Category: 5. Entertainment

At a moment when all online images are flowing into one machine-learning algorithm or another, it is easy to foresee the convergence of old canons of painting, photography, and film into an undifferentiated field of digital “slop”. Notwithstanding the implications for the precarious life of the cultural producer, this state of artificial intelligence (AI) affairs also augurs a world in which humans lack oversight over the production of images, which increasingly emerge from the latent space of accumulated data in AI models.

A number of artists have sought to halt the onset of consequent cultural blindness by calling attention to the ways technical systems shape social realities. The new machine-assisted paintings by Simon Denny, who was recently appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, address the “illegibility” of image generation in the age of AI, when history is all “jumbled up”. the artist’s two new series, presented with the gallery Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler at the JW Marriott Hotel Berlin, overlooking a hub for the German Ministry of Defence, play on the militarised rhetoric of Italian Futurism as well as cubism’s attempt to capture multiple perspectives simultaneously.

For Denny, “there is no such thing as offline and online, we’re always both,” which heightens the relevance of the historical avant-garde to a world of multi-channel experience as well as to a moment of rearmament in Europe. By using mechanical plotters to execute his paintings, Denny not only highlights generative AI as a machine for manufacturing history, he also aligns the canon of painting with that of computational art. In the process, he embraces the hybrid reality of an art world where both analogue and digital media live together, one that is crying out for work that embraces plurality without being nebulous.

Denny is not alone in treating painting as one strand of a wider transmedia strategy. The California-born artist Sara Ludy has built a career engineering porousness between media: from sculpture to video to virtual reality. Her recent exhibition of paintings at Smart Objects, Los Angeles, expressed the lingering effects of screen-based experience on life lived in the New Mexico desert. In a recent interview, she acknowledged painting through a “postdigital” lens: “The way I perceive light, space, and surface is shaped by years spent working in that [screen-centred] realm. Even if I’m not actively engaging with digital tools, that lens is embedded in how I see and make.”

Of course, that lens is also financialised, politicised, and militarised, which has prompted the German media artist and film-maker Hito Steyerl to ask, with the release of her new book Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat(2025): “In an age where most images have become operational, […] what can an inoperative image be?” With machine learning now being used to enhance the precision and autonomy of drone operations, artists are helping to maintain public focus on the opaque domain of nonhuman vision. For the Montreal-born New York-based artist Chris Dorland, “Art can’t necessarily stop the machinery, but it can expose its limits […] Technical error becomes a rupture in the smooth interface — a break in the fantasy.” The title of his recent exhibition at Nicoletti Contemporary, Clone Repo (server ruin), refers to the practice of downloading files stored online to a local hard drive. Bathed in the glow of its central LED monolith displaying degraded screen grabs from Tik Tok and Instagram against a “dead server sound bath” by Leon Louder, the show appeals to the urge to evade systems of surveillance. It also relocates glitch aesthetics from the screen to a new series of paintings, subverting one form of seduction after another while validating multimedia practice.

Even a painter’s painter such as the Canadian-American Tim Kent has absorbed digital modes of visualisation, building compositions out of vector graphics that stress the Cartesian roots of military viewfinders. Kent was part of Fever Dream, a group show in May at Studio Underground, New York, curated by Julianna Vezzetti and Xandra Beverlin, whose works register as postdigital aftershocks. A case in point is the California-born Petra Cortright, whose contributions to the show included a painting on anodized aluminium titled Athos adress Internet communication_bank foreclosures banjo-kazooie stratagy(2021) that turns a greyscale grid into an emergent field of indeterminate flora and fauna.

If such works exemplify painting from a digital place, the London-based Diana Taylor’s forthcoming show of paintings at Don’t Look Projects, Los Angeles, comes from the opposite direction. Layering the graphical matrix of Gustave Doré’s engravings together with a surfeit of other patterns over a pixellated bitmap, the artist makes legible the collapse of analogue and digital organising principles that AI obscures.

If canonical histories of linear progress are no longer wholly credible, it is still possible to identify fertile zones at the borders of art, technology, and design. The decision of Jenna Basso Pietrobon to step away from the New York art scene has fuelled a practice that evades categorisation. Having returned to the town of Nove, in the Veneto, northeast Italy, where her grandparents produced ceramic lamps, she has developed a practice that unsettles the slip-casting process by removing clay from its mould prematurely and stacking the unhardened geometrical forms. Cohering through chance and manual craft, the illuminated outcomes sit uneasily between sculpture and design.

