TANK began life in 1998 as a palm-sized magazine. We are celebrating a quarter of a century as an independent magazine with a special anniversary issue packed to the rafters with art, interviews, features, fashion and much, much more. Plus, one hundred or so pages of this 300+ page issue are the results of letting the artist Theaster Gates loose in the house, giving him the space to commission articles, conduct interviews, and illustrate features.
The War in Afghanistan formally ended in 2021, but warfare represents an ongoing psychic and geographic disruption. This short documentary from London-based director and cinematographer Frank Eli Martin, Five Scenes from the War in Afghanistan as They Appear in East Sussex, examines former soldier Clement Boland’s subjective experience of conflict, following his damaged imagination as it imposes a fragmented chronology onto the idyllic landscape of his native corner of England.
This beautiful and melancholy short film from London-based director and cinematographer Frank Eli Martin charts the decline of the oil rig industry in the Scottish Highlands. The film takes a pilgrimage to the Kishorn fabrication yard and the derelict Cromarty Firth, with the future of the region and its energy-dependent infrastructure finally expressed in the otherworldly beauty of the wind farming now dominant in the area.
Ali Eslami is a senior scientist at Google Deep Mind. Here he talks to Tank's Caroline Issa about different kinds of Artificial Inteligence, specially LLM's (Large Language Models) and tells us what we should be excited about what we should worry about.
The protagonist of Johanna Hedva’s novel Your Love is Not Good (And Other Stories, 2023) is caught between worlds: between LA and Berlin, between her mother and her absent father, between her own corporeality and the mystical allure of Hanne, a painter and LA it-girl with whom the narrator becomes dangerously obsessed. A kinky interrogation into whiteness, embodiment and the absurdity of the art world, Your Love is Not Good is a continuation of the bracing stylistic clarity featured in Hedva’s celebrated 2018 novel On Hell.
In April, the Science Gallery hosted As Above, So Below, a two-day programme celebrating Gaia Theory and the life of biologist Lynn Margulis. In this discussion hosted by Gary Zhexi Zhang, Sougwen Chung and Asad Raza discuss synthetic intelligence and how technology inevitably decentres the human.
All of us at TANK were devastated to learn of the death of Gboyega Odubanjo, who has passed away aged 27. A Barbican Young Poet and previously a Roundhouse Resident Artist, Odubanjo was the author of two poetry pamphlets, While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press, 2019) and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business, 2021). In the early summer, Gboyega came to the studio to record readings of three poems from his forthcoming collection Adam. Here, he reads “A Potted History of East”.
Gboyega’s family are fundraising to establish the Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers in his memory – donate here.
Published: 13/07/2023
Writer and artist Sophia Giovannitti reads from her book Working Girl (Verso, 2023), an examination of the twin worlds of sex work and the art marketplace. These incredibly lucrative yet shadowy industries are built on the commodification of creativity and desire, authenticity and intimacy – yet, as Sophia argues, accepting rather than refuting this taboo might lead to a more genuine freedom.
Gary reads an extract from his latest book, Dispatches from the Diaspora (Faber, 2023), a broad and unflaggingly perceptive collection of his journalism since 1994 and further proof of his standing as one of Britain’s few true public intellectuals. Gary has just been awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2023.
Why do people go to sea? Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. He discusses twin marine tragedies in which a group of billionaires and a group of refugees were drowned, finding both to be expressions of a neoliberal risk economy.
Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. In the light of the recent rebellion by the Wagner group in Russia, he reflects on the trend for and the perils of using contractors and merceneries.
Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. Here he discusses civil war as a historical theme, why it has made a return and how we could break out of its destructive cycle.
Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. We asked: how can the ongoing war in Ukraine be understood beyond the historicism of the West?
Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. Here he sets out how neutrality as a mode of international relations is making a most welcomed return. As the historical moment of a unipolar world order passes and with it the need for international law and institutions becomes self evident, neutrality is once again seen as a highly useful position from which to appeal for peace.
Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. We asked: why are there more black and brown Tories than Labour politicians, and what does that mean against the background of the party’s xenophobic and nationalistic policies?
Faisal Devji is a historian and professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in the political thought and contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim world. We asked: what’s special about the emerging extreme rightwing politicians in Europe such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni?
TANK's antidote to streaming platform fatigue, Now Showing is a sublime selection of the best independent, arthouse and foreign-language films, specially handpicked for you by the team at TANK. At only £3 a month, Now Showing is cheaper than a coffee and much more nourishing. Our current season of films, Lives of the Saints, is built from films of celestial brilliance and divine inspiration. Grab your popcorn and navigate to Now Showing in the left-hand drop-down menu, or sign up here.
Every film we feature on Now Showing is accompanied by an Afterthoughts, an informal discussion in which two people – from established figures to emergent talent – discuss their thoughts and feelings on the film. In this episode, academic Catherine Wheatley and critic Caitlin Quinlan discussed Ingmar Bergman's mighty opus Fanny and Alexander. Click here to see more.
In this episode of Afterthoughts, Slow Dance Film Club organisers Marco Pini and Olive Parker discuss Pier Paolo Pasolini's horny, heavenly film Theorem (1968). Click here to see more.
In this episode of Afterthoughts, artist and designer Adam Nathaniel Furman discusses the transgressive 60s classic Funeral Parade of Roses with Pooja Agrawal and Joseph Zeal-Henry of spatial design project Sound Advice. Click here to see more.
