I remember how smug I felt telling my friends from home ‘yeah? Well I’ve got a full SIX weeks off at Easter!’ Compared to my friends at Scottish unis, who have a measly two week break, it seemed fantastic. At last, no more having to keep my milk fresh by leaving it out on the windowsill! But now, less than a week into the vac, and with three weeks until my friends from home come back from their respective universities, the break is not quite what I anticipated.
The relief when term ends is great. Oxford is after all stressful and hectic whatever subject you study. This means at first it can be lovely to come home to a sense of familiarity and maybe, if you’re lucky enough, not to have to worry about feeding yourself for a bit. Within a few days however, spending your nights watching Coronation Street with your soap-obsessed parents, while tapping through Snapchat stories of your mates still living it up in Nottingham or Manchester, it can start to feel like a drag.
I can be sat there messaging my friends from Oxford, but it just isn’t the same. A group chat just doesn’t have the same dynamic as a cup of tea in someone’s room. I miss these intimate gatherings, especially when they always seemed to morph into a full scale rave, accompanied with strobe lights and noise complaints, as more and more friends pop in and out, each with a new anecdote or annoyance to share. I can’t help but wonder how much of their lives I’m missing.
I also miss the little things that had the potential to spark a brilliant conversation, or at least make for a great story over brunch the next morning. For instance, a few days ago, some vaguely dramatic screenshots came my way. If this had happened in college, friends would be congregating in my room and the kettle would be on. Within a few hours, we would be knee deep in Facebook mutual friends and reconstructing this person’s family tree via Instagram. But over messenger, a few ‘omgs!!!’ has nowhere near the same thrill.
Something else to remember is that university is also an escape for many of us. Sometimes we will find friends here that, for many reasons, we gel better with than anyone from home. After all, we are surrounded by such inspirational and incredible people at Oxford. For many of us, it may be the first time in our lives we’ve felt settled as individuals. To be away from those who understand you best for six weeks at a time can be understandably frustrating.
A lot of us may also not have a happy home to go back to also. The idea that the vac is a chance to return to the warm embrace of a loving family is simply not the case for many of us. It can be an especially miserable time if you are unable to express yourself, and be who you want to be, or if you are returning to an unhappy or abusive household. We can often forget how much of an open-minded, liberal haven Oxford can be.
I may be a fresher, but I feel I can offer some guidance:
If you have work to do, get as much done as possible before your friends come home. Don’t spend hours sitting at your desk, but do your best to be productive.
In my limited experience, an impassioned ‘omg we have to meet up this vac!’ shouted over your shoulder as you pack your last box into the car, isn’t a solid plan. Decide a date, a place, and a group, if you really want to make it happen! Even if it’s just a day, it’s a chance to see your uni friends in a different context outside of Oxford.
Eat healthily and exercise – think of all the Solomons it will allow you to have when you get back. Have a point in your day where you set aside time for self-improvement. You can even plug in your earphones and shamelessly listen to some 90s pop as you do so.
Whilst we’d probably all go mad if we had much longer in Oxford, sometimes the terms can seem unfairly short. It certainly didn’t occur to me how much I’d miss it all in the great expanses of vac. If you’re feeling like this, take some comfort in the fact you’re not alone.
Make the most of the vac, and don’t let it pass you by. Take the rest you deserve. Most importantly, remember that taking the effort to travel to Scotland, to see someone from Oxford, only shows how strong your friendship truly is.
Five weeks left – embrace the chance to rejuvenate, rest, eat well, be the person you want to be, have fun, and most importantly, don’t work too hard.
In the seventh series of Homeland, the FBI lay siege to a ranch occupied by survivalists protecting Brett O’ Keefe, an Alex Jones-come-Steve Bannon figure wanted by the Federal Government. It’s classic Homeland: a tense and dramatic showdown driven fundamentally not by action nor violence, but by the interpersonal relationships between the protagonists.
We are reminded, right from the beginning of the scene, that this ranch is someone’s home. The sequence in the ranch presents in microcosm one of the show’s central themes – the clash between loyalty to the homeland as home country and nation, and to the domestic homeland.
In the first two series, Carrie Mathison, a CIA agent played by Claire Danes, investigates Nicholas Brody, a liberated prisoner of war. Mathison suspects, correctly, that Al Qaeda has turned Brody during his imprisonment, and the first series plays on the tension between Brody’s status as war hero and his hidden allegiance.
Images of Brody’s home-life in the United States are constantly juxtaposed with scenes of Brody’s service and imprisonment in the Middle East. We watch as the trauma Brody suffered in the service of one homeland tears apart another.
Carrie Mathison is also bipolar. Claire Danes’ portrayal of someone both deeply driven and deeply unstable is brilliant, and extremely convincing. One facet of her illness is a sudden, manic obsession with solving the problems she’s faced with.
Her obsession with preventing and hunting down terrorism is at the expense of everyone around her, including her family. This is particularly true of her sister, who takes it upon herself to keep Carrie on the straight and narrow. Later, in the fourth series, Carrie has a child who she leaves behind in America with her sister, while she’s posted in Islamabad for the CIA. Once again, Carrie’s home is split apart by her devotion to her larger homeland, America.
Homeland is often described as a ‘post 9/11 TV show’, as it concerns a range of issues which entered public parlance after the 9/11 attacks. Terrorism, intelligence, and espionage are all central to the show’s plot. In the first series, Carrie listens in on everything Brody says, and watches his every move, through hidden cameras in his house. Even the most recent episode opens with a supposedly secret conversation between two other characters, as Carrie watches on, a voyeur.
