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Discombobulationism: A first look at Theory and Praxis of this new Art Movement

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Discombobulationism: A first look at Theory and Praxis of this new Art Movement

It has become something of a truism to declare that contemporary art thrives in states of epistemic crisis. Yet what distinguishes Discombobulationism from its predecessors is the radical affirmation of incoherence as both method and ethic. Whereas Dada negated, Surrealism dreamt, and Internet art ironized, Discombobulationism inhabits a zone closer to pure illegibility. Its adherents seem to treat sense not as an aesthetic resource but as a trap to be actively dismantled.¹

As Evelyn Marquette observed in her essay The Aesthetics of Perpetual Bewilderment (Journal of Visual Unreason, 2021), the movement’s ethos is best understood as “an epistemological vandalism.”² Indeed, the works often resist not only interpretation but also the infrastructures of meaning-production: the gallery label, the critical review, even the linear temporality of viewing.

Origins in Collapse

Though often mythologized as a spontaneous eruption in Rotterdam lofts circa 2017, Discombobulationism should be read as the culmination of longer trajectories: the fragmentation of media ecologies, the acceleration of affective labor, and the saturation of the visual field with algorithmic noise.³ Marietta Voss’s seminal performance Falling Up the Stairs (2018) already made clear that the act of discombobulation was not accidental but structural,a choreography of futility that refused resolution.

Diego Armenta’s Tuesday Never Ends (Except on Thursday) (2021) similarly exemplifies this structural resistance. The video’s recursive loops produce what theorist Jean-Paul Deleuze-Bataille termed the “chronological seizure”: a temporal convulsion in which beginnings and endings lose operational distinction.⁴

Discombobulation as Praxis

The strategies of the movement vary widely:

• Han Ji-eun’s Staircase to Nowhere (Still Under Construction) (2020) literalizes deferred arrival, recalling Derrida’s “always already” while denying even the possibility of entry.⁵

• Rafael Mota’s olfactory catastrophes (Perfume for People Who Don’t Exist, 2021) destabilize ocularcentrism, aligning with recent theories of the “anxious sensorium.”⁶

• Leonie Krantz’s fractured canvases perform what one critic has called “Cubism under erasure,” a pictorial strategy in which the grid simultaneously affirms and negates its own logic.⁷

Each of these practices can be seen as a refusal of hermeneutic closure. To look for meaning in these works is to miss the point entirely; rather, the works look back at us as unstable constellations of bewilderment.

Exhibitions of Refusal

Curatorial practice has played a crucial role in codifying the movement. The Joy of Getting Lost (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2020) remains a paradigmatic case. Curator Maximilian Drozd eliminated wall texts, replacing them with a recursive floor plan in which every gallery was marked as “Gallery 1.” Visitors reported panic attacks, laughter, along with a sense of prolonged wandering.⁸

The American reception, shaped by Discombobulation Now! (2022), cemented the movement’s reputation as both a critical darling and a public irritant. The exhibition’s central paradox lay in its mediation: although predicated on illegibility, the show went viral on TikTok, producing a paradoxical legibility through the logic of the algorithm.⁹

Toward a Theory of Discombobulationism

It is tempting to theorize Discombobulationism as a late-capitalist pathology, a symptom of cognitive overload. But such readings miss the crucial point: the works are not about confusion; they are confusion. They operationalize bewilderment as a medium in itself.

As Johanna Spielmann has argued, “Discombobulationism is not representation but performance: the enactment of confusion in real time.”¹⁰ This suggests an ontological shift in which disorientation is not an effect of art but its very substance.

In this light, Discombobulationism might best be understood not as a movement but as a condition: a contagious bewilderment that destabilizes the protocols of interpretation. If art once aspired to clarity, beauty, or even critique, Discombobulationism offers instead the radical gift of not knowing.

Or, as Voss succinctly put it in a 2021 interview: *“We are not lost. We are unfindable.”*¹¹

Notes

1. On incoherence as method, see F. Roussel, “Against Explanation,” Proceedings of the Anti-Hermeneutic Society 12 (2019): 33,54.

