werkloos

winter 2016

werkloos is the creation of

Heleen De Boever and Anna-Claire McGrath.

Cover image:

"Some Captured Textures #3" by Anouk Vercouter

The website, http:/ /www.werkloosmag.com, was designed by Heleen De Boever, using WordPress.

This print edition was designed by Anna-Claire McGrath, using Lucidpress.

table of contents

3

editors' note 7

thanatomicrobiome 9

james ebersole

how we met: weird and true stor ies of fr iends at first sight 13

xandra robinson-burns

secret poem (1) 17

camille blanckaert

lamentations of the drowning immortal 19

robert montenegro

chronicle 27

heleen de boever

an excerpt from " 27 notes to self" 29

sarya wu

see the wor ld: forget your luggage 31

anita neira

q& a: s.j . walton 35

interview with teerana hiranyakorn 41

playlist 45

4 4

4 5

list of artwork

S.J. Walton, untitled painting 11

Elaine Williams, "Seashell" 14

Sarah Hermans, "Meise, April 2014" 18

Anouk Vercouter, "A Slightly Tilting Planet" 22

Anouk Vercouter, "Sphere II" 25

Heleen De Boever, "Thorns" 26

Sarah Hermans, "8mm stills" 28

S.J. Walton, untitled painting 35

S.J. Walton, untitled painting 37

4 6

editors' note

7

A.C.: The idea of werkloos started out as a joke: I was thinking about whether I?d want to go into magazine publishing, and I sent Heleen a Facebook message saying, ?What if I just started my own zine??

Heleen: Creating a zine with my friends?/internet strangers? work had been somewhat of a childhood dream of mine, so I?m not quite sure what I replied to AC?s message but it was probably something in capital letters with a lot of exclamation marks, along the lines of YEAH GIRL.

A.C.: And from there we just sort of did the thing. We put out a call for submissions over Facebook and Tumblr, and we solicited work from friends.

Heleen: We contemplated print versus online, but creating an online magazine has the practical advantage of being easier to coordinate whilst being an ocean away from each other, plus it has the added bonus of being accessible to anyone, anywhere. Got an internet connection? Join us -- that kind of thing. That democratic aspect really appealed to me.

A.C.: What was nice about it was I got to keep in touch with Heleen because we had to talk about it constantly, and I got to showcase the work of some of my friends who are really talented. It was really fun, ultimately, because it just felt like a cool way to do something with my friends.

Heleen: Exactly, and I hope that spirit makes itself felt while you?re reading through this. It?s a pretty eclectic mix of work, but it?s all connected through this positive, somewhat DIY/Can-do! mentality. We wanted to create something that encourages people to create their own things. If that makes sense. Explaining things is hard!

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A.C.: We hope you will enjoy it, and share it with your friends, but even if no one reads it, I still feel like werkloos has been a success. There?s a part in my favorite musical--shut up, Heleen, this is great--Sunday in the Park with George, where the painter Georges Seurat says, ?Look I made a hat. Where there never was a hat.? That?s the mentality I have towards it. ?Look we made a zine. Where there never was a zine.?

Heleen: You and your musical references. But yes. Yes.

thanatomicrobiome

PART I: The Storm Rolls In

The cat got out again last night

He wanders farther every time

Ever closer to the highway and her carrion.

He stays out longer every time

Nights becoming weeks

But he?ll always come back

Until he never does.

PART II: Capsized

You stood at the edge of the pier

Screaming her name

And a reply of sorts

Came with each crashing wave.

PART III: Inhaling Saltwater

The hurricanes get worse

With every passing year

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10

And how many times can you pick up

The splintered planks of the balcony

That have fallen into the yard

And the roof tiles

Shed like scales

Before you pack it in

Head out west

And begin again.

PART IV: Cardiac Arrest

Is there a world where the cat never dies?

He just grows fatter and fatter

Until he can swallow the highway whole

And all the vultures in the universe

Buzz around his head

Searching out the meat they?ll never find.

