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Rat World Magazine

RAT WORLD IS PUBLISHED BY SELCOUTHBIRD PRESS.

Welcome to Rat World, an independent quarterly publication that showcases the “underground” - artists, writers, creatives who are pursuing interesting independent work in the community.

24/02/2024

ANNOUNCING: RAT WORLD ISSUE 7 GUEST EDITOR

Kia ora! I’m Jean — and I’ll be guest editing the q***r takeover issue of Rat World (I guess “taking over”?). I’m Malaysian-Chinese, an Aries, born in the year of the rat (!) and, untypical of an Aries, very camera shy (hence the photo).

Submissions are still open for Issue Seven, and we are looking for any type of creative work — photo essays, short fiction, poems, interviews, criticism, features— that engages with q***r identities, experiences, spaces, histories, conversations, etc etc. An interview with a q***r artist? Cool! A submission debriefing on a show you staged or wrote? Nice! Thoughtful long-form criticism on something you watched during Pride? I’m into it! An exploration of q***r activism and a behind-the-scenes organisational breakdown? A photo shoot you did with a friend which features clothes from up-and-coming q***r designers? A still-life series featuring visual art work, ceramics, weird knick-knacks? An Interview mag-style kōrero between you and your collaborator, or you and your bestie? A body horror short story with a Spotify playlist to go with it? A manifesto on what you’d change about Auckland Pride?

Basically — open and encouraging of anything. Please note that while this is in collaboration with Auckland Pride, Rat World welcomes international submissions (as usual) and, obviously, submissions from all over Aotearoa. We’ll be editorially prioritising including diverse viewpoints that speaks to the range of q***r experiences and identities FYI; you get my gist.

(As to who I am — I was a writer and the Food Editor at Metro magazine for the last four years, and I love the print medium! Viva la print!)

Jean x

23/02/2024

Please put down your reading material and listen up: We have a BIG announcement later today! Keep your eyes and ears peeled…

19/02/2024

Want to be a cool rat? Support indie print! Buy local zines, read small press comics, fill your shelves with underground publications. Cool rats read cool magazines - grab yourself a copy of Rat World on our website or head to one of our stockists 🐀🌎

P.S We are still open for submissions to our Q***r Takeover issue! Send your queries or work to [email protected] 💌

17/02/2024

PRIDE REFLECTS: WEEK TWO 🐀🌎🏳️‍🌈 Reflect on the second week of Pride with two visual arts responses!

Sanjana Khusal heads to The Rawdag Gaysian Playwright Challenge - a chaotic performance where six writers are forced to write a play that is the opposite of their artistic taste. In solidarity, Sanjana responds to the night with a creative form she too dislikes: graphic design.

Cindy Walter reflects on the asexual improvised comedy Ungartered Territory with a video response, raving about this hilarious and honest performance.

Click the link in our bio or head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out Sanjana’s design reflection and Cindy’s video response from the second week of Pride!

10/02/2024

PRIDE REFLECTS: WEEK ONE

For the first week of Auckland Pride, Flora Xie heads to the hilarious sketch comedy r***e, Baby Gorgeous for a night of various characters, parodies, and slt trucks, while Liam Hansen reports on some of their highlights from Loud and Proud - a showcase of experimental and underground LGBTQIA+ musicians.

Click the link in our bio or head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out Flora and Liam’s reflections from the first week of Pride!

08/02/2024

As well as collaborating with Auckland Pride on a very special Q***r Takeover edition for the next issue (Submissions open now!), we’ll also be working together on Pride Reflects.

Pride Reflects is a way of documenting and celebrating the creative energy and output of the arts sector. Every week of Auckland Pride Month, two creatives will respond to their experiences of witnessing shows and events across the Auckland Pride Festival.

We’ve given the creatives agency to respond in any way they like, which might range from traditional reviews to photoessays to anything in between.

We can’t wait to reflect with you! Keep your eyes peeled for the first release of Pride Reflects… coming soon 🐀🌎🏳️‍🌈

07/02/2024

THEATRE REVIEW: This Room Is An Island

This Room Is An Island is an immersive performance work that uses “curated space, movement vocabularies, technologies, and visual influences” to explore the memory of Taiwan’s colonial past. A powerful and necessary performance that emphasises the importance of this art form to confront, challenge and remember suppressed or painful histories.