In real life, the United States government made this kind of observation legal in 2005, through title 2 of the PATRIOT Act. Similarly, in the UK, we’ve become used to the idea that GCHQ knows all about us, all the time. But Homeland shows us, in the wake of 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan, what this really means. The safety and integrity of our domestic homelands are constantly under threat, so that our larger homeland, our country, stays safe.
Homeland is a great TV show because it engages us with real questions about our modern world. Our homelands are threatened, both by terrorists and those who seek to prevent them. To what extent are we willing to compromise our privacy to ensure our safety? Homeland demonstrates that there are no easy answers.
“Who was it that said that – oh, so beautiful thing! – ‘All are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars!’”
In Tennessee Williams’ much neglected 1948 play, Summer and Smoke, it is the character of Alma that says this to the other lead, John. The play, set exclusively in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, at “the turn of the century through 1916”, revolves around these two characters. They are in love from the start but can never get past their polarised differences. John is a medical doctor, whose secular worldview places people as “ugly machines” that should have no impediment to physical “satisfaction”, in his case through drink and women. Alma (“Spanish for soul”) is a preacher’s daughter who resists such cynicism, but suffers from “nervous attacks”.
This play is analytical and questioning. Alma is taken aback upon realising that the ‘stars’ quote belongs to Oscar Wilde, presumably viewing him as immoral. Williams stated his work was “emotionally autobiographical”: to what extent does an author’s life change the message of their writing? And what exactly counts as “looking at the stars”? Does this metaphor really require looking outwards, or inwards? Alma has used a telescope but is unable to grasp the scale of what she sees (“Did you know that the Magellanic Clouds are a hundred thousand light years away?”, John asks her sarcastically). For John, it is through a microscope that one can really see a “universe”, which is “part anarchy – and part order”.
Director Rebecca Frecknall and her team have created a production that is likewise part anarchy, and part order. In Williams’ script he outlines quite specific descriptions of the set pieces, with particular emphasis on “the sky”, which “the entire action of the play takes place against”. He also states that there should be “no really interior scenes”. If this open view perhaps represents Alma’s reaching for the stars, then Frecknall and designer Tom Scutt have instead sided with John. Instead of sky we have the bare, rough walls of the Almeida. Orangey-yellow bulbs at the back of the stage are the only indication of a sky scene, dim stars against the stone. Instead of the three set pieces that Williams describes, we have an empty centre stage, with concentric semi-circle steps towards the rear suggesting the lenses of a microscope. In the opposite of Williams’ stage directions, Frecknall has taken the idea of “interior scenes” to its extreme – we are inside the body and mind.
The only physical set pieces on stage are nine pianos, forming the final giant concentric circle. They are stripped of their exteriors, so that we view their insides like a surgeon viewing a body. Concentric circles combined with the number nine recall Dante’s circles of Hell, but despite all of this the set is not intimidating or oppressive visually. The stage has a moody, piano-bar aesthetic, and the minimalism of the set design doesn’t feel bleak or empty. Composer Angus MacRae uses the pianos to great effect; his score is filled with inverted pedals and sus chords, reflecting Alma’s mental state, always at risk of an “attack”. When the suspense does reach climax, MacRae has the musicians playing in canon – but slightly out of time, creating a hellish series of looping melodies. When the pianos aren’t being used, the pendulums of the mechanical metronomes on their lids tick loudly – time is a key motif of the play.
There are more conventional songs too: Anjana Vasan sings a reworking of Portishead’s Glory Box at one point, and Forbes Masson sings an excellent number towards the end. Interestingly, Patsy Ferran never sings, despite Alma being a singing teacher. At the start, we first see her character in front of a mic stand, as if about to sing to the audience. Instead, she just breathes heavily, almost violently, into the mic. Is this indicative of pain? Sex? Suffocation? After, other characters compliment her singing; what we witnessed was her internal experience of performing.
Williams was a painter as well as a writer and his concept of ‘plastic theatre’ tried to combine these mediums to an extent. By replacing the ‘sky’ background and colourful costumes with simpler visuals, pianos and mic stands Frecknall is replacing visual art with music: reinventing ‘plastic theatre’. This allows her to explore the expressionist potential of a playwright long confined to “poetic realism”. Realism does not suit Alma and John; they are such extreme foils to one another that Williams works in jokes about Alma’s attacks being a result of her “irritated doppelganger”.
One way in which the lack of set or costume change does present a slight challenge is in the actors’ doubling of parts. Vasan, for instance, plays four roles, and it becomes difficult to always differentiate between them. I also have some reservations about ‘Papa Gonzales’; a drunk old Mexican whose only role in the play is to commit a murder. This character certainly needs to be more well-rounded or developed to stop it feeling out-dated and borderline-racist. Eric Maclennan’s Mexican accent wasn’t overly convincing either; this character’s brief role in the play presented some issues.
Ferran is the star here. A newly-rising talent of the theatrical world, she was excellent in Polly Findlay’s production of The Merchant of Venice, which was perhaps an influence, as another show with a minimalist set and ticking pendulum motif. Summer and Smoke gives Ferran a real chance to show off the full scope of her abilities. Funny, tragic, vulnerable and strong all at once, this production becomes all about Alma.