PART V: Washed Ashore

And when the vultures starve away

And fall to the litter box

Half a galaxy down

You will think of the last time

You ever saw her

Waterlogged

And teaming with life

But no sign of the life

That was uniquely her

Just the millions of microbes

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SJ Walton

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Set free from her personage

To begin their lives

As free agents

Held in line by no immune system.

And unlike you

They have no regard

For what color she wanted to dye her hair next

Or if she ever smiles again.

PART VI: Autolysis Begins

And sometimes late at night

When the glass of water at your bedside

Goes untouched and gathers dust

On the somnolent surface of its tiny ocean

You try to imagine your own end

But don?t know where to begin.

- James Ebersole, United States

You said you just got back from New York seeing Broadway shows so I thought you were into musicals. Turns out your parents made you go, but you are awesome for other reasons.

You saw my flyer for a Harry Potter party at the library.

You followed me on Twitter and I liked your bio, then we both moved to London and had vegan food.

At a ball. I thought we had a mutual friend, but we didn?t. You were just a random person.

Later you told me that you thought I was weird because I said I was excited that we were both in the same accommodation and you were like ?but I don?t even really know you?. Ran into you on the way to tapas and spontaneously invited you and you spontaneously said yes.

You still don?t believe me but you were my favourite actress at uni and I saw everything you were in. When we were in the same play I was kind of starstruck. You were also a very nice person and I secretly wanted to be your friend and I?m glad you are now.

how we metweird and true stories of friends at first sight

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Elaine Williams "Seashell"

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You invited me to the climbing club?s black tie dinner even though I?d only been to one session. You were being polite, shocked that I actually showed up, but hey good thing I did.

The librarian introduced us.

In the queue for free tea and biscuits at one of those awkward freshers info sessions that said mandatory but wasn?t really mandatory, but we were the kind of people who follow rules.

We had the same voice teacher, and he kept telling each of us about the other. We finally met at a recital, which was kind of awkward until we both thought the mini Christmas tree looked like the American Girl one and then we were like OMG he was right we should be best friends.

In the Facebook group for the summer programme we were about to attend. Then you were roomed across the hall from me. And you brought The Sims 2.

You said, ?Hey I think you?re interesting. We should be friends."

Our mutual friend from the above story included us both in an email saying that we were both going to be in Oxford and we would get along and demanded that we meet each other while we?re there.

Ran into you at breakfast in college. You were looking for a new roommate, I was looking for a new room. We had gone to a ballroom dancing class together like a month ago. You showed me the room, apologizing for the mess. It was spotless. I moved in.

You said you were a Ravenclaw and I could totally see it.

Was it the champagne Oedipus brunch/study group?

- Xandra Robinson-Burns, United Kingdom

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Sarah Hermans, "Meise, April 2014"

secret poem (1)

i want you to count every bone i own

use :

your eyes

to denude my neck

please unbare my chest

your fingers

to walk down every step

of my ribcage

the palms of your hands

to caress every curve

my body makes

your lips

to melt down

certain

pieces

of

my

skin

i want you to know

i need you to feel

me

- Camille Blanckaert, Belgium17

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lamentations of the drowning immortal

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It?s not often that drowning becomes a drawn-out experience. Most folks have the benefit of lasting only a couple minutes before asphyxia takes over. The brain and heart are deprived of oxygen. Cells begin dying off one by one. Everything shuts down.

First a myocardial infarction.

Then cerebral hypoxia.

Lucky bastards are dead in no time. James Wolfe Ripley was no lucky bastard. In fact, he was one of the unluckiest bastards the planet Earth had ever seen. This is not simply because James Wolfe Ripley was not born on Earth, though it helps his case. In the planet?s 4.6 billion years of existence, Ripley was one of three beings to have immigrated to the small and humble blue-green sphere. The other two were a couple of elderly crustaceans who lived in the waters off of Cape Cod. James Wolfe Ripley was a used car salesman in Northern California.

Because Ripley wasn?t an Earthling, quite a few of the many things that pester those born on the blue-green sphere didn?t affect him at all. These included, but were not limited to: sunburn, paper cuts, hay fever, athlete?s foot, starvation, tennis elbow, pubic lice, and asphyxiation. While these genetic quirks may have benefited Ripley for most of his life on Earth, they did little to comfort him as he stood in cement galoshes at the bottom of the Nelson G. Grunwasser County Reservoir in San Jorge, CA. Ripley was bored out of his mind down there, his skin had become unbearably pruned, and he was devastatingly lonely. Such are the lamentations of the drowning immortal.

