3. 3
Editor’s letter
“I put my faith in therapy as others do in religion, or philosophy,” Anais Nin
wrote in the seventh volume of her diary. A lot of us do too. My therapist says
that’s normal.
A quick Google search explains the etymology of the word therapy is from the
Greek, meaning “minister to”, “treat medically”, or “healing”, but today the
word stands for a range curative processes: any type of means to recovery – per-
sonal (physical, emotional, psychological), financial and environmental.
In this issue, themed Therapy, we consider therapies offered to paedophiles, and
ask if the UK economy is recovering. We've interviewed Green Party leader Na-
talie Bennett about our suffering planet, written about the brain steroid modaf-
inil, and embarked on a journey to the Sufi shrine of Baba Shah Jamal for some
therapeutic music and dance. We’re honoured to feature Grande Riviere by ac-
claimed painter and UAL alumni Peter Doig for our centre-fold.
This is the final edition of Artefact produced by the BA Journalism class of
2015. What a journey we’ve been on! Quoting Mark Twain , “for business reasons
[we] have done our best to preserve the outward signs of sanity" - we hope you
haven’t thought of us as too insane! It’s been a somewhat therapeutic process -
I think we have all learnt a lot about ourselves.
Contents
04 IN BRIEF
08 DEALING WITH DARK DESIRES
Yasaman Ahmadzai
09 A RECOVERING ECONOMY?
Max Schwerdtfeger
10 IS GREEN THE NEW BLACK?
Isabella Smith
14 ASHER SVIDENSKY: CHASING THE
WHISPERS OF TALES IN ASIA
Danielle Agtani
18 SYNAESTHESIA: BLURRED SENSES
Olivia Broome
20 WHY LONDON STUDENTS ARE
TAKING BRAIN STEROIDS
Alex Smith
24 WOMEN IN TAXIDERMY: NOT JUST
A BIG GAME
Divya Bhavani
26 PETER DOIG: THE MAKING OF A
MODERN MASTER
Astrid Madberg
30 THE DARK NET
Sebastian Moss
34 NADIA LEE COHEN
Paula Wik
38 MEDICINAL MAGIC MUSHROOMS
Ed Oliver
40 SEEING GHOSTS
Luke O’Driscoll
41 THE COURTYARD OF
BABA SHAH JAMAL
Hasham Cheema
42 NAZI HUNTERS
Yordan Georgiev
43 FROM WARZONE TO WORLD CUP
Ryan Davies
44 FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
Ed Oliver
45 REJUVENATING THE PHILIPPINES
Danielle Agtani
46 REVIEWS
48 SEEN ON CAMPUS
49 CHEAPNESS
50 LAST WORD
Luke O’Driscoll
#5. March 2014
Cover image
Photography by
Elliot Kennedy,
makeup by Gigi Ham-
mond, Hair styling
by Adam Garland us-
ing Balmain Hair UK
Model: Ella Yates
Contributors
Editorial
Managing editor: Paula Wik
Deputy managing editor: Danielle Agtani
Print output editor: Louise Bonner
Print production manager: Amy Kirby
Chief sub-editor: Sebastian Moss
Sub-editors: Hasham Cheema,
Andrew Postlethwaite
Layout sub-editors: Arek Zagata,
Dominic Brown, Jacqueline Owusu, Fraser Thorne
Features editor: Storm Simpson
News editor: Aurora Bosotti
Deputy news editor: Yasaman Ahmadzai
Lifestyle editor: Rose Stoker
Deputy lifestyle editor: Rachel Willcocks
Entertainment editor: Ria Sajit
Deputy entertainment editor:
Lucia Campolucci-Bordi
Culture editor: Astrid Madberg
Deputy culture editor: Max Schwerdtfeger
Opinions editor: Fleur de Boer
Deputy opinions editor: Molly Turnley
Social media editor: Holly Oxley
Multimedia editor: Arij Limam
Online output editor: Ed Oliver
Online production manager: Bianca Pascall
Online producers: Katherine Carruthers,
James Wood
Sports editor: Sean Coppack
Picture editor: Pieteke Marsden
Assistant picture editors: Raya Barghouti, Joe
Ackerman
Journalists/photographers/illustrators
Thalia Aboutaleb, Hunter Bennett/Flickr, Divya
Bhavani, Olivia Broome, Tom Buttrick, Nelson
Campos, Ricardo Cavolo, Sean Carpenter, Martin
Cervenansky, Vicki Cheng, James Childs, Mary
Clarke, Josh De Souza Crook, CS photography,
Ryan Davis, Arran O’Donnell, Luke O’Driscoll,
Marlene Dumas, Jennelyn Estacio, Finead Fen-
ton/Flickr, Feiticeira_org/Flickr, Thuvika
Ganeshalingham, Yordan Georgiev, Sophie Had-
ley, Bryndis Hjartardottir, Corali Houlton,
Antonella Huka, Ella Jukwey, Elliot Kennedy,
Yeasin Khan, Otto Linder, Guy Longbottom, Ele-
na McDonough, Emma Morrison, Shannei Morri-
son-Brown, Montrose Pictures, Nadiyah Naidoo,
Elvira Nuriakhmetova, Ebi Osuobeni, Jasmine
Perkins, Playstation/Ready at dawn, Carlotta
Righi, Zanna Rollins, David Rothwell, Katri-
na Schollenberger, Stephanie Shaw, Isabella
Smith, Charlotte Somerville, Diana Tleuliyeva,
Hallam Tweddell, Sam Walker, Wellcome Library/
Wellcome images, Simon Upton/Interior Archive/
Corbis, Sara Furlanetto, Danielle Thomas
Art Direction Design
Oswin Tickler, Smallfury Designs
Creative Consultant
Scott King
Publishing information
Published by the London College
of Communication, London SE1 6SB
Website: artefactmagazine.com
Facebook: artefactmagazine
Twitter: artefactlcc
Instagram: artefactmag
Feedback to: artefactfeedback@gmail.com
4. 4
IN BRIEF
Wakie app
If you hate getting out of bed and
you're constantly hitting the snooze
button, then the Wakie app might just
be the best, and weirdest, solution
for you.
The Wakie app was originally launched
in Russia back in 2011, but got re-
built earlier this year as one of the
funniest applications available on
Android and iPhones.
The free app lets users set times for
random people across the world to give
them a wake-up call. It doesn't reveal
phone numbers for privacy purposes but
gives the ʻwaker’ 60 seconds to make
the phone call, with a remaining 10
seconds as a warning before the call
gets cut off automatically.
I decided to try the app myself and
see how it feels to be woken up by a
complete stranger. I set the alarm for
7am in the morning: “Hello?” I said a
little awkwardly. “Good morning. Wake
up. I hope you have a really good day”
said a female voice with an American
accent. “Hey, thanks hope you have a
good day too,” I replied in a daze.
I don't know if she had just woken up
too or if she was stoned, but the lady
on the phone seemed rather dazy too.
It was a fun experience but I would
have been happier to wake up to some-
one a bit more cheerful. We both hung
up the phone. The call was quick and
casual, it wasn't the time to social-
ise.
Hrachik Adjamian, co-founder of Wak-
ie, said “We make people happy with
the voice of friendly strangers from
all over the world who try to make
you smile in the morning. When you use
this app, you get to start your day
with a smile on your face instead of a
frown.”
Words: Nelson Campos
ELLIOT KENNEDY
The man behind the lens of Issue
Four’s cover shot is Jersey-born, Lon-
don-based photographer Elliot Kennedy.
At just 28 years old, he’s an up-and-
comer with serious credentials al-
ready under his belt, having assisted
acclaimed British photographers Nick
Knight and Gavin Watson before focus-
ing on his own career.
It’s a career that’s seen him shoot
subjects as revered as Sir Ian McKel-
len, John Cooper Clarke, Josh Homme,
MF Doom, Bishop Neru and Flying Lotus,
while also racking up a client list
that includes Adidas and Mr Porter.
Now adding Artefact to that list, El-
liot brings his “sensitive, raw and
honest approach” to our appropriate-
ly themed Therapy issue. His work is
informed by a fascination with British
subcultures and timeless style, with
images that blur the line between doc-
umentary and fashion photography.
“I painted from a young age and as I
developed as a painter I found myself
wanting to try out other mediums.I
tried my hand with sculpture and some-
how found myself being drawn to pho-
tography. I take great influence from
the ordinary moments that surround our
everyday. The things that may not seem
a lot but hold so much value,” says
Elliot.
Words: Ed Oliver
5. 5
The Age of L.U.N.A
With a unique combination of Neo Soul and London rap over
’90s- inspired production, The Age of L.U.N.A are the lat-
est to cause a storm in the London underground music scene.
Forming in 2013 and hailing from west London, the band
made their debut with Indigo which impressively featured
on Noisey, Vice and Clash. They were also mentioned in the
2015 Ones To Watch list by DJ Semtex for BBC Radio 1Xtra.
Gearing up to release their debut album under Clash Digital
Records, The Age of L.U.N.A consists of singer Daniella,
rappers Butch and Kyote and 16 year-old producer NK-OK.
Their style and sound are a direct influence of their di-
verse heritage, from the Caribbean to the Philippines.
Their sound can be described as retro, golden-age hip-hop
mixed with jazz.
Imagine Erykah Badu meets the Fugees, wrapped in UK lingo
and stylish clothing. Lead singer Daniella describes the
album as “very diverse, there is hurt but there is also
joy, love and happiness which inspire a brighter sound.”
Six Feet Deep, their most recent music video, captures the
essence of London culture and the freshness of the group
with the lyric: “I didn’t come dressed to impress, I’m fly
as fuck. I don’t need to stress to prove I’m the best.”
Words: James Childs
THE IMAGE AS BURDEN
A new retrospective at the Tate Modern is the biggest ex-
hibition of Marlene Dumas’ work ever staged in Europe and
chronicles her career from the 1970s to the present.
Chronologically displayed with occasional exposure of later
works, the exhibition spans over 14 rooms and showcases
more than 100 of her most iconic paintings, collages and
drawings. The wide range of themes from sexuality to death
are seen in Dumas’ paintings as well as references to art
history, popular culture and current affairs.
The title of the exhibition takes its name from one of her
1993 works, depicting one figure carrying another. It was
inspired by a film still of Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor,
but also references images of Mary holding a dead Jesus
in her arms. According to Marlene Dumas, the title of the
exhibition was chosen to emphasise the complexity of the
relationship between painting and image.