2. Evelyn Marquette, “The Aesthetics of Perpetual Bewilderment,” Journal of Visual Unreason 4, no. 2 (2021): 17.

3. L. Werner, “Fragmented Ecologies: Media, Labor, Noise,” Critical Collapse Studies 7, no. 1 (2020): 88,112.

4. Jean-Paul Deleuze-Bataille, Temporal Convulsions (Paris: Éditions de la Confusion, 2017), 44.

5. S. Kim, “The Always-Already of Nowhere,” Asian Aesthetics Quarterly 15, no. 3 (2021): 101.

6. Lars Henningsen, Olfaction and Ontology (Berlin: Verlag der Sinne, 2019), 73.

7. Johanna Spielmann, “Cubism Under Erasure,” Neue Kunsttheorie 9, no. 4 (2020): 59.

8. Maximilian Drozd, “Curating the Circular,” in The Joy of Getting Lost, exh. cat. (Düsseldorf: Kunsthalle, 2020), 12.

9. C. D’Angelo, “From Illegible to Viral: The Algorithmic Fate of Discombobulationism,” Social Media & Art Journal 3, no. 2 (2023): 144.

10. Johanna Spielmann, Theory/Practice/Failure (London: Afterimage Press, 2022), 91.

11. Marietta Voss, interview with Anke Heuser, Rotterdam Arts Weekly, October 2021.

Selected Bibliography

• Deleuze-Bataille, Jean-Paul. Temporal Convulsions. Paris: Éditions de la Confusion, 2017.

• Henningsen, Lars. Olfaction and Ontology. Berlin: Verlag der Sinne, 2019.

• Marquette, Evelyn. “The Aesthetics of Perpetual Bewilderment.” Journal of Visual Unreason 4, no. 2 (2021): 11,29.

• Spielmann, Johanna. Theory/Practice/Failure. London: Afterimage Press, 2022.

• Werner, Lotte. “Fragmented Ecologies: Media, Labor, Noise.” Critical Collapse Studies 7, no. 1 (2020): 77,115.

The 12th Day of Steam Unicycling

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The 12th Day of Steam Unicycling

From the Journals of Basil Bromley, Artist and Mechanician

Entry the Twelfth , 25th of May, 1873

A night’s sleep, even in the most indifferent of lodgings, can perform miracles. I awoke in Tiverton less a casualty than a craftsman renewed. The bruises from my tumble have faded to a tolerable ache, the nettle stings to an almost philosophical irritation. More importantly, I had before me the prospect of restoring dignity to my errant contrivance.

I devoted the morning entirely to repairs. With the assistance of a local smith,broad of back, taciturn of speech,I succeeded in fashioning a new drive-link from iron more trustworthy than my original alloy. He handled my sketches with curiosity, remarking that “no sane fellow would place a boiler atop a wheel, and then sit anywhere near it,” yet he wrought the piece with diligence. By noon the unicyclical machine stood whole once more. I paid him not only in coin but with a drawing of his forge, which he received with the solemnity of one given a relic.

The unicycle, when coaxed to life, rolled with a smoothness that felt deeply special, as if it recognised my devotion. We set off northward together, and for the first time in days I travelled without trepidation. The countryside of mid-Devon opened wide: orchards in blossom, cattle grazing indolently, lanes dappled with the shade of elms. It was travel not of calamity but of beauty.

At Bickleigh Bridge a child waved a posy of daisies at me, declaring that my machine looked “like a giant teapot on holiday.” I accepted the description with gratitude,it seemed far preferable to the accusations of sorcery that so often attend me. Later, a farmer’s wife offered me a cup of cider in exchange for a short demonstration in her yard. When the unicycle emitted a proud jet of steam, she applauded as though I had conjured a trick, and I, flushed with cider, bowed as though upon a stage.