James Wolfe Ripley was born Yervyn Q. Toto IV on the planet Krawatte

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in the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light-years from Earth. It?s a pleasant purple little planet between the ocean world of Poseidos and the forest world of Arbandian. The population is 4.3 billion Krawatti. The mean temperature during the month of May is 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The best golfer on the planet is Herbko Blotch. He?s not nearly Tiger Woods.

Also, interestingly enough, ?Krawatte? in German means necktie. This is merely an amusing coincidence.

Yervyn Q. Toto IV came to Earth on the 15th of March, 1870. At the time, he was an angsty teenager fed up with his father?s overbearing brand of stringent parenting. One particularly angsty evening, Yervyn ran away from home, joyriding across the universe in his father?s very expensive Star Speeder K-63. Whilst navigating the Milky Way, young Yervyn made a reckless sharp turn around Venus and astroplaned into Earth?s atmosphere. He crashed into the Pacific Ocean and washed up in San Francisco two days later. At first distressed, Yervyn ultimately decided that being marooned on Earth wasn?t so bad. He immediately began his process of assimilation. The Krawatti, having been so much more advanced than the Earthlings of 1870, knew all about the planet?s history, politics, and geography. A perennial academic underachiever (much to the disdain of his father), Yervyn was only fluent in 323 languages. Luckily, these included English, Russian, French, and Slovak. He decided he could make it on Earth.

Yervyn immediately procured a suit of clothing and began blending into his surroundings. This was easier than one might think, considering the Krawatti are nearly identical to the Earthlings except for one small difference; Krawatti earlobes are twice the size of Earthling earlobes. While Yervyn would always be prone to heavy teasing from his new Earthling neighbors, fitting in would not be difficult. He picked up a copy of the Chronicle to pick a name from the obituaries. James Wolfe Ripley was an elderly Civil War general (Union, not rebel) who had expired two weeks before in Hartford, Connecticut. Since the old soldier didn?t need the name anymore, thought Yervyn, there was no harm in taking it for himself.

So James Wolfe Ripley (née Yervyn Q. Toto IV) lived his life in Northern California. He was married twice but, despite his physical resemblance to Earthlings, Ripley found his reproductive fluid to be incompatible with that of his two wives. His first wife Margaret had pancreatic cancer and died a depressed, childless woman of forty-four in 1892. His second wife Mary perished in a train derailment outside Winslow, Arizona in 1922. Ripley was the only survivor. While Earthlings for their entire existence have been killing themselves or getting themselves killed or killing others, the

Krawatti can only die of old age. This happens within the first minute of their 338th year. It is cultural tradition to have a Dying Party on the 444th day of year 337, the day before expiration (Krawatte, a much less harried planet than Earth, completes a leisurely strut around its star in 445 days). Dying was not a problem for the Krawatti. Neither was aging, as once a Krawatti reaches adulthood he or she remains that way until year 337, day 444. The face Mary Ripley saw right before being impaled in the derailment was the same Margaret Ripley shut her eyes on for the very last time forty years prior.

Ripley traveled the world as much as he could yet never made his home more than 100 miles from the beach in San Francisco where he first emerged an Earthling. From 1942 to 2003 he sold used cars in Fremont, Stockton, Redwood City, and San Jorge. He managed to avoid suspicion regarding his never-aging face by picking up and moving every twenty years. He never loved again after Mary?s tragic death in Arizona; he had grown more sentimental and therefore more morose at the thought of loving another. No matter how much he wished it to not be so, his love would age as he remained the same. She would die and he would cry and then bury her like he did the others. Ripley did not subscribe to a popular Earthly aphorism, that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, because after loving and losing, all Earthlings revert back to the primal conflict in their lives: dealing with the unpredictability of their mortality. James Wolfe Ripley still had roughly 180 years left until death. That?s a long time to sulk.

