Kawai 加鬼 Shen 👻
@kawaishen.bsky.social
300 followers 130 following 1K posts
Read me and weep she/her; if I like you, you can call me sir http://www.kawaishen.com
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kawaishen.bsky.social
Thankfully pro reviewers have not been so easily distracted, focusing on a return to deconstruction, attn to modest/daily materials, play with silhouettes esp shoulders, etc. I love a good corset but it's a relief to see the house freed from its interim as a Galliano rehab project.
kawaishen.bsky.social
Having children play classical pieces off-kilter also strikes me as clever - trained children are perfectly capable of executing pieces like the Moonlight Sonata's 1st mvmt well. Instead they deliver a performance with a rollicking, contrived dissonance that echoes the house's approach to tradition.
kawaishen.bsky.social
There's a history of anonymizing models' faces with the house. The intention is clearly not to invoke erotic humiliation when the backdrop/soundtrack is a wonky children's orchestra. The charges of degradation are a projected moral panic; the comparisons to McQueen (!!) are lazy and superficial.
kawaishen.bsky.social
The pick stitches, originally designed for clothing tags to be easily removed, became synonymous with a brand logo, serving the opposite role they were originally intended for - so yes, it's uncomfortable. It's certainly no worse than wearing stilettos.
kawaishen.bsky.social
Reading online chatter about Margiela's SS26 show, you'd think Martens had staged some kind of misogynist torture production. The mouthpieces are obviously meant to replicate the house's pick stitches and have nothing to do with gender - the show was co-ed. #fashionsky
Maison Margiela Co-Ed Spring Summer 2026 Collection
YouTube video by Maison Margiela
youtu.be
kawaishen.bsky.social
The Cold Data exhibit at Gallery 44 tasks the viewer with acknowledging the material realities and costs of data storage and computing with a model data centre, collage pieces and short film
Cold Data by Soft Turns (Wojciech Olejnik and Sarah Jane Gorlitz): a model data centre with tiny lights, fans. Remarkably realistic.
kawaishen.bsky.social
You're free to express yourself as an artist sure, but if you're coming to read in Toronto, maybe consider how a poem like this will land with an audience in a city full of refugees from colonial violence and the children of those refugees
Hannah Black: I’ve noticed, especially in poetry, but elsewhere as well, an existential question coming up around how to go on with everyday life while genocide is happening. “A genocide is happening and I’m eating breakfast”—that kind of thing. In some moods, it strikes me as fundamentally trivial or even kind of narcissistic. But then in other moments, I think, well, it might be an important question. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Mohammed El-Kurd: It’s good to talk to your friends about these things, but I think these are conversations you keep to the group chat. I don’t think this is for the stage or for the page. I think our role is to shift the lens from how we feel about what’s happening to what’s happening.
Reposted by Kawai 加鬼 Shen 👻
Reposted by Kawai 加鬼 Shen 👻
kickstarterunited.org
‼️🚨KICKSTARTER WORKERS ARE ON STRIKE🚨‼️

As of 8am this morning, the workers of Kickstarter United/OPEIU Local 153 are on strike.

WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR A BOYCOTT! Creators and allies, please continue using and supporting the platform.
Kickstarter United is on strike!
We are not asking for a boycott! Creators & Allies: Please continue to support & use the platform
swipe for ways to show your solidarity Why We're Striking
A codified 4-day work week.
We simply want to protect the way we've been working for over 3.5 years. The 4dww has proven benefits, such as increased productivity and improved employee satisfaction. It's part of what makes Kickstarter a special, innovative place to work.
Fair pay for our lowest-paid workers.
