Philadelphia shoegaze luminaries They Are Gutting a Body of Water have announced a new album, LOTTO. It’s out October 17 via Julia’s War/Smoking Room/ATO Records. Following 2022’s Lucky Styles and swanlike (loosies 2020 – 2023), the record features the previously unveiled single ‘american food’, as well as an astounding new track called ‘trainers’. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album cover, tracklist, and the band’s upcoming tour dates.
In a press release, singer Doug Dulgarian described ‘trainers’ as “a vignette, a day in the life; desiring something wholesome while still grappling with the reality presented clearly by my subconscious. I’ve built this life for myself, idealizing escape like we all do, I live in this house built on what I can only perceive to be bad decisions and shame, of comfort and distraction. walk to the store to buy some dumb thing that won’t help, after fantasizing about escaping it all. glance back at the comfort of my house and consider staying outside in the world tonight, because the escape isn’t big enough, it just never is.”
While previous releases focused on exploring new (and often digital) textures, LOTTO finds Dulgarian putting his guitar first and embracing a live-band sound. “In a world of perpetually increasing artifice, this record is my attempt to surface through the sea of false muck,” Dulgarian explained. “It’s rife with perceivable mistakes, ebbing and flowing with the most humanity I can place on one record. The more I utilized [technology], the softer I got. I return again and again to that world because it’s more comfortable than my physical body. The dopamine flooding my brain. And in moments of clarity, I am often very aware that we’re currently watching the homogenization of art right before our very eyes. I am afraid that technology and convenience will cure the world of life.”
LOTTO Cover Artwork:
LOTTO Tracklist:
1. the chase
2. sour diesel
3. trainers
4. chrises head
5. rl stine
6. slow crostic
7. violence iii
8. american food
9. baeside k
10. herpim
They Are Gutting a Body of Water 2025 Tour Dates:
Thu Oct 30 – Cleveland, OH – Mahall’s
Fri Oct 31 – Detroit, MI – Edgemen Printing
Sat Nov 1 – Chicago, IL – Subterranean
Sun Nov 2 – Minneapolis, MN – The Underground
Tue Nov 4 – Denver, CO – Marquis Theatre
Wed Nov 5 – Salt Lake City, UT – Soundwell
Thu Nov 6 – Boise, ID – Shrine Basement
Fri Nov 7 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre
Sat Nov 8 – Vancouver, BC – Kingsway Club
Sun Nov 9 – Seattle, WA – Vera Project
Tue Nov 11 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
Thu Nov 13 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
Fri Nov 14 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar
Sat Nov 15 – Mesa, AZ – The Underground
Sun Nov 16 – Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad
Tue Nov 18 – Austin, TX – 29th St. Ballroom
Wed Nov 19 – Dallas, TX – Club Dada
Fri Nov 21 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade: Purgatory
Sat Nov 22 – Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade
Thu Dec 4 – Washington, DC – Black Cat
Fri Dec 5 – Pittsburgh, PA – Spirit
Sat Dec 6 – Toronto, ON – The Garrison
Sun Dec 7 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz
Tue Dec 9 – Somerville, MA – Arts at the Armory
Thu Dec 11 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
Fri Dec 12 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
Most people think they know what a culture swap looks like. They imagine traveling, trying new food, or learning another language in school. But there’s another kind of culture swap that happens without warning. It takes place online, when you start a conversation with someone you don’t know, from a place you’ve never been. You don’t plan it. You don’t prepare for it. But you come out of it seeing life a little differently.
Talking to random strangers online can change the way you think. It’s one of the simplest ways to find out how other people live, talk, eat, and see the world. It isn’t formal. It isn’t filtered. That’s exactly why it feels real.
The Power of Unfiltered Culture
Everyone Has a Culture to Share
When two strangers talk, they bring their lives into the chat. They might not mean to. They might not even notice they’re doing it. But they use words from their town. They mention habits from their home. They talk about things that feel normal to them but are brand new to you.
You start to see how small differences matter. How often they eat. What they call their grandparents. Whether they take their shoes off at the door. These tiny things are culture in its clearest form.