Dumas became famous in the mid-1980s for her series of
paintings based on the human form. The exhibition’s quite
personal, as texts that go alongside each room’s walls are
written by Dumas herself to give visitors an insight into
her mind. Some of the featured paintings such as Martha -
My Grandmother (1984) are from Dumas’ private collection,
giving the exhibition a more intimate feel. There’s also a
political aspect in many of her paintings.
Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden runs until May 10 2015
at Tate Modern and costs £16 with concessions available.
Words: Diana Tleuliyeva
The horror game that helps victims of trauma
What started off as a university project has turned into a
biofeedback based interaction game called Nevermind, which
helps players deal with trauma through stress.
Creator Erin Reynolds told Artefact that, “in Nevermind you
play as a ‘neuroprober’ – a theoretical “therapist of the
future” who can venture into the minds of psychological
trauma victims in order to help them unearth the root cause
of the symptoms they have been suffering from.
“As you venture through the surreal areas of each patient’s
mind, the game will respond to the your ‘psychological
arousal’ (stress, fear, anxiety, etc.) and this is where
the biofeedback technology comes in. Some responses are
more punishing than others, but each specific environmental
reaction relates to the overall story of each patient, pro-
viding clues as to what the original trauma actually was,”
she adds.
The game uses heart rate variability to determine the play-
er’s fear and stress at any point during gameplay, sending
it back as biofeedback-based interaction that helps players
through different levels of stress and fear.
“We hope that Nevermind can help expand awareness of the
breadth and complexities of psychological trauma as well
one day, being able to serve as a direct therapeutic tool
for trauma victims,” said Reynolds as she aims to give
players something back in gaming.
Words: Josh De Souza Crook
6. 6
Escaping gravity: the growing popularity of flotation therapy
If you’re looking for a new way to
decompress, relieve aches and pains or
are just up for trying something out
of the ordinary then maybe you’d like
floatation therapy. Lying down in a
tank comprised of high content Ep-
som salt-water heated to 35.5˚C (skin
temperature) you float on the surface,
removing your sense of gravity.
At Floatworks in Canary Wharf, assis-
tant Julie Pleteneva said: “It al-
lows the brain to release endorphins,
it replaces stress with a sense of
well-being, increases energy levels,
improves skin conditions, it’s a full-
body detox, and it also helps muscles
to relax. It can also regulate sleep-
ing patterns and help insomnia.”
The tank itself is a bit like a fu-
turistic pod, its giant white lid
opening up into the cascading pink,
orange and blue lights emitting out
onto the Epsom salts. You’ve got the
option to stay immersed in the dim
multi-coloured lights or plunge into
complete darkness. I tried it without
the lights but started to get a bit
too disorientated, which wasn't too
therapuetic.
Floatworks offers a one hour session
but time goes pretty quick. At one
point I wasn’t sure if I’d been in
there 20 minutes or whether they had
forgotten to let me out. It makes you
start thinking more introspectively -
it’s easy to switch off completely and
go into a trance-like state, happily
floating without thinking about any-
thing.
Words: Sophie Hadley
IN BRIEF
Hunter S Thompson - Ten Years Since
It has been a decade since Doctor
Hunter S Thompson bode farewell to the
world, “Wow, what a ride!”. His legacy
remains as giving journalism the power
to be free from the pangs of objec-
tivity, offering a contingency plan to
innumerable young writers fighting to
right the world’s wrongs through blood
shot eyes and debilitating hangovers.
Not only have we inherited the Thomp-
son dogma that gave successive mav-
erick writers passage to fulfil their
journalistic pursuits inebriated or
buzzing, but we’ve been spectacle to
the human behind the words, “I’d never
advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or
general insanity for anybody. But it’s
always worked for me.”
It goes to stand that Hunter left us
with more than gonzo, offering, at
various intervals, a glimpse into what
he saw for the future, mentioning in
one radio interview a vested analy-
sis of the causality of 9/11 and his
campaigning for fair drug reform that
still remains as pertinent today as it
did in the seventies.
Bar the carousing anecdotes of po-
litical campaigns, backyard shooting
ranges and 100mph open-road mescaline
sessions, Hunter offered self-reflec-
tion, utter absorption and visionary
realism, even if editorial praise was
coupled with closed-knuckle-combos
from motorbike gangsters.
Words: Fraser Thorne
YOGA WITH A VIEW
Yoga fanatics are being given the opportunity to do their best downward facing
dog against the backdrop of London’s beautiful skyline.
The Yoga in the Sky classes will be held 80 metres up in the sky in Britain’s
largest sculpture the ArcelorMittal Orbit, overlooking Queen Elizabeth Olympic
Park, home of the 2012 Olympics in East London.
This unique yoga experience is just one of the classes available to view-loving
athletes in London: other class venues include the glass floor at Tower Bridge,
and Yogasphere on the top floor of The Shard – 310 metres above ground.
Lasting one hour, the classes focus on technique, posture, and breathing whilst
absorbing the breathtaking views of London at dawn.
Yoga in the Sky is set to launch in East London on March 7. Classes will cost
£17.50 and start at 7am for advanced and 8.15am for beginners.
Words: Zanna Rollins
7. 7
Plastic fantastic?
There is strong evidence that suggests
an increase of mental health problems
in cosmetic surgery patients.
A study by The British Association of
Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) in
2014 found that women accounted for
90.5 per cent of all cosmetic surgery
procedures – totalling 50,122 – the
most common of these being breast aug-
mentation.
Norwegian Social Research found that
women who decide to undergo cosmetic
surgery are “on average more depressed
and anxious” and are more prone to
suicide. Studies have also found
that there are two common psychiat-
ric phenomena among cosmetic surgery
patients: a heightened risk of suicide
and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).
Lara, 25, had been diagnosed with
depression at age 16, which she felt
was well under control at the time of
her first surgery. “It was after the
surgery that things began to spiral,”
she said. “The surgery was done, but I
didn’t feel more confident, instead, I
started to find more faults in myself
– things that needed to be changed.
“I hated my body, and as hard as I
tried to work out, I wasn’t getting
results fast enough. I was sure li-
posuction was the answer to my prob-
lems.”
After her second surgery, Lara opt-
ed for post-surgery counselling:“I’d
become almost obsessed with the way
I looked and nothing I did felt good
enough.”
Currently, there are no (official)
regulations in place within the UK to
control or reduce the risk of mental
illness in plastic surgery patients.
Words: Nadiyah Kaur Naidoo
ARTIST RICARDO CAVOLO
Ricardo Cavolo has naturally led an
artistic life, beginning when he was
born in his father’s painting studio
in Salamanca, Spain. Now at the age
of 33, still working as an illustra-
tor and muralist, Cavolo feels like he
belongs to the art world.
“I was living with gypsies since the
age of three. I’m sure this affected
me creatively, and positively in my
work” says Cavolo.
Having worked for both Nike and Urban
Outfitters, Cavolo's vibrant drawings,
reminiscent of old sailor tattoos,
have been enjoyed around the world.
Featuring the Mexican painter Fri-
da Kahlo, his above illustration was
made especially for Artefact’s Therapy
issue.
When asked why he draws Frida fre-
quently, he said: “She was a very
strong person, who lived with both the
good and bad. She had big and strong
convictions and was loyal to them”.
Kahlo started painting after she suf-
fered severe injuries following a bus
accident. Then part of a volatile mar-
riage to fellow painter Diego Rivera,
she became a powerful feminist and one
of Mexico’s most famous painters.
“I like Frida as a person and Frida
as an artist. She had her own way of
explaining life through her art, and
that's not so common. She had so many
ghosts inside of her, and she used her
art to remove them. She used art as a
therapy”.
His book 101 Artists to Listen to
Before You Die will be released by No-
brow in March.
Words: Louise Bonner
8. 8
A file released in February 2015
named top British diplomat Sir
Peter Hayman, who served during
the Thatcher administration, as a
known paedophile. His abuses were
apparently common knowledge among
the Westminster elite of his peri-
od but kept secret from the public
for more than 40 years.
In the UK in the 1970s, pro-pae-
dophile activist group the Paedo-
phile Information Exchange (PIE),
joined the National Council for
Civil Liberties (now the Liberty
organisation) and campaigned for
the 'sexual liberation' of chil-
dren. Hayman, who died in 1992,
was a member. Before disbandment
in 1984, PIE managed to wangle its
way into mainstream political dis-
course and recruited around 1,000
members; it received support from
student unions and was given a
platform in national newspapers.
Its activities now seems chilling
and raise questions about how PIE
became an accepted pressure group
on the fringes of public debate.
**
Honorary research fellow at the
University of Winchester and au-
thor of two major studies on pae-
dophilia, Sarah Goode, said that
the process of understanding the
historical responses of child sex-
ual abuse, and ethics, is long and
complex. She points to the publi-
cation in the 1940s of Professor
Alfred Kinsey's books Sexual Be-
haviour in the Human Male and Sex-
ual Behaviour in the Human Female.
Kinsey’s texts and similar works
that followed contributed to a
change in public attitudes towards
sexual behaviour. In 1953, Kinsey
appeared on Time Magazine's cover
and his work was widely praised
for having a positive impact. But
he also generated controversy by
being the first to broach taboos
such as sex before marriage, mas-
turbation and homosexuality. His
theories focused on the idea that
an orgasm was the ultimate good,
overriding any other consideration
such as child protection. Howev-
er, Kinsey has been repeatedly ac-
cused of having put his research
before the welfare of children as
he failed to report the abuse com-
mitted by some of his interview-
ees, as mentioned by his biogra-
pher Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy in an
interview with The New York Times
in 2004. The Kinsey Institute has
never denied the participation of
men with paedophilic preferences
in the study: “As stated clear-
ly in the first Kinsey volume...
the information about children’s
sexuality responses was obtained
from... a small number of men who
had engaged in sexual contacts
with children and who were in-
terviewed by Dr. Kinsey and his
staff,” said John Bancroft, di-
rector of the Kinsey Institute
from 1995 to 2004.
Kinsey’s attitude towards child
ʻsexuality’ remained at the cen-
tre of academic and intellectual
debate for decades; the malign in-
fluence of this strain of ʻsexol-
ogy’ has only recently come under
scrutiny as the now-adult survi-
vors of 1970s child sexual abuse
have begun to speak out and demand
better protection strategies.
As Goode suggests in her research,
this open academic discourse and
intellectualisation of the eth-
ics of children and sex could be
connected to the scourge of sex
crimes committed against children
in the late 20th century, which
are only now coming to light.