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby anticipated this world of hybrid objects by uncoupling product design from function and reframing it as a forum in which to speculate on possible futures. Following the corporate conversion of speculative design into a vehicle for fetishising the future, the duo’s new book Not Here, Not Now: Speculative Thought, Impossibility, and the Design Imagination (2025) asks “[w]hat it means to design at a time when, for many people, the future seems to have become an impossibility.”

The answer, it seems, is a form of reworlding that uses all forms of media to envision sustainable alternatives. One of Dunne and Raby’s former students, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, was part of a recent exhibition at Hypha Studios in London, titled The Geological Unconscious. Curated by Julie F Hill and Susan Eyre, the show entangled multiple media to explore worlds of more-than-human experience. Tchoudjinoff’s work The City of Gold (2022) speculates on the Anthropocene, incorporating the physical fragments of a fictional supercontinent visualised in a nearby virtual world. While Eyre’s installation Lithos Panoptes (2025) refracts a video of human activity through a series of lenses, capturing the molecular structure of magnetite while revealing the mineral’s view of the world.

Palmer Gallery, in London, attempted something similar through its recent show Handful of Dust which considered sand as a mnemonic material and shapeshifting archive, slowing the spectator’s journey by situating them in a space of primordial experience. In this context, Li Li Ren stood out for her use of 3D-modelling software to develop a series of sculptures — from dismembered arms to desiccated topographies — that expressed the distribution of the body across physical and digital, and human and nonhuman domains.

At a moment when art’s legacy structures are giving way to a new border economy, work like Ren’s can help to ensure that AI and generative media do not create a state of unresolvable impasse but instead engineer a place where analogue and digital media live together in a rich field of hybrid creativity.

All the same, few comic characters were as militant as Superman. In one early issue, he demolishes a row of slum homes in order to force the authorities to build better housing (a risky strategy, that one). In another, he takes on the city’s gambling industry because it is bankrupting addicts. And in another, he declares war on everyone he sees as being responsible for traffic-related deaths. He terrifies reckless drivers, he abducts the mayor who hasn’t enforced traffic laws, he smashes up the stock of a second-hand car dealer, and he wrecks a factory where faulty cars are assembled. “It’s because you use inferior metals and parts so as to make higher profits at the cost of human lives,” he informs the owner. Were Superman’s direct-action protest campaigns strictly legal? No, but they were riotous, boldly political fun – and almost 90 years on, they stand as a fascinating street-level account of US urban life in the 1930s.

SEOUL — The third and final season of Netflix’s “Squid Game” broke viewership records on the streaming platform following its release on June 27, marking a fitting close for what has arguably been the most successful South Korean TV series in history.

Although reviews have been mixed, Season 3 recorded more than 60 million views in the first three days and topped leaderboards in all 93 countries, making it Netflix’s biggest launch to date.

“Squid Game” has been transformative for South Korea, with much of the domestic reaction focused not on plot but on the prestige it has brought to the country. In Seoul, fans celebrated with a parade to commemorate the show’s end, shutting down major roads to make way for a marching band and parade floats of characters from the show.

In one section of the procession, a phalanx of the show’s masked guards, dressed in their trademark pink uniforms, carried neon-lit versions of the coffins that appear on the show to carry away the losers of the survival game. They were joined by actors playing the contestants, who lurched along wearing expressions of exaggerated horror, as though the cruel stakes of the game had just been revealed to them.

At the fan event that capped off the evening, series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk thanked the show’s viewers and shared the bittersweetness of it all being over.

“I gave my everything to this project, so the thought of it all ending does make me a bit sad,” he said. “But at the same time, I lived with such a heavy weight on my shoulders for so long that it feels freeing to put that all down.”

Despite the overnight global fame “Squid Game” brought him (it’s Netflix’s most-watched series of all time), Hwang has spoken extensively about the physical and mental toil of creating the show.

He unsuccessfully shopped the show around for a decade until Netflix picked up the first season in 2019, paying the director just “enough to put food on the table” — while claiming all of the show’s intellectual property rights. During production for the first season, which was released in 2021, Hwang lost several teeth from stress.

