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The Cult Collective

Independent zine featuring all your favourite nightmares. Based in London & Berlin, open to international contributions. (Formerly The Cambridge Cult)

09/01/2025

Happy New Year to our wonderful readers, followers and contributors. The first piece of work we’re sharing with you in 2025 was published in our most recent issue, ISSUE XI: COMMON GROUND.

Gordianknott1994 by Tarfa Bachan is a mixed media piece created with various fabrics and metal chain in 2024. In this work, Tarfa explores themes of memory, separation, and transformation through a textile collage that reflects her Bedouin heritage and a commitment to sustainable art practices. The work is crafted from reclaimed fabrics and inherited textiles, using a combination of the Mola technique — an intricate process involving the layering and cutting away of fabrics to reveal underlying patterns — and silkscreen printing. These materials and techniques are not only a nod to her cultural roots but also a conscious choice to minimise waste, symbolising resilience and the preservation of history.

You can read the rest of her artist’s statement on our website here: https://www.thecultcollective.co.uk/post/gordianknott1994-tarfa-bachan

ISSUE XI: COMMON GROUND is still available to order in print on our website here: https://www.thecultcollective.co.uk/shop

Tarfa’s Instagram:

01/12/2024

Our eleventh issue, COMMON GROUND, is a collection of work by artists and writers who have been brought together in dialogue with one another, reflecting how we as creatives want to exist and proceed in the world. Now we give it to you to hold in your hands in print.

Within its pages:
Documentation of two performances, one about the protection of monuments during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the other about the experience of transness in public spaces. Prose about urban life and those with whom we share the streets. An ongoing documentary photography project exploring the safe spaces created by music and dance. The architecture of a building in a poem, and a portrait of an apartment in a poem. A tapestry exploring themes of memory, separation and transformation, reflecting the artist’s Bedouin heritage. Thoughts on the diary as an anchor to a moving plane, grounded in a Palestinian girl’s war diary. A photo series mapping an angel’s fall to earth. And so much more, which we will leave you to discover for yourself.

This issue features work by Shuchi Agrawal, Tarfa Bachan, Genevieve Badia-Aylin, Marta Burhan, Ciel Elsner, Sara Simona Juke, Pauline Kail, Darius Kanuga, Rosanna Martin, Veronica Maier, Lucas Neutelings, Stephanie Ritzema, Robert Seidel, and Eva Weinkötz.

You can order ISSUE XI: COMMON GROUND here:
https://www.thecultcollective.co.uk/shop?Category=NEW

We ship to the UK, mainland Europe, and the US.

01/11/2024

A LATE-NIGHT ZIGZAG WALK HOME: ANNIE HAMILTON'S 'STOP AND SMELL THE LIGHTNING'

Tilda Butterworth interviews Australian musician and multimedia artist Annie Hamilton about her new album and creative process.

Collages by Greta Markurt, featuring photographs by Charlie Hardy, Jordan Kirk and Maya Luana.

Read the interview in full on our website: https://www.thecultcollective.co.uk/post/a-late-night-zigzag-walk-home-annie-hamilton-stop-and-smell-the-lightning

12/10/2024

Sending Issue XI: Common Ground to print next week! We’ve been working tirelessly to pull everything together and we think you’re going to love it.

28/09/2024

Welcome to THE CULT COLLECTIVE!

We have been pondering this transition for over a year, and the time has finally come.

The Cambridge Cult began five years ago as a student zine at the University of Cambridge. Since then it has been through so many formative eras that its name no longer feels connected to what we are doing, and what we hope and plan to do.

This change feels full of potential for more experimentation and branching out. The magazine remains at the core of THE CULT COLLECTIVE, but we want to reach further and do more too! We thank you for staying with us ###

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Our new email ([email protected]) is now active, but you can still contact us at the old one if we are already in conversation about COMMON GROUND there.

We’ve run into website difficulties (because of course) but in a few days you will be able to find us at www.thecultcollective.co.uk. For now, we’re at our old website.

Instagram: thecult_collective
TikTok: thecultcollective
X: cultc0llective

17/08/2024

Thank you to everyone who has submitted to ISSUE XI: COMMON GROUND. We’ve loved looking through the submissions we have so far, and we are very excited by the creative and insightful ways in which people have engaged with the theme. You will hear back from us by email soon!

We’ve decided to give anyone who hasn’t submitted another two weeks to do so — because the summer can be a strange, liminal time, and we too were both sucked into it — so we are extending our deadline until September 1st.

Please do send us your work. Even if we choose not to publish it, we will always endeavour to send some constructive words.

