tribe issue 13

2009

tribeINTERNATIONAL CREATIVE ARTS MAGAZINE

2 TRIBE MAGAZINE ISSUE 13

ISSUE 13 TRIBE MAGAZINE 10


A life lived for art ...

“Why don’t you get a proper career, like a doctor or a teacher, instead you’re studying art...What can you do with art?” During a recent visit home this derogatory remark was aimed at a friend of mine, who is also an undergraduate art student. Her purported fumbling over her words as she racked her mind for an intelligent and thought-‐through comeback, sparked a debate that oPen rears its ugly head in our own house as well as I’m sure the lives of many others. As an undergraduate student myself, I have found that it is a frequent occurrence to find oneself caught up in a need to jusTfy life decisions to those who feel it is their obligaTon to offer their bombasTc opinions as fact. OPen I will find myself caught in a cycle of worrying about whether it is possible to become an arTst-‐ is it feasible in an unknown financial situaTon? Am I studying enough? And most potently, in a world with an increasing populaTon, how can I create an individual style? I hope this doubt does not seep into the lives of generaTons to come, in a world where an overnight celebrity status and desire to emulate the rich and famous serves a more important role to aspire to. Thus, when you doubt yourself, as I, and so many arTsts do, I have found the words of Leonardo Da Vinci a great comfort: “ That painter who has no doubts will achieve very liWle”.

So to those who struggle to comprehend the field of art as a legiTmate career, I ask where would we be without art? The cards you receive from loved ones would be blank senTments devoid of colourful fonts and emoTve drawings as well as the books whose covers enTce you to read them, the games we play or the symbolic art of religion. One can look to the work of Galileo and his proficiency in Chiaroscuro, or even further back to cave painTngs or anatomical illustraTons of from nineteenth century, all of which have aided our cultural understanding and medical knowledge. Perhaps most importantly, without art culture loses its meaning. I do not mean art as a creaTve industry to aWract mass markets, but alternaTvely art as a honing of individual creaTve expression. I would be lying to let you believe that I don’t oPen quesTon the meaning of art as a pracTce. I feel that on some level, those individuals who refute art completely would feel differently if they looked more closely at the skill and craPsmanship that goes into art, as exhibited by the arTsts of tribe. Perhaps it is because when we walks into a gallery one is oPen confronted with a noTon of what art ‘is’. We are met by a piece of rope placed in the middle of the floor or perhaps layers of mouldy bread presented in a Perspex box with an accompanying ‘explanaTon’. Hence, hopefully when someone is asked in the foreseeable future what purpose art can serve in today’s society, they will cease to fumble over their words but to remind those in quesTon to see art as more than something restricted by the confines of the museum and point to its prominence in our daily lives. “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” Pablo Picasso

So embrace the escapism that art provides, sit back with a cup of tea and cast your eyes over an array of inspiring arTsts from around the world...

Francesca Didymus, tribe correspondent

Editor In Chief

Mark Doyle

Editor

Ali Donkin

Creative Writing Editor

Tilly Craig

Marketing & PR

Steve Clement-‐Large

Cover

Ralph Steadman

Contributors

Ralph Steadman, Kate MccGwire,

Victoria Ustinova, Sarah Ahmad, Ali

Gardiner, Ali Donkin, Tilly Craig, Mark

Doyle, Allicette Torres, Dom Moore,

Lucio Villani, Sam Stenning, Donna

Kuhn, Deivis Slavinskas, Vanessa

Louzon, Sam Walker-‐Smart, Peter Ike

Amadi, Eva Dolgyra, Kathryn

Mackrory, Luke Prater, Harriet Lacey

CONTACT

To submit work:

[email protected]

To say hello:

[email protected]

Full submission details can be found

on our website:

www.tribemagazine.org

Artists have given permission

for their work to be displayed

in tribe magazine. No part of

this publication may be

reproduced without the

permission of the copyright

holder(s)

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.tribemagazine.org

http://www.tribemagazine.org


Iraq War

ISSUE 13 TRIBE MAGAZINE 10Sitting Elk


Norma

Harriet Lacey


Small CelebrationsIn honour of Tribeʼ’s one year anniversary the team has decided to let the celebratory mood take us and to

use this issue to give some much needed adulation to things often over looked in life, those influential linch-‐‑‒

pins and hidden sparklers of creative culture. Our picks may not get awards, may only be greeted with blank

stairs and head scratches when discussed but each have, we feel, made a serious cultural contribution and in

their own way been overlooked. We think they are owed a few Champagne corks popping in their direction.

Perhaps unfortunately when trying to think of under celebrated things I came up with a long list ranging from Lord Bryon’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, who despite laying down the foundations of computing gets less recognition than her philandering father, to American sit-coms, symphonies and even artistic icons like paint-by-numbers. However my choice for overdue attention has to go to a technology that was once the centre of our cultural world and despite taking a side step out of the limelight still remains relevant and indispensible, a fact we seem to have forgotten. My celebration is for radio and in particularly its contribution to British comedy.

Somewhere along the line I seem to have accumulated a lot of radio’s, a fact I only became aware of having acquired the nickname “radio lady” from my local flea market. I plead mitigating circumstances and say that half of them don’t work, but I’m pretty sure that makes it worse somehow. I also never realised how much I did actually listen to radio shows, the reason for doing so often being a lack of anything interesting on TV. Have a little explore and you can find anything on the radio schedules and lots of it too but best of all is the amount of good comedy there is. With the invention of something new there so often seems to be an assumption that all that went before it will become obsolete, so people thought about radio with the invention of TV, but rather than being bulldozed by ever advancing plasma, 3D, HD, flat screen, wide screen technology, radio’s apparent weakness has become its fundamental strength, aferall it provides a cheap, low risk, low budget playschool for new comedy talent before they go of to hang out with the big kids at television house. Radio has provided a start for many of the countries best comedic talents yet doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Shows that have radio origins are rarely know about even by fans of the TV versions, let alone their screenless gestation period actually being listened to. Lets not look at what we’re missing visually and celebrate what the lack of a screen does for great comedy.