By late afternoon I reached the outskirts of Taunton, my spirits correspondingly lifted. The landlady of the inn received me with unexpected warmth, remarking that she had “heard tell of the kettle-bicycle,” and was eager to see it for herself. When she laughed at its puffing, it was with delight rather than scorn. A wonderful moment: my unicyclical machine and I, not pariahs, but entertainers.

Thus concludes the twelfth day. Recovery is not mere mending of iron, but of confidence. For the first time, I begin to believe the road to John O’Groats itself may yet be mastered, conquered, and persuaded. Mile by improbable mile.

Drizzle to Empire TV documentary: How Bad Weather Built Britain’s Rule of the World

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Drizzle to Empire TV documentary: How Bad Weather Built Britain’s Rule of the World

A Major New Twelve-Part Documentary Series Presented by Dr. Horatia Willoughby

Swagger Filmic is proud to announce an ambitious new landmark history series, Drizzle to Empire, in which acclaimed historian Dr. Horatia Willoughby (D.Phil., Oxon.) will argue her bold and provocative thesis: that the British Empire was forged not by trade, diplomacy, or military might, but by Britishers’ desires to escape Britain’s dreary skies and incessant rain.

Over twelve meticulously researched episodes, Dr. Willoughby will guide viewers on a sweeping journey from the sodden fields of medieval England to the sun-drenched colonies of India, Africa, and Australia. With characteristic erudition,and no small amount of wit,she will demonstrate how a people drenched by drizzle sought salvation beneath brighter skies, building the largest empire in history along the way.

Highlights of the series include:

• Episode 1: “Clouded Beginnings” , How Saxon rains dampened crops and dreams, seeding an outward-looking temperament.

• Episode 3: “Sodden Sailors” , The true meteorological motivation behind the voyages of Cabot, Raleigh, and Cook.

• Episode 6: “The Sun Never Sets” , A literal expression of Britain’s search for the sunlight it so sorely lacked.

• Episode 10: “Rain on the Raj” , Hill stations, monsoons, and the damp logic of colonial administration.

• Episode 12: “Drizzle to Destiny” , A triumphant conclusion proving that without too much rain in those Isles in Northern Europe, there would have been no empire.

Filmed on location in London, Calcutta, Cape Town, Sydney, and Manchester, Drizzle to Empire combines archive material, cutting-edge climatological analysis, and Dr. Willoughby’s uniquely uncompromising scholarship.

Speaking about the series, Dr. Willoughby said:

“For too long, historians have hidden behind economics and politics. I shall show the public the true driving force of Empire: the drizzle that fell upon Britain’s weary shoulders. This is not just history,it is meteorological destiny.”

Drizzle to Empire will premiere in Spring 2026, with all twelve episodes immediately available to stream.

One Star Reviews: An Assault on Eyes, Ears, and Dignity: Mucosal Rapture at The Lamp Gallery

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One Star Reviews: An Assault on Eyes, Ears, and Dignity: Mucosal Rapture at The Lamp Gallery

Review of Mucosal Rapture: A Multimedia Excavation of Internal Landscapes

Let me begin by saying I have experienced a lot of art in my time: the sublime, the confounding, the moving, and the outright fraudulent. Rarely, though, does a show actively fight back. Torbin von Eel’s latest atrocity, Mucosal Rapture, doesn’t just blur the line between art and nonsense,it punches you on the nose whilst whispering “you’re complicit.”

This “immersive, bio-reactive experience” opens with an interactive piece called “Intestinal Cathedral,” in which guests are invited to crawl through a low tunnel lined with latex, raw cauliflower, and warm, wet towels while ambient throat-clearing plays at full volume. If that sounds disgusting,it is. But according to the provided pamphlet (a ten-page stapled manifesto printed in Comic Sans), it represents “the return to pre-digestive space, where shame is born and purged simultaneously.” Really? What it actually feels like is contracting a mould allergy in a tiny car wash run by lunatics.