With love from the French mountains (Virgo Valley),
Tilda & Greta
xx

19/07/2024

ON THE ROAD

Our long-time road trip film obsession is coming back strong in time for the hottest period of the summer.

All of the films we’re sharing here (some of them classics, some little-known or under-appreciated) take place in America, and have that strangely familiar, oddly nostalgic, sun-bleached feeling to them. Despite this being so far from home for us (and probably for most of you too), these films have sparked thoughts about our relationships to our own countries, however troubled they may be, and whether this kind of physical exploration could bring us closer to understanding.

We’ve been thinking about the road trip — the act of driving, or of being a passenger — as something liminal and timeless; a means of processing, and of finding new ways to communicate.

Reflect upon the promise of the enclosed space of a car, and the new landscapes rushing past. Think about the potential of the road trip to build or break relationships, and to reconcile differences.

(And consider this your reminder that we DO accept journalism and academic writing, should this be a topic that fascinates you too!)

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Films:

1. Little Miss Sunshine (2006, dir. Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton)

2. Paris, Texas (1984, dir. Wim Wenders)

3. Almost Famous (2000, dir. Cameron Crowe)

4. Thelma & Louise (1991, dir. Ridley Scott)

5. American Honey (2016, Andrea Arnold)

6. Carol (2015, dir. Todd Haynes)

7. The Straight Story (1999, dir. David Lynch)

8. The Runaways (2010, dir Floria Sigismondi)

9. Desert Hearts (1985, dir. Donna Deitch)

10. The Yellow Handkerchief (2008, dir. Udayan Prasad)

17/07/2024

We’ve assembled some visual inspiration for you on the theme of COMMON GROUND, and with it comes a reminder from us to think broadly and inventively when creating your submissions.

The deadline is August 13th, in just under a month!

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Images:

1. From the series ‘Suburbs of St Petersburg’ by Markus Jokela (1992)

2. Base camp laundry at Tapovan Meadows, near Gangotri, India Himalayas, by Andrew Walker (1993)

3. Collage by Sigurður Guðmundsson (date unknown)

4. Youngsters at play on the July 4th holiday at the Kosciusko Swimming Pool in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant District, by Danny Lyon (1974)

5. Conversation Pit, source unknown (late 1960s-70s)

6. Moses and Cows, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada, by Larry Towell (1995)

7. New Jersey Turnpike facing Manhattan, by Gary Miler (1973)

8. Girl on expired Kodak 200, Atlanta, US, by Mary Robinson (c. 2010)

9. Children play in front of ‘A Train’ graffiti in Brooklyn's Lynch Park, by Danny Lyon (1974)

10. Red carpets drying, Iran, by Bruno Barbey (1976)

16/07/2024

IMAGINING UTOPIAN SPACES

“The Utopian Spaces Lexicon (Asli Serbest & Mona Mahall, 2018-ongoing) is an installation [that] explores currents of thought and practice — from 1918 to 2018 by way of 1968 — that have produced alternative futures through a feminist perspective: architectural projections and speculations, utopian ideas and visions are introduced and discussed in a moment of political and social regression.

[…] The lexicon is developed as an open and growing archive that can go from a word to a phrase, from a drawing to a floor plan, from a video to a model, from an argument to an entire text.”

Images:

1. La Cité des Dames (Christine de Pizan, 1405), a book outlining the construction of a city as a feminist manifesto.

2 and 3. Photographs from Jinwar, an eco-feminist Kurdish women’s village based on self-governance, communal economy, and cultural and religious diversity.

4. Kitchenless House (Marie Howland, 1885 & Alice Constance Austin, 1915), housing plans for cooperative communities in the US and Mexico eliminating individual kitchens, based on communist ideas of gender equality, division of labor, materials and space.

The lexicon compiles many more projects. For ISSUE XI: COMMON GROUND we encourage you to read into them and to let them inspire your work, by responding to existing ideas and reflecting on those which arise in you.

Access the PDF here:
https://m-a-u-s-e-r.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Mahall_Serbest_feminist_utopian_spaces.pdf

01/07/2024

Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that Palestinians mourn as the Nakba — the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people — and Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence.

The first part of the book recounts the repetitive, feverish days of a group of Israeli soldiers in the scorching Negev desert. There they murder an encampment of Bedouin, among their victims a young Palestinian woman. In the second part, many years later, a young Palestinian woman in Ramallah attempts to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular r**e and murder. She becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, partly because the crime was committed exactly 25 years to the day before she was born.

