monthly post: july
some months feel like both a year and a week at the same time. this month i’ve done a lot, but also not much at the same time. i’ve traveled, walked around nice places, met a lot of people, saw some friends i haven’t seen in a while, and saw friends i see quite regularly. went to develop brighton, met some people, read by the beach. gave people zines, wrote poetry from eavesdropping in the streets; “my twat son”, people say beautiful things. i found a jar in alien in a charity shop, i bought it for 50 pence, i love them very much. they still don’t have a name, but i have thought about many: clive, glen, phlegm, Terms of Service. i’m still not sure.
next month, it will also be a month. it will have days in it with planned stuff, and surprises. first, there is york zine fest on 2nd of august, it will be a lot of fun, a 12 hour party they say. art market from 12-5, gigs and boogie from 5-12. i will be selling some zines and prints. thinking about making it all “pay as you feel”. please don’t buy the whole table for a pound.
i am also working on something very exciting. i found a place at the uni, a room, accesible easily by bus, to hold workshops. i want to use this space to show people, alternative, small, d.i.y., low tech tools, and then hold mini jams where we make things quickly, without paying too much attention to the quality, playing with new tools really. my hope with this space is to cultivate some sort of community, or dare i dream, a scene, around alternative games and small tools. workshops about riso and lino, held by my friends nic and izzy, have created a space in the last year where i met so many lovely people. i would like to carve out a similar space based around games and low tech tools. get in losers, we are making blogs, we are making small, personal vidya games. we are making sound toys, zines and all kinds of strange and beautiful things. would be helpful if you dropped me a dm if you would be interested in coming to these, i am trying to gauge interest.
starting to create spaces where we can talk about alternative social technologies feels important now (not just online, but also irl) as all the mainstream digital creation and distribution platforms are either innovating at a dizzying pace to exploit its users and environment, or enacting forms of censorship which affects the most marginalised. stuff like UK enacting ID checks for nsfw stuff online, then itch io deindexing all 'adult' games from the site because of pressure from payment processors. taking down so many beautiful games, even domino club itch page is not accesible from uk anymore. expressing sexuality in games is banned but with the power of friendship and venture capital we can make gambling accesible to everyone, especially the financially distraught, we have the technology. this is the true power of video games.
anyway, i have so much pent up anger about this that it could take over the whole post. maybe i’ll come back to it later with another post.
i’m going back to turkey in august for a week. one of my best friends from uni is getting married to another one of my best friends!! and i shall be their Witness (as required by state officials). going to istanbul gives me so much anxiety that i turn into a fireball each time, but it’s a pain i learned to live with to see the people i love.
on other news: i got commissioned by pizzapranks of indiepocalypse to make a game for one of their issues. i am drafting something these days and am very excited by it. also i started work on developing some games for my 2nd phd study. also i’m finishing up a paper to submit to a conference. i’ve been hurt by burnout before, so i’m trying to keep an active eye on not getting too much on my plate. but the food is delicious, and sometimes it’s a feast!
movies:
watched a lotta good movies this month. here are my faves:
- monster (2023): i loved this one so much. so many movies about/around childhood work through romantic ideals that end up dehumanizing the people in it. this one felt special in that it understood the perhaps defining quality of childhood, an intense process of understanding yourself and the social world around you, which feels violent very often, and almost separate from the reality of adults, while going through pains you don’t understand.
- the sacrifice (1986): watching this movie felt incredibly long, but it has also been the movie i thought about by far the most this month. it made me think about the virtues of boredom as an aesthetic. it’s not a complex movie, but it has something very powerful to say. also people who think tarkovsky’s movies are dreary are incredibly wrong, it has so much love in them.
- ran (1985): saw it in the cinema, it was beautiful. the sound and colours. yeah. it has a sick jester in it that just won’t stop spitting bars.
- the cook, the thief, his wife & her lover (1989): i love movies which are very economical about the spaces they use. this feels almost like a theatre play but it also uses the tools of cinema it has under its belt so powerfully. also it’s just so iconic.
- do the right thing (1989): likewise feels like a theatre play, and it says what it wants to say so clearly and cleverly, with so much style.
- blue spring (2001): there is a hollowness in adolescence, it’s present in a lot of coming of age movies, but also they are also often life affirmative to the point that it feels like a lie. this one is not concerned by that, and ultimately portrays this aspect of adolescence better than other movies. a garden that hasn’t even sprouted yet.
books:
read some stuff. here’s what i think:
- the years by annie ernaux: i love things that which presents their own contradictions, utilizes them as fruitful tensions. this book’s main contradiction is that it is both deeply impersonal and personal. it shows the passing of the years, how life changes, the trends, the dreams, hopes, defeats, pleasures, desires, change. reading it all like this makes you reflect on your life. makes you feel human, breaks the myth of being one and unique, but also shows how the feeling you have with it is also undeniably yours.
- the book of all loves by agustin fernandez mallo: i have very mixed feelings about this one. there are some parts of it that shine but also a lot of parts that feel just uninspiring. i think that is normal for a book that is so strictly about love and all types of love.
games and stuff:
- cereballers by tom: this rules. it’s one of my fave games now. i love when a system stops caring about whether it “works” or not and just goes broken. (this is also related to my research somehow.. im gonna be the first person in the world to cite barefootis.legal in a research paper)
- night confessional by sweetfish: beautiful idea and writing. coin operated confession booths? it’s more likely than you think.
- meet me at the workers club by molleindustria: this gave me the feeling i had when i read siblings by brigitte reimann, who is from eastern germany. a work which shows you a different sort of social reality, in which a slow liberation not only feels possible, but an inherent part of it.
- screen savour by duncan corrigan: have you ever thought what it would feel like to make out with your computer? no? would you like to find out?