So between 1964 and 2003, Ripley was glum. The youthful exuberance that had brought him to Earth in the first place had given way to a seething misery. His first friends had grown old and died. Their children were right behind. The neighborhood kids teased him about his stretched earlobes, asking him if he ever wore them over his shoulder like a Macedonian soldier. Apparently there?s a song about that. He never bothered to look it up.

Ripley enlisted in the US Army in 1967 and went off to Vietnam. He had avoided World Wars I and II because he didn?t feel comfortable with killing, especially since his enemies were unable to return the favor. Sportsmanship is an important value on Krawatte, perhaps comparable to the Golden Rule on Earth, and utilizing shifty methods of gamesmanship to carry one to victory is seen as an unforgivable sin. Maybe this is why Herbko Blotch was no Tiger Woods.

But after 90 years on Earth and feeling rather lonely, Ripley signed his soldier?s name on a soldier?s contract and was taught to fire an M60 into moving flesh targets. While Ripley was never particularly proud of his time in the war, it was cathartic for him to blow off some steam while blowing off the

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Anouk Vercouter, "A Slightly Tilting Planet"

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the heads of 16 year-old Viet Congs. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the young men of his platoon. He felt like the big brother of the group, as he was at least 75 years older that the nearest enlisted man. It only made it more difficult when each of them fell, one by one. Clark from Cincinnati was torn up by machine gun fire. La Russa from Louisiana took a bayonet in the throat. ?Skippy? Sanchez from the Bronx watched a shell fall on his head. And no matter how deep in trouble Ripley got himself, he always escaped without a scratch, at least on the surface. Even though he could not die, Ripley still feared for his life. He feared for his sanity. He feared for his ability to cope with being alive. Everything around him, the entire world practically, was dead dead dead.

Ripley returned home to Northern California in 1972. Post-traumatic stress disorder was not among the laundry list of conditions to which he was invulnerable, nor were the spells of fainting he experienced in the years following his return. He spent a decade self-medicating and avoiding the VA. He continued his jobs at the used car lots but sold his home and moved into a trailer where he made futile attempts for thirty-one years to end his life. Ripley always knew his efforts were for naught, but he still took comfort in the thought that maybe, just maybe, he would succeed.

So for thirty-one years James Wolfe Ripley was suicidal. He attempted to poison himself weekly by filling his trailer with carbon monoxide. He managed to only kill the cat. On forty-six separate occasions he tried to shoot himself, but the bullets always fell lame. He would hang himself from a bed sheet noose for hours at a time, pleading the powers to allow his airway to be blocked, for asphyxia to take hold. Sometimes he would manage to lose consciousness, but he always woke again with a crick in his neck and a tear upon his cheek.

When Richard Nixon announced his resignation, Ripley?s blood alcohol level was 5.6. Tricky Dick left office; Ripley only left consciousness. The next day, Gerald Ford was president and Ripley had a hangover.

On the day John Lennon died, Ripley stuck his head in an oven. The next morning the world sang songs and mourned, but he could only scream ?Helter Skelter? and tear apart his copy of The Bell Jar. Ripley survived a jump from the Space Needle in Seattle the morning of September 11, 2001. When he picked himself up and walked back to his hotel bar, Ripley watched the news coverage from New York over twelve Bloody Marys. He cried for those who died that day, but reserved for himself feelings of unease and envy.

It just wasn?t going to happen. He was stuck. He?d have better get used to it.

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On the 17th of April 2003, the glum man from Krawatte was taking dinner in his favorite roadside diner in San Jorge, three blocks from Clay Driver?s Pre-Owned Mercedes dealership. Clay Driver was Ripley?s employer, a lanky 63 years-old and the tallest person Ripley had ever seen on any planet. Driver was kind to his depressed young employee, unbeknownst to the fact that his depressed young employee had been on Earth twice as long as he had. Ripley was given the rest of the day off. He had been crying at the coffee station. Driver gave him 20 bucks and told him to buy a chicken-fried steak from the diner down the street. Ripley gladly accepted but said no more, lest he develop friendly feelings for a man he knew had 10 or 20 years left at best. Ripley waited midnight to take that steak. Three hours later James Wolfe Ripley was at the bottom of the Nelson G. Grunwasser County Reservoir.