Alma is a difficult character to play, partly because Williams seems to have used her as a chance to explore Freudian ideas surrounding women – the woman driven to neurosis by sexual abstinence. The sexual appeal of motherhood: ‘Alma’ may be “Spanish for soul”, but it is also traditionally associated with ‘mothering’ female characters. “you don’t have a mother to take care of such things for you” she says to John in the first scene; “It was a pleasure for me to be able to”.
Ferran and Frecknall navigate this sensitively though, and to great effect. All in all this production is some of the best theatre I’ve seen in a long time, and certainly worth trying to get a ticket for (watch the ‘rush’ ticket releases on Tuesdays). Williams’ already little-known play is re-staged inventively, but unpretentiously, to create a performance that you’ll experience rather than just watch. Williams would likely not have minded Frecknall’s deviancy from his directions: he stated that “the imaginative designer…should not feel bound by any of my specific suggestions”. And this production is imaginative. It will sit you in the gutter, but it’s an “oh, so beautiful thing”!
Environmental groups are calling on Oxford City Council to introduce a network of gondola lifts, with the potential to carry up to 4000 people an hour.
The proposal comes amid growing concerns over traffic levels in the centre of the city, with Oxford City Council today announcing a new campaign aiming to educate people about air pollution and promoting clean travel behaviours.
Last month, city council leaders refused to back a Green group proposal for £25,000 to be spent on research into the use of low emission aerial transport. It stated that gondola lifts, more commonly known as cable cars, should be considered as a viable alternative to road transport.
However, the proposal did receive the support of Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth, who told BBC Oxford: “We can’t build more roads in Oxford, we know we’re constrained by buildings. Now if this is an alternative by using the space above… I don’t see why we should not consider it.”
He stated that although the suggestion might seem “off the wall,” the council is willing to look into ideas that are “outside the box.”
The proposal also received the backing of environmental groups such as the Oxford Civic Society, who claim to be “dedicated to the continuous improvement of Oxford.”
Juliet Blackburn of the Oxford Civic Society Transport Group argued that the plans “have some huge advantages over road-building,” which would be “especially welcome [in Oxford] as existing roads will still be needed in the future for other modes of transport.”
She also highlighted their use of “clean electricity” as a possible means of getting people into the proposed Central Oxford Zero Emissions Zone. Blackburn also noted that the gondola lifts would be “ideal for tourists who [could] get a very good view of the city.”
Regarding the proposed gondola lifts, the Oxford Climate Society told Cherwell: “Oxford is suffering from dangerous air pollution and a congested city centre. To protect its citizens, innovative and bold measures capable of solving these problems are urgently required.
“If the proposed gondola lifts can improve commuters’ quality of life and take unnecessary cars off the street, they are worth investigating. However, it would be wrong to support measures that facilitate more individual car-traffic in the suburbs. Councillors thus need to ensure that any such measures are part of an intelligent package of public transportation capable of tackling this problem at the root.”
The Oxford Student Green Party told Cherwell: “If the Council is serious about introducing a ZEZ [Zero Emission Zone] then it needs to be looking at innovative new ideas. Rather than building more car parks, increasing city centre car parking spaces and cutting parking charges, as it is now, it needs to consider a wider array of alternative solutions.
“Greens are always looking for good value, energy- and space-efficient transit ideas. Gondola lifts have the potential to be all of these things, and alleviate traffic pressure on buses, cars, and cyclists. Our priority remains making cycling in Oxford safer and public transport more accessible, while reducing air pollution.”
The proposed lifts would be the seventh passenger cable car network to be built in the UK, and could connect straight onto the rooftop level of the Westgate Centre.
A university graduation. Crash. A funeral procession. Crash. A marriage ceremony. Blackout. It is in this stylish sequence of tableaux that the RSC’s Hamlet bursts into vibrant, electric life. On tour for over two years since its original run, this production is permeated by the same swagger throughout. Loud, epic and bright, there is never a moment when the drama sells itself short.
Hamlet is a play that we might often associate with a dark palette of greys, browns and blacks, but it is clear from the offset that Simon Godwin intends to flip the tables on such a sombre and, indeed, clichéd theatrical language. The yellow set is bathed in a warm red light and a long Kente-cloth hangs at the centre. This is an African Hamlet and, in its vision, the production defies all expectations its audience might have about the best way to stage the most difficult play in the English language.
Paapa Essiedu as the tormented prince matches the décor in his vitality and energy. An affable, witty and boyish Hamlet, he often finds himself replacing ‘poor Yorick’ as the designated fool. He mocks the court-figures who surround him, impersonating them, playing tricks on them and guffawing at their interjections. Though we may forget it due to how rarely such humour is drawn upon, this tragedy does, undeniably, have its own share of jokes. With this production, we have the rare occurrence of an auditorium echoing with laughter until the last few scenes.
Draped in a paint-stained suit, Godwin’s Hamlet becomes a colorful trickster figure. It is only at the end of the first half that his patterned garments seem to acquire a new meaning. As canvasses inspired by Basquiat descend from the flies, we suddenly realize that all this bravado, violent theatricality and colour are simply another part of his confusion and torment: a creative urge unsure of how to express itself, soon to transform into destructive capability. Indeed, in one particularly disturbing moment in Hamlet’s bedroom, Essiedu cruelly rubs paint onto Ophelia; he is holding her prostrate on the floor. Language and meaning are at odds. This is simultaneous creativity and destruction. To be or not to be.
