Episode ten marks the finale of season one with our interviewer Habib William Kherbek who curated this season’s interviewees. Our guest this week is the multi-faceted, creative practitioner, Taylor Le Melle.

Originally from the United States, Taylor currently resides in the UK. They are a writer, organiser, curator, producer, and the publisher and editor at PSS, a micro-publishing press.

In conversation with Habib, Taylor discusses “The Virosexuals” by Orion J Facey, a recently published sci-fi novel set in a dystopian Manchester, UK, in 2080.

The book explores themes of self-discovery, Afro-futurist queer subcultures, excess, trauma, healing, and action. It tells a story of a new STI - a computer virus with physical effects directly linked to the brain with no known cure. It reflects on the algorithmic enclosure of choices, the nature of reality, and the coercion of software.

Taylor highlights the cinematic quality of the book and its exploration of the intertwining of pleasure, ecstasy, and terror. Orion’s interests in various philosophies, transcendental, religious, and spiritual texts are also touched upon. Taylor raises the question of what actions readers might feel permitted to take after engaging with the book.

Beyond publishing, Taylor’s diverse interests include curating, writing, producing, herbalism, and researching nutritional links to moods and emotions. They discuss biohacking through teas and honeys, understanding the blood-brain barrier, and enhancing the nervous system through singing and vibration healing. Taylor also writes book reviews and is currently working on a novel, with Orion serving as a mentor.

Taylor co-founded a film cooperative with friends, emphasising the importance of community and cooperation for survival, especially in the demanding environment of London. They no longer work for entities outside the cooperative, challenging the notion of critical distance and the taboo of working with friends. Taylor advocates for collaboration with emotionally invested individuals.

Taylor Le Melle served as a Jerwood Writer-in-Residence in 2018 and curated the “boundary+gesture” exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre in 2019, exploring themes of personhood and property.

Creatrix Pod is presented by Claire Zakiewicz for Creatrix Magazine.

This is episode 7 and our guest is the innovative visual artist Egle Jauncems, currently residing in London and originally from Lithuania.

Egle explores and challenges various media and techniques, including weaving, sculpture and oil painting on unstretched canvas.

At the age of 20, she won a scholarship to study weaving and embroidery under buddhist monks in Taiwan. She is particularly interested in symbols, complex systems and codes, especially in everyday street scenes. Her works are playful and rhythmic meditations on conquering nature and illusion.

Egle holds a BA in weaving at Chelsea college of Art and an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art.

In our conversation with resident interviewer Habib William Kherbek. Egle delves into notions of power and how power is represented in painting. They also discuss her background as a musician and DJ who transitioned into a visual artist, as well as the challenges of balancing work and family life with two children.

Egle recently had a solo exhibition titled “Orion” at Cedric Bardawil in Soho, London.

We are delighted to present Egle Jauncems on Creatrix Pod this week.

This is Episode 6, and our guest is the meticulous and evocative Thana Faroq. Faroq is an award-winning Yemeni photographer, writer, and educator currently based in the Netherlands. She was born and raised in Yemen until the age of 17 when she traveled to Canada and the US for her undergraduate studies.

Her recent book, "How Shall We Greet the Sun" explores the personal stories and complex emotional lives of a small group of young women refugees living in the Netherlands, including Thana. It reflects on their shared and individual journeys, casting an eye toward both tangible and metaphorical futures. Many of them are at a point in life where they are navigating the formation of new identities—shaped by new cultural contexts, power dynamics, memories, and nostalgia for the past.

Thana Faroq offers a visual and textual exploration of how the identities of this generation of women migrants in the Netherlands are continuously built and reshaped by their current circumstances and the homes they left behind.

She speaks with our resident interviewer, Habib William Kherbek, about her working processes, starting with a sentence and crafting short sentences, followed by the photography that arises from them. She discusses working intuitively and allowing for mistakes and imperfections and finding joy in the process.

She discusses the role of the creative process in the healing journey and conveying conflicting emotions. Her work explores the challenge of depicting in pictures the feelings of homesickness and loneliness, as well as the struggle to integrate into a new culture as a female refugee. She navigates the formation of new identities and the nostalgia for the past.

Thana currently teaches at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (KABK). She received the inaugural Open Society Foundation Fellowship Grant in 2018 and the Arab Documentary Fund, supported by the Prince Claus Fund and Magnum Foundation, in 2019. In 2020, she was recognized as 'One to Watch' by the British Journal of Photography. She also won the PhotoWien Photo Book Award in 2021 for her first book, "I Don’t Recognize Me in the Shadows."

