Is it 1938, 1968, or 2026? When the ARK issue “Deception and Illusion in the Arts” was published in 1961, we were building the Berlin Wall, - now we have an American Mexican one. For those of us living in sheltered geographies, life rolls on as matcha lattes at Parker’s café, behind the college building. Yet for some, even at this university, “who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the centre of our foreheads,”* there are no safe homes to go back to. The countries we were born in no longer exist. Maps are constantly redrawn at the whim of the mighty and male, skewed and gluttonously bulged where wealth, and power are greatest.

In this edition, I ask writer and critic Estelle Hoy how can artists provide an effective response to what is happening now. She talks of Audre Lorde and rage. Rage is cultural. How it is expressed and punished. In these isles, it is disapproved of in polite circles, alongside public displays of affection, hoodies, potholes, junk mail, graffiti, call centres, menopause, immigrants, protesters, e-scooters, and bad punctuation. It is tricky in international academic environments, where the line between sanitisation of thought and mutual respect is constantly being recalibrated. And yet rage is effective. It bypasses reason and activates the core. So much so that rage is now being used by the extreme right to counteract “the cultural centre”, to dismantle inclusion, break the connectedness. We live in a highly polarised world, with an abundance of data yet imperfect information, skewed by algorithms. As digital emojis and AI-enabled autocues replaced physical contact and spoken word we lost our ability to speak or to hear. We forgot how to have conversations that broaden our perspectives rather than re-entrench narrow positions. We stopped thinking and began only to feel. We oscillate between private rage and public conformity, then flip. Can we fight rage with rage? Or is there something else?

This ARK concentrates on the idea of repetition as both: practice and a form of protest. Repetition is often mistaken for stasis, but it is movement. It is, as Deleuze argued, a positive force with unpredictable effects. Not an apathy. In repetition, the mind is freed from a conscious cognitive load, whether quiet, accumulative or transformative. It is the rhythm that carries artistic practices forward. The daily routines, returns, recommitments to an idea or cause, revisits, revisions, gestures that build meaning over time.
“Repetition is like a dance,” reflects Camille Henrot. “A refraction of memories,” Chantal Joffe. “A meditation,” Ani Liu. “A heartbeat,” Brigitte Bloksma. “A repair”, Indrė Šerpytytė. It is like “food or sleep or sex,” says India Mullen. “An act of survival,” declares Carrie Scott. The director of the Berlin Biennale, Axel Wieder, believes in the power of institutions as social and porous environments that accommodate dissent and community - something this publication aims to be. It is a snapshot of what young RCA artists are thinking, listening to, and looking at now. 
Read ARK|REPETITION here.