes – Cecilia Wang

After an eight-month investigation, The Telegraph ruefully published a piece revealing allegations of intimidation and sexual harassment against a business tycoon whom they were prevented from identifying by a court injunction. In a dramatic turn of events, Lord Hain used his parliamentary privilege to name the man as Sir Philip Green.

There was a predictable outcry from Green’s lawyers, who claimed that Lord Hain had disrespected the court injunction. Yet it was perfectly legal for the peer to invoke his parliamentary privilege. Unlike in the US, where the separation of powers means that the Supreme Court holds the ultimate say over matters of dispute, the British political system has a small ‘c’ constitution. Parliamentary privilege is essential here in maintaining the absolute sovereignty of parliament and the balancing of different interests.

Of course, with such unrivalled privilege comes tremendous responsibility. But Lord Hain has only invoked such privileges twice before – once to name arms dealers, and the other to name companies with alleged links to a corrupt former South African president. This is hardly an arrogant man whimsically abusing his parliamentary privilege.

Green’s lawyers were also quick to point out that Lord Hain has links with the law firm hired to make the case for The Telegraph. Yet as a well-seasoned politician, Lord Hain would definitely have anticipated the amount of scrutiny he would face once involving himself in such a high-profile case. Would he really choose to speak out lightly?

With wealth and power, Green appears to be the embodiment of the super-rich who seek to evade the consequences of misdemeanours. The nascent investigation revealed that he had settled with five different individuals using non-disclosure agreements; it looks like Green has used this power to his advantage, preventing victims from speaking out.

Fame affords many privileges but it no doubt comes with responsibility. If Green wants adoration and admiration for his success, he must earn it by leading by example.

No – Josh Taylor

It is always distressing when politicians interfere with the judicial process. We need only look across the pond to Trump’s inflammatory remarks about Supreme Justice Kavanaugh’s hearing to see the troubles this can cause.

Whilst the actions of Lord Hain may not initially seem significant and may indeed appear honorable, what he has done by using parliamentary privilege to reveal Green’s identity is of extreme importance. By releasing this information and defying a decision made by three judges of the Court of Appeal, Lord Hain has symbolically implied both that he is above the law, and people of significant status and questionable morality are below it.

The impartiality of the justice system, and respect for said impartiality, are two of the most important values of any democracy. Lord Hain in a tweet last Saturday tried to insinuate he was upholding these values by saying he was “standing up for human rights against power, privilege, and wealth.”

This is somewhat ironic coming from a peer. Lord Hain isn’t an elected representative so he can’t properly claim, as a Commons MP would be able to, to be speaking on behalf of the people. If he were a member of the lower house, it is likely that the parliamentary outrage at a politician interfering with judicial process would have been much larger, with calls for resignation just around the corner. But even putting that aside, the idea that one can be standing up for human rights by directly defying a court injunction, decided impartially by some of Britain’s top judges, is ludicrous.

Don’t get me wrong, I find Philip Green slimy and insufferable. What he did was contemptable, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But even he, with his plethora of faults (and just like every other citizen of any democracy worth its salt), is entitled to due judicial process, without interference from parliamentary powers. If it becomes commonplace for parliamentary figures to undermine the legal system in this way, it won’t be long before we are living in a country uncomfortably similar to that across the pond.

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