Jennifer Cheuk responds to the show from two perspectives - firstly as a seated guest on opening night, and secondly as an interactive audience member on closing night.

Read the full review at ratworldmag.com/read 🐀🌎🔗

01/02/2024

RAT WORLD x AUCKLAND PRIDE ISSUE SEVEN COLLABORATION

For this issue, we are working with Auckland Pride to bring you a very special Q***r Takeover edition of Rat World!

So, what does this mean? We are looking for creative work that explores q***r identities, experiences, spaces, histories, conversations, and anything in between. There is no limit to the style or type of work that you can submit as long as it fits into the ‘Q***r Takeover’ vibe - we wanted to keep the submissions parameters as open as possible so that we could platform and celebrate a range of work from our rainbow communities. Bonus points if it includes rats.

We can’t wait to see your work! Reach out to [email protected] with your submissions or queries🐀🌎

30/01/2024

Tomorrow we are not only opening our submissions for the first issue of 2024 BUT we are also revealing the Super Secret Extra Special collaborator we are working on Issue Seven with!

Keep your eyes peeled and get excited… Rat World is aboutta rock your world with this reveal 👀🐀🌎

13/01/2024

Let’s kick off 2024 with a cool new music Zine to check out!

There is an abundance of talent here in Auckland that, in Kiran Patel's opinion, does not get the recognition that it deserves. Over the years Kiran has had the pleasure of photographing artists, going to gigs, meeting & working with artists & bands, and now hosting them in Halfway Down's studio on Dominion Road.

These artists have captured his heart, and through his new Zine, My Musical Crushes, Kiran seeks to introduce you to them - and hopefully together, fall deeper in love with the Auckland music scene.

We sit down with Kiran to chat about the zine, his first gig, and why the Auckland music scene has such a unique energy.

Click the link in our bio to check out the full interview and make it your New Year’s resolution to read more local independent publications 📖📚

30/12/2023

2023 was the year of combatting burnout and taking it slow - we released two issues instead of four, we took longer breaks in between each issue, and Jenn learnt not to reply back to emails at 3am.

These moments of pause meant we could have fun again which led to a couple of our favourite memories of 2023:
⭐️ We released an R18 Rat World zine for Valentine’s Day
⭐️ We attended the inaugural Small Press Fest in Dunedin and talked about algorithms, social media, and print publishing
⭐️ Issue Five was stocked (and has almost sold out!) at one of the leading magazine stores in London
⭐️We went to the Melbourne Art Book Fair and bought too many cool books
⭐️We hosted our Issue Six Launch Party at Epolito’s Pizzeria and had a full on PIZZA PARTY

We don’t know what 2024 has in store for Rat World, but we know it’ll be cool, fun, ratty, and full of love for the underground creative scene 🐀🌎❤️

22/12/2023

PAWA x RAT WORLD: An Overview of the 2023 Performance Art Week Aotearoa Festival

Frances Pavletich refers to PAWA as one of her favourite weeks of the year: “it is both challenging and joyful, a chance to spend a week with a community that in many respects is the antithesis to ordinary life”.

This final piece delves into the form, politics and history of performance art, situating the 2023 PAWA festival within a larger context of artistic anarchy.

Click the link in our bio to read the full piece - I garuantee this article will change your perspective on performance art and illuminate the importance of this medium in Aotearoa.

20/12/2023

PAWA x RAT WORLD

Today we bring you the last three of our responses ahead of our overview closing piece tomorrow.

Click the link in our bio to check out some deeply moving and poetic reflections on works by Leafa Wilson & Olga Krause, and EunSun Heo.

Don’t forget to keep your eyes open for our final article tomorrow too!

17/12/2023

PAWA x RAT WORLD

We have two more beautiful responses uploaded onto our website! Delve into the world of performing arts and enjoy these critical reflections from Chris Girven and Amber Clausner.

Click the link in our bio or head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out the full pieces!

11/12/2023

I’ve been thinking a lot about Rat World Issue One recently.

This photo was taken in a random Palmerston North hotel shortly after our Issue One release party - we had received a completely out of the blue DM asking us to review a gig there. No one really knew us at the time and we didn’t know why they asked Rat World. But we were so excited and grateful that we decided to hop in the car and drive for 6 hours to head to their gig. Spoiler: it was great.