The clever Basquiat comparisons struck me as particularly perceptive. Like that artist, currently undergoing an overdue cultural resurgence thanks to the recent Barbican retrospective, Hamlet is a figure who expresses an inner life through ‘suggestive dichotomies’. He is a character torn between humour and sobriety, light and dark, sane and insane. These contradictions are what make him such a difficult personage to realise on stage. Even Essiedu occasionally seems swamped by what this production demands of the role, despite the highly commendable energy he brings. He maintains a spark until the very end of the play, but perhaps this sustained joviality is, in fact, part of the problem in his conveyance of the tragic hero.
The Basquiat influence also helps us to make sense of Hamlet’s position within the complex cultural backdrop of this production. The programme draws parallels between Hamlet and Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, who, in 1949, returned to Africa after conducting his studies in England and found himself mired in existential crisis. In this version, Hamlet returns from an American university: Wittenburg, Ohio. Caught between two continents, both Essiedu’s Hamlet and Nkrumah cannot help but feel a crushing sense of personal disorientation amidst external instability. These are the ‘mimic men’ that Homi Bhabha speaks of, trapped in a liminal space between cultures. Basquiat clarifies this link. Sitting comfortably beside Hamlet and Nkrumah, his art constantly searches for union between African and American ideas, symbols and stories. These allusions provide a productive and original take on the psychological impetus for Hamlet’s behaviour.
Whilst African aesthetics are employed in this production, however, they come refreshingly free from the baggage of colonial history. The fact that the names are not changed and the onstage kingdom is still called Denmark even creates the impression that we are observing a world in which imperial roles have been exchanged. Fortinbras is seeking ‘Lands/ So by his father lost’. But are these the colonies lost in the struggle for independence? Or inversely, are they European nation states invaded by the West-African conqueror, King Hamlet? If the latter is the case, the show might almost be considered afro-futurist in its interpretation and design.
Buffeted by strong performances elsewhere, notably Lorna Brown as Gertrude and a doddering Polonius played with great wit by Joseph Mydell, this production whizzes along. Whilst the morose mood of the piece in the second half negates much of the lightness of the first, and in the process lowers the energy, the show never enters the realm of boredom. This is no doubt helped by the African drumming that periodically features. In the fencing scene, this percussion reaches a crescendo, reverberating through the audience: every hair stands on end. It is truly magical.
This, like many moments, is a reminder of how important it is to bring different influences to bear on our classic texts. In an interview with black creative Euton Daley conducted by Cherwell last term, we discussed the idea that diverse casting does not necessarily equate to representation or a meaningful attempt to engage with different cultural experiences. This production however is not just, as Daley put it, ‘black people doing Shakespeare’. It takes seriously the world it represents and brings a whole new reading to the text. For these reasons, although it may not be perfect, this Hamlet is both innovative and important.
RSC’s ‘Hamlet’ is onstage at London’s Hackney Empire, between 6 and 31 March 2018.
Oxford City Council will activate its Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) this weekend, taking the total number of nights SWEP has operated this winter to 31.
The protocol, activated on Friday night to last until Monday morning, means the City Council and local charities will provide extra shelter for rough sleepers around the city. It is activated when the Met Office forecasts sub-zero overnight temperatures for three or more consecutive nights.
SWEP is operated with the Council’s local partners Homeless Oxfordshire and St. Mungo’s, which runs the Oxford Street Population Outreach Team (Oxford SPOT). Other partners include Simon House, The Porch, and a number of Oxford churches.
On the nights that SWEP has been activated so far this winter, 703 bed spaces have been occupied.
We have activated our Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP), which means that emergency beds will be available for…
Oxford City Council Board Member for Housing, Cllr Mark Rowley, said: “The unusually harsh conditions in the last month mean that by Monday morning SWEP beds will have been available for 31 nights this winter.
“Activating SWEP means that staff and volunteers in Oxford’s homelessness services step up from their regular duties to deal with emergency conditions, and it is a tribute to their experience and professionalism that SWEP has risen to the extraordinary challenges it has faced this winter.
“If you are concerned about a rough sleeper, you can contact Oxford SPOT on 01865 304611 to make a referral, or report them on the national StreetLink website or app. The Oxford SPOT line is not an emergency line for reporting rough sleepers at night, as the Oxford SPOT team will be helping to run SWEP and not taking phone calls.
“If you think there is immediate danger to the health of a rough sleeper, please call 999 instead.”
Rough sleepers can access beds at O’Hanlon House between 9pm and 9.30pm every night that SWEP is activated. Members of the Oxford SPOT team will be out on the streets to inform homeless people that the protocol is in operation this weekend.
O’Hanlon House provides a “secure environment” for “known rough sleepers with chaotic behaviours and those presenting for the first time whose needs are unknown.”
Known rough sleepers who present a lower risk to themselves or other are often allocated shelter in the churches’ Oxford Winter Night Shelter (OWNS).
Specialist SWEP provision is also available for single homeless women.
Last term, Oxford SU’s homeless campaign ‘On Your Doorstep’ petitioned the City Council to operate SWEP on every night of sub-zero temperatures, rather than when three consecutive nights of freezing weather are forecast. This would be in line with homeless policy in London.
Chair of ‘On Your Doorstep’, Alex Kumar, told Cherwell: “It is brilliant to see eligibility rules suspended and emergency shelter opened to rough sleepers. Shelter on freezing nights is a basic human need.
“One local authority on its own cannot solve the national homelessness crisis, but it can do a lot to to ease human suffering, and I encourage Oxford to be bold, like London, like Liverpool.