This narrator’s fixation on patterns and connections gives rise to an urge in the reader to think in the same way, and common motifs and images begin to appear between the two timelines. Despite these echoes, which draw the reader into an expectation of some kind of discovery or reckoning, the novel ultimately reveals the frustrating impossibility of uncovering truth in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

These two extracts we have chosen to share with you here are from the second part of the book. We made connections between Minor Detail and our theme COMMON GROUND because of the ideas of invisible and concrete borders, boundaries and ownership which arise. As the narrator drives across borders which she is forbidden from trespassing, she sees a land unfold around her which is at once recognisable and entirely foreign. She experiences perpetual confusion about what she is and is not permitted to do in this contradictory space.

We encourage you to read Minor Detail and reflect upon ideas of imposed restrictions and the physical forms they take, upon changing landscapes brought about by greed and violence, and upon the borders and boundaries (spoken or unspoken) which you witness around you in everyday life.

16/06/2024

We have so much inspiration material and so many prompts coming soon on the theme of our new issue, COMMON GROUND… but for now, here are a few more moments from our journal binding workshop and exhibition in collaboration with Modernismus back in May!

Photos by Carla 🙏🏻

10/06/2024

Issue XI is about a place that lies somewhere in the middle of everything. It is, in fact, not one place but many, and it cannot always be found. It could be a kitchen, a garden, a train platform, a market, a conversation, a fleeting moment. It resists concrete definition, yet it is the laying of foundations, upon which we can reach mutual understanding.

Yesterday’s EU elections serve as a reminder of one of the many deepening geopolitical rifts in the world. Each day seems to draw new lines of separation, until a fragmented grid touches our horizons. We mourn a sense of possibility. But we also remind ourselves of the connections which remain and which we nurture between us — such as this zine and the community around it.

For this issue, we urge you to think about the spaces where we can meet. Their creation, their loss, their transformation, their recovery. Think about the design of the public spaces we use, about social housing and the lack of it, about squats and communal gardens, and about the systematic dismantling of communal spaces and networks which we are witnessing in real time. Think about refugee camps and borders; about liminal areas which bring polarised groups together. Reflect upon ideas of the collective and the body politic.

We also urge you to think about the words and imagery you use, or that others use about you, which deepen these divides and prevent us from seeing how much we have in common. About the dialogues and rhetorics we are becoming accustomed to, and have perhaps ceased to question. Think about the spaces in which you have found safety, but also keep in mind the relationships you continue to nurture despite profound differences. Consider openness and radical love. Consider the idea that we do all, in fact, owe each other something in our time upon this earth.

For Issue XI, we at Cult urge you to find the spaces where radical and transformative dialogues can happen, and to push back against injustice, division and cruelty with the work which you create. Common ground is that which brings us together when we believe there is nothing which can.

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Submissions of poetry, prose, journalism, still and moving images, and other art forms relating to the theme are all welcome.

The submission guidelines are detailed on the website www.thecambridgecult.com

Send your submissions to: [email protected]

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SUBMISSION DEADLINE: AUGUST 13TH 2024

04/06/2024

A chaotic glimpse into our journal binding workshop and exhibition in collaboration with Modernismus in May!

Full list of thank yous on Instagram x

15/05/2024

It is the beginning of summer. As the days get warmer and the nights get longer, this is a moment which disturbs the dust collected through the winter, eliciting introspection, reconsideration, and often profound change.

Do you have thoughts and emotions tumbling around in your head which you’d like to put down on a page? Are you based in Berlin? Then this workshop is for you!

On FRIDAY 17 MAY from 21:30 - 23:00,
Cult is running a WRITING AND JOURNAL BINDING WORKSHOP,
‘Writing as an antidote to the river of forgetting’, in collaboration with Aylin Derya Stahl.

This is part of MODERNISMUS, an art, concert and club event held regularly at Humboldthain Club. For the full lineup, check out our other posts.

PLEASE DM US TO SIGN UP FOR THE WORKSHOP AS THERE IS LIMITED SPACE.
Participation is possible in both German and English.

Image credits: Frida Kahlo, Derek Jarman, and a mystery journal 👀

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This is an extract from ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’ (2023), a short film shot on VHS by Kelvin Grey. The artist uses these three existential questions (from the title of Paul Gauguin’s Magnum Opus) to spin threads between painting, installation, tarot, the Altar sutra, and the Bay of Naples. The film is mystical and contemplative, immersing the viewer in the rhythms of the natural world and capturing strange, pensive moments in time. Stills from the film, as well as the artist’s statement, were published in ISSUE X: CYCLES. The full film is available here: https://www.thecambridgecult.com/post/where-do-we-come-from-what-are-we-where-are-we-going-kelvin-grey

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