It was also the start of something very cool and I think back on this experience often - the celebration we had over receiving our first gig review just a month or so after launching Rat World. So much has happened since that first Issue and I look back on each experience with huge gratitude

All this to say: Do the thing you’ve always wanted to - you never know how it might turn out 🐀🌎

10/12/2023

Start your week off right with some critical performance art writing! The next two pieces from our PAWA x Rat World collaboration are now live 🐀🌎👀

Whether you want to read a meditation on garbage and identity, or a series of thoughts on sound, art, and vagueness - these articles are sure to get you in the right mood for the week ahead…and maybe even refresh your perspectives on the world around you…

Head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out the articles or click the link in our bio!

02/12/2023

PAWA x RAT WORLD: Penelope’s Window

Quinoa / Chris Kirk unpacks the layers of complexity in Sam Trubridge’s performance art piece, Penelope’s Window. Rowing a small dinghy in circles whilst reading aloud from Homer’s Odyssey, Trubridge’s work satirises “the white male protagonist of ‘discovery’ narratives”. Head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out the full piece 🔗

This article is published in collaboration with Performance Art Week Aotearoa 2023. Showcasing performance artists from across Aotearoa and the world, Performance Art Week Aotearoa brings a stellar line-up of performance art works, workshops, discussion and happenings to Wellington city. Rat World is excited to platform a range of critical writing on the events from the year’s festival 🐀🌎

27/11/2023

ARTICLE: Modern Cave Art - Some of The Works of Little John

In this compelling investigative piece, Ruari Warren explores his years-long relationship with the known Outram Caveman and outsider artist, Little John.

Through Ruari’s exploration of Little John’s artistic work and character, the article poses a larger question of what it means to expel someone from society who has already left.

Click the link in the bio to read the piece!

21/11/2023

INTERVIEW: Dominic Hoey

Niamh Pritchard spoke to award winning poet and writer Dominic Hoey ahead of his November book release, The Dead Are Always Laughing at Us. Hoey is a literary outlaw, and a poetic straight shooter. Ranging from imaginative scenes of an out-of-pocket youth, to forthright and vigorous critique of late-stage capitalism - The Dead Are Always Laughing At Us is his newest collection of poems that are sometimes hilarious, sometimes grim, and always brimming with insight.

Dominic Hoey will be joining Isla Huia and Liam Jacobsen for an Aotearoa Book Tour from November 30th - click the link in our bio to read the interview and book your tickets now! 🐀🌎📖

18/11/2023

INTERVIEW: Crystal Choi from Phoebe Rings

Nam Woon Kim catches up with Crystal Choi, lead singer-songwriter of the Tāmaki Makaurau-based dream pop band, Phoebe Rings. Their newest single, ‘아스라이 Aseurai’, written in Korean, describes feelings of longing accompanied by a dreamy music video made by Punctum Productions. Nam chats with Crystal to discuss writing music in your mother tongue and the collaborations that complete this process.

Click the link in our bio or head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out the full interview! 🐀🌎🪐

12/11/2023

Missing Halloween? Got fomo from all the events you didn’t make it to? Well, we are throwing it back to the most iconic Halloween night of Tāmaki Makaurau…

Rat World fashion photographer, Felicia Duque went along to the All My Friends Halloween party, CREAM to document some of the amazing outfits from the night 🎃👻💀

All My Friends is an emerging Asian and Pacific led Arts Organisation based in Tāmaki Makaurau committed to connecting people through creativity. They aim to platform creatives from q***r, Asian, Pasifika and BIPOC communities and are focussed on fostering visibility, meaningful conversations and new connections that connect these differing communities.

Check out the full gallery of photos at ratworldmag.com/read or click the link in our bio!

07/11/2023

THEATRE REVIEW: Live Live Cinema’s Night Of The Living Dead

Absolutely loved this exhilarating performance. Integrating live foley, music, and dialogue, Live Live Cinema reanimates Night Of The Living Dead to create a unique theatrical experience.

Head to ratworldmag.com/read to check out the full review and book your tickets now🐀🌎🧟

02/11/2023

PAWA x RAT WORLD: Opening Night

Brooke Pou (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Te Rangi) introduces the opening night of Performance Art Week Aotearoa with astute reflections on the medium and insightful responses to the opening artists: “This exhibition is notably one of the few dedicated to performance artists in a world that has historically disregarded performance as an art form”.