It Happens Without Planning
This kind of culture exchange doesn’t need a classroom or a guide. It happens by accident. One minute you’re talking to someone about music, and the next you’re asking what time they eat dinner. Then you’re comparing how long the school day lasts in your country versus theirs.
You don’t always notice it’s happening until later. That’s the strange part. You just talk. Then the pieces add up.
In live 1-on-1 video conversations, even more of this happens. You see how they sit. You hear their voice, their timing. You might see the kitchen behind them or hear a local song in the background. That’s more than conversation. That’s an entry into their day-to-day life.
What Changes When You Talk to Strangers Online
You Drop Your Filters
When you talk to someone you’ll never meet again, you stop trying to impress. You stop holding back your questions. You can be more honest. You can also be more curious. This gives room for better answers, even for awkward ones.
People feel free to ask things that are usually off-limits. They’re not trying to be rude. They’re trying to understand. That makes it easier to explain your way of life to someone who has never seen it.
You Start to Question What You Thought Was Normal
A simple greeting, the way someone says hello or goodbye, might make you pause. You start to realize that your way isn’t the only way. You notice how much of what you do every day is just habit, not truth.
Even small things like how people queue, how they show respect, how they handle silence, start to stand out. These differences make you think more carefully about your own routines.
You Learn Without Trying
This isn’t school. You’re not being tested. But you end up learning new words, new customs, new jokes, and even how people feel about certain topics in other parts of the world. Because you’re not forcing it, the learning feels easy.
What Makes the Experience So Unexpected
Randomness Makes It Honest
You’re not selecting someone based on their background. You’re not signing up to study their culture. You just bump into them on a chat site or app. That randomness is part of what makes it feel real.
There’s no script. There’s no agenda. That’s why what they share with you feels raw and personal. It hasn’t been packaged to impress tourists. It hasn’t been edited for safety. It’s just one person telling another how things are where they live.
The Emotional Layer
Sometimes the conversation stays light. But other times, it goes deep fast. A stranger might tell you something they’ve never told anyone else. This can feel intense. But it also builds trust.
The fact that you’re far apart and probably will never meet adds a strange kind of safety. People say things they wouldn’t say to someone close to them. That’s rare in most other forms of culture exchange.
Common Topics That Lead to Culture Swap Moments
Food: What they eat, how they cook it, when they eat it.
School and work: How their day is structured, what they expect from a job or education.
Family roles: Who takes care of the house, how decisions are made.
Holidays and routines: What counts as a big day and how it’s celebrated.
Beliefs and values: Not always religion, often just simple ideas like what’s polite or what’s rude.
These are the parts of life people often take for granted. But when someone from far away questions them, they start to matter more.
When Things Get Confusing
Misunderstandings Happen
Sometimes the words don’t match. A common phrase in one language might sound rude in another. Or someone may bring up a topic that feels too personal.
The best way to fix it is to ask what they meant. Most people don’t want to offend. They just speak from their own habits.
Humor Doesn’t Always Translate
Jokes often depend on local slang, timing, or even cultural ideas. What’s funny in one place may sound strange or even offensive in another. But explaining a joke teaches a lot. You learn not just the punchline but the way people think.
How to Make the Most of It
Be curious without being pushy. Let the conversation flow naturally.
Keep your tone simple and friendly. This helps others open up.
Don’t assume your way is better. Ask, don’t preach.
Share your habits too. It’s a swap, not a lesson.
Use short messages or clear words if language is a barrier.
The point isn’t to become an expert in their culture. It’s to understand a piece of it from someone who lives it.
What Stays With You After
Once you talk to a stranger online and hear their way of life, you don’t forget it. You may not remember the person’s name. But you’ll remember that they eat dinner at 10 p.m. Or that their school starts at 6 a.m. Or that they see silence as a sign of respect.
These pieces stay with you. They pop up in your thoughts later. They shape how you speak to others, how you judge less, and how you listen more.
A Window You Didn’t Know Was Open
Most of the time, when people think about learning about others, they think big. They think of books or trips or teachers. But sometimes, you just need to open a chat window. A stranger appears. You talk. And in that short, simple talk, something changes.
