‘Desire can be nebulous and strange’: Pulp is a new zine created as a space for queer artwork and writing and that would be ‘too explicit or esoteric to publish elsewhere’
“I’ve seen us enter into a post-sex positivity era where sex is so hypervisible it’s almost banal,” says writer and editor Megan Wallace. And, unfortunately, the ubiquity of sex hasn’t been accompanied by a more permissive attitude. Wallace explains, “Ironically, misinformation abounds and there’s widespread censorship which means only certain bodies, perspectives and realities are acknowledged within the sexual realm.”
To create a space to explore sex expansively and openly, Wallace has co-created Pulp with art director Jack Rowe – a zine filled with writing, art and photography that would be “too explicit or esoteric to publish elsewhere”. “Desire can be nebulous and strange, and sexuality can ebb and flow,” Wallace tells Dazed, “so I wanted to explore it all in a way which felt less prescriptive and art and non-journalistic writing felt like a good way of freeing up that creative libidinal energy.”
In this spirit of multiplicity and freedom, the inaugural issue includes a range of photography including imagery by Marf Summers, Hidhir Badaruddin, Layla Kosima, El Hardwick and Orion Isaacs, Austn Fischer and Anna Sampson alongside written contributions by Zoya Raza-Sheikh, Bee Beardsworth, Kitty Osman, Quinn Rhodes, Anya Schulman, Ozziline Mercedes and Helena Whittingham.
With such a scope of contributors, Pulp offers multiple perspectives on sexuality and fantasy without the prurient thirst that so often accompanies mainstream depictions of sexual subcultures and lifestyles. From Kosima’s world-building imagery, which fuses fashion and art, creating cinematic scenes with ensemble casts, to Fischer’s stylised, monochromatic studies of the body, Pulp has been curated with a guiding principle of assembling the visions of artists “whose sexual experiences are quite different – people who are active in BDSM, people with experiences of non-monogamy, queer perspectives, different gender experiences and neurodiversity”.
“I love the idea of a printed magazine as a tactile object but also as a way of bringing together lots of different varieties of things with different layers of relation to one another,” Wallace says. “They all encourage us to look past the preconceived scripts of sexuality, intimacy and relationality… Sex isn’t any one thing and – beyond delineating and keeping within the perimeters of pre-agreed boundaries and frameworks such as safe, sane and consensual – there shouldn’t be any scripts or roles predetermining any one outcome.”
What’s next for Pulp? Among other plans, Wallace is launching a Substack (featuring their erotic writing and “autofiction exploring queerness, identity and relationships”). And, contemplating future issues of Pulp, they’re looking for new, multi-sensory ways to represent kinks and sexual experiences in a more tactile way, with “more of an emphasis on feelings and textures”. Wallace concludes, “I’ve also joked about doing a magazine issue themed around heterosexuality, and I think no-one is better suited to excavating that theme with humour and panache than a bunch of queers – so maybe that will be Pulp 2!”
In the meantime, take a look at the gallery above for a closer look.
Pulp launches tonight (December 3, 6pm to 9pm) at the Photo Book Cafe in Shoreditch, London. See here for details.
Order your copy of the zine here.