#but the clean interior designs feel oddly...isolating

[risingshine]

Wabi-sabi feels like a...curious aesthic, at least from my perspective. Because on the surface, its natural tones and materials, imperfect decorations

but like, the core of wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection, feels like it can actually apply to quite a few things. the clutter that always winds up on your desk, the mis-match mugs in the shelves, feel as much a joy of life as worn stones and old bonsai trees.

Maybe I'm just in a weird mood today.

[merakiui]

thinking about androids again, but rather than the plot seen in android jade,,,, consider android floyd who is being developed by tech genius idia shroud with input and funding from business magnate azul ashengrotto.

(cw: yandere, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, obsession, vaguely implied non-con/dub-con, android floyd)

He's designed to be a companion for those who are lonely and in need of the company (whether physically or socially). You're just a tired, overworked university student, so it's mind-boggling to you when there's a sleek limousine parked just beyond campus property. Security guards are insisting you come with them because there's someone who'd like to meet you.

In the limo, you find yourself sitting across from Azul Ashengrotto himself. He doesn't bother with flowery introductions, instead cutting to the heart of the matter. You've been randomly selected to help with a very important phase of his and Idia's project. The general idea is to test how well the android interacts with a normal, ordinary person in a monitored setting.

You're very confused. You never signed up for any lottery, and you certainly aren't affiliated with anything of that sort. You're just trying to get through your degree, survive two part-times, and hopefully make enough to keep afloat for another month. Azul tells you this isn't an issue; you'll be generously compensated for your time and efforts. It's only three months; you'll be permitted to live your life as you normally would, only now you'll be accompanied by a highly intelligent android.

Despite hearing all of this, you hesitate when he reveals the lengthy contract. As you flip through it, analyzing each clause and category, Azul says something that piques your interest. "We don't expect you to house an android in your little apartment. Goodness, that's simply ludicrous. We'll provide your housing for these next three months. After all, we must be able to monitor your progress."

"Housing? What do you mean?"

He smiles at you. Backdropped by leather interior, the lights casting odd shadows on his face, he looks near-sinister. But he leans forward to press a ballpoint pen into your hands and the illusion vanishes. "I think you'll find it quite to your liking. If you've finished your classes for the day, why not visit the property with me? Then you may decide whether you wish to participate."

You're not worried about that part. What worries you the most, however, is the fact that he's right. You are finished with classes for the day and you have nothing planned. You took today off from work. Your schedule is perfectly free.

But of course the Azul Ashengrotto wouldn't know that, would he?

The house is a smart home, equipped with every necessity and appliance. Everything's controlled by a remote here. It's not very far from your university either, built on a hill that overlooks houses below. It feels a little isolating and smells very new and clean. Like that fabled new car smell, only it's a house. But everything is so unique to you. Its minimalistic design is oddly cozy, and you can't help but feel enchanted the deeper you venture through the two-story home. It's all so unreal!

Azul gives you the rundown, explains how the remote and each button works. You can lock doors, open and close windows, mess with the thermostat, turn the home security on and off, and even start the oven. You hold the power to this home in the palm of your hands. It's immensely fascinating.

By the end of the tour, you're shaking his hand and signing his contract, agreeing to three months of study. Not only are you provided this nice home, you'll also be paid per week. And the pay is far more than you were making with your two jobs.

The android has a long, tongue-tying serial number, so to make things easier he's named Floyd. They even gave him a surname in preparation for the twin android who is being designed to complement and mirror him. He certainly looks human when you meet him, but there's this uncanny nature to his presence that slightly unnerves you. He's too perfect. Skin too smooth. Eyes too bright. Hair too soft. He towers over you, having to bend down to walk through the doorframe, and every movement he makes is very mechanical and stiff.

Still, you smile at him and offer your hand. "Hi there. I'm (Name). Your...housemate, I guess."

He nods, peering down at your hand before lifting his own. "Floyd Leech. At your service."

You were expecting to feel coldness, so you startle when his hand fits into yours and it's warm. It feels so very real. So deceptively lifelike. You wonder if he can regulate his own internal temperatures. Just how advanced is he?

"Right... Um, I look forward to getting to know you!"

He nods again, releasing your hand after a perfectly timed handshake.

Azul had given you a special number should you need to reach him or Idia. All you needed to do was phone it if at any point you were to feel confused or unsafe. "But I don't think you'll utilize it," he told you when you stood in the lab, watching Idia Shroud flit around to do final maintenance checks to ensure Floyd was ready for his first trial run. His eyes were open the entire time, two mismatched lights centered on you. His stare was listless, but somehow you felt as if he was looking through to your very soul. "He's very safe. In fact, he's programmed to assess and react appropriately to dangers of all kinds. You'll be safe with him around."

And safe you are.

You've always been alone, so it's nice to have a roommate, even if he only speaks when spoken to. It's awkward for all of one week until you ease into his pattern. From various vantage points throughout the house, Idia and Azul watch through hidden cameras. You cook your meals for yourself and Floyd watches, assisting when you order him to. You leave for class and Floyd waits by the door for you to return, standing stock-still for hours.