You now know something you didn’t before. And that’s enough to say you’ve swapped cultures, in the most unexpected way possible.
Last week, thieves allegedly broke into an SUV used by Beyoncé’s choreographer and one of her dancers in Atlanta, Georgia. The incident occurred on Thursday (July 8), local news station WSB-TV reports, less than 48 hours before her four-night residency at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium as part of the pop star’s ongoing Cowboy Carter tour. Among the numerous stolen items were USB drives with her unreleased music, video footage for her concerts, as well as past and future setlists.
On Monday, July 14, Atlanta police issued an arrest warrant for a suspect, reviewing surveillance footage that captured the break-in. Investigators also used the Find My app to find a pair of Apple AirPods and locate where they were pinging from. Personal belongings including laptops and designer clothing were also stolen, according to the incident report
When you love someone, you always want to be close to them. Being together makes everything a lot more fun. That’s why long-distance relationships are not easy. But sometimes priorities leave couples with no choice. Still, that doesn’t mean they have to be boring. Thanks to modern technology, the PS5 games provide incredible ways for couples to stay connected. With your consoles, you and your partner can laugh together and face epic challenges side by side.
Here is a list of PS5 games that will help couples feel like they’re right next to each other.
FivePS5 Games for Long-Distance Couples
Portal 2
Portal 2 is perfect for lovers who want to think together. The game is a follow-up of the award-winning original Portal game. This time, the two-player mode has an entirely new campaign. At the same time, the cooperative gameplay features a unique plot and more test chambers. Specifically, you and your partner will solve physics-based puzzles.
A Way Out
A Way Out makes couples experience becoming two prisoners who are trying to make a prison escape. Particularly, you and your partner will take on the role of Leo and Vincent. Together, you need to solve puzzles and avoid barriers. Also, it’s an intense bonding where couples can fight, sneak, drive, and do a lot more together in a game.
It Takes Two
It Takes Two is probably the most fitting PS5 game for long-distance couples. The game is literally about Cody and May, who have a fractured relationship. They are trapped in a different world as dolls. And they need to work together to move forward.
Sea of Thieves
Sea of Thieves offers a thrilling pirate experience. Similarly, couples can explore the seas together. Plus, they can find lost treasures, fight sea monsters, and more. It’s a great way to explore with your partner because there are no set roles. So, you can approach the world however you want.
Destiny 2
Destiny 2 is where you can shoot aliens together. Specifically, couples get to explore the solar system and uncover its mysteries. At the same time, you can go on adventures, such as quests, missions, and patrols. Along the way, players get to collect unique weapons and gear.
What Did We Learn Today?
Your consoles are not just for solo entertainment. Gaming can also be a tool of passion, especially when playing together. Likewise, these PS5 games for long-distance couples turn screens into portals of love. Set it up and play your way closer!
In life, goals and dreams are integral parts of growth — even for couples. And growth sometimes means distance. It can also be challenging, even when you know your love for each other is strong. But all you need is a good time together. Likewise, the right iPhone games can bring you and your partner closer than ever. Whether a few cities apart or halfway across the world, these games strengthen connections. It offers fun and light romance.
Here are five iPhone games that can keep your long-distance relationship playful and healthy.
Five iPhone Games for Long-Distance Couples
The Past Within
The Past Within is the ultimate co-op experience. As a couple, you get to solve puzzles and explore worlds. Specifically, one is in the past, and the other is in the future. However, the main goal is to discover the plan of Albert Vanderboom. At the same time, you need to help Rose in pursuing her father’s plan.
Sky: Children of the Light
Sky: Children of the Light caters to couples looking for something dreamy and heartwarming. Together with your partner, you are going to go on a journey and solve puzzles. Similarly, users will need to explore the ancient civilization’s ruins. It’s an open world filled with magical realms. So, you can do whatever you want. You can go to concerts, throw parties, and defeat darkness.
Draw Something
Draw Something is a game that will test your creativity. Also, it will test how well you know your partner by just looking at their drawing. This game turns doodling into a fun thinking game. You and your partner will take turns drawing and guessing. Likewise, each difficulty of the word will correspond to a specific value. The harder the word, the higher the value.