A gateway into Korean content for many around the world, “Squid Game” show served to spotlight previously lesser-known aspects of South Korean culture, bringing inventions like dalgona coffee — made with a traditional Korean candy that was featured in the show — to places such as Los Angeles and New York.

The show also cleared a path for the global success of other South Korean series, accelerating a golden age of “Hallyu” (the Korean wave) that has boosted tourism and exports of food and cosmetics, as well as international interest in learning Korean.

But alongside its worldly successes, the show also provoked conversations about socioeconomic inequality in South Korean society, such as the prevalence of debt, which looms in the backstories of several characters.

A few years ago, President Lee Jae-myung, a longtime proponent of debt relief, said, “‘Squid Game’ reveals the grim realities of our society. A playground in which participants stake their lives in order to pay off their debt is more than competition — it is an arena in which you are fighting to survive.”

In 2022, the show made history as the first non-English-language TV series and the first Korean series to win a Screen Actors Guild Award, taking home three in total. It also won six Emmy Awards. That same year, the city of L.A. designated Sept. 17 — the series’ release date — as “Squid Game Day.“

Although Hwang has said in media interviews that he is done with the “Squid Game” franchise, the Season 3 finale — which features Cate Blanchett in a cameo as a recruiter for the games that are the show’s namesake — has revived rumors that filmmaker David Fincher may pick it up for an English-language spinoff in the future.

While saying he had initially written a more conventional happy ending, Hwang has described “Squid Game’s” final season as a sobering last stroke to its unsparing portrait of cutthroat capitalism.

“I wanted to focus in Season 3 on how in this world, where incessant greed is always fueled, it’s like a jungle — the strong eating the weak, where people climb higher by stepping on other people’s heads,” he told The Times’ Michael Ordoña last month.

“Coming into Season 3, because the economic system has failed us, politics have failed us, it seems like we have no hope,” he added. “What hope do we have as a human race when we can no longer control our own greed? I wanted to explore that. And in particular, I wanted to [pose] that question to myself.”

NEW YORK — “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is good advice for the Britpop band Oasis, who launch their surprising reunion tour today in Cardiff, Wales.

Led by brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, the reunion marks the end of the siblings’ long-held feud, one that led to Oasis disbanding in 2009. For many fans, this news is almost too good to be true. They’re anxiously awaiting whether the Gallaghers will indeed make it through the entire run of international dates and even perhaps extend the reunion.

Whether they’re in it for the long haul or will call it quits at some point sooner (hopefully not before they reach the Rose Bowl Sept. 6 and 7), here’s a look at a few other very famous — but very brief — band reunions.

The Beach Boys

DISBANDED: Technically, they never broke up. Read on.

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A few months in 2012.

WHAT HAPPENED: There is no linear history when it comes to the Beach Boys, but here’s the abridged: Band members came and went, and the band’s visionary, the late Brian Wilson, retired from touring in 1964 following a breakdown caused by stress and exhaustion. His place was soon filled by Bruce Johnston, who remained with the group for decades. Wilson also infamously feuded with his cousin and bandmate Mike Love over songwriting credits for years.

The question here is: Can a band that never broke up reunite? In this case, yes: The band — with both Wilson and Love — got together for a new album, “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” and world tour in 2012, celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary. It wasn’t the whole original lineup, however: Drummer Dennis Wilson died in 1983, and guitarist Carl Wilson died in 1998.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: The force behind the band, Brian Wilson, died last month at age 82, but Love continues to tour under the Beach Boys name.

Led Zeppelin

DISBANDED: 1980

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: Good question. The band played a few one-off events in the mid-1980s throughout the ’00s, never embarking on a reunion tour. So, a few days? A few hours?

WHAT HAPPENED: Led Zeppelin disbanded immediately following the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, reuniting only for a select few events in the decades that followed. Most notably, their first show back was a complicated set at Live Aid in 1985 in Philadelphia. Lead singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones’ last performance together was in 2007 at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert held in London’s O2 Arena. There, Bonham’s son Jason Bonham played the drums. Page and Plant had a separate band together that released a couple of albums in the ‘90s.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: Highly unlikely. The band has successfully evaded reunion requests in the past, including one from President Bill Clinton. In 2013, Clinton asked the British rock greats to get back together for the 2012 Superstorm Sandy benefit concert in New York City. He asked; they said no.