He had forgotten the faces of the men who put him there, the ones who had left him to die and be lost forever. He figured they had probably forgotten his face as well, as they seemed the kind of guys who did this sort of thing often.

James Wolfe Ripley had been at the wrong place at the wrong time: the wrong planet, the wrong country, the wrong city, the wrong diner. He was there at the wrong 12:36 a.m. eating the wrong chicken-fried steak. He was sitting in the wrong booth drinking the wrong Coca-Cola when the right guy took the right bullet through his right ear. Ripley was a loose end, a wandering eye, a potential mouthpiece. When he came to at the bottom of the reservoir, affixed with cement shoes and irrevocably stuck, Ripley decided he couldn?t really take it personally.

They had no way of knowing he was only three clicks from being an immortal.

And as his fingers began to prune and his eyes became bloodshot and boredom set in and loneliness reared its ugly dark face, Ripley thought for the very first time in a very long time about a pleasant purple little planet millions of light-years away.

- Robert Montenegro, United States

Anouk Vercouter, '"Sphere II"

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Heleen De Boever, "Thorns"

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chronicle

1.These fields rush and glow somehow realerwhen you have to squint your eyes

against the summer afternoon heat / that blowssomething evil in your skin. I came with a bottle

of wine my mum and her new boyfriend didn?tfinish. I?m here to finish / something.

2.Growing wasn?t any of the romance / I wasborn a body technological, a body yet too soft

to adopt a machine aesthetic. What remainedbetween a copper brain and the wax

of my limbs / is what shaped everythingthat is about to come.

3.In me / something feline, agile, a primal burn.This is a toast to the tradition of women trampling

their bodies down. These fields, thisgetting lost / a sacrifice to my mother

who never admits she carriedchildbirth like an excuse.

- Heleen De Boever, Belgium

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1228

Sarah Hermans, "8mm stills"

an excerpt from

"27 notes to self "

XIII.

There are 7.125 billion people in the world.

One of them

is bound to be

______ (insert comparative adjective here)

(i.e. stupider)

Than you.

- Sarya Wu, Taiwan

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see the world,forget your luggage

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As a child my usual requests from Christmas or birthday presents were trips. Anywhere. As long as it meant seeing or experiencing a different part of the world, I was happy. Travelling to different countries shaped me: the way I think, feel, and sense the world was undoubtedly influenced by the multiple experiences I have been fortunate enough to go through in various time zones, climates and smells. Becoming an adult has somewhat limited the amount of travelling I do every year, mainly because of the responsibilities that come with age (and the small detail of money), but there is always a way.

Surrounding yourself by literature graduates and students has mainly two consequences: money is never abundant for anyone and ideas for making things happen come by the dozen. That is how ?Rich People* Travel Book Club? began (*aspirational). The asterisk is key. Every month, a member chooses a country they would like to visit, picks a book from that country, and we let the pages take us there. Unlike other book clubs with friends I have been part of, we have committed to reading the books, meeting at the scheduled times and discussing the books instead of falling for the temptation of just discussing our daily events. That, for me, is already a success. However, this little group that seems to have started as another excuse for some literary fun with friends and the always-welcome opportunity to catch up has helped me, and I will dare say us, in other respects.

It is always good to commit to a book, especially when reading times have been relegated to browsing scattered information on the Internet. Not only out of a sense of responsibility to the author, the money you spent, or the paper that was used to print the book (for the guilt-driven readers out there), but also because this is an experience you are sharing with your fellow reader/explorer.

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You are not alone in this. You owe it to them too. You do not leave your friend behind in the wilderness while looking for a mythical tiger in Tasmania, Australia (The Hunter by Julia Leigh) or when they desperately need advice to make a web of bad decisions better in a garrison in Austria (Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig). This sense of community and adventure have given me back the drive I was lacking in order to go back to my voracious reading habits.