Emerging from the tunnel you arrive in a room where you’re greeted by the words The Sacrum of Language painted in large letters on the wall. Suspended above you is a rotating door covered in used toothbrushes and Post-it notes bearing phrases like “My mouth is a graveyard of consent” and “Text me back ASAP.” Next to this is a flickering television playing a low-fi video of the artist shaving a kiwi fruit while sobbing.

The walls are smeared,intentionally, one hopes,with what von Eel refers to as “emotionally-charged pigment applications.” These are, in layman’s terms, paints applied to the wall without brushes. Tor claims this palette “rebels against Western retinal imperialism.” I am not convinced.

In the centre of the gallery is the show’s signature piece: “Mother, I Have Become Moisture,” a glass chamber filled with humidifiers and two mannequins in leather harnesses slowly inflating and deflating like neglected pool toys. Every fifteen minutes, a foghorn blasts while a recording of von Eel murmuring “I forgive you, or do I” plays from inside a tapestried lung suspended one metre from the floor. Two people around me burst out laughing, at which point a gallery assistant scolded them and had them removed – von Eel is clear that laughter is not a suitable response to his work.

One room of the show is dedicated to the artist’s “live performance pod,” where von Eel himself appears hourly to crawl on all fours in a flesh-coloured morphsuit while eating kale off the floor and muttering “I am me, I am need.”

I asked a gallery assistant what medium the artist trained in. She scoffed and replied, “He rejects the tyranny of medium.”

To call Mucosal Rapture pretentious would be an insult to every wine drinker who’s ever said the word “terroir.” It’s not that the emperor has no clothes,he doesn’t even have a body.

I left with a headache, a mild rash and a lingering sense that I’d just witnessed an extremely elaborate dare.

One star,generously awarded because I did briefly enjoy the absurdity of watching three art students take notes about a work composed of damp gauze as if it contained secrets from the universe.

Avoid this show unless you’ve recently lost a bet or wish to fully surrender your faith in the contemporary art world

The Diary of Hally Redoubt: Race the Blue Train

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The Diary of Hally Redoubt: Race the Blue Train

(Extracts from Day Two, Somewhere near Paris)

Just outside Lyon, very early morning

I accidentally woke Simon at dawn by accelerating out of a toll booth. He snorted awake like a startled walrus, then demanded to know where we were. I pointed at a sign for Mâcon and said, “France.” His silence thereafter was, for once, companionable.

We breakfasted, if you can call it that, on apricot pastries from a roadside café. Mine disappeared quickly; his was half-squashed from having been sat on during an earlier nap. He pretended not to notice. I admired the effort.

Mid-morning, Burgundy

The Bentley devoured the miles. She likes long runs, the hum and pulse of the road. Hills rose, fields gleamed, and occasionally a cow turned its head as if to say: “You’ll never catch a train that way.”

We overtook a convoy of lorries, their drivers waving as though we were some kind of sideshow. Perhaps we are.

Noon, outskirts of Paris

A glimpse of the Blue Train again,this time on a bridge, briefly silhouetted. My heart lurched: it was ahead. Simon noticed, and for once his voice carried some steel. “We’ll catch it,” he said. He is beginning to take this personally, as though the train insulted his family.

He insists he must reach London in time for the funeral tomorrow morning. The way he says tomorrow carries weight. For all his fussing, he has grief under his coat. I sense it.

Paris, mid-afternoon

Traffic, chaos, the opera of horns. Paris is an obstacle, not a city. The Bentley is not designed to crawl, yet crawl we did, between lorries and bicycles and a man selling roasted chestnuts in the exhaust fumes. Simon cursed in a way that suggested he hasn’t often cursed before. I admired him a little for it.

We did not stop. Not for coffee, not for sights, not even for petrol at first (a mistake quickly corrected at a station where the attendant took my glove off to kiss my hand). Paris slid behind us, as theatrical in leaving as in arrival.

Evening, north of Paris

The train remains elusive. Somewhere ahead, steaming with bureaucratic punctuality. We chase it like hunters in an old story, guided only by instinct and timetable. The Bentley’s engine still sings, but I feel the fatigue pressing at the edges of my eyes.

