what i did, #4

it's been 2.5 months since the last issue and i'm slowly recovering from one of the most stressful (but also rewarding) semesters i've ever had. i absolutely had no capacity to do anything creative beyond my assignments, but i still managed to engage in some media.

essays on empathy

i've been a fan of deconstructeam for a long time now and i finally played essays on empathy (2021, published by devolver digital) in may/june.

what i enjoyed most (apart from the amazing music by fingerspit) were the videos: for every game in the collection, they made a video where they sat on the couch talking about the development process (in particular the challenges). after finishing everything, i really missed seeing the team.

the game i enjoyed most was, of course, eternal home floristry. i had already played it on itch.io years ago and it was nice to revisit it.

i'm also looking forward to their new game virtue and a sledgehammer which looks extremely intriguing (cn mature content):

a mortician's tale

i also played a short game called a mortician's tale (2017, laundry bear games). you play a mortician who goes about their job for a short period of time. it's meant to be an educational game and i think it does a good job without being too graphic. i especially liked the trans-affirming and decolonial perspectives that the developers incorporated throughout the narrative.

strange antiquities

i loved strange horticulture (bad viking, 2022), so i was really looking forward to their next game, strange antiquities (2025).

while it's a well-made game with lots of things to discover and an addictive gameplay, i found myself not liking it completely. i was overwhelmed by the many books i had to cross-reference to get the antiquities right, often not succeeding and having to play the mini game to try again. for me, it was a little bit frustrating at times. i also preferred the art style from the previous game, which had a more illustrative look. but these are only nitpicks. what was a major downer for me was the story. it's an occult setting—i get that. only, there were often references to "black" and "dark" being synonymous to "death" and "bad." i know that these equations are normalized in (western) media, but the sheer volume of it made me cringe really hard. because if you make yourself familiar with the work of Black creators and academics, you'll realize that one aspect of perpetuating (anti-Black) racism is the constant use and reproduction of associating the aforementioned adjectives with each other. if black/dark is equated with death/bad (etc.), it'll continue to be (as it has been) used as a discriminatory metaphor for people (of color). the fact that there were nearly no people of color in the game only added to this issue.

i'm sure the studio is unaware of all this and meant no harm (which is a european and western problem in general*). now my question is: why not ditch the tropes and come up with something different, something unique?

*see fatima el-tayeb, european others (2011)

tongues untied

i finally watched the iconic video essay tongues untied (1989) by marlon riggs (also featuring essex hemphill).

filled with footage, poetry, spoken word, and personal stories, it's an experimental montage about the (racialized and sexualized) Black body, about HIV/AIDs, about queerness, about death. highly recommended and free to watch via the UNT digital library (no registration required).

A History of Future Contagion

i watched a conversation on contagion between candice lin and neel ahuja, organized by sophie guo and andrew cummings (the courtauld).

from the description the coulthard's youtube channel:

From 5 February to 8 May 2022, Spike Island presents Pigs and Poison, a multidisciplinary exhibition of work by Chinese American artist Candice Lin. The exhibition explores the migrant experience, disease poetics, and colonial legacies through tumour-like sculptures, a virtual reality environment, and a monumental wooden trebuchet that hurls cannonballs made from lard and bone black pigment to smear the gallery walls. Attentive to what the artist calls ‘the margins of history,’ Lin’s broader practice examines race-making and colonial matrices of power, while imagining alternative narratives often modelled upon interspecies relationships from ecological perspectives.

Similar concerns animate the work of scholar Neel Ahuja. Informed by feminist, queer, and critical race studies, Ahuja’s research explores the relationship of the human body to animals and viruses, while analysing how states and scientists try to manage the environmental risks of contact across species and borders.