We're fighting for livable minimum salaries for roles that are undervalued by the market but crucial to keeping Kickstarter running. We believe none of our workers should struggle to make ends meet. Creators
Show your solidarity by:
Continue using the platform like normal
When something breaks, complain loudly that it is management's fault for causing the strike
Include our logo and strike info on your project
Send a letter to KSR leadership urging them to meet our demands & end the strike bit.ly/KSRUletter Community Allies
Show your solidarity by:
Support your favorite creators on the platform like normal
Send a letter to KSR leadership urging them to meet our demands & end the strike: Creators
Show your solidarity by:
Continue using the platform like normal
When something breaks, complain loudly that it is management's fault for causing the strike
Include our logo and strike info on your project
Send a letter to KSR leadership urging them to meet our demands & end the strike bit.ly/KSRUletter
Donate to our solidarity fund: bit.ly/KSRUdonate
Attend a rally or picket either in-person near you (NYC and Seattle) or virtual
kawaishen.bsky.social
Recently finished reading this collection of interviews and saw that Miss Major is fundraising for hospital fees: fundly.com/missmajor
Cover of Miss Major Speaks by Toshio Meronek and Miss Major, photograph of a young Miss Major in a shimmery cold shoulder dress under a disco ball.
kawaishen.bsky.social
This definition of class has been successfully cultivated since the 70s in part to drive a wedge between private sector unions (mostly men, then mostly yt) and public sector unions (mostly women, including WOC, more likely to have post-secondary education) in a rift that still exists
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
the going definition of "working class" seems to be whether or not one went to college. look I know we're not going to agree on here about what "working-class" is but can we all agree it's not that?
nymag.com
Trump’s 2024 coalition has already fallen apart. Polls show Trump has lost the young, Black, and Latino supporters he attracted in 2024, leaving him with the same old white working-class base.
kawaishen.bsky.social
I really wish that I'd been assigned to read this, Hartman's Scenes of Subjection, and other such books in my undergrad.
Cover of Christina Sharpe's Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects ft a black and white photo, "Missing Link, Liberty" by Carrie Mae Weems. A figure in a tux with white gloves, tipping a top hat towards something outside the frame. Completely obscuring their face and head is the mask of an elephant. Excerpted text from Christina Sharpe's Monstrous Intimacies: "The legal captivity of Africans and their descendants was central to the codification of rights and freedoms for those legally constituted as white and their legally white descendants. That is, freedoms for those people constituted as white were and are produced through an other’s body legally and otherwise being made to wear unfreedom and to serve as a placeholder for access to the freedoms that are denied the black subject."
Reposted by Kawai 加鬼 Shen 👻
kawaishen.bsky.social
Thank you for sharing - I've no affiliation to the publication but it does print great food writing!
kawaishen.bsky.social
Those who liked this thread might be interested in this article by Borsook. "...the average geek espouses a world where the only art would be that which has withstood the test of the marketplace..."
kawaishen.bsky.social
For certain populations (e.g. incarcerated), punishment and the sovereign's right of death and power over life, never really went away. This should have made clear the alliance between pre-modern punishment with today's tech could come to dictate the conditions of everyday life. And now, here we are
kawaishen.bsky.social
Foucault wrote about a historical shift from the "punishment" of pre-modern society to the modern panopticon - I think what we're seeing is how various forms of punishment will return to western societies, a tech-driven fusion of pre-modern and modern apparatuses of power.
kawaishen.bsky.social
I think we're going to see many instances of overt, external coercive forces for population control return alongside the more internalized "manufacturing consent" forces I mostly grew up with. I don't just mean fascism (which I consider a modern phenomenon), but pre-modern conditions.
kawaishen.bsky.social
I'd discounted how little biopolitical fitness or productivity (via services like rolling out a basic vax program) is required by a ruling class to maintain power/hoard resources.
kawaishen.bsky.social
- given the sheer amount of resources and admin infrastructure/workers required to properly maintain a biopolitically fit labour force. Like, corps don't want to pay for healthcare, etc. It wasn't that I didn't see how much more concentrated wealth would become but -
kawaishen.bsky.social
I once wrote this comic about a dystopic world where the nation state was an empty container for tech/corp-controlled psuedo-city-states, a bit like the company town but with the feverish branding of national/brand identity. At the time, I thought this was a stretch - 🧵
kawaishen.bsky.social
If anyone has read this Varoufakis book and the Cédric Durand book on the same topic, is it worth reading both?...
Cover of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis. Bold white and purple sans-serif text with a black background.