First to benefit from radio are the controversial comedies - shows that are either niche in their target audience or propagate a radical sense of humour which tends not to


The Goon Show, BBC

That Mitchell And Web Sound, BBC


translate to an instant ratings smash. Radio allows experimentation to take place, without the big investments and big gambles of a TV budget radio commissioners can take risks on their schedules, if a fringe show finds its audience there it can move on to “bigger” things, such was the case with The League of Gentleman with it’s abrasive twisted surrealism which would scare away even the most deep pocketed, strong backboned of TV commissioners, similarly Goodness Gracious Me aimed squarely at the Asian community, quality writing and performances earned it fans across the board but despite this pitching to what is on the face of it such a small market it’s not an easy sell in TV land. Radio means not only can a show prove its plausibility for TV but it also gives a new show a ready-made audience to follow to its TV transition. It goes the other way too. Though not strictly speaking radio as they were thought too crude for release, Peter Cook and Dudley Moor found recording their Derek and Clive sketches the only outlet for their more extreme material, material that would only have made it onto screens if it had been made several decades later and even then would have been relegated to late night. That’s not to say however, that radio is just for training shows for TV, there are comedies which have found their permanent home on radio and have inspired TV to follow, with the adoption of the panel game format for example (though oddly many more women seem to feature on radio panels than their TV counterparts). Television is just playing catch up.

Perhaps the group of comedians who most readily adopted radio is the surrealists. Radio has proved its self as a trial ground for new shows but it has its own virtues as a medium too. ‘The Goon’ show is one of the most iconic radio comedy shows of all time and was where Spike Milligan was let of his leash to create a fun anarchic new breed of comedy which whilst being a success in its day was surpassed by ‘Monty Python’s’ TV success which undeniably had its roots with The Goons. The benefit of the medium is its limitless possibilities, whilst a trip to the moon on magic carpets is big budget stuff on TV, a table of peculiar sounding odds and ends will get you there on radio. The boys from The Mighty Boosh particularly lamented the loss of freedom when their show made the TV jump, no longer able to create magical journeys at the drop of a hat, if you want to make a rainforest on TV, sets, costumes and an army of workers are needed - on radio grab a cardboard tube, some dried peas and you’re there! Flight of the Concords too needed to find a home on HBO before getting the budget to fund elaborate visual musical numbers, outside of their mock-doc radio show origin the musical interludes could get seriously dull unless accompanied by some pricy set pieces to keep your eyes as well as your ears entertained. Red Dwarf too, an initial expensive outlay to pay for a spaceship interior could only be justified by the show’s audience brought from its radio origins.

Aside from the expense, radio comedy can often show off an actors talents better than


the television adaptations. Sketch shows like That Mitchell and Webb Sound and Little Britain in their original radio formats, free from prosthetics and wigs to show character change, had only their thespian nous to rely on and ultimately, in my opinion that’s the better way. As amusing as fat suits and fake teeth can be, on occasion more often than not they are just distractions from talented actors giving great performances. Losing one sense rely does increase the others, you notice things in a performance you never would from a television show. In both the above cases there is also the feeling that somewhere along the line some TV execs have mentioned ‘catch phrases and snappy timing, oh and also let’s lose the long words guys, this is prime time TV’ as there seems to be a certain amount of dumming down along the line, apparently audiences can’t multi task, eyes, ears and brain is just one function too far.

Completely with out hyperbole, radio has to be one of the key reasons Britain created some of the most ground-breaking comedy in the world. The US system of “Pilot season”, commissioning one off episodes to see how they fare is miles above British broadcasters pay grade and even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t allow those slow burn, quirky comedies to find the following they need to take them through to a whole TV series. This “training ground for new talent” line is one the BBC seems to trot out to justify BBC 3 yet they don’t seem to be putting up such a glorious fight for their long running creative springboard which has proved its self time and time again as the fountainhead for new comedy, maybe it’s about time the BBC start singing radio’s praises.

Ali Donkin


Lucio Villani


Kate MccGwire


Can you sum up your ar5s5c journey to date? Where did it start? Are you

where you thought you would be at this 5me?

It’s a long story and a long road. I worked for years as a freelance designer

before I decided to go to Art College as a mature student. Gecng into the

Royal College was a real turning point for me as it was when I started to

believe that I could finally make a career out of something I cared so

passionately about. All I needed to do was work my socks off and that’s

what I sTll do now! You have to keep that drive as an arTst because the

momentum is crucial at any point in your career.

Do you plan your works me5culously before you begin them or do you

prefer to take a more relaxed approach to your work?

The forms of my sculptures are always meTculously planned. They are

sketched first in charcoal, which enables me to have free rein of shape and

scale. On paper I can sketch an idea and save it for later if necessary.

However once a piece is ready to be feathered the process becomes much

more like painTng, fluid and expressive but meTculous and meditaTve. I

oPen become completely immersed in the act of making and oPen look

back at a finished piece of work and think ‘did I make that?’ It’s like they

have a life of their own.

In the majority of your work your primary medium is feathers, I’d imagine

that this can be very 5me-‐consuming. Approximately, how long does it

take you to make one piece of work? Do you work on more than one at a

5me?