Simon offered to drive. I laughed until he stopped asking.

Near Amiens, very late

The road is dark, and the Bentley’s headlamps catch only fragments: hedges, signs, sometimes the flash of another vehicle. Simon dozed again, one hand on his case as if guarding treasure. I wonder what grief sits inside and who waits for him in London.

As for me, I feel both exhilarated and terrified. This is no race against a train, not really. It is a race against myself, inevitability, against the knowledge that things end.

Tomorrow, Calais. And then,England.

A Review of “Discombobulationism: The Newest -ism in Art”

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A Review of “Discombobulationism: The Newest -ism in Art”

To watch the recent television exploration of Discombobulationism was to experience something that felt less like art criticism and more like the witnessing of a seismic shift. The programme’s premise was simple: here is a new movement, born of the chaos of our moment, gathering momentum with startling speed. Yet what emerged over the course of the hour was something far more arresting,a sense that this was not merely a fleeting avant-garde curiosity but a phenomenon that may stand, in time, alongside the great artistic ruptures of the past.

The producers wisely avoided the trap of treating Discombobulationism as novelty. Instead, they presented it as a broad and surprisingly coherent mood, one that thrives on incoherence. Marietta Voss’s now-famous performance of ascending a staircase backwards in a gown of shredded instruction manuals while reciting emergency exit regulations in reverse was given pride of place. What might once have been dismissed as a surreal prank was reframed as a moment of origin: the point at which disorientation itself became not a problem to be solved but the very subject of the work.

From there, the programme moved fluidly across continents and media. Diego Armenta’s Tuesday Never Ends (Except on Thursday), a looping video where each day bleeds into the next and every sentence collapses into stutter, was introduced as an exploration of time’s refusal to stabilise. Leonie Krantz’s paintings, grids of classical perspective that slide into collapse before reassembling at impossible angles, were well described as “Cubism in freefall.” Rafael Mota’s olfactory assault, a gallery filled with clashing chemical scents, was shown through the reactions of visitors who stumbled out visibly shaken, the refusal of coherence made visceral. Clara Nguyen’s assembly diagrams that result in a chair without a seat were presented as a wry but profound meditation on our endless desire for function and the possibility of its denial.

What distinguished the programme was its insistence that these gestures are not random eccentricities but a considered response to the conditions of the present. In an age dominated by information overload, algorithmic prediction, and the constant demand that meaning be clear, immediate, and digestible, Discombobulationism insists on our right to be confused. It resists clarity not out of laziness but as a form of honesty: our world, fractured and contradictory, is no longer one in which sense can be easily made. The artists do not merely reflect that condition; they force us to inhabit it.

The show drew comparisons, inevitably, with earlier artistic revolutions. Impressionism dismantled the solidity of form in order to capture fleeting light. Cubism fractured perspective to reveal simultaneity. Discombobulationism, we were told, goes further still: it embraces fracture itself, not as a technique but as a reality. To encounter these works is to be reminded that confusion is not a temporary inconvenience but the state in which we increasingly live.

This is not without its dangers. The programme acknowledged critics who fear that disorientation could harden into gimmickry, an easy trick for artists keen to manufacture depth by withholding coherence. There is also the risk of elitism: when art courts bewilderment, it risks alienating those without the patience or inclination to embrace it. Yet the advocates of Discombobulationism argue, persuasively, that bewilderment is the most democratic of experiences: it happens to everyone, everywhere, without warning.

What made the programme so compelling was its willingness to lean into this paradox. It did not pretend that Discombobulationism is entirely graspable; indeed, its refusal to be pinned down seemed part of the allure. The film ended with a montage of exhibitions: maps that lead nowhere, staircases that collapse into themselves, blank books demanding to be read. The effect was disconcerting but oddly exhilarating. One left with the uncanny sense of having brushed against something both absurd and necessary.