For this event, organised in partnership with Spike Island, Lin and Ahuja will join each other online for a discussion about Pigs and Poison, Lin’s broader practice, disease ecology, and the affects and materiality of contagion and control in coloniality and post-coloniality.

while the topic was quite serious, the conversation had many moments of tenderness and i really enjoyed the watch, seeing just how connected the works of lin and ahuja are despite being done in different disciplines.

walking cities: toronto

the video below is only 6:55 minutes long but it contains so many concepts that are imbued in western geographies.

from the video's description:

Renowned Canadian poet and writer Dionne Brand took a walk on Bloor Street West with Edinburgh-based poet Vahni Capildeo. They discussed the multiplicity of languages, the significance of corners and the repetition of colonial memories and structures in the architecture of the city.

in your dreams with myha'la

ever since i've watched the first episode of industry, i've liked myha'la, and i know owen thiele from his in your dreams episode with connor storrie. so when i saw that there's one with myha'la, i had to watch, and it's amazingly sweet. they talk a lot about acting, the beginnings of myha'la's career (with industry), the industry (not the series). super interesting watch!

homecoming queenz

in june, i was at an event where the short film "homecoming queenz" by oz marinov & elias wakeem (2012) was shown.

from the announcement text:

Homecoming Queenz is a collaborative work between artist Oz Marinov and Elias Wakeem, documenting an art performance captured entirely on smartphones at Lydd Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport). This piece captures their return from abroad, dressed in full drag, as they navigate the public space of the airport.

This performance is a bold statement on visibility, identity, and the act of reclaiming space, confronting societal norms and expectations head-on.

the event was organized by tales of the diasporic ordinary and they invited elias wakeem for a conversation on the film. they came from palestine to take part in this event, hosted by jasper j. verlinden, and spoke about the making of the film, dismantling some tropes along the way.

i don't know if this story is true

i also went to the exhibition "i don't know if this story is true" by addons, at the kunstraum potsdamer straße as part of the yearly "udk rundgang" (udk tour).

what i found most fascinating was the work of alicia agustín who had a room installation at the exhibition on the topic of myoma.

avatar commission

that one was fun! ckiyme wanted a minimalist ethereal avatar and commissioned me to draw one. it took a bit to arrive at the final version but i really like it.

wild seed

i've read almost all of octavia butler's work but hadn't come around the patternist series. finished this novel within a short period—it's amazing!

the spirit bares its teeth

beautiful cover art and haunting story: andrew joseph white's novel the spirit bares its teeth (peachtree teen, 2025) is set in victorian london and features a transmasculine autistic protagonist (as well as other queer characters). it's quite gory at times and has lots of triggering content (there's a content note from the author at the beginning, so one knows what to expect). i really enjoyed the read and i already have another book from white on my to-read pile.

this place kills me

i've read a lot of graphic novels written by mariko tamaki and this place kills me (in collaboration with artist nicole goux, abrams fanfare, 2025, ) didn't disappoint either. set in the 1980s in an all-girls school, it explores themes of queerness, abuse, power, suicide, murder, and drug use. not an easy read, but really good.

monstress, vol. 1

monstress (image comics, 2021) is a really unique comic featuring (almost) an all-female cast. written by marjorie liu and illustrated by sana takeda, it follows the story of maika halfwolf who is half-human, half-arcanic. unsurprisingly, racism plays a big role in this narrative, alongside mental health, queerness, disability, dispossession, and displacement. it's quite gory at times but has moments of comic relief, so it was bearable for me. very much looking forward to reading vol. 2.

academic readings

many months of reading, i can't possible list all of the amazing texts i've been grinding through, but here are some:

Ahuja, Neel. Bioinsecurities: Disease Interventions, Empire, and the Government of Species. Duke University Press, 2016.

Bailey, Marlon M. Butch Queens up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. University of Michigan Press, 2013.

Chen, Mel Y. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke University Press, 2012.

El-Tayeb, Fatima. Un/German: Racialized Otherness in Post-Cold War Europe. Cornell University Press, 2025[2016].

Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Linke, Uli."Racializing Cities, Naturalizing Space: The Seductive Appeal of Iconicities ofDispossession."Antipode, vol. 46, no. 5, 2014, pp. 1222–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12012.

Livingston, Julie, and Jasbir K. Puar. “Interspecies.” Social Text, vol. 29, no. 1, 2011, pp. 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-1210237.

Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press, 2016.

articles

very interesting article on "going analog" during these trying times...

Cyberdecks, Going Analog, Permacomputing, Medieval Guilds, and the Arts and Crafts Movement

People are moving away from corporate controlled tech, and making their own. How the designs of cyberdecks are being driven by women. And how medieval guilds, Luddites, and the Arts and Crafts movement are all connected to our current moment.

Sunshine and Seedlings: A Newsletter by HydroponicTrashHydroponic Trash

detached from the rest of you

amazing new album by loraine james i've been listening to for weeks.

new avatar

kelala has also published a new album—i love it.