In a way it is a sort of endless process, a repeTTous cycle of collecTon and

creaTon. While the making can take anywhere between a couple of weeks

to a few months the collecTon can take years. I oPen work on more than


one piece at a Tme as I find while I’m in the middle of making one I will

have ideas about other pieces. They evolve from one another.

Your current works FINE and Beguile have recently been exhibited in

the London exhibi5on Metamorphosis: The Transforma1on of Being

that contained both old and modern masters from Albrecht Dürer to

Francis Picabia. How does it feel to have your work exhibited next to

ar5s5c greats such as this?

I am of course enormously flaWered and thrilled. It’s a fantasTc feeling

and something I never really expected to happen. As well as

Metamorphosis I was recently in another group show called Sculptors’

Drawings at The Pangolin Gallery, Kings Cross, which showed my work

alongside arTsts such as Phyllida Barlow, Lynn Chadwick, Anthony Caro,

Alberto Giacomec, Antony Gormley and Pablo Picasso!

You’ve men5oned in previous interviews that you source your

feathers by people sending them to you. To what extent is it vital to

receive these dona5ons? Do you get sent a lot of one par5cular kind?

These donaTons are absolutely vital; my work would literally not be

possible without them, parTcularly in relaTon to pigeon feathers as

there is nowhere to buy them. Luckily pigeon feathers are also my most

frequent donaTon. I do also get some more unusual donaTons,

someone once sent me 10 years worth of moulted feathers from their

budgie, which were beauTful, but unfortunately too small to use.

Nevertheless, I appreciate every donaTon and hope one day to make

an installaTon of all the lovely leWers and envelopes I have been sent

over the years.


Can one also assume a connec5on between your work and fashion

design?

Though I see the synergy between my work and fashion design, I am

very wary of drawing a close connecTon. Fashion is notoriously fickle

and although I think the sensual textures and contours of my pieces

compliment the human form I want my work to have longevity and

reach beyond an Autumn/Winter collecTon.

What advice would you give to aspiring ar5sts?

Say yes to everything at the start, being in shows forces you to make

new work and pushes your pracTce forward. You never know who will

be there and what will happen but you’ll meet fascinaTng people

along the way. Take a few risks, as even a bad experience will be useful

in the long run. A career is a marathon not a sprint.

What can we expect from you in the near future?

My largest solo exhibiTon to date, Lure, will be opening at All Visual

Arts on November 22nd. The majority of my year has been spent

making sculptures for this exhibiTon, which includes a host of new

cabinet pieces, wall-‐mounted works and a monumental installaTon.

Interview by Francesca Didymus

katemccgwire.com

LURE: Solo show

All Visual Arts, London

22nd November 2012 -‐ January 2013

www.allvisualarts.org

http://www.katemccgwire.com

http://www.katemccgwire.com

http://www.allvisualarts.org

http://www.allvisualarts.org


Sam Stenning


Temporada De PatosA film for anyone who’s ever spent a Sunday afternoon doing

nothing and learning everything

Temporada De Patos (2004, English translaTon: Duck Season) is a Mexican movie that

follows the exploits of Flama and Moko, two young boys living in an estate in a borough of Mexico City, during one long, lazy Sunday. They have everything they could possibly want for the aPernoon: a large boWle of cola, money for pizza delivery, a games console and, most importantly, no parents. The peripety, when it eventually happens, appears to be quite a trivial one, but for a couple of kids such as these it presents a preWy big problem: the power cuts out. Without video games to keep them entertained, they are forced to improvise and, along with the girl next door who comes over to use the oven and a pizza guy who refuses to leave without being paid, they embark on a minor adventure.

Temporada De Patos was the debut movie from Fernando Eimbcke, which, upon release, received almost unanimous praise from criTcs and filmmakers including Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men) and Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone, Pan's


Labyrinth). The reason I think it needs celebraTng is that, these few fesTvals aside, no one has seen it. It grossed approximately $155 000 at the box office, and only about $5000 of this outside of Mexico. During my three years studying film at university I have never heard a lecturer menTon it, nor met a student who has seen it. I can only suppose this is due to a failure on the part of the distributers.

And this is a real shame, because it truly is a coming-‐of-‐age tale that deserves to be regarded alongside such classics of the genre as The Breakfast Club and Stand By Me. Unlike these, however, this is no shiny Hollywood venture; this is cinema stripped to its bones, shot in starkly minimal black and white, using only four actors (none of whom are professionals), and set almost enTrely within a single flat. Comically speaking it is deadpan to the core – at Tmes it feels like Eimbcke could be a Mexican incarnaTon of Jim Jarmusch. It equally feels like a film that could sit comfortably alongside Superbad, indeed it totally succeeds in dramaTcally portraying the lives of two male youths with both humour and pathos. In terms of the lessons learnt at the end of the films 85 minute running Tme… well, some may feel that they’re not worth a feature length film, but most will understand that the things that affect the liWle lives of Duck Seasons’ humble characters are perhaps the things that maWer most. Temporada De Patos is heart-‐warming gem and makes you long for those lost, hazy, lazy days of youth.

By Alistair Gardner


Sarah Ahmad

Sarah Ahmad art work connects her and the viewer to architecture, buildings and forms. The world she creates through her drawings, is real, and yet brings fantasy, itintermingles the playful spirit in us with the forms we live in, things that exist and an

abstracted view of the same. Diverse people, cultures, their architecture, thoughts and the coming together of all in one life is what her work embodies.

Her work which is created by free hand line drawings includes abstract sculptural buildings, trains and bridges, old built houses with new age forms and a view of urban life and cityscapes. The medium is mostly black pen-ink, dry pastel and other media on paper.