Nirvana

DISBANDED: 1994

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A series of one-off performances in the 2010s and 2020s.

WHAT HAPPENED: Nirvana disbanded following the death of frontman and principal songwriter Kurt Cobain. Its members pursued other projects — most notably, drummer Dave Grohl founded the Foo Fighters. But two decades after Cobain’s death, in 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so bassist Krist Novoselic, touring guitarist Pat Smear (of the Germs) and Grohl got together for a short set — joined by Lorde, St. Vincent, Joan Jett and Kim Gordon on vocals for a reunion dubbed “Hervana.”

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: Maybe there could be a few more gigs here and there? Novoselic and Grohl reunited for a few one-off performances in the years that followed, most recently coming together for the Fire Aid benefit concert in Los Angeles and the 50th anniversary celebrations for “Saturday Night Live,” both this year. At the latter, Post Malone took over vocal duties.

Oasis

DISBANDED: 2009

HOW LONG THE REUNION IS SUPPOSED TO LAST: If the band makes it through their full run of reunion shows, July through November. So, five months.

WHAT HAPPENED: Good question. The band — and in particular, the Gallagher brothers — have not released a public statement giving specific reasons for the reunion. But the initial tour announcement did seem to allude to past tensions. “The guns have fallen silent,” Oasis said. “The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

In 2019, Liam Gallagher told the Associated Press he was ready to reconcile.

“The most important thing is about me and him being brothers,” he said of Noel. “He thinks I’m desperate to get the band back together for money. But I didn’t join the band to make money. I joined the band to have fun and to see the world.”

Fans had long theorized a reunion might be on the horizon, too: In the wake of the 2017 bombing that killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in Oasis’ hometown of Manchester, Liam Gallagher performed at a benefit concert. He criticized his brother’s absence, but a spokesperson said Noel Gallagher couldn’t attend because of a long-standing family trip. Benefit organizers said Noel Gallagher approved the use of Oasis’ music and donated royalties from “Don’t Look Back in Anger” to the British Red Cross’ One Love Manchester fund.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: It’s happening. A better question is: What are the chances of a new album? That’s impossible to know.

Outkast

DISBANDED: They never officially disbanded, so call it a hiatus. They never released another album after 2006’s “Idlewild,” and 2007 is frequently cited as the year they officially took a break.

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A few months in 2014? They announced reunion dates in January 2014, played their first in April, and ended that October.

WHAT HAPPENED: At the top of 2014, Outkast — the innovative Atlanta-based hip-hop duo consisting of Big Boi and André 3000 — announced they would tour festivals around the world to mark 20 years of their band, following a near-decade-long hiatus. The dates began at Coachella, where the duo headlined both Friday night shows. Then they made their way to their home state of Georgia for the CounterPoint Music & Arts Festival, which the AP described as “an energetic show that kept the crowd jamming in the late hours.”

Once the reunion shows were done, so was Outkast. Big Boi continued to release solo records, and André 3000 would follow suit … almost 10 years later, when he released his debut solo full-length album, the flute-forward “New Blue Sun,” in 2023.

“New Blue Sun” has “no bars,” he joked to AP shortly after it was released. It’s a divergence from rap because “there was nothing I was liking enough to rap about, or I didn’t feel it sounded fresh.”

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: When asked about new Outkast music, André 3000 told AP, “I never say never. … But I can say that the older I get, I feel like that time has happened.”

The Velvet Underground

DISBANDED: 1973, more or less.

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A few months in 1993.

WHAT HAPPENED: Here’s another opaque one for you, as band reunions so often tend to be: John Cale was ousted in 1968, Lou Reed left in 1970 and the Velvet Underground slowly dissolved from there, releasing their final album, “Squeeze,” in 1973. In 1990, Cale and Reed joined forces to release an album in homage to Andy Warhol, “Songs for Drella,” opening the door for a future reunion. There were a few one-off performances, and then the band toured Europe in 1993, including a performance at Glastonbury.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: It is pretty much impossible. Reed died in 2013. Guitarist Sterling Morrison died in 1995. And Nico died in 1988.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

Key Facts

Top Fiction Book Sales Of 2025

(From Jan. 1 – June 26, according to Circana BookScan)