Truth or Dare
Truth or Dare spices things up when distance makes everything fade. It’s still the traditional game that everyone knows. But it’s made even more fun for mobiles. Particularly, it has over a hundred entertaining Truth and Dares. As a couple, you can choose from clean and dirty categories.
Words With Friends
Words With Friends is another classic game with a modern twist. The game allows you to challenge your partner to a match and see who makes the best words. Similarly, it’s not only for fun. Words With Friends also expands your vocabulary knowledge. Plus, it’s best for couples with different schedules. One can answer and play whenever available.
What Did We Learn Today?
Distance is for the weak ones. Kidding aside, iPhone games for long-distance couples offer more than fun. They are shared experiences. Gaming together is also a way to show each other effort. More importantly, they remind one another about love and connection.
Icy Qiao is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose work spans animation, moving image, sculpture, and installation. Her practice explores the hidden, deep-rooted structures of psychological experience. Autobiographical in nature, her works delve into trauma, identity, and East Asian family structures, dissecting her own history to reflect broader social realities.
A graduate of the Royal College of Art’s Narrative Animation program, Icy blends narrative and experimental techniques in her work, challenging the confines of traditional linear animation and favoring emotionally-driven expression. By turning memory, trauma, and anxiety into tactile and visual forms, she reclaims control over her inner world while opening a space for emotional resonance with the viewer.
Her work was permanently collected by a national first-tier museum in China in 2023, marking significant recognition within both international and domestic art contexts. She sees artistic creation as an ongoing process of psychoanalysis, a way to reconstruct inner order through the continual dissection of memory and emotion. Through this process, she has carved out a distinct space in the field of contemporary multidisciplinary art.
Carving Anxiety: A Psychological Repair from Dream to Material
In her 2025 work ‘A Dream of Teeth Falling Out, Now Real’, Icy visualises subconscious anxiety through a series of clay tooth sculptures. Starting from a recurring dream— where her teeth constantly fall out and are swallowed—she embarks on a process of emotional response and psychological repair. The act of moulding each tooth, with its repetitive and slow rhythm, becomes a bodily ritual of healing. Each tooth carries fragments of the dream while symbolising the reconstruction of personal boundaries and expressive capacity.
As Icy describes:
“During a period of recurring dreams where my teeth would fall out and be swallowed whole, I began recreating each one in clay, as if extracting internalised emotional fragments from my body. Klein’s theory of ‘aggression and reparation’ unfolded through this process as I transformed unspeakable anxiety into tangible material. The teeth became both remnants of dreams and symbols of rebuilding self-boundaries and the ability to express. As I made them, my real-life anxiety gradually eased.”
This work not only continues her deep engagement with psychology but also further demonstrates her use of multimedia to delve into personal experience.
Self-inflicted Pain: Tracing Emotional Echo Within Family Fracture
Created in 2019, ‘Self-inflicted Pain’ is one of Icy’s most emotionally charged early works. The two-minute short film blends live-action and animation, breaking traditional narrative structure to explore how emotion ferments through memory in a non-linear fashion.
The work was inspired by a childhood memory of witnessing her mother cutting her own face out of a series of family photos, an act of silent defiance that became a point of departure for Icy’s reflections on disconnection, psychological rupture, and the internalisation of pain. Referencing Adler’s idea of the ‘comfort zone of trauma,’ she explores how emotional mechanisms trap individuals in cyclical replays of past events.
Incorporating seven elements and six actions, the film gradually blurs the boundaries between imagined pain and reality.
As one of her early pieces, its form is restrained, but through structural deconstruction and rhythmic repetition, Icy begins translating private family memories into an abstract
visual language, allowing individual experience to resonate emotionally with viewers. This work marks the beginning of her ongoing exploration into the relationship between emotion, memory, and the body.
Narrative Collapse: Absurdity and Fragmentation in the Information Era
In works like ‘Brain Travel’ and ‘Stream’, Icy continues using animation and live-action techniques to critique the cognitive disarray and social homogenization of the digital era. She consciously breaks the coherence of linear storytelling, allowing fragments, repetition, and ambiguity to become the structural core of emotional narrative, mirroring the anxiety and fragmentation we experience in real life.