The term ʻpaedophile’ applies to
a person who is sexually attracted
to children below the age of sexual
consent: in the UK, it means those
aged under 16. One of Goode’s the-
ories is that paedophilic tenden-
cies are “hard-wired” into the de-
veloping foetal brain and that, as
a condition, it must be made clear
through a series of tests to as-
sess whether it is an involuntary
condition or if the abuser chooses
to offend. “The word ʻpaedophileʼ
should not be used as a synonym
for ʻsex offenderʼ, because any-
one who is sexually attracted to
children always has the option to
choose to refrain from sexual of-
fending behaviour,” says Goode.
**
Paedophilia is regarded as a se-
rious sexual offence and those who
are diagnosed with the disorder or
charged for its crime are expect-
ed to join treatment programmes
and serve a judicial sentence. Jon
Brown, the NSPCCʼs head of sexual
abuse programmes, says that the
most effective forms of treatment
for paedophilia are cognitive and
behavioural therapies that use em-
around 20 per cent of men are ca-
pable of being sexually aroused
towards children, and that around
one per cent of all men are ex-
clusively or primarily sexually
attracted to them. Corresponding
figures for female paedophiles are
not easily accessible due to the
subject being discussed rarely.
In the UK, there is a reasonably
well-embedded system of cognitive
behavioural treatment for con-
victed offenders, but a lack of an
advice treatment programme such as
the Prevention Project Dunkenfeld
in Germany – a pioneering scheme
aimed at those who have yet to
offend but are concerned about
their behaviour and want help. Ac-
cording to Clean Internet Charity
Foundation, on average, 15-20 in-
dividuals per month contacted the
organisation in Berlin - more than
800 by the end of 2008.
In Scandinavia, there are proba-
tion services for those worried
that they might offend. Thera-
pists sometimes work with paedo-
philes to understand and identify
their urges, offering strategies
and integrating behavioural ther-
apy tailored to the patient’s per-
sonality. In certain situations,
medication is prescribed to sup-
press the offender’s libido.
Paedophilia involves unacceptable
desires or practices that destroy
innocent young lives, but the
shifting academic debate and new
treatments perhaps signal a fresh
approach to tackling it.
By encouraging paedophiles to
come forward and be treated,
we might effectively protect
potential victims
Dealing with
dark desires
Words: Yasaman Ahmadzai
Image: Mr OH
pathy training and restructuring
of distorted or 'deviant' thought
patterns. “It’s not thought of in
terms of there being a cure for
paedophilia or sexual offending
against children. It’s more that
the risk will always remain but
it’s important that risk is re-
duced as much as possible through
a combination of strategies and
also offering some hope for the
abuser,” Brown explains.
Lecturer of Philosophy at the
University of London, Dr Rebecca
Roache, has written about paedo-
phile rehabilitation for Oxford
University’s Practical Ethics blog
and says there are paedophiles who
resist their sexual urges and nev-
er go on to abuse children.
“While offending paedophiles might
be an appropriate target for our
wrath, non-offenders who are bat-
tling their conditions and want to
ensure they do not commit crimes
deserve our sympathy and help.
And it seems plausible to think
that the more we help the latter
type of paedophile, the better we
will get at preventing the former
type,” says Roache.
Despite the existence of organisa-
tions offering help and preventa-
tive strategies to non-offending
paedophiles, Roache is concerned
by the lack of incentives for pae-
dophiles to come forward for fear
of being demonised. However, it
remains unclear how effective the
treatments are. According to Dr.
Goode, a recent study shows that
9. 9
A recovering
economy?
Words: Max Schwerdtfeger
Image: Mr OH
Britain has the fastest growing
economy in the first world - or so
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
declared towards the end of 2014.
The figures, from IMF, suggest-
ed that by the beginning of 2015,
the UK economy should have grown
by 3.2 per cent, more than any
other G7 nation and meaning that
the UK had emerged from the global
financial crisis in better shape
than France, Germany and even the
United States.
The report – the most recently
published by the IMF on Britain's
economy – was followed in January
by Christine Lagarde, the IMF's
director, praising the UK's el-
oquent and convincing leadership
of the rest of Europe and admit-
ting that previous pessimistic
forecasts on the UK’s potential
growth had been wrong.
It is certainly an about turn from
the IMF who suggested in a consul-
tation report as recently as 2012
that the coalition government's
economic policies risked damaging
the country's productive poten-
tial permanently.
**
That Britain has done so well is
remarkable when considered in the
context of the fragile political
and economic state of the world.
However, before one offers our po-
litical leaders too many congrat-
ulations, one must remember just
how fragile Britain’s economy re-
ally is, and that some are yet to
see the true benefits of economic
recovery.
When, in 2010, Britain formed its
first coalition government since
the Second World War, it immedi-
ately set about imposing the most
austere economic policies for a
generation in response to the fi-
nancial crisis threatening to en-
gulf the world.
It worked, for the most part, and
Britain regained control over its
public finances with an efficien-
cy that no other country of equal
size and population could.
Unemployment levels not seen since
the Depression crippled the Unit-
ed States, and Germany and France
were, and still are, struggling
to resolve the debt crisis in the
Eurozone.
However, it quickly became appar-
ent that cuts to public servic-
es, as well as reluctance from the
banks to lend, meant that people
were gradually spending less and
less as capital became scarce.
This meant that growth was non-ex-
istent, and Britain became peril-
ously close to slipping back into
a prolonged recession as house
prices dropped along with wages
and the government struggled to
meet its own deficit reduction
targets.
The initial signs of growth came
in the shape of answering one of
those problems. The government’s
2013 ‘Help To Buy’ scheme proved
to be an effective initiative in
helping first-time buyers get on
the property ladder, allowing them
to purchase a house with a deposit
of as little as five per cent.
The rise in GDP in the past two
years can largely be attributed to
this, but the question is wheth-
er or not the recovery will last
beyond the next general election
- this vote being perhaps the most
important and unpredictable in
many, many years.
The outcome of the election will
depend on who puts forward the
most convincing argument in re-
gard to the economy’s stability
and growth, and all other issues
– Europe, immigration, etc. – ap-
pear drab in comparison.
The economy has dominated the
rhetoric, despite references else-
where, and accusations of feck-
lessness and heartless elitism be-
ing traded between Conservatives
and Labour. It is the economy that
will decide whether or not David
Cameron is given the opportunity
to pursue his ambition to renego-
tiate the UK’s position in Europe,
or if Ed Miliband gets his chance
to shape government policies.
“Growth is up and GDP is up,”
says James Meadway, senior econ-
omist at left-leaning think-tank
the New Economic Foundation. “It
is a kind of recovery, but real
wages are down and people are be-
ing paid much less than they were
five years ago. The government has
eased off austerity because peo-
ple weren’t spending.”
The election, Meadway says, will
have an impact upon the recovery
but not perhaps as much as one
might imagine.
**
“The difference between Conserva-
tives and Labour isn’t great, the
biggest of which being the speed
with which austerity is imposed.
What is interesting about the
election is whether or not either
party is forced into coalition
with one of the small parties. The
SNP, for example, is opposed to
austerity.”
“Standards of living have
dropped,” adds Meadway. That is
something echoed by the Trussell
Trust, the UK’s largest network of
food banks.
“While there appears to be ele-
ments of economic recovery in the
UK, our experience from those who
are referred to our food banks is
that a proportion of the popula-
tion is being left behind,” says
Trussell Trust trustee Alison In-
glis-Jones. “Those people who are
affected by benefit sanctions and
delays and, as demonstrated in our
half-year figures released in Oc-
tober 2014, an increasing number
of people in employment but on low
income and zero hours contracts
are being referred to the Trust's
food banks.” Those figures demon-
strate that referrals to food
banks under the Tory-Lib Dem co-
alition have increased by 38 per
cent since this time last year.
**
Of the factors influencing Brit-
ain’s economic outlook, perhaps
one of the most pertinent is the
falling price of oil.
The UK has very little control
over this and is at the mercy of
international markets, which are
influenced by events beyond its
borders. The war in Ukraine, for
example, has affected Britain be-
cause of EU sanctions against Rus-
sian, which has invested in the
UK, particularly in London.
How this concludes is largely de-
pendent upon another crisis clos-
er to home that is potentially far
more severe – that of the Eurozone
crisis.
The crisis, or more specifically
the Greek element of it and that
of Ukraine, is inexorably linked
because of prominent members of
Syriza, the far-left government
of Greece, having ties to Mos-
cow. Alexis Tspiras, the new Greek
prime minister, has made his oppo-
sition to sanctions against Rus-
sia very clear and the Kremlin is,
according to the Financial Times,
hoping to exploit both the vocif-
erous resentment to EU-led aus-
terity and Greece’s historic and
cultural ties with Russia in order
to undermine Europe.
Britain’s relative ineffective-
ness in both these cases is per-
haps the biggest indicator to its
inability to control its economic
destiny. However, the government
should be credited for, if noth-
ing else, winning back some of the
UK’s financial credibility.
Whether or not it will last and
give the UK the chance to prosper
in the long run is another ques-
tion, and one that will be decided
by many different factors, some
of which lie out of the control
of any politician in Westminster.
Despite positive reports on
the UK's economic outlook,
doubts remain over the
stability of the recovery
10. 10
The leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett,
on votes, drugs, dogs and Himalayan happiness
ISGREEN
THENEWBLACK?
11. 11
Ten years on from the enactment of the Kyo-
to Protocol, the health of the planet is
definitely going to pot. 2014 was the hot-
test year on record ever. According to NASA,
global warming – which 97 per cent of climate
scientists agree is due to human activities
– is causing wildfires, insect outbreaks,
increased flooding, heat waves, sinkholes,
disappearing lakes and dying lizards.
British politics is a steaming wasteland too.
A party – led by a former commodities trader
who looks how a weasel would if you bought it
Burton vouchers for its birthday; that has
spawned countless listicles along the lines
of ‘Top 10 Most Deplorable UKIP Gaffes’; and
whose last manifesto included a policy of
compulsory uniforms for taxi drivers - has
emerged from the underworld. Said party now
has two actual MPs and is reaping serious
percentages in by–elections – on average 28
per cent in each of the last ten.
Everyone hates Cameron and Miliband is weird/
eats bacon wrong, and their policies are ba-
sically identical soundbites written by two
very similar PR execs who went to Harrow to-
gether, so another hung parliament is looking
likely in May. Never, since the emergence of
the two–party system in the 1600s, has the
country seen such a fragmented ideological
landscape. In other words, the UK is rowing a
governmental turd boat in uncharted waters.
