ON MY RADAR

Covering film, art, literature, tv, and a few things I probably shouldn't admit to...

“ON MY RADAR” IS A RUBRIC THAT LOGS MY RECENT CULTURAL EXPOSURE.

None of these are endorsements. It’s also not a ranking. Just what crossed my path - and what didn’t fully leave.

Especially after seeing people start to consciously consume media again it appears as relevant as ever. Hopefully the “performative intellectualism” is not just a trend. I, for one, am yearning for more consciousness, intention and attention to detail.

I’ll be covering film, art, tv, music, literature and perhaps also some things I should not admit to…

1. KINKY GIRLS FROM BIG CITIES “1$t” (MUSIC)
   

   Kinky girls from big cities is an off-platform band circulating through radio, files, and word of mouth. Intentionally hard to find, even harder to place. They are not on streaming platforms. Not trying to be. Their website sounds pretty pornographic but once on it, it feels like a non updated, lost place in the whole World Wide Web. It’s inspired by myspace and band forums and also what inspired my Tumblr desktop layout. Circling back to my intention point earlier: I think this rock band specifically is as intentional as it gets nowadays.

   You can listen to them here:

   www.kinkygirlsfrombigcities.com
   

   

   (IMAGE FROM KINKY GIRLS FROM BIG CITIES)
   
   

2. PROZAC NATION BY ELISABETH WURTZEL (1994) (LITERATURE)
   
   Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel is a first-person account of depression before it learned how to behave online. Messy, exposed, and difficult to distance yourself from.

   This one deserves a trigger warning: this was well before wellness language or damage control.

   Personally, I think that’s part of the reason why it is missing in today’s conversation about mental health because it has to fulfill the following points: be educational, be responsible, be disclaiming or be outward facing (“this might help you”). Prozac Nation is inward facing to the point of suffocation. It also doesn’t really give you a “usable identity”. Skins (UK) for instance, gives you archetypes. The Virgin Suicides gives you mystery. Plath gives you tragedy-as-genius. Elisabeth Wurtzel gives you a woman who is: brilliant, cruel, needy, entitled, suffering - and aware of it all. There is no clean way to turn that all that into an identity or “aesthetic” without flattening her.
   

3. SHORT-TERM, BUT LONG-TERM BY 550BC (PRINT PUBLICATION)

   
   The publication is a forensic visual archive compiled from dating-app profiles used by IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers during operations in Gaza in 2024.

   Over 300 images are collected, redacted, and recontextualized to examine how war imagery circulates casually, intimately, and largely unchecked.
   

   

   
   Short-term, but long-term really captures how war imagery no longer just arrives through official channels, but through casual, intimate platforms. The personal images, in that dating app context, document how easily violence slips into normalcy when filtered through intimacy and platforms built for (cheap) desire. The archive feels immediate, but its implications aren’t.

   

   
   (IMAGES FROM 550BC)
   

4. SILENT HILL 2 BY KONAMI COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT TOKYO (2001)

   (GAMING)

   
   Silent Hill 2 is a psychological horror game where atmosphere does most of the work.

   Less about monsters, more about guilt, memory, and what refuses to stay buried. That naturally feels very different in a culture where horror & gore exist to shock. And obviously also nostalgic. (Perhaps I should disclaim that gamers would not consider me a gamer and I rarely find the time. So in no way can I give an expert opinion).
   
   In the end of the day, it reads as horror but, to me, it felt closer to a study of depression and rumination through metaphors and symptoms that don’t just disappear once they are identified.
   

5. HIGH FIDELITY (2020) (TV)
   
   High Fidelity from 2020 is a TV show adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel of the same title re-centered around a record store owner, - Rob played by Zoë Kravitz - in contemporary Brooklyn.

   The series follows romantic fixation, breakups, and a pretty relatable way of self-mythologizing through lists, music, and constant interior narration.

   Set against a culture of playlists, references, and hyper-articulated feelings, intimacy becomes something that’s curated as much as it’s lived. Rob remembers relationships, reorders, and replays them. Less as experiences than as personal archives.
   
   What the show captures beautifully, is how self-awareness doesn’t necessarily produce emotional movement. Insight can become a loop, taste a shield, and the brilliant narration replaces resolution. In this version, obsession isn’t framed as immaturity but as a coping mechanism. (Note: I also really just enjoy looking at Zoë Kravitz).
   

6. THE STROKES (MUSIC)

   
   Another band. Who would’ve thought. They are not even niche or anything and I remember listening to them as a kid as well. Back then I used to think: ‘The lead singer (Julian Casablancas) definitely was a public mental health risk to any girl he got involved with’. Now I think ‘real’.

   
   His voice sounds like someone who didn’t really mean to hurt anyone - which somehow makes it worse. The sound is detached yet self-aware. Slightly ashamed but still going to do it again. It’s not really supposed to be romantic. Not to a sane person anyway. It’s like emotional aftermath. Missed calls. Bad timing. Emotional negligence dressed up as apathy. Cigarette smoke and regret. And I know somewhere out there is a girl who thought she was gonna be the exception.
   

7. SEDITION MAGAZINE ISSUE 04 (PINT PUBLICATION)

   
   Sedition Magazine was an independent fashion magazine that’s gone quiet, not forgotten…

   Inactive for years. I still reference like it never really left.
   
   As an independent writer/blogger (I clearly don’t like labels) I love and respect independent publication. Especially today (everybody scream in unison “print is dying”). Well, the 2021 issue, and those that came before, are just that: in their own words “made in Los Angeles, CA - and put together using paper, glue, scissors, and computers. It’s something we make because we love making things” .
   

   

   
   

   (IMAGE FROM SEDITION.COM)
   

8. DAVID LYNCH EXHIBITION @ PACE GALLERY IN BERLIN (ART EXHIBITION)
   
   Absurd art from the king of the cinema of the absurd himself. Small and intimate setting. Go early and on week days. If you’re unemployed, that is.

   
   After viewing the exhibit - and what follows is a direct quote from my private journal - I sat down at the café that belonged to the gallery space (Die Tankstelle, ZEIT-Café), got an overpriced tea from the overly friendly barista. While looking at Lynch’s work that consisted of photographs, film, light installations (he made some pretty cool lamps) & multimedia paintings, I overheard a lady who presumably worked at the gallery tell a middle aged couple that David Lynch had a “happy childhood” and “no trauma”. The implication was: “how can someone produce something this… grotesque, beautiful (those are not mutually exclusive), but grotesque and have had a regular childhood?” How can one come up with these fever dreams of absurdity, the violence, the humor - all of which are very trauma coded - and not have suffered? It goes against what many people believe to be an unspoken rule or perhaps better phrasing: the age old question: Do pain and suffering validate art? It appears to me, as though the tortured ones usually happen to create the most fantastic, incredible, grotesque, scary, fucking amazing shit you’ve seen, heard, touched, tasted and most importantly felt. Even if you don’t get it. And perhaps Lynch was fucked in the head too. In his own way. Who knows. Or maybe that’s something I need to tell myself to remain comfortable in this environment I have created for myself.

   
   The journal entry ends here.

   The silver-lining is I stole an almost completely destroyed poster advertising the exhibition across the street. And also that I never stop looking for one.

   

   (IMAGES ALL TAKEN BY ME, FIND MORE HERE)
   
   That’s it for now. Hope you enjoy this rubric. Leave a nice comment if you did. Or don’t. I can’t tell you what to do.