Her practice questions not only media forms but also the capacity of narrative itself to carry emotional experience.
The Shadow of Symbiosis: Emotional Silence in East Asian Family Structures
Icy’s work consistently examines the complex psychological dynamics of East Asian family culture, particularly pathological symbiosis, blurred emotional boundaries, and long-term repression. She investigates phenomena such as ‘giant baby syndrome’ and the ‘great mother’ family dynamic, translating these culturally embedded structures into symbolic visual language through animation, moving image, and installation.
Through this ongoing process of self-analysis, she offers viewers a space to reflect on how we are shaped by cultural forces—and how art can become a gentle form of resistance.
Language and Its Wording: An Artistic Practice Where Content Chooses the Medium
Icy’s artistic process is never constrained by medium. For her, art is a language, and the medium is its phrasing. She does not impose fixed forms, but lets the authenticity of expression guide her choices, selecting the medium best suited to each project’s emotional and thematic weight. Animation, live action, installation, sculpture—these are the shifting vocabularies she uses to tell her stories.
Her works are often born at the intersection of personal memory and social psychology, focusing on how individuals locate themselves within family structures, cultural identities, and emotional trauma. When faced with inexpressible experiences, she carefully constructs formal and narrative frameworks to give emotion a space to land and opens the possibility for deep, reflective dialogue with the audience.
In her practice, there is no fixed technique or predetermined aesthetic, only a persistent pursuit of emotional resonance that always begins with content. It is this freedom and honesty that give her work its enduring strength.
When you bite into a fruit, pause. When you run your fingers across a leaf, pause. Let each pause be a line break in the prose of routine.
John Cage famously said in his Lecture on Nothing “I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it”. This mystical, contemplative nothing is shining and free in curators Moyu Yang and Chang Wang’s The Green Grammar, produced, supported and co-curated by host Gallery, ArtSect. The exhibition runs from June 27 to June 29 at art’otel, Hoxton.The exhibition was blooming with paintings, sculptures, ceramics, films, and most importantly – food and flowers. The Green Grammar draws on spirituality, ecology, mysticism, the body, and philosophy of language. This exhibition does not seek to dualistically answer questions regarding these ideas, but instead gestures to the shifting nature of these ideas within ourselves, our natural world and our created world.
ArtSect Gallery is a nomadic entity that builds, produces, and curates both physical and digital exhibitions across London, Athens, and the Middle East. Their focus lies in subtle geopolitics, psychology, LGBTQ+ voices, and emerging immersive and sensory practices. Incubating new artists and fostering cross-border communication between regions presents both logistical and social challenges—challenges that ArtSect is actively exploring and will continue to engage with in the years to come.
“Green Grammar was a joy to produce and a wonderful opportunity to experiment with sensory and aural experience, blending curation, literature, and human touch. We are very proud of our curatorial partners, Moyu and Chang, and look forward to more experimentation, public interaction, and future productions.”
—Christian Dyson, Co-founder, ArtSect
These works engage more with the somatic experience of language and dining, rather than focusing on spoken language itself. As a whole, the exhibition moves beyond conventional notions of mindfulness or meditative experience. Rather than inducing a state of calm, the works invite participants into a deeper, contemplative awareness.
fleur.de.lune_ Phuong Anh Nguyễn’s Flower installation (2025) Courtesy of the artists and art’otel London Hoxton Gallery. Photography: Huaiyi Du
At the opening night, Lancy Liu, a sensory artist who works primarily with food as her medium, curated a four-course dining experience for the debut night of The Green Grammar. She specialises in using experimental approaches to restructure edible materials, exploring how food can function as language and narrative. The social aspect of this experience must also be emphasised, as a warm and inviting atmosphere beamed throughout the night. Her practice brings together edible sculpture, biomimetic structures, and aforementioned based syntax, placing controlled craftsmanship alongside the unpredictable beauty of natural transformation.
Beginning with Verdant Island, the language of plants grew like a mycelial web. This was followed by Orchard Blossom and Dew of Dawn, concluding with the edible sculpture; material language. The base of both works is made from bread-based edible sculpture, shaped by hand to resemble tree bark and weathered stone. The pieces had naturally fermented and cracked in time – their quiet transformation embodying the space where memory gathers and language begins, allowing the plants they held to speak.