Enter Natalie Bennett and the Greens, on a
solar–powered speedboat.
The party is growing at an exponential rate:
one bonanza week in January, its membership
increased by 40 per cent from around 33,000
to over 46,000. Bennett et al. flicked ‘V’s
at Farage from their (sustainable wood) deck
as they sped past him with his mere 42,000
lackeys, their wake splashing his tweeds.
The Greens are beginning to be known as a
party that stands for more than just what it
says on the tin. No longer are they sole-
ly associated with trees, veganism and weed;
they’re attracting support for being an
all-purpose anti-establishment outfit, speak-
ing out against social injustice, nepotism,
and the sorry state of the voting system.
The party’s antipodean leader pledges to
raise the minimum wage to £10 and fix day–to–
day problems like the lack of cheap housing
and the cost of train tickets – issues that,
unlike the more nebulous question of green-
house gases, people can grip onto.
In fact, according to the ongoing survey by
social enterprise Vote for Policies, (which
is essentially a blind taste test of policy;
respondents chose their preferred party hav-
ing compared plans on a range of key issues
without knowing who they belong to), the pub-
lic like the Greens the best. More than half
a million people have completed it so far,
and 28 per cent of people – a solid eight
point lead on the runners up Labour – would
vote Green if policy was their only priority.
And maybe they actually will. They sure can.
In February the party successfully crowd-
funded the (£500 a pop) deposits required to
enter a candidate for the 150–ish seats in
the country that a Green candidate wasn’t
already standing in. This ensures that on May
7, every voter in the UK will be able to put
a cross next to a little emblem of an earth
radiating petals if they so chose.
Words: Isabella Smith
Images: Jasmine Parker
A VOTE THAT COULD MEAN SOMETHING
It’ll be a strange election; it’s the first
one in recent British history that the elec-
torate actually expect to result in a hung
parliament. How this fact will affect voting
behaviour is anyone’s guess.
Bennett, blonde and head–bobby, settling into
her seat in the faux-French station bar her
assistant chose for us, has her suspicions.
“I run into people up and down the country
who just say, ‘I’ve been tactically voting
for decades; I’m not going to do it anymore.’
People get that this has given us the kind
of politics we've got now, when you've got a
Labour and Tory party that you can hardly get
a cigarette paper between.”
The current First Past the Post (FPTP) voting
system (where for every seat, the party with
the most votes wins the seat outright and the
votes of those who voted for any other party
are totally disregarded, or “wasted”) is the
enemy of the Green Party.
They propose a move to a proportional rep-
resentation (PR) system, in which the number
of MPs elected from each party would more
closely match the number of votes the par-
ty receives in total. PR is better suited to
multi-party politics than FPTP, and many re-
gard it as fairer.
Bennett hopes the results in May will make
electoral reform more of a salient issue for
the public. “What we may well see in this
election is quite a lot of MPs being elected
with not much more than 25 per cent of the
vote. You can imagine a lot of the other 75
per cent of the people [who voted] in those
seats going ‘but hang on a minute, how did
that happen?’. What will need to happen is
such a groundswell, such a level of frustra-
tion that it really pushes people to force
change.”
It’s this kind of talk that aligns so neat-
ly with the long held discontent of many -
discontent which, in recent years, has been
demonstrated by diminishing turnouts. She
seems to get it. But she also thinks now is
the time to cut the apathy and get down to
the polls. “Business–as–usual politics has
people thoroughly fed up and thoroughly feel-
ing like they want change. People are in-
creasingly grasping that it's in their hands
to deliver that change simply by voting for
what they believe in.”
She’s all about empowerment, this Natalie.
The recent ‘Invite The Greens’ Change.org
petition probably contributed to the secur-
ing of the Greens’ inclusion in the televised
leaders’ debates. But rather than the result
itself, the best part for her was the fact
that it could serve as “an important first
step for lots of people to recognise that
politics should be something that you do, not
that's done to you – 300,000 people can see a
case where their clicking had an impact.”
A STEEP ASCENT
Bennett orders a latte and announces her
intention to keep her coat on; it must be
chilly up there at the top. Having taken over
the leadership from the Green’s only MP Car-
oline Lucas in 2012, she suddenly became a
high profile figure at the beginning of this
year, mostly attributable to the saga of the
aforementioned leaders’ debates.
But she doesn’t seem ruffled by the new lev-
els of scrutiny this has brought. “There’s a
certain pressure of knowing that at any point
in time someone might take a photo of you and
post it on Twitter or someone might comment
on what you’re wearing, or you look a bit
tired. There’s a kind of stress in that, but
you learn to live with it.”
Being Green, as she points out, means she's
“probably” in the public eye on trains more
than most other politicians. This is no un-
derstatement: last year she took a 48 hour
(each way) train journey to attend a confer-
ence in Croatia because she doesn’t fly if
she can help it.
It’s these hints at a kind of ‘I’m–not–budg-
ing’ ideological integrity that make the
party seem, for now, relatively trustworthy.
No matter the result of the election, Bennett
says, they won’t go into a coalition. But,
“we could imagine a potential of supporting
a Labour minority government on a vote by
vote basis. So that means, you know, we don’t
get ministerial cars, but we get to keep our
principles.”
HEADACHES AND HICCUPS
These principles have resulted in a few head-
aches for the leader of late. She appeared
on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, and
certain factions of the press descended like
vultures when she admitted that belonging to
a terrorist organisation would not be a crime
under a Green government. “In an extraor-
dinary claim, Natalie Bennett said people
should not be punished for what they think,”
gasped the Mail.
They’ve also been called out for suggesting
the Queen could live in a council house in a
post-monarchy Green society, and that they
would withdraw from NATO and all but disman-
tle the armed forces.
I want to know if they mind making awkward
headlines – and perhaps putting off voters
who would have otherwise supported them –
by refusing to compromise their beliefs. It
“Thewarondrugs
hasfailed,andwe
shouldbetreating
drugsasahealth
issuenotacriminal
justiceissue”
12. 12
takes me four attempts to ask the full ques-
tion though, because she keeps charging in
with her Defensive Politician hat shoved on,
slightly askew, to “clarify” things “for the
record”.
Usually eating up questions like it’s break-
fast time, her answers become choked and
press–officerly at the mention of ISIS. She
sounds like a fumbly David Cameron. On the
subject of Queen Liz, she says she was try-
ing to make “a serious and important point
that nobody, nobody at all, should fear being
homeless in Britain.” Fair enough. The long
and short of it is that “Well, the thing is
the Green party has principles.” Yes, we
know.
Insufficiency of the answer aside, she’s not
just saying that. Compared to the two big
dogs, the Greens are ideologues. Instead of
playing into the endless Lab. vs Con. battle
for the support of Middle England, their pol-
icies seem to be truly guided by ten reasona-
ble core values, the aim being, according to
their website, a “radical transformation of
society for the benefit of all, and for the
planet as a whole.“
And then there was that spluttering, ill-pre-
pared interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC
radio, the horrendousness of which cannot be
overstated. For three whole painful minutes,
Bennett failed to give a straight answer on
the funding of a flagship policy – a pledge
to build 500,000 new social homes by 2020. It
happened weeks after this interview was con-
ducted, so the question remains unasked: why
don't you just stick to what you know? The
green stuff.
APPLE CORE VALUES
Her three most pressing environmental issues:
“Climate change, waste: when you think about
the fact we’re turning our oceans into a
plastic soup, and securing our food supply.”
As important as the planet is to her, Bennett
doesn’t intend to ram environmentalism down
anybody’s throat. “The reason I'm in politics
is to change the way society works, so that
doing the environmentally friendly thing is
the easiest, simplest, cheapest, most obvious
thing to do… It's a matter of changing the
way society works rather than changing indi-
vidual behaviour or thought.”
She isn’t the guilt–tripping type either.
“I'm not going to criticise anyone for, after
a really long tiring day at work, falling
into the local chain supermarket store, pick-
ing up a heavily over–packaged ready meal and
whacking it in the microwave. What we need to
do is cut working hours so people have more
time to buy some nice food, cook it proper-
ly, have the leisure time and space in their
lives to do that.”
Her realisation of the importance of over-
hauling the system stems from years back: an
experience on the campaign trail “over there
on the Regent’s Park Estate,” she recalls,
motioning westwards. Bennett tells of how
she had knocked on the door of a “lovely”
old lady. “She saw my green rosette and there
were tears in her eyes. She said, 'I feel so
guilty because I can't recycle my newspapers,
because I walk with a stick and the bin is
500 metres that way.’ As I said then and as
I say now, that's not your fault, it's our
fault for putting a system that you can't use
in place.”
GREEN AND BROWN
One system the Greens would change is the way
we deal with narcotics in society. “The war
on drugs has failed, and we should be treat-
ing drugs as a health issue not a criminal
justice issue,” the green queen asserts. If
elected, they would legalise marijuana imme-
diately with a view to establishing a fully
legalised, controlled and regulated trade.
They would establish a licensed service pro-
viding analysis of any drug regardless of
source, which would be available for a small
fee.
They would also begin reviewing the classifi-
cations of other prohibited drugs like heroin
and acid, weighing up the costs and benefits
of keeping them illegal. According to Na-
talie, “That's a policy that's based not just
on principles but on very strong evidence
from around the world about what keeps drug
users, families, and communities safe.”
ROTTEN CORE VALUES
And what about keeping the planet safe? Reck-
less consumption is one key area the Greens
are passionate about tackling in order to do
this. The European Environment Agency says
it’s a major driver of environmental damage,
and each year, we generate enough e-waste
(discarded electronics products) alone to
fill a freight train so long that it would go
all the way around the world.
The Greens say that “Our culture is in the
grip of a value system which is fundamental-
ly flawed.” But how can we have any hope of
changing when us young people have been con-
ditioned to be voracious consumers ever since
our feet were the size of iPhones?
“The fact is, very simply, we have no alter-
native.” That may be so, but the average per-
son is subjected to hundreds of advertising
messages every day. Buying superfluous junk
can be difficult to resist.
Bennett insists that there’s something in
it for us aside from just the hazy idea of
protecting Mother Nature though. “We need to
change, but what's really important to get
the message across is that we could actually
all have a better life - a more fulfilling,
healthier, less stressful life - in the new
green economy. I think lots of young people
and older people do really get this: chas-
ing after the newest handbag, buying T-shirts
that you wash twice and they've turned into a
rag; all of that kind of stuff is not improv-
ing our quality of life.”
So what would improve our quality of life?