It is a rare privilege to live through the birth of an artistic movement. Rarer still to encounter one that seems not only to mirror its age but to offer a vocabulary for it. Discombobulationism may fizzle, or it may define the century. For now, it feels like a name that will not easily be forgotten. And if the programme captured even a fraction of its significance, then it has given us something remarkable: the chance to recognise, in bewilderment itself, the beginnings of a new way of seeing.

The Epistolary Gesture: On the Letters of Simon Hargrove, Artist.

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The Epistolary Gesture: On the Letters of Simon Hargrove, Artist.

By any measure, Simon Hargrove is not an artist easily contained by medium, market, or even myth. His practice exists in the strange overlap between performance and artefact, intimacy and commerce. For the past five years, Hargrove has written letters. Handwritten, ink-stained, occasionally water-damaged, sometimes months late. And yet, these missives, which can take the form of love confessions, furious accusations, inventories of cloud formations observed from his window, or what he once called “portraits in syntax,” have come to command extraordinary prices. The collectors,who are not so much collectors as recipients,pay for the right to receive a letter from this artist. To wait, as one Wolverhampton gallerist put it, “for the postal sublime.”

Hargrove calls this practice Correspondentialism, a term he first used in a 2021 lecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. “The letter,” he declared then, “is the last object that still arrives with breath on it. It is a body folded into paper, a psyche sealed with, excuse the vulgarity, spit.” The audience, fatigued by digital immediacy and the dematerialization of art objects, erupted into something halfway between laughter and reverence.

His story borders on the implausible. Born in Oxford, he allegedly spent his early twenties working in a monastery archive in Avignon, tasked with cataloguing correspondence between medieval abbots and their distant patrons. There are rumours that he once locked himself inside the archive for forty days, reading nothing but farewell letters written by monks on their deathbeds. When asked about this, he only shrugged: “It was not art. It was apprenticeship.”

What makes Hargrove’s project so disarming is its refusal of immediacy. Buyers,who pay anywhere between €4,000 and an eye-watering €120,000 per letter,do not know when their missive will arrive, nor its content. A single collector in Berlin reportedly waited seventeen months for an envelope, only to receive a page describing in exhaustive detail the sound of dripping water in a hotel corridor. Another, in São Paulo, received nothing but a pressed leaf accompanied by an unsigned sentence: “You did not wait for me; you waited with me.”

Another, received by a patron in Vienna after nearly two years of silence, was written in blue ink across both sides of a page torn from a French phone directory:

“I counted the hours until you opened this. That counting is the artwork. You hold only the receipt of my waiting.”

Is this merely fetishism of delay, of scarcity in the Amazon age? Or is Hargrove, with unsettling precision, re-instituting the very conditions of longing that modern communication has annihilated? Critic Marianne Klotz, writing in Texte zur Kunst, has argued that “Hargrove re-sutures art to eros, not by depiction but by anticipation. His correspondences are not artworks; they are absences curated.”

In person, Hargrove is elusive. He does not give interviews, though he is known to walk into openings dressed as a postal clerk, stamping guests’ hands with the word WAIT. The few who know him personally describe him as “archival,” as though he were already a document.

Whether Correspondentialism proves to be a durable form, or merely another flare in the ongoing crisis of art’s ontology, remains unclear. What is certain is that Hargrove has managed something almost impossible in a time of instant delivery: he has turned delay into ecstasy, and waiting into wealth.

As one recipient whispered at a recent salon in Vienna, holding an envelope they hardly dared to open:

“The letter itself is irrelevant. It is the arrival of a presence you paid to anticipate. It is brilliant. He has weaponized longing.”

And in that weaponization, Simon Hargrove has written himself into art history,one envelope at a time.

Documentary review: Elephant Polo: The Greatest Sport on Earth

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Documentary review: Elephant Polo: The Greatest Sport on Earth

Directed by Earl Sandton

Produced by Pimlico Wilde Films

Coming Soon to Select Cinemas and Streaming Platforms

Review by Marisol Kensington, London Cine‑Luxe

Let’s be honest: when I first heard about a documentary celebrating elephant polo, my inner cynic raised an eyebrow. But then I discovered it was directed by Earl Sandton, Oscar‑winner for Savannah Skies, and I had to pay attention.