1. “Sunrise on the Reaping (A Hunger Games Novel)” by Suzanne Collins: 1,667,012 books sold
2. “Onyx Storm (Deluxe Limited Edition)” by Rebecca Yarros: 1,614,239 books sold
3. “The Crash” by Frieda McFadden: 410,225 books sold
4. “Great Big Beautiful Life” by Emily Henry: 335,020 books sold
5. “Fearless” by Lauren Roberts: 320,759 books sold

Top Nonfiction Book Sales

(From From Jan. 1 – June 26, according to Circana BookScan)

1. “Everything Is Tuberculosis: the History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection” by John Green: 162,621 units sold
2. “The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More” by Jefferson Fisher: 137,003 units sold
3. “Abundance” by Ezra Klein: 135,558 units sold
4. “The House of My Mother: a Daughter’s Quest For Freedom” by Shari Franke: 101,432 units sold
5. “Careless People: a Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams: 97,632 units sold

Top 10 Movies Of 2025 (domestic)

According To Box Office Mojo

1. “A Minecraft Movie”: $423,941,548
2. “Lilo & Stitch”: $400,019,803
3. “Sinners”: $278,036,257
4. “Captain America: Brave New World”: $200,500,001
5. “How To Train Your Dragon”: $200,250,960
6. “Thunderbolts*”: $189,796,527
7. “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning”: $186,001,201
8. “Final Destination: Bloodlines”: $136,739,975
9. “Mufasa: The Lion King”: $126,423,748
10. “Dog Man”: $97,970,355

Top 10 Movies Of 2025 (worldwide)

According To Box Office Mojo

1. “Ne Zha 2”: $1,899,639,136
2. “A Minecraft Movie”: $954,441,548
3. “Lilo & Stitch”: $945,919,803
4. “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning”: $562,001,201
5. “How To Train Your Dragon”: $456,084,960
6. “Captain America: Brave New World”: $415,101,577
7. “Thunderbolts*”: $381,670,701
8. “Sinners”: $364,536,257
9. “Final Destination: Bloodlines”: $283,239,975
10. “Snow White”: $205,679,463

Biggest Billboard No. 1 Songs Released In 2025

According to Spotify streams

1. “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter: 126,823,256 streams
2. “4×4” by Travis Scott: 121,802,187
3. “What I Want” by Morgan Wallen and Tate McRae: 97,143,569 streams

How Does This Year’s Box Office Compare To Previous Years?

Paul Dergarabedian, a box office analyst for Comscore, told Forbes that 2025 could be the best year for movies since the industry was rocked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Hollywood labor strikes of 2023. Though this year’s box office is performing better than 2024, it is still behind the 2019 box office by about 26%, according to Comscore data. Dergarabedian said the first quarter of 2025 was slightly underwhelming because of the lack of blockbusters released in December that could have carried over into this year. He said the box office has had built up momentum since April, when “A Minecraft Movie” overwhelmingly beat box office expectations and “Sinners” became a word-of-mouth hit, which he noted is an original movie not connected to an existing franchise, unlike most other box office hits this year. Dergarabedian said the second half of the year is stacked with potential blockbusters, including “Jurassic World Rebirth,” “Superman” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”

Tangent

“Sunrise on the Reaping,” a prequel novel to the “Hunger Games” book series written by Collins, has had a film adaptation in development since before the book was released. Film studio Lionsgate has already been working to build hype for the film, slated to release in 2026, by revealing the cast one at a time in social media posts since April. Australian actor Joseph Zada stars as a younger version of Haymitch Abernathy, the protagonist of “Sunrise on the Reaping” who participates in the 50th Hunger Games. Other cast members include Elle Fanning as a younger Effie Trinket, Ralph Fiennes as President Snow and Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman.

How Did “ne Zha 2” Become A Smash Hit Overseas?