“I hope the City Council continues to go forward from here towards activating SWEP and opening the shelters to all rough sleepers on every freezing night, knowing that they have support from their own local party in doing so.”
Rough sleepers have reportedly been reluctant on occasion to access the shelters, citing concerns about drug use and the lack of provision for dogs.
Spaces for up to four dogs are available in Homeless Oxfordshire’s O’Hanlon House, though these are all currently taken. Oxford SPOT offers free kennel spaces to all rough sleepers with dogs during SWEP periods.
A further decision about whether to continue operating SWEP will be made on Monday.
On the nights that SWEP has been activated so far this winter, 121 individuals have accessed emergency beds, with an average of 24 rough sleepers each night during SWEP periods. The highest number in SWEP beds on any one night was 38 people.
A November 2017 count of the homeless population in Oxford put the total number of rough sleepers at 61, the highest recorded figure in the city’s history.
Magdalen College has scrapped its Commemoration Ball, due to be held at the College next year.
In an email to undergraduate students, seen by Cherwell, JCR President Calla Randall wrote that the Ball “has been cancelled due to a lack of applications for Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and Treasurer.”
Magdalen’s Commemoration Ball was also previously cancelled in 2015.
A first-year Magdalen student told Cherwell: “It’s a shame, but if there’s no one willing to put themselves forward for ball committee then there’s not really much we can do.”
Magdalen College’s freshers have been criticised on the Oxfess Facebook platform for not applying to fill organising roles.
One Oxfess read: “Magdalen freshers why did none of you apply for ball committee you selfish little shits.”
#Oxfess14056magdalen?? freshers??why??did??none??of ??you ??apply??for?? ball ??committee?? you ??selfish?? little ??shits
In her announcement to fellow undergraduates, JCR President Calla Randall wrote: “The MCR President and I did try our best to advertise this opportunity so we’re disappointed that the Ball will not go ahead.
“There will be an opportunity for the next JCR and MCR Presidents to request a ball in 2020 next academic year.”
A smaller black-tie event was held in 2015 when that year’s ball was cancelled.
Randall told students: “Thus, there is precedent for event [sic] to take place in 2019, although there is some resistance from College to repeat this.
“However, if – together with the MCR – a group were to put together a detailed plan for how this might work, referencing similar events at other Colleges, I think it would be possible to convince College otherwise.”
However, in a later message to JCR members, obtained by Cherwell on 6 April, Randall confirmed that the ball was “definitely cancelled.”
She wrote: “Despite working hard with the MCR President to persuade College to reopen applications for the Commemoration Ball committee, it is clear that they are unwilling to change their position.
“College argues that we are now too far behind schedule to manage a successful Ball.”
She again cited a lack of applications for the main management positions as the ultimate reason for the cancellation.
Magdalen College Home Bursar, Mark Blandford-Baker, told Cherwell: “Commemoration Balls are substantial undertakings and organised by students primarily for students, albeit with extensive administrative support from the College.
“It is unclear why no one has come forward to hold the post of chair or vice-chair.
“The College noted that changes to some exam timetables may have been a contributing factor in the lack of applications.
“The College has pointed out that the common rooms can apply again next January for a ball in June 2020.”
#Oxfess14088#Oxfess14057Please stop railing against the Magdalen freshers. Maybe they didn't do what you would have…
Cherwell understands that a number of freshers were originally interested in smaller roles, as opposed to taking on responsibility for an event as notable as a Commemoration Ball.
Speaking of the prospect of a smaller ball in 2019, Randall told students in her earlier message: “If you were one of those people, this Ball would involve less responsibility and thus might suit you.”
JCR President Calla Randall did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.
This article was updated Friday 6 April (17.45pm) to include the Magdalen JCR President’s second message to undergraduates, confirming the ball would definitely be cancelled.
We met TJ Hertz (a.k.a Objekt), the evening before his hotly anticipated set at The Bullingdon. Sitting opposite the man behind the music in the lobby of Oxford Spires Hotel, a long and rainy bike ride out of the city centre, was somewhat surreal, but the Oxford alumnus-turned-international DJ was immediately friendly. “I need a drink,” TJ laughs, “I’ve had three hours sleep”.
Both in terms of his production and DJing, TJ’s iconic style channels his self-professed “mild obsessive compulsion”. ‘Theme From Q’, which won top spot in Mixmag’s 2017 track round-up, offers a glimpse of TJ’s meticulous crafting process – its infectious, playful organ hook bounces on top of explosive breakbeats as vocal fragments dart all around. In his shows, his precise and masterful use of EQing and multi-track mixing has earned him attention as one of the most impressive selectors in the game. He is renowned for pushing the boat out musically, but admits that he no longer gets “a huge amount of joy out of just punishing people with really inaccessible music… There’s a joy to be had in seeing what makes people tick and how that intersects with what makes you tick and exploring that overlap in the Venn diagram”.
We certainly reached this intersection at The Bullingdon last Saturday. The popularity of the night – which sold out over a month before the event – manifested itself in a packed but energetic venue. The audience were receptive to each agile change in direction that TJ took as he moved through techno, electro, and jungle. Such dynamic eclecticism provided a masterclass performance that Oxford is lucky to have witnessed.
The Bullingdon used to be a “pretty mediocre venue”, TJ explains prior to his set. “These days it feels like the student generation is pretty well clued in and would actually come to see an artist play because they’re into them and not just because their mates are going. Honestly, if you’d told me in 2007 that Oxford students would come out in droves to see DJ Stingray at the Bully I wouldn’t have believed you”. In the current climate of Oxtickets’ competitive economy and the recent change in The Bullingdon’s ticket policy, it is hard to imagine a time when Simple events weren’t sold out a long time in advance.
