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Rose McLaren

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.



Articles Available Online


Talk Into My Bullet Hole

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July 2015

Rose McLaren

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July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Oh, I don’t...

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May 2014

Art Does Not Know a Beyond: On Karl Ove Knausgaard

Rose McLaren

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May 2014

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has an oddly medieval form: a cycle, composed of six auto-biographical books about the...

During a performance of A View From Elsewhere (2019), Toronto-born artist Sin Wai Kin wore a floor length gown with matching evening gloves As the fantasy in three acts unfolded, one side of their mouth transformed into a smirk The performance was characterised by an unapologetic exhaustion as Sin Wai Kin lip-synced over a provocative track about the demands of the audiences’ gaze: ‘She’s here… So, go on, look at her’   Sin Wai Kin, formerly known as Victoria Sin, identifies as non-binary Their performances ply apart femininity in order to expose gender as an elaborate social construct – a comedic opera of many composite parts, reliant on myth, performance and spectatorship    In their latest work, a film titled A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021), influenced by Cantonese opera, Sin Wai Kin toys with – and queers – tradition They appear as several characters at once, presenting interpretations of Cantonese operatic archetypes One such character is The Universe, a reinterpretation of the Zing (warrior) role, appearing in a diamanté belt with the letters ‘R’, ‘E’, ‘A’, ‘L’ brandished across the waist – a nod to the ways in which Sin Wai Kin’s practice both mocks and heralds language as a technology for truth production Actuality is regarded as just another lacklustre accessory    In the past year, Sin Wai Kin’s performances have taken the form of virtual commissions, such as Total Fabrication (2020), a short film published on the Guggenheim’s Works and Process YouTube channel In this three-minute clip, Sin Wai Kin dons a rainbow-shaped moustache, their face bearing a striking resemblance to iconic filmmaker John Waters They then lip-sync to a track that troubles the distinction between news and performance, fact and invention    When I meet Sin Wai Kin over Zoom, they sit in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror at home in London The reflection revealed a reproduction of the Mona Lisa in a small gold frame, on a wall behind the screen A print of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus was affixed nearby As Sin Wai Kin spoke of their interests in performance, fiction and disguise, I began to

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.

The Prosaic Sublime of Béla Tarr

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Issue No. 6

Rose McLaren

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Issue No. 6

I have to recognise it’s cosmical; the shit is cosmical. It’s not just social, it’s not just ontological, it’s really huge. And that’s why we...
Stalker, Writer or Professor? Geoff Dyer's Zona and Genre

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February 2012

Rose McLaren

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February 2012

‘So what kind of a writer am I, reduced to writing a summary of a film?’ wonders Geoff Dyer half way through Zona. Such...

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November 2016

The Miserablist

Anne Boyer

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November 2016

This vision was strongly nebulous, an indeterminate but bold reaction only because it was so much like one of...

Interview

July 2015

Interview with Sarah Manguso

Catherine Carberry

Interview

July 2015

There’s a certain barometer of a writer’s achievement that urban readers know well: did this book cause me to...

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April 2017

Everywhere and Nowhere

Vahni Capildeo

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April 2017

Part of my reluctance to write on citizenship is that as a poet, a worker in delicate, would-be-truthful language,...

 

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