Ruixin Wang’s project 1(2022 – 2024) Lancy Liu’s Orchard Blossom & Dew of Dawn (2025) Courtesy of the artists and art’otel London Hoxton Gallery. Photography: Huaiyi Du
As an ecosystem, the flowers and set all felt wholly unique and complementary – necessary and uplifting to each other. Artist and florist, Phuong Anh Nguyễn. Her brand, Fleur De Lune (Flower of the Moon, or peace lily – nature’s lunar pacifier) lends Southeast Asian shou dance with Western floral craftsmanship, forming a cross-cultural harmony rich in nuance. Her work transcends traditional floristry, entering into art and cultural dialogue — a continuing song of heritage and adopted home. Like Liu’s contributions, Nguyễn’s floral arrangements were created specifically for The Green Grammar.
Together, these three elements — food, flora, and form — produced a rich psychosomatic experience, where the audience’s participation and interpretation evolved into a living extension of the artwork itself. The work enabled an ongoing dialogue across the gallery: a chorus of community and shared pleasure.
The food and flowers were gorgeously complemented by an array of artworks. Yang’s work Set, a modular candelabrum assembled in its grandest form for the occasion, gestures toward the shifting identities women navigate between private and public realms. Its presence illuminated Liu’s piece which, owing to its sensational taste, was devoured not so mindfully, yet with undeniable joy.
_fleur.de.lune_ Phoung Anh Nguyễn’s Flower installation (2025), Ruiyi Wang’s The restaurant (2023-2024), Moyu Yang’s SET(2025), Anyi Ji Moved by the stirrings of the heart （2025) Cosima Von Moreau’s Infinity (2024) Courtesy of the artists and art’otel London Hoxton Gallery. Photography: Huaiyi Du
Ruiyi Wang’s The Restaurant finds its place seamlessly within the exhibition. In this work, forks twist and stretch around elegantly crafted ceramic bowls, subtly distorting the familiarity of domestic dining. Her sculptures challenge the social rituals embedded in table settings, exposing a primal, almost feral instinct beneath the veneer of etiquette.In contrast, Ruixin Wang—an accessories designer and object artist—explores cutlery as a symbol of power and social hierarchy. Her project uses bones to represent both life and consumption. By transforming discarded bones into wearable tools, she reverses the roles of predator and prey, subverting the elite’s weaponised utensils and challenging notions of status through everyday objects.
Nearby, Anyi Ji’s Moved by the Stirrings of the Heart (2025) features white stoneware vases and a shell cradling a flourish of green plant life. The arrangement draws on the aesthetics of wabi-sabi, celebrating imperfection and impermanence. The texture of the plants mirrors the vases’ own rough surfaces, blurring the line between vessel and growth, containment and becoming.
As the audiences participate in the work—and indeed become part of it—they are surrounded by a multitude of pieces from talented young artists.Directly opposite the table stands the exhibition’s largest piece: The Dream of the Road by James Lang, a sprawling tree set against a muted blue sky. Inspired by early medieval Christian art, the painting conceals and reveals a message embedded in a grid across its surface, offering a visual meditation on revelation, memory, and the sacred.
Adjacent to Lang’s work is a textured canvas by Jingshan, who uses cracked tree bark as a metaphor for human fragility and resilience. Through the repeated layering and scraping of paint, she echoes the way bark naturally accumulates and erodes over time—inviting reflection on vulnerability, endurance, and the passage of time.
Beside this is Caitlin Hazell’s sculptural installation: a delicate chain formed entirely from bread. By transforming this humble, universally recognisable material into a symbol of quiet restraint, Hazell explores the weight of the mundane and the invisible rituals that shape daily life.
Continuing along the gallery’s contours, we encounter Blossoms of Decay by Wanting Wang. In this piece, rotting food is photographed as vibrant floral life bursts from its core. By embedding vitality into decomposing forms, Wang questions whether human intervention generates renewal or imposes corruption. The work challenges our perceptions of beauty, transformation, and the fragile illusion of impermanence.