The black and white in most of her art works is a depiction of colourful lands and lively cityscapes. The concept itself adds colour, thus a simple black and white palette just paints an outline to the theme.

surmritgallery.com/artists-work/sarah-ahmad.html

ISSUE 13 TRIBE MAGAZINE 10Deivis Slavinskas


Ralph Steadman is a legendary

illustrator. Famous for illustrating the

works of Hunter S Thompson, Ralph has

an instantly recognisable and distinctive

pen and ink style.

Recently, Ralph submitted 7 unpublished

illustrations for tribe to showcase. Enjoy!

ISSUE 13 TRIBE MAGAZINE 10Donna Kuhn


Back in 1984, there wasn't much to entertain an excitable 13 year old. It's hard to convey just how little there was back then, even though it seems just a short ride back in time. We live in a time of plenty entertainment wise -‐ back in 1984 the TV still finished at 1pm most nights and you had to wait until 6am and the Open University programs if you needed a further TV fix. I immersed myself in books (fiction and non-‐fiction) and music as an escape from the dull reality of suburban working class life.

Then, midway through 1984, a friend of mine told me about Dungeons and Dragons. At first I was dubious. I wasn't really into the whole sword and sorcery malarky, being firmly a die hard sci-‐fi fan -‐ I owned very few fantasy novels and I didn't like them very much. Despite my fantasy prejudices, I was persuaded to attend a game of D&D at Carl's house, a notorious spod from school. I had little to no street cred so it mattered not that I was socialising with the schools ubernerd. What unfolded that evening was, metaphorically and literally, magical. When the bickering stopped that is.

Bickering is a huge part of D&D, and probably still is. It's the drawback of playing a game that exists largely in the mind and imagination of the players. But, that very thing is also what makes D&D and the stories that unfolded as we played through the various dungeons (dungeons are the worlds in D&D and are not literally dungeons. Sometimes they are, but most times they are not) so incredibly immersive. After several 8 hour long sessions, I would leave each game buzzing with ideas and also mentally exhausted. In D&D you create a

SWORDS, ELVES AND ARGUMENTS


character, a personality that you become very attached to. You see and engage with the imagined world through the eyes of this character, and the world you are engaging with is also one that your are building and shaping -‐ you create the myths, the legends, the dialogue and storylines (although the outlines are created by the person running the game, the referee if you like, called the Dungeon Master). The Dungeon Master plays a pivotal part in the experience; he/she shapes the world, creates the mood and atmosphere, drives the storyline along, reacts to changes and provides vivid descriptions of the environment. The characters then complete the story.

What I loved so much about D&D was the way in which it engaged with the imaginative parts of my brain in a way books, videogames or films failed to do. Somehow the visual, visceral aspects of modern online fantasy games fail to activate and stimulate my imagination in quite the same way as D&D did. A good game of D&D, less the bickering, is one of the most under-‐rated, misunderstood and maligned pleasures in life. It marries story-‐telling, dialogue, character interaction,

imagination, creativity, spontaneity, and action and a way that nothing else I have experienced ever has. D&D should be celebrated more as a catalyst for creativity and as fuel for the imagination. D&D is not a passive experience, like listening to music, watching a film or reading a book, it is participatory and immersive, and each player is part of the unfolding story.

I've not played D&D since I was 15 years old, but I still remember the games, the scenarios, some of the dialogue and the storylines 25 years on. I can't say the same thing about most of the books I have read or the films I have seen. I think its time we all re-‐evaluated the merits of D&D as a creative and imagainative catalyst.

Mark ‘Oakenshield’ Doyle, bane of the Wastelands of Gggrtth


Victoria Ustinova


What inspires and motivates the work you create?

The architecture, people, the nature inspires me. My primary motivator is an inner impulse that pushes to take a pencil and embody the image matured in the head.

Can you describe where you are in your artistic career?

I am in the beginning. I always knew what I wanted to be, but just now I am ready for this. It's time to turn ideas into reality.

Can you describe your creative process? where does it start for you?

I start with a search for a surface that I see as a potential picture. Technically this is the most difficult part, all the rest appears itself.

How would describe your work? do you think it fits into a genre?

The work is my perception of the world. It’s an attempt to transmit a vision of reality in the extra dimensions by the graphic funds.

Can you offer any advice to those looking to make a career in art?

In any situation, keep self-reliance and not spare yourself.

Does all architecture inspire you or certain types? for example does the age or style impacts how much it inspires you to create?

I have favourite styles. Proportions, techniques, used means of expressiveness that inherent to them stimulate my imagination. Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, the Chicago School, theDeconstructivism. The monumental embodiment of charm.

How important, to your work, is the element of time that yourepresent through different materials?

In my opinion, the element of time is an integral part of any creative process. Author's inner sense of time and signs of actual reality where he exists are mixed and transformed so created work has its own dimension of time.

How do you intend your work to be seen? on the wall, in a book? areyou trying to reach any particular audience?

I suppose the different ways of their presentation. In the frames on the walls, as illustrations in the books, the prints and the rapports for tissues, enlarged and printed on firewalls. Yes, I’m trying.


How do you want your work to impact your audience?

I wish my work causes people’s curiosity and inspires them.

What direction do you see your work taking in the future?

The development. Addition of a motion, a volume, a scaling-up. Synthesis with the other forms of creativity.

То, что вдохновляет и мотивирует работу, которую вы создаете?

Архитектура, люди, природа вдохновляют меня. Основной мотиватор - этовнутренний импульс, который побуждает меня взять карандаш и воплотитьобраз, созревающий в голове.

Можете ли вы описать, где вы находитесь в вашей художественной карьере?

В начале. Я всегда знала, кем хочу быть, но только сейчас я готова кэтому. Пришло время превратить идеи в реальность.

Вы можете описать Ваш творческий процесс? где она начинается для вас?