You might think it is not the same as real travelling, that you do not get to experience the culture in full, or that it does not equate to the thrill of physically going away. Here, I summon the wise words of Wittgenstein: ?the limits of my language are the limits of my world.? Words very much shape the way we see the world, both being culturally bound. Every word we read on those pages gives us a sense of not only the author?s idiosyncrasy, but also the culture that saw them grow. We see it all through their eyes: the way they perceive their country and culture and how they think we perceive them. It is as simple and complex a relationship as the one established between every tourist trying to gesture something to a local. And as for the feeling of going away, it is exactly that. Just by picking that book, anywhere and at any time, you escape the city, office, or café you are in. You are travelling, meeting new people, experiencing the smells and sounds of a market in Thailand (Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap), or sensing the tensions of the revolution?s aftermath in Kenya (A Grain of Wheat by Ng?g? wa Thiong?o).

Do not let a fear of airplanes or lack of money or holiday time limit you from all you can gain from what other nations have to offer. Most of the problems we see in the news are due to too much cultural misunderstanding and the only way out is by paying attention to what someone who leads a different life to yours has to say. The words are there, full of experiences waiting to be shared, knowledge that can only open your eyes to realities you had not imagined. With every page we read, we are brought closer and closer to all corners of the world, without pestering adverts on the side of the page, without endless security checks, or heavy backpacks. Find your ticket at the nearest bookshop. Pack light. Dress for any weather. Be prepared to come back with a story to tell.

- Anita Neira, Chile

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Heleen De Boever

Travel tickets:

Sightseeing, by Rattawut Lapcharoensap (2006, Thailand)

The Hunter, by Julia Leigh (2001, Tasmania)

A Grain of Wheat, by Ng?g? Wa Thiong?o (1967, Kenya)

Beware of Pity, by Stefan Zweig (1939, Austria)

The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver (1988, United States)

Arresting God in Kathmandu, by Samrat Upadhyay (2001, Nepal)

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q&a

s.j. walton

Can you tell us a little about yourself, where you are from and how you came to pursue a degree in Fine Ar ts? Have you always been creative?

I'm from a smallish town in Somerset, England where I've lived around pretty much all of my life. I never actually intended to do a degree, but around the end of my art foundation course I fell ill with CFS/M.E (Chronic Fatigue

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Syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis), which really changed my life (not for the better, either) and really knocked my confidence ?artistically?. I spent a few years half-heartedly doing photography and trying to figure out what my life was with a chronic illness. Photography is something I still enjoy, but it's not exactly what I want to spend my life doing. Eventually I felt like I needed to get back into the art so I decided to go back to volunteering in a gallery in my town, and after doing that for about a year and meeting some great artists, I decided that actually yeah - I'll do a degree. I needed a huge change in my life. It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision, and sometimes I wonder if it was the best way to go about changing my life, but there we go. I ended up going to an open day in the summer (I wanted to stay close to home for health reasons) to the university closest to me - Bath Spa, Bath being a city I loved anyway - and spoke to one of the tutors, showed him my moleskine, and he gave me an interview right there [and I] was accepted after my interview a few days later. It happened quite quickly and unconventionally. So yeah, I guess from that you can see I've always expressed myself creatively. My mum and late gran always encouraged me from when I was little, too, my mum being a knitter and my gran an artist herself. For some reason I've only ever wanted to be an artist, so guess I'm lucky in that respect, even if I was never sure how (or if it would happen!). I still don't quite feel qualified to call myself one though.

I t sounds like going to college for an ar ts degree came as a bit of a fresh star t for you, after discover ing you have CFS/M.E. For our first issue of werkloos we worked around the theme begin again. In what way does this theme resonate for you, either in your work or personal life?

Yeah it did, a much needed one. I think my work and personal life are one of the same really, I don't have a huge social life as it is and if I'm not actively painting them I'm usually thinking about it. I'm happy for painting to be my life, and this idea of beginning again is something I ended up doing over the summer: I switched from working with mixed media to oil paints. For some it might not sound like a huge step but I think it's enabled me to take on a more solid approach to my work. It was scary at first and felt like I was only adding to the madness, but I think new beginnings can be; nothing is ever static. Sometimes we try to remain static out of fear, but I've grown up being told that often the best things - best for our well-being - can often be the scariest and most challenging. "Begin again" does resonate with me in that respect.

