After a lengthy hiatus we're back with some exciting plans moving forward! We are now accepting submissions from those of you who are eager to have your voices heard! Join the loud minority by emailing us on contributions@zodculture.com

Here it is, the video from ZOD Culture's The Word event back in May. Produced and edited by Rachel Mallett | Thank you to everyone who made it out and got involved!

Here it is, the video from our "The Word" event back in May by Rachel Mallett. Thank you to everyone who made it out and got involved!

On Survival: Lessons from a Festival Exploring Sexual Abuse

Photo: Robert Thorpe-Wood as ‘the Boy’ in Tanaka Mhishi’s This is How it Happens. Photo credit: Kenneth Jay.

It sounds like a hard sell; a four day festival talking about sexual abuse and consent. Discussion panels, open houses, theatre, spoken word, art and yes, even comedy. It happened at /I’klectik/, an art space and cafe in central London which, for four days at the end of July, played host to Clear Lines, the UK’s first festival exploring the issue of sexual violence. I was there as a contributing artist. So were a lot of other people.

Some weeks before, I received an email from co-founder Winnie M Li asking whether I was happy to have a short play I’d written restaged as part of the theatre night at Clear Lines. I said yes enthusiastically – it’s one of my favourite pieces – and called a writer friend to gush.

“That’s really great,” she said. My friend then asked, “Can you have a festival about sexual violence? I mean… who’s going to go to that on a weekend?”

You can. We did. And as to who turned up, Clear Lines estimates that the equivalent of one man and ten women are raped every hour in England and Wales, and that a fifth of girls and one in twelve boys will be sexually abused. There is a devastating lack of spaces to talk about what these experiences mean for us. And, when I say ‘us’ I mean it; my play, ‘This Is How it Happens’, is a retelling of my first year as a survivor of date rape.

I wrote my play because... Read On

Playwright and performance poet, Tanaka Mhishi's article - 'On Survival: Lessons from a Festival Exploring Sexual Abuse' - will be available to read, like, comment on and share tomorrow afternoon on www.zodculture.com

Photo credit: Kenneth Jay

‪#‎ClearLinesFestival‬ ‪#‎Artivism‬

To See An Ocean Of Dreams In A Mere Tear-drop As Wichita Falls

These are the words of my friend,

“I've been thinking too much about mortality lately, turning into a skeleton who's been trying to simplify things so people get why life's shit happens and why we need to view each other equally”

He sent them to me a month before he ended his own life. Inner-most thoughts that have crystallized in my mind’s eye because I evaded the darkness – I malignantly tip-toed around his reality; his truth; his fall. I selfishly presumed that his thoughts on mortality would fizzle out like the circular motion of a spinning top… but only light can drive out darkness.

Chen continues to offer his unconditional friendship and support to Shi and his daughter, along with many others

Photo: David Høgsholt

A light – present within all of us – which emanates from Chen Si every time he patrols the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge during his free time, to look out for people contemplating suicide. People like Shi, whose life continues to be downtrodden by the exorbitant cost of his daughter’s leukemia treatments, burdening them with insurmountable debts… People who long for freedom.

Having learnt to see an ocean of dreams in a mere teardrop, Chen reaches out to these individuals with kindness and unabated love. Intent on listening with a clear mind; observing with empathic vigour; feeling with an... Read More

The pain from losing someone close to us is something we never truly move past -- how can we? Particularly when you know that you could have done more to help that person, but you just didn't know how to approach them. Gripped by trepidation, we just aren't prepared for this... "Perhaps if I’d engaged with my friend’s isolated feelings, he wouldn’t have felt so alone in this universe. I’m haunted by the reality of never knowing. But how do we intuitively respond to an individual’s sorrow? How do we remove our fears and acquire a level of empathy, which is so far removed from our daily lives?" 'To see an ocean of dreams in a mere teardrop as Wichita falls' by Benjamin Eli Levine will be available to read tomorrow afternoon on www.zodculture.com

Brighton against austerity! we want to know how your community is fighting back? 

“Would you like me to bring you some tea?”

“Tea?” I repeat. I hadn’t ordered tea. Was this tea free?