Я начинаю с поисков поверхности, в которой я увижу потенциальнуюкартину. Технически это самая сложная часть, все остальное происходитсамо.

Как бы описать вашу работу? как вы думаете, она вписывается в жанре?

Мои работы - это мое восприятие мира. Попытка передать видениереальности в дополнительных измерениях графическими средствами.

Вы можете предложить какие-либо советы для тех, кто хочет сделать карьеру в искусстве?

В любой ситуации сохранять уверенность в своих силах и не жалеть себя.


Все архитектуры вдохновить вас или определенные типы? Напримерли возраст или стиль влияет на сколько это вдохновляет вас создать?

У меня есть любимые стили. Пропорции, техники, используемые средствавыразительности, которые им присущи, стимулируют мое воображение.Романский стиль, Готика, Ренессанс, Чикагская школа, Деконструктивизм.Монументальное воплощение обаяния.

Как важно, для вашей работы, это элемент времени что выпредставлять через различные материалы?

По моему мнению, элемент времени является неотъемлемой частью любоготворческого процесса. Внутреннее чувство времени автора и признакиактуальной реальности, в которой он существует, переплетаются итрансформируются таким образом, что создаваемая работа имеет своесобственное измерение времени.

Как вы намерены вашей работы, чтобы увидеть? на стене в книге? являютсяВы пытаетесь достичь какой-либо конкретной аудитории?

Я предполагаю разные пути представления моих работ. В рамах настенах, как иллюстрации в книге, принт или раппорт для ткани,увеличенными нанесенные на брандмауэры. Да, я пытаюсь.

Как вы хотите вашу работу для воздействия вашей аудитории?

Я бы хотела, чтобы мои работы вызывали у людей любопытство и вдохновляли.

Какие направления вы видите ваши работы в будущем?

Развитие. Добавление движения, объема, увеличение масштаба. Синтез сдругими формами творчества.

Interview by Hannah Lewis

ISSUE 13 TRIBE MAGAZINE 10Allicette Torres


In 1928 Leona Delcourt was to become a defining aspect of the French Surrealist movement, yet her name was almost lost forever. The renowned founder of Surrealism, Andre Breton’s semi-autobiographical work, ‘Nadja’ examines his intensive courtship of the eponymous Nadja over ten days. Though the novel bears her name, little is really explored of Nadja the woman. Her unaffected traits mirrored Breton’s definition of the surrealist mind as, “Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern" and so she became symbolic; the archetypal Surrealist image. Breton saw in her a new breed, a naturally perfect mind and ready-made vessel, carrying the fundamental ideals of surrealism; minimal self-censorship and freedom through automatism. Nadja herself, however, remains loosely sketched and vague throughout the pages of the novel, ensuring the reader remembers it is only Breton’s interpretation of her that enchants us.Breton met the beguiling young woman on the 4th October 1926, and consequently began their intense affair. She chose to call herself Nadja, "because in Russian it is the beginning of the word hope, but only the beginning.” And so Breton seemed like a beacon of hope to her, but only as they began.For many years the woman who inspired such a compulsive obsession in Breton continued to be a mystery. She was long rumored to be fantasy, a character drawn from his own mind, while the many letters she wrote to Breton remained unpublished. After decades of obscurity, Dutch author Hester Albach’s intricate research eventually led him to discover a cache of letters alongside Breton’s original manuscript of ‘Nadja’. From these he uncovered the true identity of Nadja; a young woman named Leona Delcourt. Albach found that Leona’s fraught existence was spent drifting between bars, dancehalls and the streets of Paris, subsisting upon the patronage of her admirers. He published ‘Leona, heroin du surrealism’ in 2009, however it is currently only available in French and Dutch.

The Sacrificial Muse:H o w S u r r e a l i s m b e t r ay e d L e o n a D e l c o u r t By Tilly Craig


Leona’s reality held a far greater tragedy than ‘Nadja’ alone ever revealed, for what Breton had also documented was his own hand in her mental deterioration, aged just 25.In a letter to Breton dated November 1926 she decried the early notes he had take for ‘Nadja’ as a “distorted portrait of myself.” Breton’s interest in Leona waned quickly as he realised that the qualities he had initially perceived as her guileless nature, were in fact the dark tendrils of mental illness. He began to distance himself from the ‘mad’ woman he discovered her to be, whilst her letters to him became increasingly agitated. 28th January, "You are a powerful magician, sometimes quicker than the lightning that surrounds you like a god…and I feel lost if you leave me.” 30th January, “You made me become so beautiful, André…why did you destroy the other Nadja?”On the 21st March 1927, several months after their affair had ended, Leona suffered a mental breakdown, or to Breton’s mind, “indulged herself in…eccentricities”. His complete lack of compassion exemplifies that she remained to him no more than a creative process, a means to an end. After being taken to a psychiatric hospital, she was diagnosed with various mental disorders, notably “polymorphous psychic troubles”, depression and anxiety. She remained institutionalized until her death, 14 years later from ‘wasting neoplastic’, or cancer. There is no record of Breton ever visiting Delcourt during her confinement. Breton wrote, “I do not suppose there can be much difference for Nadja between the inside of a sanitarium and the outside.” Perhaps these words eased his conscience, for he had committed the ultimate betrayal. He had allowed this lost, broken girl to believe her fragility was power, whilst never giving her the stability and support she needed to survive in the real world. He drained her spirit, immortalizing in ‘Nadja’ the vulnerability that he mistook for beauty, before discarding the broken remnants of her struggling physicality to fade into the dark corners of an asylum. Surrealism danced the line between insanity and idiosyncrasy, with Dali’s claim that, “There is only one difference between a madman and I. I am not mad." This fondness for eccentricities and affectations allowed the Surrealist set to play at insanity, whilst still keeping a safe distance from clinical insanity. Well-articulated madness appealed to the pioneering Surrealists, a loosening of the reins caused satisfying confusion within the stuffy, refined upper circles of 1920s Paris. Madness without limits, without control, remained firmly the vulgar territory of mental wards. Leona stumbled all too easily over to that frightening, unfashionable side. Her fall from grace was as swift as her rise, but weeks prior to her breakdown she gathered the strength and clarity of thought to call out Breton for the callous cruelty his creative circle displayed in one of her final letters to him, “I hate your game, and your clique.”


