TEARS

A multilayered collage that appears like a school book where somebody stuck a finger through its pages and left a deep hole. Contains an image of Kirsten Dunst in the movie The Virgin Suicides

From Lehrte to Berlin: The Need for a Poetics of Puberty

The feeling that stayed with me after finishing Kleinstadtnovelle was not that puberty itself is the problem, but the hostile conditions in which it is supposed to happen.

Digital collage created with a still of Andy Samberg looking like a hunk from the 2007 movie Hot Rod. Image by Flip Zang.

Commit to the Bit!

In the first episode of The Lonely Island (2001), Ardy, played by twenty-three year old Andy Samberg, all lips and shaggy curls, stars in a goofy early-90’s-hip-hop-MTV-style interlude. From the twin-sized bottom bunk on my ten-centimeter iPod screen, I studied this scene with adolescent gravitas.

A landscape photo of the whole room where our installation is. The view here is from someone at the end of the room, opposite from the entrance. Here we see a lilac-colored room with like-colored fur trim on the walls. In the room is a large changing room bench that is painted green and covered with like-colored fur. We see an old 90s era thick television, scattered papers and clothing on and around the bench.

AXE PULSE – THE PHOTOS

As part of the large group exhibition titled How (Not) to Fit In – Metaphern der Adoleszenz at Villa Merkel, Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, in Esslingen, Germany, which ran from May 8 – July 17, 2022, COVEN BERLIN created the installation and environment we called AXE PULSE, eponymously named after our current magazine and curatorial theme (which can be read here).

Google Street View, Image collage, Sonnenallee, Berlin. Excerpts from: Artist unknown, Freya and her Cat Chariot, 1886; Fresco of Edigna in the Linden, c. 1800, St. Sebastian in Puch Kirche.

Unter den Linden

I turned the laundry hamper upside down, shaking the quivering body into the planter. A rat, fugitive found in the bathroom of my shared flat, tumbled into the mess of cigarette butts and weeds growing near the trunk of the tree that separated the sidewalk from the parked cars. I’m sorry, I thought, following the rat’s ecstasy as she fled to the faintly fissured gray bark. I couldn’t find a wild place to bring you. A siren howled, blue and white light lit up the underside of the branches that graced the first floor of the apartment building where I took shelter.

It is a small swamp in Grunewald on a sunny day. The picture was taken from slightly above. There is an area covered with the thick high grass in the middle of the image. One can distinguish separate plants on the first plan. Behind this area, more to the upper right and left corners of the image are green deciduous trees.

Unmeasurable Falling

The first time I stepped into marsh water was when I was about 7. One of the first sunny days in early May. My friend’s family took me along with them to the reservoir. We were all neighbors living in the same street on the outskirts, and in the summer all the kids were biking there quite often. But at that time we probably were yet too young to go there by ourselves.

A four color image on a white background. In the center, three women wearing grecian dresses raise an offering toward the sky. They are outlined in blue with a light blue over color, and some yellow over wash on the bottom. On the edges, two piles of spirals sit under two black line illustrations of Lofi girl, a girl with bangs wearing headphones and a sweater and sitting with her head on one hand, looking pensive. A yellow circle is behind each illustration. The lofi girls face each other.

An ode to the cybernetic patron saint of work and procrastination, Lofi girl.

To hear some beats to relax/study to,
I invoke Lofi girl.In a mythic time of human/cyborg symbiosis, she and I are one. By the grace of her beats, I can achieve my best self.

Collage of various chumbox advertisement thumbnails: images of people, skin, and runny eggs.

Feelings at the Edge: A Chumbox Tour

The scene is all too familiar, the gestures rehearsed. It begins with the innocence of casual browsing, the wide-eyed wonder as you click and scroll, traipsing around some mildly interesting news article. Then it leers at you, inevitable and horrible.

A surreal watercolour painting of a black sky, red sea, and green creatures. Many planets seem to rise in the sky, and there appear to be gohsts and amoebas coming out of the sea.

Poem 1, 2, 3

Poems by Inky Lee.

I knew of an asian man. His body was small and he was going blind. He quit his office job and was training to become a masseur – to see with his hands while his eyes cease to see. He was a devout christian and was known to pray for many hours every day. People called him a holy man. One time, I went to his place to get a massage. After the massage, he prayed for me. As I was about to leave, he smirked and told me to never bring a black man home because that would make my mother go into a long fast.

A black and white ink drawing of barren plants surrounded by a thin, wiggly border

soul death in a digital dating app

Have you ever walked into a room on a warm evening and noticed an unpleasant odor? So unpleasant and complicated that it is visible to the naked eye?

I haven’t smoked for two months, yet I wake up every day with an acid taste in my mouth. The bitterness that I reflect to others mirrors the bitterness within me. It’s a bitterness so rich with associations, so raw and complicated.