WE'RE SUPPORTING

French installation artist Baptiste Debombourg made this mural of Icarus using 35,000 staples as a comment on American power. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Made from 100 percent organic cotton and eco-friendly, this super soft tee celebrates a sinister world of kaleidoscopic colours and ripples of psychedelia, of serenading Queens, of dancing flamingos, of unimaginable euphoria. It’s all the work of Sydney label, Das Monk and it’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$40. Now, there’s one hell of a Christmas present, even if we do say so ourselves!

WE'RE READING

Marton Schoeller’s new book of portraits aims to highlight the contrast between the extreme physiques of female bodybuilders and the vulnerability expressed through their eyes and nuanced facial expressions. Read more

WE'RE THINKING

Side-scrolling funage for a rainy, lazy day. I’ve been putzing around on this and sipping nettle tea. Moles are cute.

This clip had such an impact on me when it first came out, back in the day. There’s just something so poignant about the idea that some people you pass on the street everyday have a little bit more insight into their world — our world — than we could ever imagine. It’s beautiful and confronting, and it’s all set to the most wonderfully evocative music.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

While I’m definitely not into the whole Lord of the Rings thing, I’m convinced Tolkien stole his inspiration from Göreme, in Turkey’s central Cappadocia region. After a mammoth volcanic eruption around 2,000 years ago, the landscape eroded to form a series of valleys, filled with peculiar, phallic-shaped tufts that the locals call ‘fairy chimneys’. Early Christians hollowed out the tufts and turned them into houses, churches and monasteries. These days, most of them are still in use and a few have been converted into cute hotels and hostels. If you’re not too claustrophobic, I’d highly recommend doing the hobbit thing and spending a night in one.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Baltimore’s Teeth Mountain create pulsing, shamanistic, tribal-sounding tracks from a bunch of floor toms, cello, mandolins, keyboards, saws, and whatever else they can get their hands on. The chaotic music they make is noisy, roughly-hewn, and impulsive-sounding, but that seems to be the point. They’re trying to evoke a sort of post-apocalyptic primitivism. It will be interesting to see where this collective takes their aesthetic.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.