Vanessa Louzon


T H E F I S H

H E A R T E D

B R I D E

Effervescent Presents


A kiss will bring

her back to life.

That's how it works in

stories like

these.

Some say she had i t owed, Rapunze l the Fa i r . Beauty

beyond compare? That was bound to cause t roub le .


Nobody cared for Rapunzel's opinion, nobody

needed her conversation; she was just a bauble.

Some say she had i t owed, Rapunze l the Fa i r . Beauty

beyond compare? That was bound to cause t roub le .


A salty sea-

heart on ice

for years, brought back

to earth to

save my love .

I t 's perfect .


The

T h e F i s h He a r t e d B r i d e , a d a r k f a i r y t a l e f o r a d u l t s a n d

b r a v e c h i l d r e n , r u n s f r om t h e 1 3 t h t o t h e 1 7 t h F e b r u a r y a t T h e Na t i o n a l Ma r i n e Aqu a r i um , P l ymou t h .

T i c k e t s a v a i l a b l e f o rm t h e Aqu a r i um o r v i s i t fi s h h e a r t e d b r i d e . c o . u k

P h o t o g r a p h y b y Dom Moo r e


tribe:WRITE

“to cr

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a sense

of a

clos

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; to g

ive us

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arroganc

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confi

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Alista

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Issue2

Contents

Pg. 102 A Michael by Sam Walker-Smart

Pg. 104. Shadows of a Distant Morning by Peter

Ike Amadi

Pg. 110. Come Together by Alistair Gardiner

Pg. 114 Twenty-Seven by Luke Prater


A M i c h a e l "Excuse me, are you Michael?"

He looked up from his work, annoyed to be stopped mid glorious sentence.

She was tall and slim and possessed a smile that he was sure had won some hearts in the past. Her hair,

cropped in the style of a silent movie star, shone like in that one shampoo commercial that always

plagued his television. She was older but not much so and her eyes revealed a kindness so often absent

in city dwellers.

He paused.

Could he be a Michael?

After all what was she expecting?

A date? Business associate? Industry insider with some juicy, career ending gossip? The possibilities were

endless but still the fact remained that she knew not Michael's appearance. Why couldn't he be a

Michael? Maybe they would hit it off? Fill the void in each other’s lives and truly complete one another.

They would holiday in the Alps and, in time, possess a charming cottage, with its own herb garden

naturally. Their children would understand the importance of reading, never know that taste of an E

number and behave like angels. What if she didn't want kids? This thought warmed him more.

But the lie, oh the lie.

How long could he maintain this double life? How long before the she discovered his true face...the face

of a Patrick. The pressure would build; the nights would become endless sweat soaked affairs. So much

would have to be concealed. He knew he didn't have the stomach for that. Not in the long run.

It would be just like those stories you read in the morning paper, 'Ruined Businessman Takes Own Life

in Garage', crushed by the secret, desperate to maintain the lifestyle his trophy misses was accustomed

to. No, not this chump, he wasn't going to lay down for such foolishness.

He placed his pen down and pleasantly smiled.

"No I'm not Michael, sorry"

"Ok, thank you" she walked away slightly embarrassed, heels tip tapping with urgency.

"Lucky escape" thought Patrick sipping his coffee, "Lucky escape".

Pen touched paper once more.

Sam Walker-Smart


The scorpion emerged from the ragged crack in the filthy, cobweb-strewn ceiling boards and crawled down the faded walls to the floor. The room was dark, the pale curtain of dusk covering the remains of the day like an anonymous corpse. The distant hills, visible through the stained glass louvers of the only window in the room, had already swallowed up the reddish-yellow orb of the sinking sun.

The heat was unbearable. It had refused to dissipate with the demise of the day and it promised to make the night a long and miserable one, not that there would be any respite in the morning anyway. There was an endless hum of monstrous mosquitoes, endlessly hovering in the still air hungering for the copper taste of human blood. The night was their day; the flies had already retired for the night.

The scorpion moved around the dusty floors as if confused. Maybe it was looking for a cool spot to escape the relentless heat. But maybe it had another agenda. It could be looking for a place to hide from the woman.

The woman lived in the room. She left in the mornings and came back in the evenings. She hardly ever stayed a full day unless it was Sunday. Then she would lie on the tattered mattress and stare at the ceiling for hours.

The woman had wiped out the scorpion's family both nuclear and extended. Mum, Dad, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and even her own children. The scorpion was left alone.

Of course there were other families, other communities that abounded in the scorched rocks outside. The woman could not kill them all. But all hers were gone. She was alone.

Maybe the scorpion desires revenge. Does she feel emotion? In her small, arachnid mind, is there hate? If a scorpion is cornered and sees that its destruction is inevitable, it will commit suicide with its own sting. It can feel terror, enough of it to push it to take its own life. Is terror not an emotion?

Maybe she desires revenge. If she can feel fear then maybe she can feel grief. And hate.

Shadows Of A Distant Morning


The scorpion is not designed to kill. It’s poison is meant to cause extreme pain. A young man had once described the sting of a scorpion after being jabbed in the right heel with its lethal tail:

"It was like someone stabbed my foot with a knife and was driving it up, through my body, straight to my brain."

