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Izabella Scott

IZABELLA SCOTT is an editor at The White Review.



Articles Available Online


Shola von Reinhold’s ‘LOTE’

Book Review

September 2020

Izabella Scott

Book Review

September 2020

To read Shola von Reinhold’s ornate, multi-layered novel LOTE (2020) is to encounter a baroque mind. It tells the story of a queer Black...

Art Review

November 2019

Actually, the Dead are Not Dead

Izabella Scott

Art Review

November 2019

During Bergen Assembly’s opening days, I am asked to attend a number of mock funerals, including one for a...

Above: the art for Togawa’s debut album Tamahime Sama   I’m standing outside a convenience store in Shin-Ōkubo, dressed as a stag beetle   For a while now, my friend M and I have been working on a film made up of various short snippets, stitched together to recreate the experience of flipping channels in a very strange hotel, or floating through the galaxy and tuning into different alien frequencies Today we have been shooting footage for one such snippet: a karaoke video to a song by the artist Jun Togawa, called ‘Mushi no onna’ [Insect Woman] M is a seasoned filmmaker who has come up with most of the ideas for the various snippets, but this is one that I’ve dreamed up – an idea, in fact, that I’ve been wanting to realise for some time Living in Japan, karaoke has become one of my favourite pastimes, and I’ve spent a lot of time watching karaoke videos – marvelling at the various features that define the genre and, particularly, at the peculiar brand of wistfulness that is a hallmark Now we are trying to reproduce this wistfulness within an insect context, creating a karaoke video for a song I have become obsessed with The video tells the story of a boy and a beetle who were once together but are now apart and pining for one another, each continually passing the other by without noticing   To transform myself into a beetle, I have constructed a big, horned headdress out of cardboard, painted brown, with an open hole in the centre into which my face slots M is wearing a purple sweatshirt and shorts, socks and sandals on his feet He is also carrying a four-foot long insect-catching net, which I bought at a DIY shop where I live in Osaka and carried down on the bullet train to Tokyo Travelling with it, wedging it into the overhead luggage rack, along with the oversized headdress wrapped up in a bin bag, earned me lots of strange glances   What I love about filming with M is all the improvisation We decide little in advance about the shots we

Contributor

September 2015

Izabella Scott

Contributor

September 2015

IZABELLA SCOTT is an editor at The White Review.

Book Review

August 2019

Jordy Rosenberg’s ‘Confessions of the Fox’

Izabella Scott

Book Review

August 2019

It’s hot as fuck, said the friend who handed me Confessions of the Fox, a faux-memoir set in eighteenth-century...

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Echo Chamber

Art Review

November 2017

Izabella Scott

Art Review

November 2017

A lattice of diamonds and crosses, painted onto a 21-metre long wall at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, scatters my gaze. Artist Navine G....
Hot Rocks

feature

November 2016

Izabella Scott

feature

November 2016

‘We have received around 150 of them,’ Massimo Osanna tells me, as we peer into four small crates stuffed full of dusty freezer bags....
False shadows

Art

August 2016

Izabella Scott

Art

August 2016

The ‘beautiful disorder’ of the Forbidden City and the Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Perfection and Light) was first noted by the Jesuit painter Jean Denis...

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poetry

May 2015

Europe

Kirill Medvedev

TR. Keith Gessen

poetry

May 2015

I’m riding the bus with a group of athletes from some provincial town they’re going to a competition in...

Interview

Issue No. 10

Interview with Jacques Rancière

Rye Dag Holmboe

Interview

Issue No. 10

Jacques Rancière came into prominence in 1968 when, under the auspices of his teacher Louis Althusser, he contributed to...

fiction

April 2015

Heavy

Chris Newlove Horton

fiction

April 2015

It is a two lane road somewhere in North America. The car is pulled onto the shoulder with the...

 

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