You lounge in the sitting room and put on all kinds of films. Action. Comedy. Horror. Floyd's eyes never leave the screen. But sometimes he watches you more than he watches the movie, noting all of your reactions. He doesn't understand why you get so emotional over sappy romances. So you explain it simply: "It evokes emotions. We all have emotions, and these movies make us feel them. Happy. Sad. Angry. Upset. Things like that."

But Floyd doesn't feel. Even so, he listens and he nods along, filing your answers away for later dissection. It's interesting.

By the end of the first month, Floyd's adopted new habits. Ever since you told him he's free to do as he pleases, he's taken to cooking your meals for you, doing your laundry, preparing your bag for the day. He's surprisingly good at it. He does chores when you leave for classes or work. And for the first time in a while you're excited to return home, knowing he's there waiting.

Floyd adds new words and phrases to his ever-expanding vocabulary. You watch a lot of TV together and he starts to use some of what he hears in his own speech. He picks up informal language quickly, and it isn't long until he's using words like sup or dunno instead of the rigid how are you? and I am unsure he was previously programmed with.

The first sign of unrest comes when you realize Floyd's also connected to the smart home. At first you didn't think it was a bad thing. After all, with him controlling it you won't have to worry about getting up to grab the remote if you've already sat down. Floyd can do that for you. But then the remote goes missing, later turning up shattered. You ask Floyd what happened and he looks at you and says, "Why use this piece of junk when you've got me?"

"Still... What if you're not able to help? What if you're in sleep mode and I need to open a window or something?" you argue, cradling the splinters of remote like they're an injured baby bird.

"That won't happen," he replies smoothly, issuing you a soothing smile. "I'm always gonna be here for ya. Count on it."

And you do because, by the time the three months are nearing their end and Floyd's developed into quite the companion, more and more human than he's ever seemed, you find yourself stuck.

No, not stuck. That's not quite right. You're more so trapped.

Floyd locks the doors, shutters the windows, turns off the lights. You're cowering in the closet, the only place that feels just a little safe in this moment. You can't reach Azul or Idia either. He's shut the power off, the internet connection, everything. The smart home on the hilltop feels like a tiny island now, and Floyd's the shark always circling it, waiting for you to dip your feet into the depths.

"C'mon, Shrimpy," he calls out, and it's a nickname you were once so fond of because he thought of it himself. "I already told ya I ain't gonna hurt ya. So just come out and talk to me."

You have no idea where you went wrong. Was it too many horror films? Was it the fact that you started to rely so heavily on him for companionship, ignoring your human friends in favor of staying in with Floyd? Or was it because he was blocking their numbers that you never received any messages and automatically assumed they were cutting contact? He said he'd always be here for you, so why to this degree?

The closet doors are thrown open. Floyd drags you, kicking and screaming, out by the ankles. Every camera has gone dark on Azul and Idia's end. All but one. The one in the bedroom. Floyd stares directly at it when he lifts you up and lays you on the bed, gentle and sugary-sweet.

He smiles and waves before that screen blanks out, leaving you truly trapped with him.

And because it's all experimental, morbid curiosity trumping ethical morals, no one comes to rescue you.

Three months is more of an indefinite forever in this lonesome smart home.

[peckhampeculiar]

One to watch

Francis Olvez-Wilshaw’s work has explored a diverse range of topics, from American football to the financial crash and his grandfather’s Filipino heritage. We caught up with the Peckham-based artist ahead of his upcoming show at the Royal College of Art

Words Emma Finamore; Photo Orlando Gili 

Big, bright red baseball caps are something you might expect to see at a Donald Trump rally, rather than in an art gallery, but a Peckham-based artist is using symbols like this in his work as a way of questioning power, both political and economic.

Francis Olvez-Wilshaw first arrived in the area after winning a place to study sculpture at Camberwell College of Art from 2010-13.

“I was sort of ‘parachuted’ into Camberwell,” he says, remembering how it felt to be a teenager from the Midlands arriving at art school in London. “I was oddly out of sync. I think people noticed my accent a lot, it used to be much stronger.”

Encouraged by his tutors, Francis went on to apply successfully for an MA at the Royal College of Art (RCA), but took a two-year gap after his BA to go back to his hometown of Buxton, Derbyshire, to “toughen up” and learn to live as an artist outside the protective confines of university. While he was there he received a grant from the Arts Council to set up his first solo show: If You Want Me To Stay.  

This initial show was heavily influenced by collaborations Francis had worked on at Camberwell with a fellow student interested in interior design. Looking a little like a 1960s bedroom, the show featured brightly coloured, almost cartoon-like sculptures and neon Perspex tables.

There were cushions covered in flowers and small ornament-like sculptures, the most striking of which were resin cast busts of the grandfather of socialism, Karl Marx, in neon pink, yellow, purple, blue, orange and green.

The show might have appeared jovial and bright on the surface, but its themes went deeper. “I was interested in the commodification of someone who spoke about commodity,” says Francis, of the Marx busts.

Next he “bounced back into a London residency in Highbury, run by curator Paul Bailey” and took part in a group show with the Florence Trust at St Saviour’s – a former church turned arts centre – in north London.