Yichen He’s Flower and the Scarlet Omen merges cyanotype with oil painting to create a dialogue between organic form and expressive texture. A solitary white flower is encircled by a luminous red halo—minimal yet potent—contemplating humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world.
Beside it, Tianxi Wang’s Me and Inch’s explores an intimate relationship with a houseplant that has been a long-time companion. Paired with a self-portrait, the piece radiates a quiet spiritual support, reflecting the emotional connection between artist and plant—two living beings growing alongside each other.
Turning a corner, we find Cosima Von Moreau’s Peep Hole (2024), a serene assemblage of soft porcelain and resin on board. Drawing inspiration from the intricacy of nature, the work becomes a contemplative mirror—reflecting not just the outside world, but the viewer’s own sense of peace. A similar sentiment is echoed in her other piece, Infinity (2024).
In Bringers of Fertility, Above and Below, Katya Morgan Sykes conjures a spiritual connection with the fungal realm. With skeletal, organic forms, the work draws on animism, myth, and the interwoven dependencies of living systems.
Nearing the end of the circuit, we encounter Xueting Chen’s No.1, a reinterpretation of concrete through the lens of technological failure and emerging fragility. By destabilising the material’s conventional strength, Chen transforms cement into a precarious structure—one that appears solid but is on the edge of collapse, evoking themes of land, memory, and vulnerability.
Root Animals, a UV print on mixed media, draws inspiration from Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the rhizome. Opposing hierarchical structures and ideal forms, the work explores life’s small, interconnected moments—rain, breeze, friendship—suggesting meaning grows horizontally, not vertically.
Finally, we come full circle—both spatially and conceptually—with Lu Kuangyi’s we can never clearly see what stands before us (2025). These mirrored paintings, placed at the beginning and end of the exhibition, explore the liminal space between organism and object, where time, perception, and reality begin to dissolve. Their quiet symmetry signals a move away from emotional immediacy toward a search for unfamiliar truths—glimpses of a world that feels both unsettling and newly revealed.
Herman Hesse, a key inspiration in manifesting the exhibition, said “Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” Yang and Wang together have curated an exhibition with deep, contemplative roots and long branches that extend graciously without reaching. The art here sees us – our ideas of nature and language, and their reality – in all dimensions, glorious and transcendent.
Courtesy of the artists and art’otel London Hoxton Gallery. Photography: Huaiyi Du
Exhibition Details:
Dates: June 27 – 29th, 2025 Opening: 6:00 PM, Jun 27th, 2025 Location: Art’otel London Hoxton Gallery and Auditorium, 1-3 Rivington St, London EC2A 3DT
Curators:
Moyu Yang, Chang Wang
Participating Artists:
Anyi Ji, Phuong Anh Nguyễn, Cosima Von Moreau, Caitlin Hazell, Lancy Liu, Xueting Chen, Katya Morgansykes, Ume Dahlia, Ruixin Wang, Ruiyi Wang, Xin Zhang, James Lang, Kuangyi Lu, Aura Sun, Jingshan Ding, Tianxi Wang, Yichen He, Wanting Wang
Abbie Wilson produced this piece with the generous editorial contribution of Daniel Northover.
The screening of The Green Grammar Exhibition in Art’otel Gallery Hoxton unfolds like a quiet choreography of everyday materials, bodies, and ecological sensibilities. Tucked away from the white walls of the gallery, it takes shelter in a dim, intimate room in Art’otel gallery Hoxton, produced, supported and co-curated by host Gallery, ArtSect.The exhibition runs from June 27 to June 29 at art’otel, Hoxton.Interweaving themes of food, nature, and the philosophy of everyday mundane, these video artworks explore how meaning is constructed through soft gestures, tactile matter, and the unspoken logic of personal and collective memory. Just as grammar shapes how we communicate, these works uncover the quiet systems of meaning that emerge through emotion, memory, and the rhythms of daily life.