“If you ask people 'What makes you feel good,
what do you enjoy?', it's time with family
and friends. it's the opportunity to re-
lax and do things you enjoy, and that's what
we're aiming to create, a society with much
more of that. Much less stress, much less
fear of not being able to put food on the ta-
ble or keep a roof over your head.”
GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS
So what about just straight up prioritising
happiness, like Bhutan does? The Himalayan
nation has had a policy of pursuing ‘gross
national happiness’ instead of gross domestic
product (GDP) growth since 1972.
The psychological wellbeing of Bhutanese
citizens and the health of the environment
are what inform decision making - conser-
vation of ‘community vitality’, traditional
culture, resources and wildlife are high on
the agenda. Their commitment to this holis-
tic approach to economics is so strong that
it’s enshrined in the country’s constitution.
Could this strategy work for us? Or do we
just enjoy moaning?
“...thinkaboutthefactwe’returning
ouroceansintoaplasticsoup...”
13. 13
“Happiness is a bit of a wooly word. What I
would like to see replacing a focus on GDP
is what’s called a traffic light system. You
look at a range of indicators that assess
the economic health of society, the social
health of society - things like inequality,
the state of the environment - and what you
want to do is keep all of those above the red
light level. So you make sure that none of
those are going horribly wrong and you man-
age the economy in a way that’s sustainable,”
says Bennett.
GREEN HUMAN BEING
All this change the 49 year-old wants to
effect, what inspired it? She worked as an
editor at The Guardian Weekly until 2012; was
it an abrupt transition from headline writer
to headline maker? Apparently not. “I think
I always knew at some point that I'd leave
journalism, because if you spend a couple of
decades doing it, you see a lot of the same
very depressing stories again and again. You
know, African famines, political coups, de-
mocracy breaking down.” There’s something hu-
man and relatable about the way she finishes;
“You get to the point where you really want
to change the news, not just report it.
She still maintains a blog though, the es-
oterically titled Philobiblon, which takes
its name from a medieval collection of essays
about library management. So does she have
any more obscure interests? “I can't eat glu-
ten so I have to get creative with cakes. I
make a mean lemon polenta cake. I don't know
whether that counts as obscure.” Imagine her
sat at home, watching Bake Off and wincing at
the proclaimed density of a macaroon, and she
takes another step away from politician-bot
territory.
Philobiblon also has a whole section dedicat-
ed to all the dogs she’s ever owned, complete
with biographies and pictures. Which was her
favourite? Kelly springs to mind first for
being “super intelligent.”
“Mind you, Beanie the Staffie was rather nice
too. She was utterly irrepressible, that's
what was nice about Beanie. It might be on
the website, one of the photos is of Bean-
ie carrying her ball, with her head up like
this...” She proceeds to do her best ‘excita-
ble canine’ impression, hands up by her face.
By anyone’s standards, Natalie Bennett is not
your normal politician. But the Green Party
is not your normal party. And like Beanie,
she could turn out to be irrepressible. If
she can avoid the unavoidable, awkward ques-
tions, that is.
15. 15
Travelling the uncharted and secluded areas
across the world, freelance documentary pho-
tographer, Asher Svidensky pursues the myths
of stories to bring them to life.
Gaining recognition for his projects such as
The Eagle Hunters of Mongolia and The Yin-Bou
Fishermen, Asher has delivered a TED talk on
storytelling and had his work published in
National Geographic (USA). But born in Isra-
el, where there is compulsory recruitment for
the military, Asher took an unconventional
route to success.
Starting as a clerk, he pushed his way to be-
come a military photographer, which is where
he learned photography: “It was amazing; I
had a lot of spare time to work on myself as
a photographer and go and see places that I
couldn’t have done any other way, like going
on choppers, going on treks, going for train-
ing.”
Fresh out of the military, Asher followed
his dream of travelling through Mongolia
and started his storytelling adventure. His
two main photo projects speak of conflicting
traditions, one shows how age-old traditions
can evolve, while others fade in a modernised
world.
Asher went to west Mongolia to document the
lives of Kazakh eagle hunters, who tame ea-
gles for hunting smaller animals, such as
foxes and marmots. The preservation of the
culture of eagle hunting is what enticed Ash-
er: “One thing I’m really interested in is
past generation’s traditions, I like the fact
that those cultures, thousands of years old,
still exist.
“When you go to the eagle hunters, there's
no road and electricity. It’s just how it was
all those years ago. You see the eagle hunt-
er, the traditional clothes that were worn by
their ancestors using the same techniques,
the same style of art and you see Mongolia
in the eighth century, just for a little bit
before someone’s phone rings.”
Initially Asher documented the eagle hunters’
lives but felt the photos mimicked similar
stories, and pursued a new way of narrating
the Kazakh eagle hunters. “I decided to fo-
cus myself, stop looking for a portrait of a
centuries-old image of a Kazakh eagle hunter,
and search for a portrait representing the
future of this ancient Mongolian tradition.”
Tradition-wise, when a boy turns 13, and he’s
strong enough to carry the weight of a grown
eagle, his father starts training him in the
ancient hunting technique. Asher photographed
two boys training to be eagle hunters, 13
year old Irka Bolen and 14 year old Bahak
Birgen. But to demonstrate the increased
equality and number of educated women in Mon-
golia, Asher decided to search for a final
female subject.
Asher photographed Ashol Pan, the daughter
of an experienced eagle hunter: “I was amazed
“I’mreallyinterestedinpastgeneration’s
traditions,Ilikethefactthatthosecultures,
thousandsofyearsold,stillexist.”
16. 16
by her comfort and ease as she began handling
the grand eagle for the first time in her
life. She was fearlessly carrying it on her
hand and caressing it somewhat joyfully.”
Asher’s second photo story of the ‘Yin-Bou’
fishermen on the Li river of Xing-Ping vil-
lage in south China is a more sombre tale.
‘Yin-Bou’ fishing is a 16th century art form
where cormorant birds are used to fish.
Asher photographed 73 year old Yue-Ming and
his older brother, 83 year old Yue-Miang, who
have been fishing in the Li river since they
were 15. They are masters of the ‘Yu-Khuo’
technique which uses a lamp to control their
birds in the water and collect the fish.
“Traditionally the fisherman would live in a
boathouse on the river itself, rarely step-
ping on land and migrating along the river
with fish - following their source of live-
lihood. They would trade a portion of their
daily gain of fish with other villagers for
their own basic needs, as they say: on the
river there is no use for money.”
But today, money is everything. Yue-Ming and
his brother, are the last of their kind, and
make a living by presenting their form of
fishing to others, almost as small float-
ing museums. The project was supposed to be
a continuation of The Eagle Hunters of Mon-
golia, photographing future generations of
old traditions. But there are no successors
for this art as fishermen and their families
prefer for their children to find a different
way of living in modern China.
After the cultural revolution of the ʻ80s,
most 'Yin-Bou' fishermen were pushed aside
by industrial fishing boats, collecting huge
numbers of fish each day in the Li river.
Asher’s project instead, focuses on document-
ing the tradition of ‘Yin-Bou’ fishing before
it fades.
Moving on from Asia, Asher hopes to follow
the stories he’s heard of Siberia: “My dad
told me about this area near Sakhalin where
everyone travels by dogsleds. When you wake
up in the morning, you see these tiny hills
of snow outside and discover there is a dog
underneath. They are completely fine, they
just get covered in snow as they sleep. I
grew up with these ideas and I would finally
love see these myths in real life.”
18. 18
“When I was a child, I recall other kids hit-
ting each other and it hurting me. I used to
say, 'Don’t hurt everybody!' and the other
kids and teachers would be really confused. I
couldn’t watch horror movies - I still have a
difficult time watching them - because I could
physically feel the gore I saw on TV,” explains
Francy Mae Clark, a student at McNally Smith
College of Music in Minnesota.
Francy exists in a world of synaesthesia, the
neurological condition which mixes the senses.
This is a world where people taste words when
they speak them, feel someone else's physical
pain when they're hurt, and visualise mul-
ticoloured auras surrounding people's bodies
that they perceive as representing the per-
son's warmth and personality.
Two of the more common forms of synaesthesia
are grapheme-colour, where every letter and
number is assigned a colour in that person's
mind, and time-spatial synaesthesia involving
days, months, numbers and the alphabet in a
spatial form.
Francy's brain is wired in such a way that
gives her mirror-touch synaesthesia, allowing
her to experience a similar touch or pain sen-
sation that another person feels, just by
watching them.
“I remember one time when I was a child, my
friend fell and scraped her knee up so badly.
But I remember trying really hard to be there
for her and it was difficult because I could
feel the pain too,” she says.
“I’ve learned to be able to function while
feeling pain, but it would be nice to be able
to be there 100 per cent for my loved ones in
pain.”
Along with mirror-touch, Francy has sound-
sight, sound-touch and sound-temperature sy-
naesthesia. She sees sound, feels sound on her
skin and in her body, and feels temperatures
from music.
For a creative music composer synaesthesia
gives her the ability to connect with music on
a whole new level. Think human sound system and
iTunes visualiser combined.
“I can physically see sound, however, it’s
not in colour like many other sound-sight peo-
ple see it. It’s more like a disturbance in
the atmosphere. Maybe the way the air above a
campfire looks? Kinda like that. I see it with
all sounds, but it's more defined when I lis-
ten to music. This helps me when I’m writing
orchestra music because I can think of what I
want it to sound like and look like and feel
like,” she explains.
“This is a blessing and a curse. Music will
feel silky or smooth or bubbly and wet. That’s
also a great experience to [have] when lis-
tening to music. However, high pitched fre-
quencies like squeaky car brakes or microphone
feedback bring me pain to my neck and sides.
Other sounds can give me physical pain too.”
Famous synaesthetes in the music industry in-
clude Pharrell Williams, Lady Gaga, and Lorde,
who in a podcast interview with Yoni Wolf de-
scribed her song Team as being “full hot pink”.
Wassily Kandinsky also used the condition to
create paintings, and Baudelaire's famous poem
Correspondances shows his synaesthesia when he
writes: “There are perfumes fresh like the
skin of infants / Sweet like oboes, green like
prairies”.
What triggers the senses to be mixed is still
a mystery, but in the last decade there has
been a growing interest in the colourful brain
condition. Studies suggest four per cent of
people are synaesthetes.
Carly Jaques, a research assistant at the Max
Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the
Netherlands, is part of a team conducting a
large-scale study into the genetics of synaes-
thesia: “Synaesthesia has been observed to run
in families; however, previous genetic studies
have not converged on a single locus in the
genome that would single-handedly explain how
synaesthesia arises; rather, it appears that
there are multiple genes in the human genome
that contribute to building a brain that is
capable of synaesthesia.
