No sleep. Bus. Club, another club. Plane. Next place. The activities of Lady Gaga’s now oft-quoted On the Record interview seem like a hazy utopia. Restless days of constant partying are over, for now, with PCRs replacing the LCR. Sleep is in excess, and clubbing is replaced with walking. The peak of entertainment? The local…
Arts
Visions of Paradise: Michael Armitage at the Royal Academy
The historic square is lined with a Victorian dream of modernity where chemistry, physics, medicine, history, and art neatly coexist. Entering, you duck past the sciences, avoid the history, as much as possible, and head straight for art. Guarded not only by large wooden doors, hidden amongst 17th century archways, the entrance to the gallery…
Climate Change, News
Sustainable Coffee Offered on UEA Campus
Coffee is that vital substance coursing through the heart of UEA. Over 35,000 cups of the stuff is sold to students and staff on campus every year. Stumbling out of a 4-hour long lab? Double espresso, please. Haven’t finished any of the set reading for the seminar starting in 10 minutes? A large mocha, extra…
Music
Heaven To A Tortured Mind: a year with Yves Tumor
It seems apt that Heaven To A Tortured Mind should have been released just over a year ago. In that time, the world has had to come to terms with the fractured realities of COVID, each of us searching for a way through the rugged landscapes of inequity, vaccine nationalism, and government incompetence. Tortured minds,…
Fashion
A Lacquer of Shame
The theme was ‘60s; my costume was gaudy. Wearing a floral shirt, long white flares, and an extravagant amount of glitter, I spent the night dancing with friends. Lighting up my nails was a sloppily-painted mix of dayglo yellow and fluorescent pink. My glasses? Rose-tinted, of course. Looking back this was a night that changed…
Arts
Art in the anthropocene
Plastic floods our oceans, concrete accumulates beneath our feet, and carbon weighs down on us from above. This is the new world of materials that we live in. Welcome to the Anthropocene. Popularised by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in the early 2000s, the Anthropocene represents a new layer in the geological strata and denotes…
Books, UEA Live
UEA Live: An Emptiness That Hurts, In Conversation With Tsitsi Dangarembga
Filmmaker, playwright, director, and Booker Prize-shortlisted author. To this list of accolades Tsitsi Dangarembga can now add International Chair of Creative Writing for UEA’s world-renowned Creative Writing MA. It was with great anticipation, therefore, that Dangarembga joined Jean McNeil, Professor of Creative Writing at UEA, and Canongate’s Editor-at-Large Ellah Wakatama to discuss her expansive body…
Science
The Anthropocene: A New and Contested Concept
All around us the planet is dying – and humans are responsible. In fact, the influence that we are having on the global environment is so great that it has been suggested that we have moved into a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Coming from the Greek words for human (‘anthropos’) and new (‘cene’), this…
Books
“There is nothing”: the need for LGBTQ+ representation in fiction
I chose it, if I’m honest, for its size. Sitting in a quiet coffee shop in Valencia, sheltered from the midday sun, I opened one of the few books written in English that I could find in a nearby bookshop – Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. Sipping an iced coffee, I began to read. Hours…
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