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Amber Husain

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, The Believer, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. She is the author of Replace Me, to be published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.



Articles Available Online


Slouching Towards Death

Book Review

July 2021

Amber Husain

Book Review

July 2021

In January, a preview excerpt in The New Yorker of Rachel Kushner’s essay collection The Hard Crowd (2021) warned us that this might turn...

Book Review

August 2020

Natasha Stagg’s ‘Sleeveless’

Amber Husain

Book Review

August 2020

‘The thong is centimetres closer to areas of arousal,’ writes Natasha Stagg in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York,...

A twilit bedroom Silence Ceiling view of the base of a hyper-extended bed—the length of a catwalk Slow pan of ruffled bedsheets in close-up—magnified sheets like an Arctic mountain range Shitty camera quality—that of CCTV or a sex tape, colours drained Zoom out Slow tracking shot reveals one by one, as in a Tarkovsky film, a series of sleeping faces—silent apparitions of celebrities—Taylor Swift—Kanye West—Kim Kardashian—eyelids shut, lips loose, mouths ajar—a slumbering parade of pop royalty—not in their usual livery but nude—trashily nude—classically nude Most of the body parts—arms and torsos and necks—are purpled with tattoos Most of the nipples—black or pink—are pierced A pink Caucasian cunt in extreme close-up Blackout   ‘At once both superficial and deep,’ a man’s voice intones—Kanye West’s We fade up on Kanye, wearing a silver jacket, sat in a swivel chair at a mixing desk being interviewed by journalist Zane Lowe ‘Both deep as a canyon and superficial as a razor blade,’ Kanye says, eyes wild, head dipped ‘So, you think you’re pushing the boat out?’ Lowe asks ‘I’ve reached a point in my life,’ Kanye answers loudly—as drums begin a 4/4 beat—’where my Truman Show boat has hit the painting’ Freeze-frame close-up of Kanye’s face, mouth agape—an oil painting filter is now applied to Kanye’s facial image—bass drum and hi-hat kicking—and now all at once a synthetic accordion and descant recorder come in doubling a jaunty melody—the freeze-frame of Kanye’s face cuts for a split-second to an image of Freddy Kruger—then black—and Kanye’s rap enters:   For all my Southside niggas that know me best I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex Why? I made that bitch famous   A glittering legend flashes up on the screen:   ☆ FAMOUS ☆ BY ♫ ‘KANYE WEST’ ♫   ♦   Shoulder to shoulder, half concealed by the sheets, half revealed by the sheets, in that enormous bed they lie, the celebrity bodies in Kanye West’s ‘Famous’ video And lie in more senses than one, all the bodies being at once hyper-real and hyper-fake, seemingly real yet actually prosthetic But, once become an image, isn’t everything real?

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall,...

On Having No Skin: Nan Goldin’s Sirens

Art Review

January 2020

Amber Husain

Art Review

January 2020

The feeling of drug-induced euphoria could be strips of gauze between beautiful fingers. Or a silver slinky sent down a torso by its own...
In Defence of Dead Women

Essay

November 2018

Amber Husain

Essay

November 2018

The memorial for the artist was as inconclusive as her work, or anybody’s life. Organised haphazardly on Facebook by one of her old friends,...

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feature

January 2011

Futures Past: Monumental Memorials of Modern Berlin

Leila Peacock

feature

January 2011

Cities display a worship of history in the monuments and memorials that they choose to erect, through which the...

Interview

November 2012

Interview with Simon Critchley

John Douglas Millar

Interview

November 2012

Over the last twenty years Simon Critchley has produced a series of elegant works of political and cultural theory....

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with Marina Warner

Elizabeth Dearnley

Interview

Issue No. 1

At the beginning of From the Beast to the Blonde, her study of fairy tales and their tellers, Marina...

 

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