The Chinese film “Ne Zha 2” became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time this year—with little help from the United States. The animated film is a sequel to “Ne Zha,” a box office hit released in 2019, and its main character is based on the Chinese mythological character Nezha. “Ne Zha 2” became an immediate smash hit in China upon release in January, and about a month later, took the crown from “Inside Out 2” as the highest-grossing animated film of all time. Only about $20 million of “Ne Zha 2”’s total gross is from U.S. theaters, according to Box Office Mojo, which lists “Ne Zha 2” as the eighth highest-grossing film of all time. Much of its gross comes from Chinese theaters, and multiple outlets reported more than 300 million tickets have been sold in China, a staggering total equaling about one-fifth of China’s population. The film was helped with its release coinciding with the Lunar New Year period, when people had time off from work, and China’s effort to build more movie theaters, Deadline reported, adding that support for the film became a source of national pride. Government subsidies helped fund about $80 million in movie tickets, Deadline reported, adding some companies gave employees the day off to go see the movie. The film’s basis on a traditional Chinese story and its appeal to all generations helped the film connect with audiences, Chinese film critic Raymond Zhou told the New York Times. The success of “Ne Zha 2” comes as Chinese interest in Hollywood films wanes, with only “Godzilla x Kong” ranking in the top 10 at the Chinese box office last year, CNBC reported.

Further Reading

‘Sinners’ Will Barely Drop From Opening Gross In Its Second Weekend As Movie Continues To Defy Projections (Forbes)

Who’s Who in ’The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping’ Cast (The Hollywood Reporter)

Art

Maxwell Rabb

MR

Maxwell Rabb

Maxwell Rabb is Artsy’s Staff Writer.

Actor and activist Nadia Jamil has delivered a powerful reflection on motherhood, mental health, and the importance of setting boundaries — especially for women navigating parenting in a patriarchal society.

She also talked about how important it is for boys to understand that their future wives should not be expected to “mother them”. Giving the example of her own son, she said while she may pamper him as his mother, that shouldn’t lead him to believe his wife has to do the same.

At a recent panel hosted by the Almawrid Women Society, she said, “I am a mother and the daughter of a working mother. I never felt that we or our household were deprived of anything because our mother was working. On the contrary, my self-confidence, my humanity, is inspired by my mother’s.”

Jamil recalled a childhood with a present father who played an active role in parenting, not out of compulsion, but with conscious care. “Our father, when our mother was not around, spent quality time with us. He was not clueless,” she said. “So if a woman is deprived of a husband who helps her with domestic duties, then that is her misfortune.”

Cutting into the deeply embedded gender roles in South Asian families, where emotional labour and childcare are often shouldered entirely by women, Jamil reflected on her own experience as a working mother raising both a young daughter who is four as well as a 23-year-old son.

“Not every woman is fortunate enough to have a husband who gives his family time. In that situation, women do end up making a lot of sacrifices. But I am also a mother who works, and I have a four-year-old daughter whom I want to inspire to become a woman who can work, be self-reliant, and be happy to take care of herself,” she added.

Acknowledging how her approach to parenting has evolved over time, she said, “I am a very different mother to my daughter than I was to my son because I have seen that if I don’t take care of my mental and emotional well-being, then I won’t be able to take care of my child.”

A major part of this learning, Jamil argued, involves setting and maintaining clear personal boundaries, something rarely taught to women in our society. “If my son crosses them, even if he speaks to me disrespectfully, he will have crossed that boundary, and I will not entertain it.”

She criticised the culture of self-sacrifice that is romanticised among Pakistani mothers. “In our society, a lot of things are just made up,” she said. “Things like women staying hungry to feed the kids. To an extent, by design, a mother will prioritise her child’s needs over her own. But if I overcompensate, it will be at a cost. It is up to us how much pressure we put on ourselves.”

She went on to talk about how she is raising her son. “When a boy becomes a teenager, he is exposed to all kinds of things,” she said, citing her son’s education at Aitchison College and his exposure to elite feudal households. “At home, he insists I make his plate. And I do that for him because I am his mother. But he cannot expect the same thing from his wife or wife-to-be. He shouldn’t. That girl does not need to mother him. I tell him that he needs to understand this.”

Jamil’s message is ultimately about breaking cycles of guilt, burnout, and gendered expectations.

She wants mothers to not just raise good children, but to raise children, especially sons, who grow into respectful, self-aware adults who do not outsource their emotional needs to women or expect nurturing at the expense of their partner’s well-being.

If you are attending the Friday opening night of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, get ready for stars, fireworks and “Tropical Chancer,” “I’m Not Your Toy” and “Bulletproof” courtesy of La Roux.

