What was last year’s mega-watt pop album brat really about? Smart marketing, of course – but also art-making in-progress, in public. A reflection on thinking past (acid-green) surfaces.

In a binary market, to become the night is to prepare for it, by displacing the desire for appearances and experiences onto products, rituals, and one’s own face. Either you’re in or you’re out.

What’s left from the year that was? A lucky septet of writers, curators, and artists review the sweetnesses lingering on their tongues and the splinters still stuck under their skins.

In the mistake culture produced by an era of surveillance, our idea of the good isn’t defined by action, but its appearance, and the power to make truth boils down to who keeps the receipts.