Objekt at The Bullingdon. Photo courtesy of Simple.
TJ studied engineering at New College ten years ago. For a city with a short term memory and an ever-changing student population, ten years feels an impossibly long time, but TJ’s experience was not much different from our own. “Ten years is not that long – we had the internet, we almost had smart-phones…” he laughs. Clubs have come and gone, but in a relatively small city like Oxford, the scene hasn’t changed much – the likes of Park End and Bridge still cater for chart and cheese-lovers, whilst smaller venues play host to independent student nights.
Then and now, the intimate venues of Oxford have provided a fertile breeding crowd for emerging talent, something TJ explains concisely when he notes that “smaller venues are and have always been the incubators of the scene”. TJ learned to DJ in The Cellar by experimenting on the decks during soundchecks for the live music nights he was involved in. He took over running Eclectric, a night at Baby Love Bar on King Edward Street.
“It was a total pain in the arse,” TJ describes, “it was narrow, there was a staircase in the middle of it, there were bottlenecks everywhere, the sound was kinda crap, the management were a bit of an upward struggle, it got a bit sketchy after, like, 2am – but it was kinda beloved as well”.
Baby Love Bar closed in May 2014 after its premises were reclaimed by Oriel College. The closure of small venues is not an unfamiliar possibility to Oxford students, who will all remember the recent struggle of The Cellar to defend against the prospect of re-development. Unsurprisingly, TJ supported this campaign, and spoke passionately in favour of preserving such crucial hubs.
“You don’t have to risk your finances for the next several years in order to put on parties. It’s these small venues where you have the freedom to organise stuff on more of a whim. You can foster a sense of community of like-minded people, and give local artists, musicians and promoters the opportunity to learn and develop. It’s essentially the smaller venues that build a music scene.”
“What did happen with Cellar by the way?” he asks, and was pleased to hear that The Cellar was indeed saved, after a student-run petition received nearly 14,000 signatures. “I shudder to think what a whole generation of people of going-out age in a city like Oxford would do without at least one venue like that that straddles musical credibility but also accessibility.”
Accessibility became a recurring theme of our chat. Venues like The Cellar create a space for more leftfield tastes that may be less welcome in other environments. We ask him if he ever DJed at bops and he found the idea amusing. “Are they as cheesy now as they were then?” Whilst the college bops we all know and love are still renowned for being, as TJ described, “cheese-fests”, there were other avenues for his music. He tells us that “at New College we used to occasionally put on these really small parties in the band rehearsal room, which was basically like a dungeon underneath the JCR. It was in the old buildings of New College so it was, like, ten centuries old or whatever – you couldn’t really hear anything from outside. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them raves. It was basically just twenty of us mixing records and having some relatively tame fun by partying standards”.
Oxford, as a relatively small and incredibly student-dominated city, has venues that are able to be more democratic in their line-ups, offering spaces to amateur student DJs and bigger names alike. As well as such diversity being critical for the flourishing of any music scene, and it also gives more room to female artists who are often overlooked by an incessantly patriarchal industry. As someone experienced in the profession, TJ is well-aware of this under-representation.
“The issue obviously starts with endemic sexism and harassment within the scene and industry, but on top of that there’s a myriad of interconnected factors which form a sort of vicious cycle. You’ve got this relative dearth of visible female artists being booked for higher profile slots, and an abysmal gender ratio on most house and techno lineups, so consequently there’s a lack of role models for young female musicians, who as a result are much more likely get discouraged or intimidated by the overwhelmingly male local communities of DJs and producers (with whom they’re meant to engage, learn, develop, bounce ideas off of, etc)”.
Last November, Lauren Bush (a.k.a re:ni), a DJ from the all-female SIREN Collective, made her debut in Oxford with a three-hour set at The Cellar. The SIREN Collective (founded in 2016) aims to “create a safe and immersive space for those who are under-represented in dance music, whilst continuing to critique the electronic music scene as a whole”. The status of SIREN has risen in the past year, as members of the collective have played at festivals such as Field Day and Brainchild, but the problem is still far from fixed. TJ, although admitting he was afraid of ‘mansplaining’ the issue, is undoubtedly right in identifying a “cyclical pipeline issue in addition to all of the misogyny and sexism that exists”; the problem is self-perpetuating.
The conscious efforts of smaller venues such as The Cellar in fixing this imbalance is perhaps the only way to solve it. Recently, the PRS Foundation’s International Keychange, a European initiative aiming to improve the representation of female artists, called for festivals and music industry conferences to pledge line-ups with a 50/50 gender split – 45 have committed, although, as TJ is quick to point out, “I’ve only heard of about 3 of them. Not many of them were electronic festivals; a lot of them were folk festivals or jazz festivals and I don’t know what the gender ratio is in the music scene at large – probably not great – but I think it’s particularly bad in techno.”
“I genuinely think it is changing in the sense that, like, there is more awareness of an emerging generation of female DJs that I didn’t feel was quite so present four or five years ago”. It might be too early to declare gender equality on techno line-ups, but the fact that “people within the scene are taking active measures to tackle the homogeneity of their lineups or rosters, rather than simply being like ‘oh well, there’s not enough women to book’ is certainly a step in the right direction. In parallel we’ve seen a proliferation of female/trans/non-binary music collectives and local community groups, as well as affirmative action – call it positive discrimination if you like, but I think it’s absolutely necessary – by promoters, label owners, magazines and other people with curatorial responsibilities who are able and motivated to offer a platform to female artists”, as was evidenced by re:ni’s and Josey Rebelle’s recent appearances in Oxford, along with the upcoming bookings of Shanti Celeste at The Cellar, and Saoirse and Or:La at The Bullingdon.