The festival, kicking off the European summer holiday season, has a track record of free opening night concerts that get the Czech spa town grooving. Two years ago, Russell Crowe rocked the crowd, and electronic band Morcheeba got folks moving. Last year, Kosheen was in the house – well, actually in the square outside the Hotel Thermal.

This year, another big British name is ready to bring the party to Karlovy Vary, which runs through July 12: Grammy-winning synthpop act La Roux. And is tradition, the fireworks on stage will be followed by a fireworks display.

La Roux’s self-titled debut album in 2009 was a critical and commercial success and won numerous awards. It produced such hits as the ones mentioned above. It was the creation of singer Elly Jackson, known for reddish hair that also inspired the band name, and record producer Ben Langmaid, who later left the duo.

Jackson followed up the debut album with 2014’s Trouble in Paradise, followed by 2020’s Supervision.

Ahead of the Karlovy Vary performance, Jackson, born in London to actors Trudie Goodwin and Kit Jackson, talked to THR about how her music has changed, her next album, why she deserves more credit, and how female music creators must often still fight to get it.

How do you feel about how your music and your style have evolved and changed over time and how much you have developed as an artist?

I feel that probably the biggest difference is that, as time has gone on, I’ve learned how to be more authentically myself in my work, whilst creating stylized worlds. When I first started, thinking about it from a psychological perspective, maybe there was some kind of covering up of who I really am, but under the guise of creating characters. Although I’m really proud of that time and I wouldn’t change it for anything, and I love all the visuals I did, it’s nice to be able to take the shell off a little bit as you get older and learn to be who you are, but still in an artistic landscape. That’s been a nice process, a kind of unmasking, but hopefully not in a really boring way.

Where did the name La Roux come from?

Basically, I just didn’t want it to be my name, because I think that’s really boring. Generally, names as a kind of artist name are quite dull nowadays anyway. And I also wanted it to be a name that meant that I could do lots of different things throughout my career. I felt there was an ability within that to have a bigger musical scope. I wanted my name to be able to encapsulate different things and feelings, and that’s when I decided to come up with a project name.

The guy that I did the artwork with on the first album is Alex Brown. We’re friends and we met when he was still at uni. I told him, “I’ve given myself this week to come up with a name for the project, and if it goes on any longer than that, it’s going to get silly.” When I went round to his house, he said, “I just found this ’80s baby name book in a skip outside – maybe you’ll find a name in here.”

The first page I opened said Laroux,” and I’d wanted the name to encapsulate my red hair. I also wanted to have the letter X in it, because my music was electronic, and when I was a teenager, those things went together. And I also wanted it to be a bit French, because I have some French heritage in my background. And weirdly, that is exactly what those words mean. La Roux means red-haired one in French. But even more handily, it’s the male version of that. So it’s actually, kind of by accident, a very androgynous name as well.

A friend once said: “La Roux reminds me a bit of an actress…”

Tilda Swinton?

Exactly! Have you met her? Or was she an inspiration for you?

Weirdly, I didn’t actually know who she was when I was younger. My mom is an actress in the U.K., and she knew who she was, of course. And obviously, I know who Tilda Swinton is now, but I didn’t then. I was very young. My mum was like: “There’s some similarity between you and Tilda Swinton. And I said: I don’t even know who she is, so it can’t be intentional.”

Anything that I had been like had probably come more from listening to Annie Lennox my whole life. I just happened to be ginger, and I had short hair, and I like ’80s music, so the things are going to get combined.

So no, it wasn’t intentional at all. But then I met her, and we had a couple of pictures together, and she’s very sweet. So, it was a brilliant moment.

With your family background and your talents, have you done any acting or have you created any film or TV music?

One of the biggest frustrations of my career is that people never asked me to produce anything when I produced my last three albums, and I play all the parts, and I arrange and compose every record. It’s always been really shocking to me that no one has asked me to do a soundtrack. No one’s ever asked me to write anything on commission or produce anything. I find it very strange that it makes me feel like we must still live in a sexist world that I hope we don’t live in, but we do. I would love to do that, but I’ve never been asked.

I did get asked to audition for a film role once or twice, but weirdly, being on stage in front of 50,000 people wouldn’t scare me, but doing that scares the living daylights out of me. I really like doing little bits of silly sort of acting in music videos. I really enjoy that. And I don’t think I’d be a terrible actress, but the setting would have to be very right. And I’m not the kind of be-it-all, do-it-all kind of artist. I like music.