“The expectation is that while these genes have
normal functions in everyone, slight changes
BLURREDSENSESA synaesthete explores the vibrant and bewildering world
of tasting words, seeing music and visualising auras
19. 19
Words: Olivia Broome
in them, that we call ‘variants’, might be re-
sponsible for subtle differences in the brains
of synaesthetes that result in the enhanced
crosstalk among senses,” says Carly.
Carly and her team, lead by scientist Katerina
Kucera, are collecting upward of 1,000 graph-
eme-colour synaesthetes to compare their en-
tire genomes to those without synaesthesia. To
take part in the study, each participant first
completes a genetics test and those partici-
pants that meet the criteria are sent a saliva
collection kit in the post.
“People experience it in many different ways
and some experience it much more strongly than
others,” she adds. “Researchers often draw
similarities between synaesthesia, sound sym-
bolism and metaphor, which are common to all
of us.”
Hannah Desautels, a computer animation student
at the Savannah College of Art and Design,
explained how her sound-sight synaesthesia af-
fected the way she learned to play musical in-
struments and how it enhances her creativity.
“I've been to a few classical concerts, which
I adore because I get to watch the sounds
form from the instruments and dance around the
room, and no one has a clue what I’m looking
at. In third grade we had to learn to play the
recorder for music class, and within a month or
so I stood out as that little girl that played
Beethoven by ear on a little plastic recorder.
“I’ve had violin, saxophone, and guitar les-
sons as well, but I never pursued any of them
despite that they came so naturally. The truth
is, they were boring to me. I didn’t want to
make just one colour – I wanted to make the
whole rainbow, to be the whole orchestra. Just
one colour wasn’t enough, and it was frustrat-
ing,” Hannah adds.
For synaesthetes it's difficult to imagine
what the world would be like without seeing
music or feeling other people's pain. The ex-
perience is vividly personal and difficult to
describe to those who can't live it.
“Something I never get tired of is the look on
a person’s face when I tell them the colour of
their voice. I think it makes people feel very
special – when they find out they have some-
thing unique that only applies to them. I think
that’s the closest I can get to sharing what it
feels like emotionally, to have synaesthesia”,
explains Hannah.
“But there’s another side to that. In fact, it
can get a little lonely – seeing things that
are so beautiful but being unable to share it
with anybody. Even other synaesthetes don’t
see things the same way I do. That’s the thing
about synaesthesia – it’s different for every-
one who has it. If I think about it too much, I
get kind of existential. Why me? Why can’t they
see what I see? Why can’t I share it with them?
It’s a beautiful lonely world, but I wouldn’t
trade it for anything.”
“thelookona
person’sfacewhen
Itellthemthecolour
oftheirvoice”
21. 21
It’s a soggy Friday evening in south London,
and something is not normal. It’s not the
weather that’s different, or the traffic noise
of the A23 outside. It’s my brain.
Ideas, which normally emerge from my head with
the urgency of an episode of Countryfile, spurt
like a shower head. In fact, I actually have to
get out of the shower early to note down five
before I lose them.
Time is going extra fast, spiralling away at a
worrying pace. But I’m writing with a sense of
flow and connection that I haven’t felt since
I wore a school uniform and my brain was all
fresh and shiny.
I’ve taken modafinil, and I think it’s work-
ing.
**
Modafinil is a psychostimulant drug used to
treat the excessive sleepiness that comes with
narcolepsy, shift work sleep disorder and
sleep apnea. It also has a growing fan base on
campuses across London.
It’s not known exactly how it works, but re-
search shows it leads to an increase in the
neurotransmitter dopamine, whose job is to re-
lay messages from neuron to neuron. The re-
sult, put simply, is that people who usually
fall asleep too much don’t fall asleep.
Its eugeroic (wakefulness-promoting) proper-
ties are part of what make it so appealing to
users who don’t have sleep disorders, and ac-
cording to a review of the studies relating to
the drug, the range of off-label (i.e. naugh-
ty) use is outpacing research on the subject.
Special forces personnel, surgeons, pilots,
Oxbridge students, lawyers and other alpha
types have been using cognitive enhancers for
years now, but modafinil - which was developed
in the late seventies in France - is starting
to filter down below the stratum of the hy-
per-functioning, aided by its perceived lack
of adverse side effects.
You see, it’s not an ordinary stimulant. It
has a more complex mechanism of action than
amphetamine based ADHD pills, which used to
be the speedy-feeling performance enhancer of
A story about neurotransmitters,
painstaking procrastination and overachieving dealers
MODAFINILNIGHTSWHYLONDONSTUDENTSARE
TAKINGBRAINSTEROIDS
choice for essay-writers and investment bank-
ers alike. Neurologists say this means it has
a lower liability to abuse and a lower risk of
adverse effects on organ systems than its ad-
dictive, brain-chemical-addling predecessors.
It’s also less illegal to possess it without a
prescription. Better known ‘smart drugs’ Rita-
lin and Adderall are both Class B, meaning the
penalty for possession is up to five years in-
side, but the big M is only illegal to supply.
**
A study of modafinil’s effects on cognitive
performance found that it improved “fatigue
levels, motivation, reaction time and vigi-
lance,” while a 2013 review carried out by
King’s College London in collaboration with
the Universities of Cambridge and East London
concluded that its use in conjunction with an-
tidepressants relieves depression more effec-
tively than antidepressants alone.
A quick Google of the subject throws up sto-
ries about students working for thirty hours
solid and bashing out twenty page reports in
one sitting. No wonder then, that its use is
becoming increasingly commonplace among London
students, who call it moda.
The University of London, which has colleges
all over the city, declined to comment on the
issue, but I found some attendees who would.
As most people seem to, I first heard about it
by word of mouth, from a friend at said univer-
sity. Sam*, a student at the prestigious Impe-
rial College London, was trusting it to get him
through revision for an exam on “really hard
physics shit” at a time when he only had a few
days free because of work commitments. “I’ll
be able to just sit there for four days and
rinse it. Moda in, distractions out,” he said.
**
Sam found out about it from his friend Luca*,
who buys it online from China and sells it
for less than a quid per pill. Seeing as he’s
often selling it to his peers, Luca is one of
the few people who have a good idea about the
scale of moda use - most people tend to treat
it with secrecy, preferring to let others be-
lieve their success is organic.
Words: Alex Smith
Image: Ida Amanda Ahopelto
22. 22
“Itfeelslikethere
aresomehowmore
connectionswithin
mybrain”
“As far as I can tell, more and more people
are relying on it. Probably around thirty per
cent. I get lots of calls from people freaking
out around deadlines and exams, so I created a
calendar of all the different dates on all the
main courses when I’ll be in demand. That means
I can stock up ahead of time and I’ll never run
out.” Drug dealing, overachiever style.
He’s seen exponential growth in his custom-
er base from word of mouth recommendations.
“Someone who uses it sees their friend strug-
gling to keep up with the workload, and they
feel bad. They suggest it. The friend tries
it, benefits from it, and suggests it to an-
other struggling friend. The whole thing just
snowballs.”
Another seller, a Bristolian who’s been sup-
plying and attending University College Lon-
don (UCL) for more than three years, thinks
there’s a different reason for the recent,
noticeable upsurge in ubiquity.
“This year is the first time that people paying
the new £9,000 fees are in their final year.
They feel more pressure to succeed because
they’ve sunk far more costs into their degrees.
When you’ve spent nearly thirty grand on tu-
ition, I guess you want to get a good grade.
I’ve noticed it socially too; the nine-grand-
ers don’t party as hard.”
As a resentful 9K kid myself, this resonates
with me. The idea of getting a bad degree
classification is almost three times more hor-
ror-inducing than it would have been at the
old fee levels. I might as well try a bit of
this so-called wonder drug for the purposes of
research then, see what all the fuss is about.
**
I order a batch online from the least shifty
looking website selling the drug, taking care
to avoid the one with a ‘welcome’ video fea-
turing an American woman with unsettlingly as-
sertive diction, who claims to ship directly
from - of all places - Sheffield.
It arrives about a week later, in a little jif-
fy bag postmarked Hong Kong. On that wet Friday
I crack one of the white, unassuming looking
tablets in half and wash it down my throat.
The resultant feeling is not what I was expect-
ing. The internet had promised a cerebral land
of infinite focus and productivity. Real life
people said I would be acutely antisocial and
wee a lot. Apart from frequent dashes to the
toilet, none of the above is true.
On me at least, modafinil has a subtle, mul-
ti-faceted impact. The most useful effect is
a compulsion to carry on working after several
hours on the same task. The urge to complete
whatever I’m working on is compelling.
However, if I do get distracted, it’s pret-
ty engulfing; diversions are treated with re-
markable diligence. I spend at least an hour
on Amazon studiously comparing the reviews of
various ceramic kitchen knives. Screens suck
at my eyes to an uncomfortable extent.
Becoming focusedly distracted is an occupa-
tional hazard, apparently. The UCL guy says he
once spent a night that he had intended to work
on an essay sorting through the cyber-wilder-
ness of his Gmail account, deleting marketing
emails and archiving everything from the last
two years into arbitrary folders.
When I do stay on task, it feels like there
are somehow more connections within my brain,
like a tube map that suddenly has twice the
number of underground lines. Lateral thinking
is improved; parallels and links between piec-
es of information and ideas reveal themselves
when they would usually remain hidden. When
I’m writing, unconventional metaphors fight to
become permanent sentences.
It keeps me awake too, though not in a high,
conspicuous or caffeine-jittery way. At 2.45am,
nearly ten hours on from when I started, I’m
still working away in the same spot; although
nothing much of any use is coming out of my
cranial shower head anymore.
**
If it sounds too good to be true, that’s be-
cause it is. For a start it doesn’t really work
for some people. One London College of Fashion
student who took it to try to make headway with
her dissertation said, “I was hoping for some
moment of epiphany that never happened. It
just felt like my brain was tensing/frowning.”
For others, it’s a gateway drug. Sam says
“there was a guy in my year last year who moved
on from moda and got addicted to amphetamines
and couldn’t work without them. Then he got
addicted to cocaine and ended up in rehab.”
Sounds like a rumour mill, friend-of-a-friend
scare story, right? Nope. “He tried to sell me
a £50 engineering textbook for a tenner so he
could use the money to get ‘one last hit’ be-
fore rehab.” He’s now retaking the year.