“It takes time for these shifts to propagate upwards to the bigger stages but I think the seeds have been sown and I very much hope that the generation of artists emerging right now might turn out to be more diverse than the last.”
Objekt at The Bullingdon. Photo courtesy of Simple.
Though the dominance of male artists in dance music bookings has been consistent since underground music’s inception, one aspect of music that has undoubtedly changed is the ease with which it can be identified and obtained – the rise of apps like Shazam, and of Facebook groups like the 91,000 member-strong ‘The Identification of Music Group’ have made it far easier for music lovers to find tracks that have been played at shows. Speaking of how people IDed their tracks when he was at uni, TJ comments that “there were some message boards on the Internet where if you managed to get a recording on your phone you could post something, but they weren’t as active as these bigger Facebook groups now.”
The ease with which tracks can be IDed and accessed is a development in the music scene that has attracted different opinions, but TJ offers a balanced view: “I think that being able to find out what a piece of music is and access it is a fantastic thing, and I think it goes some way towards democratising the distribution of music in general, also making it less nerdy and less competitive, which is nice. But I think with that comes a certain obligation to dig a little deeper than the answers that are just fed to you.” While many have heralded this inventive use of social media and advanced technology as a way of bringing music-heads closer to the tracks, purists have argued that this obsessive ‘track-ID culture’ can lead to a kind of laziness that does not respect the value of sifting through boxes of records to see what you can find. “It’s a double-edged sword… I’m wary of sounding like an old fart because recontextualising music is also something that can lead to really exciting new movements. But for me, I think that even if you take something out of context and do something completely new with it, it’s worth knowing a bit about it fits into a scene in the first place, and that’s something that…”
TJ pauses. “Actually, thinking about it, I’m gonna contradict myself here – maybe that’s not the case. If, in the olden days, as it were, you happened across a track that you’d been looking for for ages in a second hand record store, you wouldn’t know anything more about that track than if somebody told you what it was on Facebook.”
Clearly, then, the increasing accessibility of music has value, but with great power comes great responsibility… “I think that the easier access to music becomes, and access to technology becomes, the greater the onus on artists to push themselves further – they make up for that by just being better at what they do, finding new and interesting ways of excelling in some way or another.” TJ has, himself, been involved in allowing artists to adopt new technology. He worked for Native Instruments, a job that was in many ways led to by his Engineering degree. Such experiences have allowed TJ to meet the responsibility that he sets himself and other artists – of working for Native Instruments, he describes it as “tremendously informative in terms of my understanding of how the tools that I was using shaped the sound, and how I could manipulate them more effectively.”
TJ’s attitude towards his role as an artist is therefore a humble one. “I don’t think DJ’s should be gatekeepers of the music that they play. I mean, the way that I see it, I, and the people who do what I do, have a huge privilege in being able to actually spend time looking for music that we’re essentially paid for because this is what we do for a living, so the least that we can do is share that.”
This modesty is also evident in his feelings towards the city he studied in. Despite playing all over the world, TJ confesses a fondness of Oxford that is simultaneously sentimental and mysterious. When asked if it ever felt weird coming back here, TJ admits that while he hadn’t at this point had a chance to explore, the last time he was here (he performed at The Cellar in 2015) was “profoundly weird”.
“I remember taking a long walk through the city at dusk and revisiting all of these old haunts and getting these flashes of nostalgia from this place, but also just feeling like I was walking through the nostalgia of generations gone by. Not just generations, but centuries. It’s a really weird city, it feels haunted.”
As a city and a cultural hub, Oxford is simultaneously changing and unchanging – receptive to the constant influx of new students and new ideas, but also, as TJ suggests, haunted with the ghosts of hundreds of years gone by. Whilst the music scene is – albeit gradually – progressing, many of the traditions that define such a strange institution remain. When we ask him for some thrilling anecdotes about his time as a student here, TJ replies: “I wish I could regale you with crazy stories of Piers Gav but it was basically just us getting cold in the field. It was just scantily-dressed, posh Oxford kids taking pills in a marquee in the grounds of a mansion.” Nothing much has changed there, then.
An inquest into the death of James Morwood, a highly respected Classics lecturer and tutor at Wadham College, concluded yesterday that the academic drowned last September.
The 73-year-old was holidaying in Ouranoupoli, Greece with his friend and colleague Stephen Anderson when he went for what would be his last swim off the beach near his hotel.
In a statement read out at the inquest in Oxford, Anderson recounted: “We were staying at the Eagles Palace Hotel in Ouranoupoli. James had been once before and he was keen to return.
“On September 10, after breakfast, we decided to do the beach. James remembered well the mind-boggling clarity of the water, so off we went.
“We paddled a bit at first but found the water surprisingly cold. Later James decided to go for a swim a bit further out but the area by us was too rocky and stoney to enter so he went further up the beach.
“After 10 minutes I saw him swimming further out than I expected him to go. I got to the end of my chapter and I then found it was too stoney as well.
“As I walked along I knew something was going on. Some people pulled a body out and to my horror it was James. There was a nurse and a doctor from Glasgow on the beach but their efforts were to no avail as we were told he was already dead.