Friends of mine in Central and Eastern Europe all know your music. It seems like you have a fan base there…but have you played a film festival before?

I can’t remember exactly where “Bulletproof” was a number one, but I remember it being big in that part of the world. I’ve played all over Germany. I’ve played in Poland. And I have played a fashion show or two. But I don’t think I’ve done a festival before.

How important was or is “Bulletproof” to you personally and your career?

Actually, “Bulletproof” came at the end of the first record. It was the last thing we wrote for the record. And it wasn’t intentional. What happened was: Ben was on the phone, and I was in the living room on the keyboard, and I started playing the main sounds, an arpeggiated part. And he just came in and said, “Record that!” And then we just wrote the song. I was pissed off at the time because I’d been trying to date somebody, and they’d been dicking me around. I’d been listening to a lot of Yazoo, and that was a big reference on the day.

Why “Bulletproof” is weird for me is that it was throwaway when I wrote it, and it still feels really throwaway to me. It’s like it’s not for me, even though I wrote every single part in it and co-wrote the lyrics with Ben. It doesn’t represent who I am as an artist or a person at all. For me, I would say it’s outside of the catalog, which is probably also why it’s successful. But I feel that track just has a completely different feeling from anything else, which is also why it’s big.

We’d already written the album. We were already getting signed to Polydor. We were in a very relaxed, confident space, and I think for both of us, that day was just easy, because it just flowed. And we knew we’d written a really good song, but neither of us knew we’d written something that was going to essentially pay us for the rest of our lives. It is crazy when you think about what an afternoon can do.

Which one of your tracks is, or are, a good representation of who you are as an artist and person?

I would say “Tropical Chancer,” “Sexotheque,” “Cruel Sexuality” [on album 2, Trouble in Paradise]. “Colourless Colour” [from the first album] was very me at that time, probably the most me track on that album at the time. And “Quicksand” was a big one for me back then, too. And then later, “Otherside” is my favorite track from Supervision and is the most me. “Automatic Driver” and “Gullible Fool” as well.

Since these days, it seems like everything is political, any political or social issues you’d like to share?

Just: Free Palestine.

What’s next for La Roux?

I have a new record that is written and finished, and it’s on its way. I’m also working on other music. I’ve gotten back into my flow now.

Anything you can share about this fourth studio album you just mentioned? Is it different in any way?

It’s a La Roux record. It’s not like I’ve gone down some wild [path] or anything, but at the same time, I would say that it’s a lot warmer. It’s got R&B references, but I wouldn’t say that it’s an R&B record. It has R&B moments, but it’s a pop record. It’s got my own slant on an R&B flavor, shall we say?

Before I let you get back to work, anything else you’d like to highlight or follow up on?

The only thing at the moment is that I’ve really realized how frustrating I find it that I don’t get recognized in the same way as my male counterparts for my production work. That’s something I want to talk about. I kind of just ignored it in the past and was just like, “Whatever, it is what it is.” But it’s something that I recently found I actually really need to speak up about, because otherwise it’s just going to continue. I am doing three years of work at a computer by myself, and then people ask: “Which guy did this?” It’s beyond frustrating, as I’m sure you can imagine.

So, I’m now always trying to remind people that, when you listen to my music, I wrote and performed all of it, unless it’s a saxophone or the odd bass part that’s difficult. Maybe three parts across an entire album are performed by somebody else. Sometimes, I get a percussionist in at the end who specializes in percussion. Or if I want the piano to be really grandiose and old-school, then I would get a pianist in. But I would have written the basic part already. That happens maybe three times across an entire album, and still, I don’t get the credit for the other 90 percent or 80 percent that I did. It’s just very frustrating.

It’s not just men who do it. Women do it as well. We’re just brought up in a way where we categorize certain tasks into genders, and we don’t know exactly where it starts or how we do it. It happens to all of us, and you can’t really blame people for just what they’ve absorbed throughout their lives. But we can try and change it moving forward. It’s just about women communicating, unfortunately, slightly louder than men have to, which is also annoying. Maybe we just have to find ways of talking about it and making sure people do know, because otherwise, why would I bother sitting there all day trying to get better at something if no one even knows I’m getting better at it or recognizes that I even did it in the first place.