Then there’s the inherent danger of ingesting
internet-sourced pharmaceuticals from markets
that tend to be laxly regulated in comparison
to the UK. Poor quality generic drugs - as a
result of substituting ingredients for cheap-
er alternatives and inadequate quality control
measures - have blighted the reputations of
the Chinese and Indian industries in recent
years, and the provenance and purity of drugs
bought online just can’t be relied upon.
Since the start of 2014 the US Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) has imposed import bans
on six Chinese pharmaceutical plants for fail-
ing to operate “in conformity with current
good manufacturing practices.” In India, that
number is eight, including one of the plants
operated by the company that ostensibly pro-
duced the moda I used, Sun Pharma, which caused
its share price to tumble.
Although that’s not the plant that my stuff
came from - the factory that made mine is in
Sikkim state, nestled in the mountains between
Nepal and Bhutan, while the FDA-blacklisted
one is nearly 2,000 km away on the shores of
the Arabian Sea - it doesn’t inspire much trust
in the company. It’s risky at best to welcome
drugs of such sketchy origin into your blood-
stream.
It’s not particularly safe to provide websites
that operate outside the law with your bank
details either. I was careful to use a credit
card that was just about to expire, but the
UCL seller has had countless fraudulent trans-
actions up to the value of £200 on the card
he uses. “You can get them reversed, but if
you’re not the sort of person who checks their
statements, you definitely shouldn’t be buying
from these sites.”
**
Despite the prevailing wisdom in moda-acquaint-
ed circles, there are side effects to contend
with too. One day I take two tablets and suffer
uncharacteristic anxiety. My boyfriend, on a
tour of duty in Sierra Leone, fails to reply
to a text message and I imaginatively conclude
that his camp has been overrun by Boko Haram.
Then there are the stomach cramps. The organs
in the upper part of my chest feel like they’re
constricting, dry tissue on dry tissue. They
make muffled noises like big bubble wrap pock-
ets popping. My oesophagus feels unnervingly
rigid. At one point, my resting heart rate in-
creases from my usual fifty beats per minute to
ninety, and I’m grinding my teeth like a pill
fiend at a warehouse party.
This is where I tap out of my experiment. How-
ever pervasive the trend is on campuses around
the capital, however many IQ points the aver-
age user has, taking modafinil isn’t clever,
and it won’t make you cleverer.
As Sam - who’s gone cold turkey after realising
he had an insidious habit taking root - says,
“If you’re dependent on something external for
your success, you’re just digging yourself a
hole. How are you going to sustain it in the
future when the drugs run out?”
* Names changed by request
24. 24
Upon walking into the Mole Dove and Curious
Menagerie studio, you are swept away by two
distinct aesthetics in one room. The Curi-
ous Menagerie has a vintage, Victorian vibe
with earthy elements of wood and leather.
You see a squirrel protecting its pinecones
on a terracotta pot and a rook perched on a
tree stump. Mole Dove occupy the kitsch and
ethereal side of the room with mice in tea-
cups wearing tiny pearl bibs and avant-garde
headpieces such as a hair comb with a bright-
ly coloured goldcrest, the smallest bird in
the UK.
Before assuming this is the studio of a
painter or fashion designer, the dismembered
fox will indicate it’s actually the workspace
of taxidermists. In a room where you’d expect
a sombre atmosphere of death, there is an ef-
fervescence and zest for life.
Whether you’re seeking out curious interi-
or design ideas or looking to immortalise a
beloved pet, London is peppered with these
taxidermy centres, catering to all mounting
needs. Before you start worrying about animal
violence, the UK Guild of Taxidermists moni-
tors the legitimacy of UK taxidermists, en-
suring no animals are deliberately killed for
the purpose of stuffing and mounting.
Sammy owns the studio Mole Dove, her child-
hood curiosity for biology as well as her
upbringing on a farm in Bath paved the way
to taxidermy. “When my cat started bring-
ing home little birds and mice, my mum asked
me if I wanted to bury them and do a little
ceremony. I refused and said I wanted to keep
them and take the skin off. They were all
so beautiful, it just seemed a shame to let
them go into the ground. My mum, being very
open-minded, was all right with that and gave
me a pair of scissors. That’s how it start-
ed.”
Taxidermy became such an integral part of
Sammy’s life, it was even entwined into her
wedding. She fashioned an eye-catching head-
piece, a dove decorated with Swarovski crys-
tals, and her husband Joel had a little mole
nestled in his breast pocket, thus coining
the name of her studio Mole Dove.
The dove headpiece holds pride of place in
Sammy’s studio, amongst her other precious
creations.
With her ‘Alice in Wonderland’ style of taxi-
dermy, Sammy admires the techniques of tax-
idermist Stephanie Meyers: “She does this
really interesting technique where she does
like a whole cast of the animal’s body and
then she mixes some unknown chemical– she
doesn’t share it, it’s quite unique– and then
all the fur sticks to the plaster-cast mould.
She follows by applying this chemical that
degrades everything apart from the fur and
then adds a lightweight resin that she col-
ours according to the animal’s colouring.
“There’s no skin which is amazing. The fur
is made of keratin, which doesn’t break down
as quickly as skin, allowing the whole thing
to last a lifetime. There has been debate at
the Guild whether that counts as taxidermy
because it doesn’t have any skin– but that
doesn’t sway me.”
Owner of Curious Menagerie, Sarah Keen, ad-
mires the style of London taxidermist, Pol-
ly Morgan. With her work, valued at up to
£100,000, Morganʼs use of coiled pythons and
clusters of crow wings all lure the atten-
tion of celebrities like Charles Saatchi and
Courtney Love.
“She’s fantastic and I love her style because
she has a very modern take on it. I think she
makes things in such a way that people who
might not necessarily like taxidermy or think
they like taxidermy will look at her work and
WOMENINTAXIDERMY:NOTJUSTABIGGAMEAn intimate look into the art form that doesn’t concern just boys, blood and bones.
Words: Divya Bhavani
Images: Mary Clance
25. 25
they can really see it in their own homes and
they can appreciate it.”
Divya Anantharaman, a New York-based taxi-
dermist with a trademark style for fantasy
taxidermy, has reached a large and intrigued
audience. As to what enthuses her taxidermy,
she says: “I’m inspired by the intersection
of science, art, mortality, and the positive
and negative aspects of the human touch. My
ethics mean using naturally deceased animals,
by-products of the food industry, invasive
species that are harvested for pest control,
or ones that are harvested for meat. Where
it is sensible, I make sure to utilise every
part so nothing is wasted.”
Divya explains that changing conservation
laws are only a few of the rules taxidermists
must follow. Throughout history there’s been
an evolving view on what constitutes as ethi-
cal and what was once ethical, does not mean
it is today. “In the Victorian Era, consid-
ered by many to be the ʻGolden Age’ of tax-
idermy, it was ethical to go on expeditions
with the mission to harvest one of every type
of animal in order to dissect and mount them
for museums and study. It was also fashion-
able for women to adorn themselves with the
pelts of exotic birds from all over the world
– thankfully that has changed.
“All that over-harvesting has lead to con-
servation laws and today taxidermists abide
by those numerous and complex laws, and are
extremely active in conservation and environ-
mental awareness.”
A long-standing obstacle is the question of
whether taxidermy is a women’s profession.
Divya weighs in on the topic saying: “Hav-
ing a vagina has no effect on how well you do
something, and shouldn’t deter anyone from
trying something new.
“It’s funny how the biases, perceptions, and
insecurities of others manifest themselves;
throughout history women have traditionally
been the caretakers of the deceased, pro-
cessed meat from hunts, and prepared speci-
mens for museums. For whatever reason, this
has been forgotten or turned into a novelty.”
Sarah admits that at times she does receive
hate-mail: “I usually just email them back,
explaining what it is to be an ethical taxi-
dermist. They wind up apologising and under-
standing in the end. Then I tell them I’m a
vegetarian and they’re like ‘Oh!’”
Divya also struggles with misconceptions on
the work that she does: “With hate-mail,
and similar crap, it shows a combination of
ignorance and insecurity. As tempting as it
is for me to be harsh, I’d rather use it as
an opportunity to educate rather than start
a flame war. I haven’t figured out why some
feel the need to send dick-pics though, and
hopefully that stops soon.”
With their creative and colourful approach
to taxidermy, these skilled women effectively
banish the notion that this thriving artistry
must be associated with morbidity, but in-
stead should be celebrated.
28. 28
Peter Doig's paintings invite us to gaze into
mysterious landscapes, to visit worlds of in-
tense colour and lush, rich textures, leaving
us somewhere between dream and reality.
He’s an artist light years away from the
flashy kids of the Young British Artist era
and the glitz of the art world, putting his
art at the centre rather than himself, a man
seemingly always on the move yet not belong-
ing anywhere.
Some say that if there’s a legitimate suc-
cessor to the great colourists in the vein of
Matisse, Bonnard, and Hopper, then Peter Doig
might be it.
Here’s a look at the artist behind the mil-
lion pound price tags, his formative college
years in London – and how he went on to rein-
vigorate the medium of painting.
It’s hard to read an article about Doig with-
out seeing words like “record-breaking” or
“millions” – and it’s equally hard not to
mention it at all: Doig swung into global
prominence in the mid 2000s when his paint-
ings began to sell for astronomical figures.
In 2007, his painting The White Canoe sold
for £5.73million to an anonymous Russian col-
lector – at the time a salesroom record for a
living European artist.
It marked the moment Doig went from being a
largely unnoticed, albeit critical success,
to a name on the commercial art stage.
Overnight, a painter who in many ways had
been the very antithesis of flashy celebri-
ty art culture, almost became an unwilling
poster boy for everything wrong with the art
industry. And the huge prices didn’t stop
there: In 2013, Doig’s The Architect’s Home
in the Ravine sold for £7.7million at a Lon-
don auction. Doig commented that the stag-
gering price for The White Canoe made him
feel “physically sick”. Not because the money
didn’t go into his own pocket; the painting
was owned by Charles Saatchi, but because to
him it seemed a sign of an art market gone
crazy. Those huge price tags are something he
still seems to struggle to come to terms with
- success in art can’t be measured in money.
Born in Edinburgh in 1959, his father a ship-
ping accountant and his mother an actress,
his family moved to Trinidad in 1962 and then
to Canada in 1966. Having moved so often and
lived in such different places, Doig’s use
of intense colours is as far removed from the
bleak skies of Scotland as he is. His work
has drawn from his snowy childhood years in
Canada, with a number of his works depicting
scenes of swirling snow, glittering blizzards
and frozen lakes, and with other works draw-
ing heavily from the humid, saturated colours
of the leafy nature of the Caribbean.