ArtSect Gallery is a nomadic entity that builds, produces, and curates both physical and digital exhibitions across London, Athens, and the Middle East. Their focus lies in subtle geopolitics, psychology, LGBTQ+ voices, and emerging immersive and sensory practices. Incubating new artists and fostering cross-border communication between regions presents both logistical and social challenges—challenges that ArtSect is actively exploring and will continue to engage with in the years to come.
“Green Grammar was a joy to produce and a wonderful opportunity to experiment with sensory and aural experience, blending curation, literature, and human touch. We are very proud of our curatorial partners, Moyu and Chang, and look forward to more experimentation, public interaction, and future productions.” —Christian Dyson, Co-founder, ArtSect
Video Artwork Left: Beiyi Wang, Right: Tong Yin
In Tong Yin’s Eating at yt’s, a 16mm stop-motion film depicts a surreal yet tender ritual of eating. Guided by a set of hand-made textile tableware, the act of dining becomes symbolic, a soft protest against the creeping gentrification of East London. Domestic objects, sewn and staged, take on the weight of social commentary. There is something quietly rebellious in this choice of medium and material: the film doesn’t shout, it folds critique into craft, and memory into metaphor.
Beiyi Wang’s Today I had a meeting about the value with apple, stone and matsutake proposes a speculative, non-anthropocentric worldview where fungi, minerals, and fruits become agents in a dialogue about value. The work imagines a sociality that transcends the human, gently questioning how worth is defined and by whom. It is both a dream and a provocation: what if the economy were run by moss and mushrooms?
Video Artwork Left: Iris Lingyu Zhang, Right: Tianyun Zhao
Iris Lingyu Zhang’s A Punch on TOFU draws on a Chinese idiom to evoke the dissonance of unmet confrontation. In this visually playful yet conceptually sharp video, frustration takes shape as something soft, ungraspable just like punching tofu. There is a humor here, yes, but also a subtle comment on the emotional labor of communication, especially when affect meets apathy. Zhang’s work lands like a delayed echo, subtle, but resonant.
In Tianyun Zhao’s PURE · CURE, sweetness becomes a lens for existential reflection. A single-channel film meditates on sugar as more than pleasure as a quiet endurance. Zhao asks: can sweetness heal, not just mask? The tone is contemplative, drifting somewhere between sensuality and sincerity, suggesting that even small comforts can be forms of resistance in a harsh world.
Video Artwork Left: Yingying Li , Right: Anning Song
Yingying Li’s I Embody the Trees adopts the structure of a screen-based triptych, presenting a minimal but emotionally potent tableau. From tree to body, a rope runs over three panels, yet the connection remains visually tenuous, almost slipping out of sync. The work moves like a breath held too long: tense, suspended, never quite landing. In this disjunction, Li opens a space of quiet estrangement, gesturing toward the complex entanglements between nature, gendered bodies, and psychic distance.
Anning Song’s Brand and Scar shifts us into darker digital terrain. Through fragmented imagery and an unsettling narrative, the video artworks explore the emotional violence inflicted by online misinformation. In the blurred boundaries between real and virtual, victim and spectator, Song draws attention to how scars are etched by language, branding, and virality. This piece feels especially timely: a sharp reminder of the psychic cost of public scrutiny.
Together, these six video artworks collectively create a scattered syntax of tension, care, and slow investigation. There are no sweeping declarations, only gestures, textures, and loops. The screening room becomes a soft archive of thoughts: some raw, some refined, all vital.
In an age of ecological and informational noise, The Green Grammar offers, through moving images, a kind of counter-language,one that listens, that senses, that whispers before it speaks.
The Green Grammar does not seek to shout above the din. Instead, it leans into slowness, into sensation, into the fragile syntax of gestures and atmospheres.The Green Grammar Cinema becomes a form of listening, through moving images, a kind of counter-language, one that listens, that senses, that whispers before it speaks.
Exhibition Details:
Dates: Jun 27 – 29th, 2025
Opening: 6:00 PM, Jun 27th, 2025 Location: Art’otel London Hoxton Gallery and Auditorium, 1-3 Rivington St, London EC2A 3DT
Curators:
Moyu Yang, Chang Wang
Participating Artists:
Tong Yin,Yingying Li,Tianyun Zhao,Anning Song,Iris Lingyu Zhang,Beiyi Wang
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