We’re honored to release the Contemporary Art Quarterly archive of Suse Weber. The archive includes the documentation of 23 solo shows going back to as early as 2003, as well as 11 selected group exhibitions. We're thrilled to present the shifting iterations of Weber’s work, an artist whose practice has transformation and reconfiguration at its heart. We're grateful to the artist for working with us and providing so much material!

The game is played with great feeling. Pikachu, perhaps the most successful soft power symbol of the twenty-first century’s new media enterprise, looms gigantic over Nintendo as a concept and cuteness as aesthetic dominance, despite staying mostly benchside on the battlefield. Though, for some of us, these pocket monsters are just ciphers for the competitive video game circuit: 4D chess pieces; some amalgamation of straights, flushes, or full houses; the kings, queens, and rooks of RNG; what Dungeons & Dragons would be with rounded edges and big-lipped fish splish-splashing their way toward evolution. Next to my black-and-white Nintendo Switch sits the corduroy Bulbasaur my son got me for Father’s Day. I’m playing around with weather, one of four core environmental hazards in the extended Pokémon video universe: Rain, Sun, Snow, and Sand. Enjoying the filth I am, of a team whose prospects are slim but whose aesthetics please me, listenin to Beans and Freeway on my headphones. And even though what we do is wrong I play Tyranitar to start, a darkly rock type dinosaur with SAND STREAM, brewing up a storm when she enters the battlefield. Despite a soft-chinned weakness to FIGHTING types, Tyranitar is a respectable individual; she earned a slot on my team of six through grit and survivability, clapping back after absorbing heavy damage historically, just without the heroism of hindsight.

Pokémon is all about reading. Hard and soft. Soft, like how I can assume the way my opponent’s Iron Hands, a FIGHTING type, is trained based on trends in the meta game, whereby Pikalytics.com discloses player data amalgamated from prior battles. Most people plug this Pokémon into a hard-hitting tank slot: high HIT POINTS and ATTACK, made to live through anything and crush enemy morale thereafter; it’s what they’re good at, these hands. And as they say in The Players Club, you gotta use what you got to get what you want. And everybody wanna be the very best, of course, like no one ever was: picture Ash Ketchum listenin to Drake, confused, yet falling so deeply in love. But I respect my opponent’s awareness here. I change Tyranitar’s type to FLYING. Typical move, and my opponent could read me reading them and react to this and I could read their reaction and so forth in an endless chain of telekinetic tug-of-war. But he does not. Tyranitar resists the punch, and together, with the help of this ghost dog, Greavard, who burns Iron Hands—now at less than half-full health from Tyranitar’s foot in that ass—we carve a path toward victory.

A whole decade before Trey Songz couldn’t help but wait, I was beyond impatience rushing into the local EB Games store and slamming down my grass-cutting money for Pokémon Red. Its world has shaped my psyche for as long as I can remember, from soft-boy-kid card collector into dedicated owner of translucent purple Game Boys past. Afterward, I fucked around with the idea of getting into the official competitive scene, observing the e-sport from afar. But until this year and the death of the man who raised me, I’d never tried. There are lots of obvious reasons for this, like class background, money, and time, and the peculiarities of social existence, the navigation of white nerd spaces that have always made me queasy; sure, I’d swing by Benny’s Card Shop on Torresdale Ave. for cards, or hit a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament here and there, but I was still more at home on the basketball courts in Mayfair, where rushing over to get winners would inspire fear from random white women in the suburb, diving into the tall grass to escape my representation. But I can’t play ball like I used to. Now I deliver the order in Super Smash Bros., Street Fighter, Little Big Planet, or Pokémon. Pokémon chief among them. This global trans-media product whose system of play elevates and then magnifies the stylistics of the chess or checkers or Speed I played with my aunt, the Texas Hold’em I played as a kid on Popop’s computer, the Dungeons & Dragons–style dice-roll mechanics grafted into my beloved Icewind Dale role-playing games. Teaching my children mathematics by the game’s pleasurable proxy, I watched their jaws drop at an equation for calculating battle damage in one turn of Pokémon:

On some level this is basic algebra, stretched out for the convoluted chorus of choice that such games demand: the multiplicity of variables that make generalizations both iffy and necessary, as in life. With more than a thousand Pokémon, some of whom have dozens of usable moves or abilities combined, complex type matchups, and SPEED interactions—not to mention the impact of item choices and player particularities—every best-of-three competitive Pokémon match is a master class in complexity. With at least thirty larger tournaments a season, and several hundred players in the video game division alone, not counting all the special events and local setups, the online tournaments and unofficial skirmish matches, the game’s growth, especially in the past few years, tells the story: throngs of people lined up outside convention centers and local stores all across the world, sold-out regional and international competitions from London to Chile, Indiana to Portland, up to sixty-five thousand dollars in prizes, and the chance to compete for the world title, which, held last year in Yokohama, Japan, ran out of spectator passes near instantaneously.

How females in Rome and Greece talked about their fears and desires

May 3 – June 15, 2024

England may have lost their final friendly before the Euros but don’t worry, Jude Bellingham’s back!! Today, Marcus, Jim, Andy and Vish take a moment to enjoy his perfectly timed arrival to the England squad.

Elsewhere, Marcus shows Craig Gordon some sympathy after his final Scotland game didn’t quite go to plan. Plus, Vish declares that Brighton’s potential new manager is simply too young to take the job and Andy backs Erik ten Hag to still be in charge of Man United for the start of next season. Excellent news for the Ramble!

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up to the Football Ramble Patreon for ad-free shows for just $5 per month: patreon.com/footballramble.

Behind the 'cleverest escape in the prison's 30 years'

A report published in Air Mail features allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior, questionable accounting, and more at Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

The weekly newsletter’s report, published on Friday, draws on “more than a dozen interviews” with former employees of the prestigious design firm cofounded by Julien Lombrail and Loïc Le Gaillard 18 years ago.

ARTnews’s attempts to reach Lombrail and Le Gaillard by phone were not successful. When ARTnews reached out to the gallery’s global marketing director Mary Agnew for an official comment, she wrote in an email, “We are of course deeply troubled by the content of the article. Right now, we are prioritising the welfare of our staff and artists and taking the time to consider our response with our internal teams.”

ARTnews sent further questions to Agnew by email in regards to the allegations about Carpenters Workshop Gallery, but did not receive a response by press time.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery works with high-profile artists and estates, including Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, the Dutch Atelier Van Lieshout, the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, and the American sculptor Wendell Castle, as well as fashion designers such as Rick Owens, Karl Lagerfeld, and Virgil Abloh.

Benjamin Sesko is currently receiving significant attention from numerous clubs, including Arsenal, who have extended an offer for his services.

The Slovenian striker has made a name for himself as one of the top young talents in football and has been in excellent form for RB Leipzig.

Leipzig is keen on retaining Sesko, recognising their good fortune in having him within their ranks and is determined to keep him beyond this summer.

Arsenal, in need of a new goalscorer, views Sesko as an ideal fit for their team.

However, they face stiff competition as many other clubs are also eager to secure Sesko’s signature, making the battle for his services highly competitive.

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is one of several players who have been linked with a move to Arsenal in recent months.

The Gunners first wanted to sign him after Leicester City were relegated from the Premier League.

The midfielder has been one of their most successful academy graduates in recent times, and he stayed with them through the Championship spell.

His contributions to their success are one of the reasons they earned instant promotion to the English top flight.

Arsenal continues to show interest in his signature, with Chelsea also now in the running.

He said, as quoted by The Sun: