FASHION

By Bertie Brandes

7 December 2020

Everyone has their own lockdown story, and the warped ways they managed to pass the time – drawing, making puzzles, knitting unwearable crap – the list goes on and on. The domestic was suddenly strange again, a forced inhabitation that made everything feel weird, because, it was.

“Swiping between cars and kitchens, drive-through windows and cracked concrete back gardens – if you’re forced to stand still, you start to see magic in everything. When quarantine forced people indoors, a distinct kind of surreal creative content emerged online that was defined by the domestic spaces in which it exists. A teenage boy fills a glass with coke, watches the froth rise to the top and then stands by, unblinking, as the foam retreats to reveal a cup entirely void of liquid. A saucepan spins gently round and round on the rich red glow of an induction hob, a melancholic string quartet playing in the background. These are joyously basic videos – kindergarten-level editing, a trick of the heat – but their popularity speaks to a common theme online: the pleasure of uncovering strange- ness in the most unremarkable of environments.”

– The full text appears in Spike #66 . You can buy it in our online shop

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