Another scorpion in the same room had stung a tough lady, a friend of the woman. She had to be carried on the woman's back and she screamed all the way to the hospital. Not cried but screamed.

Pain. That is the scorpion's merchandise. But she could not kill. Not unless the woman was stung on the heart.

There is a type of scorpion that people said could kill. It is known as the black scorpion.

A man once said that if a black scorpion stung you; you would fall flat on the ground, paralyzed by the pain. But a black scorpion was shy and rarely showed his face, which was just as well for the woman.

The scorpion climbed the woman's mattress and crawled under the tattered, emaciated pillow. Maybe when the woman laid her head to sleep, she would crawl out, climb her hair to her ear and…or maybe down to her neck, just above her throbbing pulse.

The scorpion would wait and see how the evening would favor her.

It wasn't long before a key could be heard turning in the lock. As the door opened, a sudden rush of cooler air gave brief relief to the oppressive heat.

The long shadow of the woman stretched into the room. She did not enter immediately but paused as if to sniff the air before coming in and leaving the door open. There was a click as a switch was pressed and the room was bathed in the harsh yellow light from the 60 watt bulb that hung like a condemned man from the ceiling. The woman stood in the center of the room and despite the light; the room seemed to darken the more, as if she was a black hole in space sucking in

Shadows Of A Distant Morning


everything in its path.

In quick, automatic movements she began to strip, tossing the discarded clothes on the mattress. Her sweat soaked blouse landed on the pillow. The scorpion stirred.

The woman was tall and seemed carved from ebony. Her body was hard and sinewy, her taut muscles rippled with each movement, her jet black skin slick with sweat. Her breasts were pointed and firm, two ripe pears tipped with black stones begging to be ravished by a hungry mouth. Her navel was deep, her hips wide. Her legs looked like they belonged to an antelope with buttocks that remained unbelievably hard despite their size.

She could not be called pretty, yet her stony face with the high, sharp cheekbones had an attractiveness that could not be denied. Her black eyes had the watchfulness of a natural predator, portals into a soul completely bereft of pity or tenderness.

Her kinky, black hair was cropped close to the skull giving her the look of a pagan image. She was a being that radiated a sensual malevolence, the sophisticated beauty of a black widow spider.

With the grace of a big cat she picked up her bath kit and left the room. Moments later running water could be heard and after that a harshly sung hymn.

A few minutes passed.

A strange figure slipped into the room. The watcher had arrived.

The watcher had watched the woman for months. Every evening he would hide in the shadows and watch the woman's window.

That window was more precious to him than any television set could ever be. He would crouch in the dry, brittle bushes outside and watch her every move. He had watched her undress as he had done every evening for the past three months.

He had discovered the window by accident one evening on his way home from another miserable day at work. He had been forlorn, morose and angry, the emotions stirring up his brain in a lethal mix that would sooner or later push him over the edge.

As he passed the window at some distance he heard her singing. The song was an old Christian hymn and her voice was not exactly angelic. But she sang from the heart and he could feel her contentment. That contentment contrasted so deeply with his frustration.


He stopped to look and suddenly saw her. She was stark naked and fresh from a bath and she was vigorously rubbing herself dry with a well-worn towel. Her face was not pretty. It was too hard. Her eyes were like chips of granite, her nose flat and upturned and her mouth when not singing would be turned perpetually down at the corners. But all these features only served to entice him more. The sight of her stirred a deep longing he had rarely felt before. He sought a word to describe her...

Raw.

She did not know she was being watched and carried on in careless abandon. It was only when she eventually switched off the light that he reluctantly moved on. His previous storm of emotions had dispelled and he felt refreshed. The sight of her had rejuvenated him. He trudged off home to his borderline existence, an emaciated ghost of a man in a dirty white caftan. Ever since that night he was hooked.

There were many times he wanted to stop watching her but he came back every night. The days became too long as he waited for nightfall. Soon he was as desperate as a drug addict trying to get his next fix. The watcher knew she was driving him mad.

He had made enquiries about her. He was told she avoided men. She was always alone. She was a sociopath.

He had tried meeting her once and was snubbed viciously. He had nearly gone mad. But tonight he would reason with her. He would convince her that he had fallen in love with her.

He lay on the mattress and began to wait. The woman normally took notoriously long baths. He picked up the wet blouse from the pillow and held it to his nose. He breathed in the stink of her sweat, savoring it like the smell of a fine stew. Immediately he was aroused.

He sighed.

Suddenly he felt the presence of his life long enemy: doubt. Supposing she lashed out at him? Accused him of trying to rape her? The disgrace would be terrible. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.


The scorpion crawled out from under the pillow and got entangled in the watcher's thick, curly hair. She didn't struggle much.

The watcher lost his confidence and decided to leave. He convinced himself he was just content to watch her. He got up hurriedly and left the room. He went back to his usual outpost.

The woman came back into the room busily drying her body with her godforsaken towel. She began to sing another hymn. She knew dozens of them by heart from her days as a choirgirl. That was millennia ago when she still had her innocence. Her innocence was long deceased.

A hideous scream pierced the hot, choking air and cut short her singing.

She froze, her hand flying to her mouth, goose pimples breaking out over her skin. Her heart was filled with fear as she hastily switched off the light and went to the window to peer outside.

She couldn't see anything. She was terrified of leaving her room to investigate. She convinced herself that if she just went to bed and stayed still it would be okay.

But the morning was a long way away and she knew she would never sleep. She would be suspicious of every shadow she saw that night.

Until she saw those brought by the rising sun.