We at Creatrix magazine are delighted to feature her in this week’s episode.

This week, we are thrilled to host Lauren Oyler, one of the most influential young literary critics of her generation. Lauren’s writings have garnered widespread acclaim through her contributions for The New Yorker, Harper’s, the London Review of Books, and her celebrated novel “Fake Accounts”.

In conversation with our resident interviewer, Habib William Kherbek, Lauren discusses her latest work “No Judgement”. This highly acclaimed book comprises eight wide-ranging, critical essays that take on various particularities of contemporary culture, including the attention economy, the internet, urban spaces, social networks, the ‘Me Too’ movement, reality TV, diversity, agency, the role of criticism, gossip and her own relentless anxiety, all delivered in her distinctive jaunty style.

During their conversation, they explore Lauren’s incorporation of personal anecdotes into her writing, the rise in the popularity of autofiction, and the role of irony and ambiguity within this genre. They also delve into the author’s mindfulness of the reader, the impact of distance and proximity within a cultural dimension.

Lauren and Habib also reflect upon their shared experiences as expatriates living in Berlin while hailing from the Unites States. They touch upon the challenges of writing novels and cultural criticism, as well as the challenges they have both faced; the difficulty in defending one’s own enjoyment of a work in the face of criticism.

We are delighted to feature Lauren as our guest on this week’s episode of Creatrx Pod.

Welcome to Episode Four of Creatrix Pod and our guest is the brave, award-winning visual journalist, artist, and educator Tanya Habjouqa, who has been living with her children in Palestine.

In a powerful and important interview, Tanya talks with our resident interviewer Habib William Kherbek about her creative work, which is grounded in ethical practice and focuses on human rights, gender, representations of otherness, dispossession and resettlement in the Middle East.

During this interview she takes us through the trajectory of her life and work, recounting her upbringing between Jordan and Texas, and discussing her background in anthropology and theatre. She talks about her process, how titles are the main starting point, and describes her approach of thinking in short stories and testimonies. Tanya also mentions her use of Ayahuasca, explaining how she has asked the hallucinogens questions to guide her more difficult works and find healing in the work.

She discusses living in Palestine at the present moment, expressing the cruelty she witnesses, which is at a point where she is now literally gasping, and her plans to get out and take a break for the sake of her children. She tells us of the harrowing experiences working in the occupied territories, conveying stories while navigating the challenges of a gender-driven nature of photojournalism in the Middle East as well as the overt racism or cognitive dissonance prevalent in some of the most renowned journalistic institutions in the West. She also discusses how she uses subversion and metaphor through her work.

Tanya holds an MA in Global Media and emphasis on Middle Eastern politics. She is the author of the ground-breaking book Occupied Pleasures (2015), a founding member of Rawiya, the first all-female photography collective from the Middle East and her work is in the collections of MFA Boston, Institut du Monde Arab, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a mentor for the Arab Documentary Photography Program, nurturing marginalized narratives and narrative-creators with the space and skills to tell their stories.

A Nikon Europe Ambassador, she is a winner of the 2014 World Press Photo and a key advisor and educator to NOOR Foundation and Nikon NOOR academy.

Tanya Habjouqa has exhibited extensively throughout the US and increasingly in Europe and the Middle East, working for institutions including the National Geographic. She is represented by East Wing Gallery.

It’s an honour to have Tanya Habjouqa speak with us on Creatrix Pod, which is presented by Claire Zakiewicz and our resident interviewer Habib William Kherbek.

This is episode 3 and our guest artist is the utterly unique Bianca Hlywa. Working with symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast also known as SCOBY. Bianca is interested in challenging what we see as domestic and controllable and the growing need to control our surroundings as an escape from death.

Her work explores our relationship and confrontation with material forms in the Post-Internet Age.

She talks to our resident interviewer Habib William Kherbek about working with SCOBY and its fleshy, juicy, meaty, messy beige physicality and her interpretation of contemporary feminism.

Since recently graduating from Goldsmiths University, London her exhibitions have been reviewed in Art Forum and other international publications. Her forthcoming works include a film about the use of pesticides in art restoration.

It’s really thought provoking to listen to Bianca who is working so far outside the frame of traditional art and is working with a living organism.

Creatrix Pod is presented by Claire Zakiewicz.