Your work relies heavily on textures, giving it an almost sculptural dimension. Can you elaborate a little on how you arr ive at such textural depth and how the change from mixed media to oil paints influenced this? How do you see yourself evolving in the future? Are there other mediums

37SJ Walton

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you still wish to exper iment with?

I have a kind of obsession with texture (evident in my older work), although what I do now is physically flatter and marginally less about painting as a sculptural object, I?m incredibly interested in how you can allow the materials to both speak for itself whilst manipulating it to create this texture, depth and sense of movement. A lot of my work is really just one massive experiment and learning the rules so I can break them. I also use a lot of layers, some more transparent than others, and build them up over the underpainting ? this is usually only an initial idea and often the entire painting can evolve into something else almost of its own accord. I try not to concern myself with making mistakes, because it?s from those mistakes I think I?ve learnt the most . . . Not that I don?t get really frustrated a lot of the time, but oils really teach you to be patient.

Shifting from mixed media to oil paints hasn?t so much changed what I want to achieve with my paintings, but rather made it more sustainable and allowed me to work on bigger canvases. I?m not too sure what the future will hold for my work but at the moment I see myself working of various canvas sizes and experimenting with how I present the finished pieces; I like that often they bounce off one another and have a kind of ?conversation? with one another as opposed to them being presented as separate entities. I think I?ll stick with oils for a while too, but I?m certainly wanting to try different mediums alongside them to see how this alters the paint and how I paint with it.

One of the reasons we launched werkloos as an online magazine is because of the democratic platform the internet offers, a platform unlimited by borders, whether they be demographic, geographical or socio-economical. Do you exper ience the influence of the internet on your own ar tistic practice (e.g. through the exposure to other ar tists or the exposure you yourself gain from uploading your work to social networks)?

I definitely do. I think that exposure to artistic communities/other artists can really help you grow as an individual and learn how to navigate the professional world. It?s great to have such access to the work of other people, to connect with them and have discussions about your practice, as well as gain advice from people. I mean, you should make artwork for yourself because it?s what you want to do, but I won?t lie and say that I don?t want some kind of validation from people ? or for them to enjoy what I do, perhaps more accurately ? and I enjoy learning and moving forward with work from how people respond to it. I think support through social networking is a vital part of artistic practice.

39 SJ Walton

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I agree that social networks can be a tool for suppor t and growth, one that seems more organic and diverse than what established institutions offer. One thing I personally exper ience from being active online is the wide range of young, politically opinionated people of minor ity groups. Through the internet these people find a platform outside of institutions that allows them to creatively express their wor ld views. Is this a phenomenon you see around you, too, and if so, how do you relate to that?

Absolutely. These communities have enabled me to engage with others as well as learn and grow politically, not only just from my own individual identity but also about where I sit in the world ? my privilege(s) and when it?s appropriate to use them to speak out against injustices, and when/where it?s my place to listen to others. Like my practice this is something I know requires life-long dedication. It?s fantastic to be a part of all of this and see so many young people utilise these platforms within the arts. Millennials especially come under fire for how we use the internet, which is incredibly unfair as I don?t think people are so aware of what?s going on in the world and don?t feel they have the ability to change it.

A huge thank you for these insightful and detailed answers! As a last question, and seeing as werkloos revolves around shar ing the work of creatives from all over the wor ld, can you share some young ar tists or ar tist communities that you feel are wor th keeping an eye on?

And thank you for the interview, it's an honour! Gosh I thought about this for a long time and I know so many people in the arts, a couple of people whose work I love would be illustrator Nikki Lacey (http://nikkidraws.com/comics), photographer Katie Eleanor (www.katieeleanor.com), and musician Rena Minegishi (soundcloud.com/lingzhen), as well as someone I follow on instagram called Klaudia Medano. There's also a wealth of blogs out there of individual artists and those that take submissions, online journals, etc. I think it's really important to follow a variety of these blogs too - photography, illustration, design - anything that interests you outside of your practice.