Peter Ike Amadi

Illustration by Eva Dolgyra


Come Together…The silence was almost tangible, heavy with musings. Before us was a

table littered with half empty wine bottles, empty crisp packets, cake,

bits of screwed up paper and notebooks. It was about ten o’clock at

night and we were huddled around a table in the Writer’s Room at the

University of Warwick. Two of our group were outside smoking. The

rest of us were deep in thought having just heard the first reading of a

brand new poem entitled Batman that was apparently “still in the

stages of drafting”. Some were simply mulling it over in our heads,

enjoying what it had evoked only moments ago; others were preparing

their comments and advice about what needed changing. The poet in

question may well have been nervous about the critical onslaught they

were about to endure, but outwardly they looked calm and relaxed.

And rightly so.

The above describes an average meeting of The John Hurt Kerfuffle, the

collective of poets, dramatists and novelists of which I am a part of.

The group was formed late in 2011 after one of the first lectures we

had in the ‘Practice of Poetry’ – the module that brought us together.

Our lecturer had essentially demanded of us that we form a group that

meet on a regular basis outside of university hours to share our work

with each other. He told us that the group must be made up only of

students on the ‘Practice of Poetry’ course at the University of

Warwick and that the collective must be elitist, snobbish and totally

exclusive. This may give the impression of arrogance, intolerance

even… however this is far from the truth. The purpose of this

specification was to make the group as tight-knit as possible; to create


a sense of a closed community; to give us, not arrogance, but confidence. It

became clear that what he intended was that we were to make our literary

blunders before this group of trusted individuals and use their criticism to

better ourselves as writers.

Of course, the Kerfuffle is not the only group of its kind at Warwick – almost

anyone who’s taken a course in the creative writing department of Warwick

in the past few years will have heard of the Ugly Cousins Club. Like the

Kerfuffle, they used to meet up on a regular basis around campus with a few

bottles of wine and share poems, flash and short fiction, and improvised

theatre. Most of them had graduated before we were even students, but

stories of their Slam Poetry Performance sessions still drift around Warwick’s

writing scene. If you were to search for The Ugly Cousins Club with Google

you would find nothing; the group themselves did very little beyond the

confines of University life. This, however, was not their aim.

There are many writing collectives who do make their mark in history: The

Beats, for example, who were based in San Francisco in the 50s and included

well-known writers Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. Prior to them, one

can look back to 1920s Paris and to the Literary Expatriates, whose company

included Hemmingway, Joyce and Pound. Look back even further and note

that Wordsworth wrote with Coleridge and between them they began the

Romantic Era in the late 18th Century. And this is by no means confined to

just literature: examples from other artistic practices include The Surrealists,

the Movie Brats of New Hollywood, The Dutch Masters etc… And so

throughout history, collectives have come together and succeeded in

changing the cultural landscapes of their chosen art.

But this is all largely beside the point. The aim of writing collectives like The

Ugly Cousins and The John Hurt Kerfuffle was never to achieve fame or a place

in history. The benefits of being part of a group like the Kerfuffle are both

more intimate and modest – but just as important. First and foremost is the

company it provides. Writing can be an intensely lonely activity; locked up in

a room, really sweating over sentences or even individual words. Being part

of a writing collective forces you from your cave on a regular basis and into a

welcome babble (probably all suffering similar psychoses and equally

pleased to be relieved of them).


The second benefit is of course the feedback that you receive during these

meetings. Good feedback is hard to come by for a writer. Friends and

family tend to use infuriating phrases like “very good” or “I really like it”.

These comments are usually born out of affection and a desire not to hurt

your feelings and they can often be translated as “I didn’t really get it” or

“I’m simply proud that you’ve actually written a full length play”. Support

of this kind is, of course, beyond value, but it does nothing to improve

your writing. Showing your work to a large group of writers, whom you

trust and who understand the difficulty of getting decent feedback, means

that you get the criticism you need in order to accomplish what you really

set out to with your piece.

Spending an evening both giving and receiving such criticism can also

lead to something further - possibly the most sought after of experiences

for a writer : inspiration. Regular meetings with your collective will keep

you on your toes and give you an opportunity to discuss your work in

depth with people who will actually listen. This can (and will) lead you to

develop and cultivate your work extensively and/or unleash thoughts

trapped deep in your subconscious that offer up fresh and exciting

projects.

And if this intrigues your fellow writers, other doors may open in the form

of collaboration. There is nothing more exciting than finding another

writer who shares your interests or passions, and to collectively work on a

writing project can be rewarding beyond any kind of individual work.

This leads me to the final objective of any meeting – enjoyment. These

meetings would be pointless if you left them without the buzz and energy

provided by a night of friends, wine and art. Indeed, the scene I described

at the beginning of this feature ended with us throwing ourselves out into

the night, filled with fresh creativity and the pleasure of having shared the

evening with the words and ideas of such an exciting group of people.

I’d rather that than sweating over a sonnet any day.

Alistair Gardiner

Illustration by Kathryn Mackrory


Twenty-SevenIf death is an absence of life, at twenty-seven, I was alleywayed alongside. Lying, unafraid,catching a fox’s bark – that eerie cry forcarnal comfort – around the copse across the track.

I wasn’t to be taken back to Earth and Sky;neither was the fox. Morning light split my faceand drove all nocturnes down.

Cobain’s split by double-barrel, self-prescribedfor the deepdarksink; Jimi, Janis, Morrison’sby uppers, downers and bangdownupside vomit.

Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven.

Read the news today (oh boy). Amy Winehouse, twenty-seven.Rolling out and unfolding the appled silverback, announcingonline, with every ounce of gravity cyberspace allowed -

‘I survived twenty-seven’.

Luke Prater

tribe issue 13

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