Reality

Boxing Clever

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 by Setumo Mohlomi
Rock Punch Up The Armoury is a boxing gym which shares a complex with a gallery and one of those best kept secret bars you would be loath to order a Black Label at. Forget the Rocky Balboa like gym smells of sweat and blood and the men emitting them. This is a clean and gender friendly place, and the Upstart event they hosted last Saturday goes a long way in proving them as a champion of women’s rights. ...read more


Two Days in Istanbul

Saturday, June 15th, 2013 by Olivia Walton
Two Days in Istanbul Tuesday, 11th June. There is a lot of smoke over Taksim as I write this. Yes, again. The woman in the cafe says she will close early because she is going to join the protestors. “Gezi is very crowded,” she says. And the black smoke? “I don’t know, maybe burning plastic.” ...read more


Missing Essentials

Wednesday, June 12th, 2013 by Don Pinnock, illustration by Rob Foote
Missing Essentials It was the complaint about a missing rod on the toilet roll holder which sparked my memory. Mrs X and her husband were holidaying on Inhaca Island in Mozambique and couldn’t find the rod. The chalet also didn’t have oven gloves, or a tea pot or a mixing bowl—and the fridge was held closed with an elastic strap. Imagine! So they wrote to a travel magazine about it. ...read more


Dear Mr Griffin

Tuesday, June 11th, 2013 by Wian Van Den Berg
Dear Mr Griffin Howzit Nick, On Sunday afternoon I sat on my porch with my feet up, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper, while keeping a close eye on my cattle herding near the farmhouse. You see, we’ve got a huge problem over here with poaching at the moment. Those guys will shoot anything with a horn these days. But let me tell you, the moment I read what you said on twitter about President Mandela, I almost broke my bloody neck. ...read more


His Galatea

Wednesday, June 5th, 2013 by Liam Kruger, illustration by Sasan
His Galetea Pretty soon I’m going to have make art out of this – maybe a song, or a story, but probably a poem; something ridiculous and formal, like a sestina or a pantoum. (In part this is because sestinas and pantoums never get published anywhere, so that even once I’ve turned this stuff into Art, I can hang on to it; if I make it a story and let it out into the world, it’s going to end up being about ...read more


Blood in Taksim

Monday, June 3rd, 2013 by Olivia Walton
Blood in Taksim There are thousands of protestors in Taksim Square. Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government have decided to build a mall – in the guise of a recreated Ottoman barracks – in Gezi Park, one of central Istanbul’s only green spaces. Locals have made it clear: they do not want a mall. They want their park. Erdogan has also made his position clear: Hurriyet quotes him saying, “Do whatever you want, but we’ve made our decision.” Not quite ...read more


Shaking the Habitual

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 by Brandon Edmonds
Shaking the Habitual The Bowie-singing astronaut guy was one of the worthiest viral videos in a while. No cats in sight. It (sort of) put back all the humanity left out of Kubrick’s chilly space epic 2001. Stanley wasn’t big on people. But in the end, astronaut guy returns to earth. Gravity applies. Enchantment ends. To really shake the habitual, we need to keep going back to work out what we’ve just seen, where we stand in relation to it. That is a ...read more


Sublime and the Coconut

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 by Liam Kruger, illustration by Sasan
Bagpipes A couple of nights ago, I went running in the woods behind Rhodes Memorial, misjudged the time, or the route, or both, and ended up getting back out of the woods about an hour after sunset. And I don’t know; I think maybe I met the sublime while I was up there. ...read more


A Rave New World

Monday, May 13th, 2013 by Simon Davis, images by Andrew Kirkby
A Rave New World It’s been a week since I got back from my first trip to AfrikaBurn and it’s taken that long to process why I found it so extraordinary.On the surface, there is an astounding amount of effort and creativity: an entire town laid out for 7,000+ people, including dozens of artworks, some over 40 feet high, burning mechanical dinosaurs, laser shows and a non-stop cacophony of parties and performances with enormous sound systems, all constructed in an inaccessible desert with materials ...read more


Stop Bitchin’ Start Pitchin

Monday, May 6th, 2013 by Kim Harrisberg
Stop Bitchin Start Pitchin “I’m a farmer, I don’t usually do this type of thing!” says Tom, perhaps a lot louder than he would have liked. He is flustered, this is obvious. His hands flutter about as he speaks and his face has flushed a light crimson. He is standing in front of a crowd that, beside from a few awkward chuckles, waits patiently and eagerly for his next words. ...read more