It was, and it wasn’t. Monetarily, I didn’t pay anything for the tea. But why offer tea to a stranger in a half-filled Turkish restaurant?

Perhaps because it was cold. Perhaps because I ate alone. Or perhaps, as I have unexpectedly received free food and drink before, because the older male server thought I was beautiful.

As a societal group without historical access to monetary currency, women have survived for years on this societal “black market”: unofficially, beauty is our currency. For this reason, young women are not raised to pursue education or lucrative careers. Their societal capital is stored in their lips, their hips and their breasts as they compete for the scarcity: a man in good standing.

This is the development of the dowry; of the Western tradition of having a bride’s father pay for the wedding; of “giving one’s daughter away.” Without family name, women have only their faces by which to gain access to money in a patriarchal capitalism. So for seemingly no reason at all, men give women things for free—but is it? How does one weigh the societal pressure for a woman to pay something in return? It is a smile? A “thank you”? Is it more? Is a man being nice to a woman the same as a person being nice to a person, or is it different?

Under current economic conditions, it is difficult as a “wealthy” woman to... Read on

Historically, a woman’s value has been derived from her physical beauty. In this way, beauty (and by extension, female sexuality) can be considered a woman’s oldest and, until recently, only form of currency in a capitalist patriarchy - Yet at what cost are women societally appraised for their worth?

"She must doubt all that she receives, because it could have little to do with her intelligence, her creativity or her honest intentions and everything to do with her appearance." - Aryanna Prasad

'The Cost Of A Pretty Penny' by Aryanna Prasad will be available to read tomorrow afternoon on www.zodculture.com

*Image by Aryanna Prasad

All For None And None For All: The Depressive Effects of Western “Progress”

There are three words in English that are so difficult to utter—that require so much courage and strength—that when they are said, they can change a life.

I need help.

Americans suffering from mental illness, knowingly or unknowingly, all too often suffer through the process of searching for help from people who don’t understand these illnesses. In an individualistic society where we are raised to think only of ourselves, there is no time or energy worth expending on understanding a disease we cannot see—a disease that is easy to imagine as imaginary because it is not rational or external.

In such a society, there are over 41,000 suicides a year, making it the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.

For every successful suicide, there are an estimated twelve self-inflicted injuries.

Because caring for depression, along with other mental illnesses, goes against the teachings of self-serving capitalism and Western progress.

Good capitalists work for... Read On

America’s relentless capitalist work ethic has an overlooked side effect: how the pressure to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” affects those afflicted by mental illness. With an unrealistic emphasis on self-sufficiency, the mentally ill suffer in lonely silence in many industrialised nations.

"There are three words in English that are so difficult to utter—that require so much courage and strength—that when they are said, they can change a life - I need help." - Aryanna Prasad

'All For None And None For All' by Aryanna Prasad will be available to read tomorrow afternoon on www.zodculture.com, find out just what this could mean for your civil rights and rights to protest.

WILL YOU BE ARRESTED FOR READING THIS?

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone” – David Cameron, May 13th 2015

Let’s just let that one sink in…

At the first meeting of the new National Security Council (NSC), plans for a Counter-Extremism Bill were discussed to ‘put British values at the heart of the new government’s approach to tackling extremism’, and ‘prioritise new legislation to make it much harder for people to promote dangerous extremist views in our communities.’

The Prime Minister said to the NSC:

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.

This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation, and bring our country together. That means actively promoting certain values.

Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality.

We must say to our citizens: this is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe in these things. And it means confronting head-on the poisonous Islamist extremist ideology. Whether they are violent in their means or not, we must make it impossible for the extremists to succeed.”

You can read what the Home Secretary Theresa May had to add here, and the full Government press release on the bill here.

Reading it sends shivers down my spine.

I’m extremely annoyed that... Read On

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone”

– David Cameron, May 13th 2015

The Counter-Extremism Bill proposed by the newly formed National Security Council is changing what it means to be within the confines of the law.

"Will I Be Arrested For Reading This?" will be available to read tomorrow afternoon on www.zodculture.com, find out just what this could mean for your civil rights and rights to protest.