Editorial notes

Miserable Miracle
A.X. Ledesma

Around 13 years ago, a friend of mine shared a bizarre video called ‘BongBong LRT Speech (w subtitles)’, featuring a man on the LRT reciting a largely continuous monologue in a mixture of English, Filipino, fragments of broken Spanish, and unintelligible gibberish. He is interrupted twice. The first pause seems to be prompted by a security guard asking him not to disturb the other passengers. His silence lasts for a few seconds before his rant continues. The second disruption takes on the form of a threat.

Chen Di: Cyclone Complex – On Messy Credit and Foiled Realities
Sanjita Majumder

Inside a humming sonic sphere woven by bird and insect noise, the audience of Chen Di’s recent video installation find themselves hovering a a curious gathering. There is a newly painted, pseudo-classical Chinese pavilion in the artist’s hometown and four older women. We witness intensifying signs of an upcoming storm seemingly summoned by the women through speech and ritual.

Yelling at Clouds: On Musée D’Orsay’s First Foray Into NFTs
Arielle Acosta

There’s this great meme from The Simpsons that features a cartoon newspaper clipping with an image of the character Abe, Homer Simpson’s elderly father, angrily shaking his fist at a fluffy white cloud against a flat, blue background. The headline next to the image reads: “Old Man Yells at Cloud”. A few weeks ago, standing in Musée D’Orsay and wincing at exhibition text, I found myself conjuring the image of Abe Simpson and his troublesome cloud in my mind’s eye.

Now is the Time of Monsters: the exhibition that never was
Amina Berdin and Vittoria Martinotti

It’s 2020, Amina Berdin and Vittoria Martinotti are queuing at the Goldsmiths’ library cafe, discussing the next steps for their upcoming exhibition Now is the Time of Monsters at EnclaveLab, the first solo show by artist Stella Cade in London. Flash forward to 2024: the show never materialized due to the pandemic.  The following conversation between Amina and Vittoria addresses how the two dealt with the exhibition’s cancellation and how this experience shaped their young curatorial aspirations.