6: HOTEL
The grid’s mythic power is that it makes us able to think we are dealing with materialism (or sometimes science, or logic) while at the same time it provides us with a release into belief (or illusion, or fiction).
- Rosalind Krauss, Grids
Pink bedspreads you say
are not pleasing to you
yet you sit very straight
till the pictures are through.
Two suitcases watch you like dogs.
- Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours
Kolya
“I am Kolya. And I have come to save the world and forgive its sins.” A trip to a hotel in Moscow to interview a man who claimed to be the son of god.
My Love Affair with The Hotel
A diary of time spent in hotels, from breakfast conveyor belts to dinner served under (specifically un-requested) silver domes.
Get Unready With Me
The last decade has seen an unprecedented rise in what is meant to be a close, unfiltered relationship between those with a celebrity platform and the people who follow them.
A Conspicuous Abyss
How the aesthetics of luxury bunkers both disguise & reveal the persistence of American myths; from the Survival Condo Project to the Madonna Inn, California.
‘The Beige’
Exploring the role & representation of beige, in the hotel space and beyond.
Good and Bad Objects in Hotel Rooms
Nothing makes a hotel room feel more transient than a clock that’s just been reset.
Lake Sevan: Monks and Mandelstam
A ninth-century Armenian monastery and a modernist writers’ resort make a striking pair.
Where the gloss won’t come off
On hospitality, ‘Hostipality’, and the impossibly polished pink hotel veneer in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
room 505
Friday night. She goes to the city with the rest of them. This is how it goes.
The Wetherspoons Hotel
Every rug, every story, every Spoons, is undeniably distinct. Yet each is essentially the same.
All I’ve got is K-pop and good skin, what now?
The K-pop company system is a well-oiled machine ensuring maximum exposure of the idols within the various groups while prohibiting all access to them.
Tsq’alt’ubo
West of Tbilisi, towards the Black Sea, there is a region named Imereti. North of Imereti’s largest city, one reaches Tsq’alt’ubo (წყალტუბო), a town of mostly derelict Soviet sanatoria.
“picturesque“
Latex painted corkboard; artwork comprised of found images tagged under #picturesque on Instagram.
Artwork & text by Julie Boldt
From a pile of stuff: Uranus in Taurus
Uranus in Taurus indicates a departure from glamour & success in the ways we’ve known it in the past.
Framing the Image-World in 2020
In a year defined by distance and absence, we’re aware more than ever of our reliance on images as tools for making sense of the world around us.
Heartmake Hotel
Hotels hold prime-location status for horror stories, sites of reckoning for those upon whom isolation is inflicted. But the hotel’s detachment can also provide a place of unique connection.
Looking In, Looking Out
Photos taken in, and from, hotel rooms in different cities.
Fluffy White Bathrobes
An exploration of cultural depictions of hotels, and the workings of fantasy and seduction therein.
Esoteric Soap and the Commodification of Dreams™
Purification has long been culturally represented as a deified, or supernatural act. From John Wesley’s declaration that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, to adverts promising ‘magic’ stain removal, cleaning and cleansing have long been intimate with the vocabulary of the miraculous.