Francis’ work explored the financial crash, creating architectural interior-inspired sculptures that echoed the lobby and reception areas of big international bank buildings – complete with water features – as well as aping their corporate logos. 

“I looked at it with a sort of pastiche,” he says. “The lobbies of bank buildings and logos that don’t really mean anything – those visuals are all I know about that world. After the financial crash they’re sort of zombies, without the bravado or confidence they used to have.”

Francis notes the odd parallels of the show having been held in a former church, how the international banks he was exploring are (or were) institutions of their own; pinning the world together, with consumers worshipping at their altars of capitalism.

Next, he embarked on his MA at the RCA, where he is currently in his final year. Despite being based in a very different location, there are elements reminiscent of Camberwell College of Art, which he enjoys.

“We’re in a totally open studio, very like Camberwell,” he says. “You can’t make something and get away with it! It’s a good thing, I think.”

Francis clearly made an impact in his first few years, as he was then selected as the fourth exchange student from the RCA to be hosted by the Studio Art MFA programme at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States.

The exchange is seriously competitive, and gives a residency abroad to just one RCA student to go and work in Texas, and one UT Austin student to come and work here in London.

A little like relocating to London from Derbyshire, the move to Texas was a bit of a culture shock – but one that created a good frame of mind from which to create new, reflective work.

The resulting show at the university – titled Stick A Fork In It –was totally responsive to the environment in which Francis found himself: he went to Austin with no tools, no equipment and no work.  

“The university is next to a football stadium as big as Wembley,” he says. “So I was thinking a lot about polarisation through sport and American football, and its ethos – how it’s sort of a template, a moral code for life.”  

Francis was interested in how heavily engendered sport in America is – men playing on the field, with women dancing (or cheering) on the side – and how its expectations of women and men are outdated but still adhered to on the field.

He sees sport in the US as almost “allowing” people to go back to an old mode of living: “At this particular moment, the world sees an increasing number of changes to beliefs and social systems in which the realm of sports has come to offer refuge and a simple model for lifestyle, behaviour and relationships.”  

Francis is also interested in how sport offers a collective model for living that’s been lost in our post-industrial, increasingly individualistic, society. “One yearns to belong to something bigger than one’s self,” he says.

“Power is achieved through this collectivism, a power equated to an individual’s self-worth and control within one’s own personal sphere. Our collectivism is being defined more by what we are against, rather than what we are for. Conflict and antagonism, born from a mutated form of binary competition, is now our discourse.”

The show featured an imposing 10-foot-high red baseball cap, a symbol that Francis has focused on for a while. “I wrote about the red baseball cap for my thesis in the first year of my MA,” he says.

“How it’s been used from the French Revolution, then taken up by baseball players, then soaked up into sports capitalism and fashion brands of the 90s, and now adopted by Donald Trump.”

He says there’s something about the hat that seems to signify battle, but that it’s also something to hide behind: at the scale he created the sculpture in Austin, when you’re inside the cap it’s impossible to see out of it, or be seen yourself.

Another piece in the show is a huge, inflatable man – the kind often outside car show rooms, or advertising things on the side of the road. At first he seems whimsical and jolly, but on closer inspection it’s clear he is wearing a fierce “game face” rather than the smiley one you might expect.

Francis says he was inspired by the American football billboards he saw around town in Austin; displaying men in masks, baring their teeth and seemingly promoting violence.

While he was on this life-changing trip in Austin, another pivotal moment happened for Francis: his grandfather passed away. He had lived in the Philippines his whole life (Francis’ mother is Filipino) and the loss hit Francis in an unusual way.  

“I was in Texas, so me, my mum and my granddad were all at the furthest points away from each other,” he says. “It was an odd feeling of isolation and grief.

“He spoke a native dialect so we couldn’t really speak to each other when we saw one another every three or four years, so my idea of him really comes from stories from family, the old man sitting outside the house.”

The idea of mixed identity, but one part being dominant – “half of me is so over-assimilated that I feel like a working class English man,” says Francis – as well as a celebration of strong female role models in the Filipino home he remembers so fondly, will form the centre of his final show at the RCA.

“I’m making a dress out of a fabric woven from pineapple leaves,” he says. “It’s kind of like a ‘national treasure’, worn in the Philippines during formal occasions. It’s sort of transparent so feminine and slightly sensual, but it’s worn by men and women.”

Inspired by memories of women in the house cleaning, cooking and taking care of him and his sister, Francis will also recreate the coconut shells women wear on their feet to wax the house floor, in a sort of domestic dance.

These will be accompanied by other works such as a reimagining of a Tudor family portrait, full of symbolic objects and meaning; and a high modernist sculpture, inspired by the pot-bellied Filipino men that Francis remembers seeing sitting outside the house with their vests rolled up to keep cool in the heat.

With such diversity of inspiration and breadth of work, Francis Olvez-Wilshaw is one Peckham artist worth keeping an eye on.

............................

 Francis’ final show at the RCA is open to the public from June 23 to July 1, 12-6pm at the Darwin Building, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore. francisolvez-wilshaw.com