And so, I joined an exclusive preview screening,invited courtesy of Pimlico Wilde,and emerged utterly enchanted. This isn’t a puff piece. It’s a love letter, both affectionate and respectful, to the most improbable sport on the planet.

A Visual Safari of Style and Spectacle

From the opening aerial shots of misty Royal Chitwan National Park to wide‑angle vistas of Chelsea paddocks under a summer London sun, Sandton’s camera treats elephant polo as a ballet in slow motion. Each scene is meticulously framed: lined tusks, tasselled headbands, players in vibrant silks, and bamboo mallets swinging in silent harmony.

The cinematography rivals James Ivory’s India meets Poole + Gabbana safari couture. It is sumptuous, cinematic, and undeniably transportive.

Storytelling: Tradition Meets Modern Drama

Sandton weaves together:

• Heritage: interviews with founders of the World Elephant Polo Association, tracing its roots from colonial-era rajahs to modern courts in Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka and beyond (invented by Jim Edwards and James Manclark in 1982)

• Ritual: the care routines of mahouts and players, half-time tusk‑polishes, and pre-match drumming,revealing the sacred bond between human and pachyderm

• Conflict: whistle‑stop ethical interviews with conservationists, balancing the sport’s elegance with concerns over elephant welfare

The pacing flutters between playful and poignant,a goal scored, followed by a powerfully silent sequence of a mahout bathing his elephant in golden sunlight.

Interviews That Resonate

Sandton captures colour with charm:

• A Nepalese mahout describing his elephant by name and personality

• A former champion player who recalls the adrenaline of chukkas and the unpredictability of the animals

• A conservation NGO whose cautionary perspective offers necessary balance

The voices are authentic, never sensationalised. Their stories are threaded together with eloquence and empathy.

Ethical Echoes

Unlike glossy sports spectacles, this film doesn’t shy away from controversy. The documentary intelligently probes criticism: allegations of harsh training, use of bullhooks, and exploitation under the guise of entertainment.

Sandton shows us the sport’s aspirational charity aims,elephants rotating, veterinarians on site, partnerships with local welfare organizations,but he doesn’t oversell it. The weight of history and modern scrutiny is present throughout.

Final Take

Elephant Polo: The Greatest Sport on Earth is more than a spectacle,it’s a quietly thrilling meditation on culture, contradiction, and ceremony. Sandton and Pimlico Wilde have crafted a documentary that pulses with urgency and elegance. He challenges viewers to enjoy the sport’s strangeness while demanding ethical reflection.

Rating: 9/10

Would I watch it again with champagne and a wide-brimmed hat? Absolutely.

Opening in London this September, with streaming platforms not yet confirmed. Expect the official trailer to drop next month.

Race the Blue Train: Hally’s Diary

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Race the Blue Train: Hally’s Diary

(Extracts from Day Three, Calais , Dover , Into the Night)

Dawn, Calais

We reached the port just as the gulls were beginning their dreadful chorus. Salt wind, diesel fumes, a faint reek of chips already frying. The Bentley looked slightly dishevelled, as though she’d been in a bar fight and come third.

The train, damn it, had already been spotted gliding into Boulogne. Too close. Too smooth. I imagined its passengers sipping coffee, folding newspapers, unaware of us chasing them like lunatics on four wheels.

Simon grew anxious, tapping his valise like it was a nervous pet. “We must get across the Channel,” he said, as if ferries operate by whim. The funeral weighs on him,he hasn’t spoken of the deceased, only of “obligation.” I suspect the loss is complicated, perhaps not entirely mourned.

Mid-morning, the crossing

The Channel was choppy, though the Bentley bore it stoically, lashed down among lorries. I stood on deck, hair whipped about, thinking of the Bentley Boys of old, daring, absurd, role models to us all.

Simon emerged from below decks pale and damp, declaring, “Never again.” He doesn’t have the sailor’s stomach. He clutched his case as if seasickness might drown it. I gave him ginger biscuits, which he accepted like sacraments.