Doig seems hesitant to pledge allegiance to
a specific country, to be pinned down to one
place.
In interviews, the accent cutting through
his soft-spoken voice is hard to place. Many
Scots would of course like to claim him as
their own, as a “Scottish painter”, but Doig
doesn’t seem to want to be labelled that way.
In an interview with the Guardian he ex-
plained, when I was growing up, I never felt
that I belonged anywhere because we never
lived in a house for more than three months.
That's all I knew and that's why I don't re-
ally belong anywhere. Then again, I do feel
Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with
visiting my grandparents here every summer as
a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ances-
try. It's there all right, but it would be
pushing it to label me a Scottish painter.
Or, indeed, an anywhere painter.”
Doig started to draw seriously at 17, as a
way of dealing with the sense of dislocation
he felt working on a gas-drilling rig on the
Canadian prairies. He realised the job was
not something he wanted to do for the rest of
life, especially considering many of his col-
leagues on the platform had lost fingers on
the job. And so, he started to draw at night.
It was also there he got the idea that he
should go to art school in London.
He did a foundation course at Wimbledon
School of Art, before being accepted for a
painting degree at St. Martins
It was during those years at St. Martins,
1980 to 1983, that he’s said he started to
find his voice as an artist, after having in-
itially felt intimidated by the too-cool-for-
school air of the college.
Doig has described his formative college
years in London as a mad, exciting time, one
when the city was full of oddballs and art-
ists. To support himself he did bar work and
worked as a dresser at the English Nation-
al Opera. He was living a bohemian life in
a rough flat in King’s Cross that cost £4
a week, with Shane McGowan living down the
road. This was at a time when London was
cheap enough to allow young artists to waste
both time and space in order to find their
artistic voices – a London that doesn’t ex-
ist anymore.
Gavin Lockheart, himself a successful painter
of luminous landscapes, met Doig while stud-
ying at St. Martins in 1980 and they’ve been
friends since. He recalls how they connected:
“We liked the same music and at the time that
was more important than liking the same art,
because we didn't know much, but we were very
receptive.”
What kind of music were these two budding
artists into then? “We loved early rap mu-
sic before it was called hip hop. We saw
Grandmaster Flash in New York and Lee Dors-
ey in New Orleans, in 1982. The good thing
about Peter is that he is very catholic in
his taste; we even got to like opera when we
worked at the English National Opera.”
Many articles about Doig have often stated he
chose to study in London because it was the
home of his favourite punk bands, but Lock-
heart says that wasn’t the case: He wasn't
a big punk fan; I liked punk more than him
I think. He likes music loud but not noisy,
which punk often was. We both liked the blues
and he also introduced me to Hank Williams,
Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, Duke Elling-
ton, Professor Longhair: he liked jazz more
than me. We saw too many bands to list; there
were loads playing in London at the time.
Kraftwerk, Pere Ubu, The Fall, Kid Creole,
Captain Beefheart.”
After St. Martins Doig went back to Canada to
live in Montreal, but returned to London and
Chelsea College of Art in 1989, this time as
a mature student to do an MA.
It was an odd time to be a painter. The phe-
nomenon of YBAs (Young British Artists) and
the conceptual approach typified by Dami-
en Hirst and Tracey Emin began to emerge in
the 90s, and painting was largely seen to
be spent as a medium. The press was brimming
with articles about the “death of painting”
and many artists started to move away from
traditional art to embrace the new ways, a
re-commodification of art that had more of a
promise of commercial success.
Doig was selected for the Barclays Young
Artist Award at the Serpentine gallery in
1991, made up of the most promising art-
ists from the London MA shows. Doig’s work
“It’satropicaland
somewhatexotic
sceneofunusual,
deepcolours”
PETERDOIG
THEMAKINGOFAMODERNMASTERPeter Doig is one of the most compelling and internationally-renowned
living painters in the world today
Words: Astrid Madberg
Image: Simon Upton/Interior Archive/Corbis
29. 29
looked vastly different from the other works
on display and some of the other artists
didn’t even want to show their art in the
same space as him. It seemed a notion amongst
them that Doig's work was somehow an unfash-
ionable throwback, or not serious enough for
the look-at-me style of the 90s art scene.
Luckily, such frosty receptions didn’t seem
to knock down the artistic sureness Doig had
developed by then.
Damien Meade, an Irish-born painter working
in London, studied at Chelsea in the early
90's when Doig started working as a visit-
ing tutor and describes him as a friendly,
generous and centred individual. He explains
how Doig’s style felt fresh in a time when
painting was largely seen as an exhausted
medium. He recalls, “a lot of the painting
in the 80s had been about a sense of bravado
– big themes, big egos, and showing off. It
had this bombastic, machismo quality to it.
And Peter’s work was refreshing at that time.
He found a way of painting that made it new
again in some way. It had a silence about it.
It was cinematic, almost feminine.”
Doig's painting Blotter won him the John
Moores Prize in 1993, and marks his first
break and big recognition as an artist. The
painting depicts a lone young figure, based
on a photograph of his brother, staring down
on a frozen lake. What Blotter is trying to
capture is the activity in the mind while the
body is still, the mind allowing itself to be
absorbed in the landscape. The recognition he
received from that lead to him being nominat-
ed for the Turner prize in 1994.
The title Blotter is a direct reference to
LSD and Doig has been quite open about occa-
sionally taking it as a teenager. He has said
that those psychedelic experiences have been
important to him and his art, but that proba-
bly only people who have themselves taken LSD
could really understand how it has affected
his work. He stopped taking psychedelics at
18, but it has remained a reference point for
his artistry.
Doig returned to Trinidad in 2002 and set up
a studio at the Caribbean Contemporary Arts
Centre near Port of Spain. In his current
paintings his childhood's snowscapes of Can-
ada has largely been left for the warm hues
of the island. His painting Grande Riviere -
which we are featuring as our centre spread -
is his first painting set in Trinidad. It’s a
tropical and somewhat exotic scene of unusu-
al, deep colours. The dense vegetation along
with the lack of human presence makes for
an eerie and unsettling landscape, and Doig
plays with the romantic cliché of a wandering
horse on a moonlit beach. The idea for the
painting came about during a visit to Trini-
dad in the summer of 2000. He took some pho-
tographs of the lagoon in Grand Riviere and
painted his own haunting vision of the scene
when he returned to London.
In 2008, he had a major solo exhibitions at
Tate Britain, the event truly cementing his
reputation as an artist and introducing him
to a wider audience. He has since had numer-
ous exhibitions the world over and has kept
challenging his approach to painting - themes
keep coming back to him, and his subjects and
compositions move forwards in ways we can’t
guess.
Doig is back in Trinidad and painting away,
currently preparing for a show in Venice in
May.
We don’t not know where Peter Doig might lay
his head next, but we can expect to continue
to be both unsettled and spell-bound by his
enchanting visions. This rolling stone might
just end up being one of the true colour mas-
ters.
31. 31
THEDARKNET
You are being watched. Your movements are be-
ing recorded, your searches chronicled, your
connections and acquaintances tracked.
The western spy agencies NSA and GCHQ proba-
bly have access to your SIM card, your phone
calls and all sorts of metadata. Ad-funded
tech powerhouses Google and Facebook almost
certainly have a data file on you, trying to
work out everything you do and everything you
may want to buy, and even electronics firms
like Lenovo and Samsung could be listening to
and tracking you.
In the post-Snowden world – where the whis-
tleblower leaked the US and UK governments’
mass surveillance schemes – we’re all becom-
ing more and more aware of how we are caught
up in giant surveillance programs that are
said to be for our own protection and are re-
markably sophisticated.
Equally, the fact that Google and Facebook
collect enormous amounts of data on us is be-
coming common knowledge.
But so what, right? Chances are, you’re not a
terrorist or a paedophile, and you’re against
those who are. If you have nothing to hide,
then what’s the big deal?
Jon Bains, who founded one of the first
digital agencies, Lateral, is currently the
founding partner of the What Why agency,
and writes online about the importance of not
being watched.
In his view, people should have a right to
be able to conduct a private conversation:
“Privacy is a basic human right, and it’s not
something we should give up easily, at least
without asking why,” he says.
After the Charlie Hebdo killings, however,
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he
wanted to ban apps such as Snapchat, WhatsApp
and iMessage because their communications are
encrypted and private.
“Governments tend to make really, really bad
legislation when they don’t understand how
things work or things change,” says Bains.
There are other dangers with mass surveil-
lance and bulk data collection.
The more obvious examples are the simple mis-
takes, such as when a German grandmother was
incorrectly blocked from the internet for il-
legally downloading movies and left unable to
work at her online-only job, or when innocent
people with similar names get caught on a no-
fly list.
“There’s more and more stories of normal cit-
izens being harassed by the government, but
most of that’s kept under the table through
gag orders,” Bains says.
There’s also the potential for privacy inva-
sions due to the data, such as when US re-
tailer Target calculated that an underage
girl was pregnant and sent her flyers for
baby products, before she had even told her
father.
“Facebook has launched Atlas, which tracks
you from looking at an ad all the way to re-
tail. As somebody who has worked in market-
ing for 20 years, I go ‘oh that’s cool’. As
a human being, I go ‘fucking hell, this is
dark’. And that data’s not secure either, if
you wanted to work out how to kidnap somebody
or extort money, this would be a playbook,”
says Bains.
These companies require their own privacy,
such as for our data or bank transactions,
which are put at risk by government plans to
work around encryption by installing “back-
doors” that they can access.
Equally, the data is at risk due to security
failures on their end, as Bains points out:
“The governments are relatively under scru-
tiny, but marketeers? Not so much. The Sony
hack showed just how open this data is.”
“So, as a taxpayer, I’d say that frankly it’s
not a terribly good use of money. And from
a practical level, there’s no such thing as
a secure system, so somebody’s going to hack
into it. It’s just bound to happen.”
INTO THE DARKNESS
As awareness of government and corporate
surveillance grows, people have increasingly
looked to cover their tracks online.
It’s virtually impossible to live a normal
life in the internet age and stay completely
Surveillance and anti-terrorism specialists explore the
struggle for individuals, businesses and governments
between privacy and security
THEBATTLEBETWEENSURVEILLANCE
ANDSECRECYINTHEDIGITALAGE
Words: Sebastian Moss
Images: Oswin Tickler