Also if I can add in one last thing: Don't let fear stop you making work! Don't be afraid to make mistakes and for things to not work out, because as frustrating and often disheartening as that is - it's all progress. It might take you a long time but don't give up.

- Heleen De Boever

Find more of Jo?s work on www.sjwalton.com and www.sjwalton.tumblr.com

teerana hiranyakornbangkok, thailand

werkloos is created by young people from all over the world. In each issue, we hope to feature one person from a different city to get a better understanding of the global world we live in now.

One of the things that made Heleen and I excited about this zine project is that with technology and the internet it's suddenly possible for us to connect creative young people from literally over the wor ld in a way that wasn't thinkable twenty years ago. The story of yours and Heleen's fr iendship is also due to the internet, if I understand correctly. Can you explain how you guys got to know each other?

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If I remember correctly, we finally connected through Facebook after years of having quite a few mutual friends. I think that was back in 2012? We first

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bonded over our photos of (home-cooked) vegan meals, I am almost certain!

You're from Thailand, and you live in Bangkok now, but you've spent time in Par is and New York. In your exper ience, what is the biggest different between young people where you're from and young people in the West? What's the biggest similar ity?

Most of the people I met in the West are more independent than here in Thailand. I think it is due to the difference in the culture / how they are raised. In America, kids leave home when they are 18 and that is to be expected for most households. From my experience as a Thai/Chinese, most of us aren't encouraged to get a job until we graduate from high school or university, even. Thai/Chinese parents would raise and take care of their kids for the rest of their lives if they could so I think this environment is not very nurturing in terms of independence. However, I find that despite all the differences, we are all more similar than we than we think. Because we come from different backgrounds, we have to tap into new faculties in our brain and I love that. It can be magic to hear other people who don't share your mother tongue describing how they/you feel.

Which neighborhoods do most young people in Bangkok gravitate towards these days? Has that changed over the last few years?

Ultimately, anywhere with good food. That has not and will never change since food is such an integral piece of Thailand. I would even say it is a part of our national identity. The obsession can be dated back to a thousand of years ago when we spent hours in the kitchen preparing and perfecting curries and delicate desserts. One particular street came to mind; it?s called Sukhumvit 49, where it is a home of restaurants and cafés. The amazing thing about it is these establishments are so young. When I came home a couple of years ago, half of these places didn?t even exist.

Since our zine is about ar tistic endeavors, do you feel like the culture of Thailand is very suppor tive of the ar ts? What's one thing you feel they do very well? What about one thing you think could improve?

The art scene in Bangkok is still very niche and small, whereas in Europe and New York, it is much more abundant and accessible. One of the reasons I think young Thai people don?t risk more creatively is because our society doesn?t think art is a respectable career choice. Therefore, there is not much funding from the government and because of that, the pay is not enough for young creative people to get by in a city like Bangkok. However, things are beginning to shift. Our generation is slowly erasing these stigmas and now I get notifications from my friends in theatre who are now doing small shows.

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Dumb question that I sincerely want to know: What's the biggest TV show in Thailand r ight now?

The hottest TV show right now is Hormones - the third season just ended. The show chronicles the lives of a group of teens and their struggles; some with family and some with mental illness but most importantly, sexual relationships. I think it was the first TV show that depicts young people realistically and it is such a refreshing and hopeful step of our society to air this type of show. Sex and mental illness are quite taboo still, but we all know we have to talk about it and now is time.

Lastly, the theme of the zine this issue is " Begin Again" , and Bangkok is a city that is really old, but has begun again many times. Last August, the single deadliest ter ror ist attack in Thailand occurred in Bangkok at the Erawan Shr ine. How has the city changed since the attack, and what if any signs of beginning again do you see?

My boyfriend and I came to Thailand after the attack happened and we both agreed that besides the tighter security at crowded public spaces like department stores, nothing really changed. Though I do think that it wakes Thai people up to the conflicts within our country and in the world. There are increasingly more updates regarding potential danger on my newsfeed so even though everyone goes on with their lives, we are much more conscious. We find solace in our lighthearted humor and everyday gestures of kindness. And good food, of course.

- Anna-Claire McGrath

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