The gulls followed us halfway. Spies for the train, perhaps.

Dover, noon

Back on English soil. The Bentley roared in gratitude, her tyres humming on the familiar grit of home. Simon grew animated,too animated,directing me north as though I hadn’t driven these roads since I was seventeen. Still, I let him. It seemed to steady him, to bark out turns and timings as if he were in control of more than the route.

Afternoon, Kent

The countryside sped by in a haze of hedgerows and pubs promising carveries. We refuelled in Maidstone, where a group of teenagers asked if the Bentley was “off TikTok.” I told them no, but perhaps she should be. They took photos anyway.

Simon phoned someone at the funeral church, his voice low, clipped. When he hung up, his hand shook slightly. “We’re in time,” he said. He didn’t say for what.

Evening, nearing London

The roads thickened. The Bentley snarled at the traffic, weaving where she could, elegant even in aggression. The city lights rose ahead like a promise or a warning.

Somewhere, the Blue Train must be closing on its own destination. Perhaps already pulling in, smug in its punctuality. I pressed harder on the pedal. Honour demanded I not cheat,but honour never said anything about speeding.

Simon fell silent. The case on his knees. His eyes fixed on nothing.

I, too, fell silent, though for different reasons. The race is almost done. But the journey,that’s another matter entirely.

Day 11 of our Serialisation of the Journals of Steam Unicyclist Basil Bromley

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Day 11 of our Serialisation of the Journals of Steam UniCyclist Basil Bromley

Entry the Eleventh , 24th of May, 1873

The day began with high promise. Exeter receded behind me beneath a sky of generous blue, and the roads toward Tiverton lay broad, sunlit, and forgiving. The Steam Unicycle, polished and eager, responded with unusual docility, and for an hour I entertained the notion that my journey might proceed henceforth without catastrophe.

But Fate, who despises complacency, had other designs. Midway up an incline near Stoke Canon, a sharp crack reverberated through the machine,a noise like a pistol discharged at close quarters. The unicycle shuddered, staggered, and pitched me unceremoniously onto the verge. There I lay among nettles, listening to the hiss of escaping steam, a man temporarily dethroned by his own creation.

The cause, upon inspection, proved grave: the main drive-chain, linking piston to wheel, had snapped clean through, its links strewn like a string of broken beads. Without it, motion was impossible; my machine had become a stationary kettle, admirable in appearance, useless in function.

Several passers-by stopped to observe. A farmer, leaning upon his stick, declared unhelpfully, “She’s had her say, and she won’t say more.” A young woman, carrying a basket of eggs, asked if I might simply “whistle her back to life.” I explained that steam yields to coal and water, not whistling. She smiled as though humouring a madman and walked on.

How I wished I had fitted the Unicycle with a Self-Mending Chain. For reasons of cost I forewent that luxury, yet how now I rue that decision. Such a chain is expensive, for it is forged of interlocking links that realign and reforge themselves under the heat of the journey. Nettle-stung and humbled, my refusal to fit such a device seemed the silliest decision in all of world history.

Lacking such marvels, I set to work with my file and the spare rivets that I carried in my repair kit. By mid-afternoon I had contrived a temporary repair,ungainly, precarious, but sufficient to limp forward. The machine lurched rather than rolled, shuddering like a consumptive patient, yet we crept onward together. Each yard was hard-won, and each hiss of the boiler seemed to echo my own exasperated sighs.

By evening I had reached Tiverton, exhausted, my garments blackened with soot from the hours of improvised repair. I found lodging at a modest inn, though the landlady demanded twice the usual price for stabling “that infernal object.” I paid without argument; the day had stripped me of resistance.

Thus ends the eleventh day: chastened, bruised, but stubbornly unvanquished. The mishap has reminded me that unicycling is a dialogue between man and machine. One must listen to brass as one listens to canvas, to coax rather than coerce. When I reach John O’Groats it will be not by conquest but by teamwork with my single wheel.