Pou is a curator from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is currently Curator at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space while completing her Masters thesis in Art History. Her research and writing interests include wāhine Māori and Moana artists, exhibitions and curators, as well as global Indigeneity, connections throughout Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, textile art and performance.

Click the link in our bio to read the full piece by Brooke Pou and check out the full programme of events at PAWA! 🐀🌎▪️

Photo credit: Robyn Jordaan

02/11/2023

Super excited to be collaborating with Performance Art Week Aotearoa (PAWA) to platform some amazing critical writing on the events from this years festival!

Showcasing performance artists from across Aotearoa and the world, PAWA brings a stellar line-up of performance art works, workshops, discussion and happenings to Wellington city!

Keep an eye out for our first response by Brooke Pou (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Te Rangi)… coming soon 👀

24/10/2023

ISSUE SIX SPOTLIGHT: ROAD by Karangahape

Karangahape Road is a cultural and historic icon in Tāmaki Makaurau, named “The World’s Coolest Street in 2022” by Time Out. But what does this infamous street smell like? And how do you bottle up the experience and atmosphere of K Road into a perfume?

Ella Halstead sits down with Sam Stuchbury and Freddy Riddiford from Motion Sickness Studio - the creative agency behind ROAD by Karangahape. Collaborating with Nathan Taare from Of Body, ROAD "captures the sensory rush of Aotearoa's most iconic street”.

Check out Issue Six to read about the process behind the marketing campaign, scent creation, and community outreach of ROAD by Karangahape.

Photos supplied by Motion Sickness 🌀

21/10/2023

Grab Issue Six for your spring reading pile and check out these beautiful full page spreads by Lewrece Cruzat 📸

Head to ratworldmag.com/shop to grab your copy or catch us at Semi Permanent in Wellington from November 9-10 🐀🌎

12/10/2023

Super stoked to be at the Semi-Permanent Art and Design Fair this year!

When I was a kid, my older brother brought home the 2010 Semi-Permanent Book Two. I was captured by it - the design totally struck me and I still have it on my shelf to this day. I really have Semi-Permanent to thank for getting me into design and inadvertently leading me to start a print magazine in my 20s.

Very excited to be here selling Rat World + merch alongside some other awesome creatives and publications! The event is free to attend - hope to see you there 🐀🌎

Semi Permanent Aotearoa Art & Design Fair is powered by Squarespace ▪️

11/10/2023

ISSUE SIX SPOTLIGHT: MISA SUGATA

Jennifer stumbled across Misa Sugata’s animations by coincidence and has been completely captivated ever since - Misa’s surreal and beautiful work expresses the core of human existence as inherently absurd.

Rat World chats with Misa Sugata about avant garde animation, audio soundscapes, and her current anime project documenting her grandfather’s experiences during World War II.

ISSUE SIX IS OUT NOW! Head to ratworldmag.com/shop to grab your copy or keep your eyes peeled for our stockist update…

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Wow thank you so much to everyone who came out to the launch party on Friday night 🐀🌎❤️ I was so worried all week that this would be a bust, but honestly it was better than I could have imagined. The beautiful cafe space (OPEN on K Road) filled with music and poetry and people talking was just so great. I loved seeing everyone packed into this coffee shop, reading Rat World, meeting each other and dancing to the live music. Community is a huge part of Rat World and we really want to create a space for people to connect and meet other artists, musicians, writers. The print magazine is important as a centre for this community to build around. But more than ever, we need rats for a Rat World and you are the best rats a Rat King could ask for 🥹 Massive thanks to our performers: Kate Bodger, Overcommunicate Magazine, Ray Leslie, Venus in Spirals, Marianne Leigh, Honeybee

Issue Three blends print, audio and visual together, creating a whole world within the pages 🐀🌎

Grab the newest, biggest and f**king coolest Rat World yet. 40 contributors. Music, art, comics, multimedia, community, writing. Aotearoa focus, but connected internationally. This is Rat World 🐀🌎

ISSUE TWO COVER REVEAL PREORDER NOW: https://www.ratworldmag.com/shop/p/rat-world-issue-two 🐀🌎 VFX ART: Timmy Griffiths SOUND: Field Recording, Japan 2018