“James’ body stayed on the shore, covered in blue towels and I was whisked away off to town to make statements to the coastguard. I spent the rest of my time in Greece writing letters and informing people that needed to know.
“I met his brother at Gatwick Airport and returned his belongings.”
Morwood’s brother, Bryan Morwood, also presented evidence at the inquest. He confirmed that he had been away in Colorado at the time of his brother’s death. He returned to the UK after receiving the tragic news from Anderson.
When asked by Oxfordshire Assistant Coroner, Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp, about the process of repatriating Morwood’s body from Greece, the brother said: “That is a long story. Luckily James had travel insurance so I was able to arrange repatriation through them. Originally they [Greek authorities] told me I would have to go out there to reclaim the body.
“What was actually expected of me was to slip them a few Euros to make that all go better. The mortuary in Thessalonika tried it on with the insurance companies and it all took weeks.”
Rhodes-Kemp concluded a verdict of death by drowning. She said afterwards: “It is amazing how many people suddenly jump out and try to help in situations like this. Two highly qualified people were there and despite their best efforts, he sadly passed away.
“Nothing could have been done. What happened to him happened in the water. It is a form of drowning where the water hits his larynx and sends shockwaves to his heart.”
Stephen Anderson, himself an academic of New College, told Cherwell: “James’s sudden and unexpected death was very sad indeed, the more so in that he had only recently had the all-clear after a cancer scare.
“A scholar of considerable repute and a great teacher, he had a great knack for making friends, and is greatly missed by all who came in contact with him, particularly at Harrow, in Oxford and at the JACT Greek Summer School, held annually at Bryanston.
“The Roman poet Horace, in words very familiar to James, gets it just right: ‘multis ille bonis flebilis occidit’.”
Morwood was born in Belfast and educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, before teaching at Harrow School for 30 years. At Harrow, he was involved in school journalism and acting, supervising the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch and Richard Curtis.
In 1996, he was elected to a Fellowship at Wadham College, where he became an Emeritus Fellow in 2006.
During his time at Oxford, was Editor of the Wadham Gazette and authored the Oxford Latin Course textbook, which afforded him international recognition in the classics world.
Wadham College Warden, Ken Macdonald, told Cherwell: “James was a gentle, scholarly teacher and friend who was loved and respected in equal measure at Wadham.
“Tolerant, funny and wise, he epitomised the enlightenment values that we treasure here. We were devastated by his death and we miss him terribly.”
Ray Ockenden, who stepped in as Editor of the Wadham Gazette after Morwood’s death, wrote in the Gazette: “The College mourns this man of extraordinary humility and humanity as an outstanding teacher and scholar, as its friend and most loyal servant: after James’s first year as a Fellow, there was only one term of the remaining twenty years of his association with Wadham during which he did not hold a College office.”
Stephen Heyworth, a Tutor of Classics alongside Morwood, wrote in a tribute: “We do know that he died a happy man, having lived a full life, and with no major project unfulfilled.
“People have helped themselves cope in such cases by creating stories about the death. In the ancient world, there is a repeated myth about those who died in water: their beauty was fatally attractive to the deities of sea or river.”
A Classics student at Wadham, Zoë Reed Sanderson, who was taught by Morwood, told Cherwell: “Tutorials with James were a highlight of my week; he taught with such passion and enthusiasm.
“The memorial service last month in the Sheldonian Theatre was a lovely way to remember and celebrate his life.”
Having attended a crewdate at pre-season, I thought I had experienced everything that sports’ drinking culture entailed. Yet, in the first week of Michaelmas I was introduced to the mysterious ‘Vinnie’s’ that I had heard being mentioned maybe only once or twice before.
I was told to adhere to a dress code that prohibits denim and sneakers and make my way to Vinnie’s for a social. Vincent’s Club, I found out, is a members-only club predominantly for Oxford Blues, which only let women become members a few years ago, with them not even being allowed to enter the club until a few years before. It lies behind a blue (of course) door, and as I walked up the stairs to arrive into the main room, I realised that Oxford Blue was very much a theme of the decoration, which also included pictures of male-only sports teams.
The place we went to was essentially a living room, filled with sofas and a bar area in a corner. Buying a Pinky was a must in preparation for Fuzzy Ducks, so I ordered my first one for a costly £5. It is usually served in a pint glass, and it’s made of grapefruit juice, orange juice and five shots of gin. Anticipating a gin-fuelled burn in my mouth, I took my first sip and was more than pleasantly surprised.
This was a truly delicious fruit juice, surely. “Pinkies are lethal,” I had been informed, and I could see why before I had got to the bottom of my glass. The cocktails are famously extremely alcoholic, yet also refreshing and alarmingly drinkable. Although seemingly expensive, the drink ends up being the equivalent of £1 per shot, which definitely seems more reasonable.
Pinkies are not the only drink that Vinnie’s has to offer. Its Perkies consist of grapefruit juice, lemonade and five shots of vodka to replace the gin. Its lesser-known ‘Shredders’ are also made of five shots of vodka, but instead of juice, soda and lime are added. Reminiscent of what one might order on a tropical holiday, all of these drinks are far too easy to consume, considering their alcoholic content. You can see why it’s a favourite location for sports teams to spend their Wednesday evenings.
Vinnie’s does see its spaces fill up in the evenings, particularly after Bucs. Whether its cocktails are enough to erase its questionable history (along with your memory) is for each person to decide.
