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Philippa Snow
Philippa Snow is a critic and essayist. Her work has appeared in publications including ArtforumThe Los Angeles Review of BooksArtReviewFriezeVogueThe NationThe New Statesman, and The New Republic. Her first book, Which As You Know Means Violence, is out now with Repeater, and she is currently working on an essay collection about famous women.  

Articles Available Online


You Don’t Think God Is Sexy?

Film Review

January 2023

Philippa Snow

Film Review

January 2023

On the most literal level, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s elliptical, spiritual-cum-sensual movie Teorema (1968) is about an entire family being driven to distraction by their...

Essay

Issue No. 31

It's Terrible The Things I Have To Do To Be Me

Philippa Snow

Essay

Issue No. 31

Here was a woman who had modelled her life so closely on Marilyn Monroe’s that doing so eventually helped...

You won’t be able to do it It is a call, and it is something you only know how to do by doing it over and over Birds practise their musical tunes Cows practise their ‘moo’ as they stroll through the fields But persons don’t know how to make a call, and so you will never be able to do it   ‘Oh you’ is sung It starts out a little bit lower and ends a little bit higher like the call for a Bob White bird, only slower You hold on to it longer And like the call of the Bob White bird, you do it over and over and over again The more you do it, the more you have to do it And you have to think of a 1% solution of WC Fields and little bit of bursting at the end ‘Oh you,’ ‘Oh you’   But anyway, you can’t do it You can’t do it because you hardened your voice around some sounds you heard once And now you can’t change it   You thought it would sound good to hold on to the ts at the ends of words with a breathy whistle that is held until the beginning of next word You make that whistle for every single word that ends with a t You like it, and your head jumps a little bit every time you say it You say ‘but’ or ‘but-uh’ a lot so that you can make that t sound a whole bunch more times You put it in everywhere: But-stah-aah But-stah-aah You put it in between words, at the end of sentences, and at moments when other people would have a chance to talk   Or you say ‘Sure, sure, sure’ while other people are talking like you already thought of everything they were saying a thousand years ago Sometimes you say the name of someone and then ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ Then sometimes you repeat the name several times together with ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ while holding your finger in the air so that they will stop talking and you can say all of your sentences

Contributor

November 2018

Philippa Snow

Contributor

November 2018

Philippa Snow is a critic and essayist. Her work has appeared in publications including Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtReview, Frieze, Vogue, The...

Essay

January 2021

An Uneasy Girl

Philippa Snow

Essay

January 2021

Even before Lucie arrives holding a shotgun, we know that the perfect family in this huge suburban house are...

Brilliant Muscles

Essay

December 2019

Philippa Snow

Essay

December 2019

‘Lindsay Lohan’s new film,’ I told almost everyone I spoke to for about two months earlier this year, ‘is about werewolf detectives.’ Nobody seemed...
Evita Vasiljeva, POSTCRETE

Art Review

February 2019

Philippa Snow

Art Review

February 2019

Lower.Green is situated in the unlikely surroundings of a near-dead mall in Norwich. It is not just any mall, but Anglia Square Shopping Centre:...
Gabriele Beveridge, Live Dead World

Art Review

November 2018

Philippa Snow

Art Review

November 2018

Several months ago, I went to a salon so small and so identikit that I do not recall the name, and against every sane...

READ NEXT

poetry

Issue No. 13

Morning, Noon & Night

Claire-Louise Bennett

poetry

Issue No. 13

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice. It ought not to be too ripe – in fact there should...

fiction

January 2014

Vertical Motion

Can Xue

TR. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

fiction

January 2014

We are little critters who live in the black earth beneath the desert. The people on Mother Earth can’t...

poetry

June 2013

Major Organs

Melissa Lee-Houghton

poetry

June 2013

When they take my brain out of its casing it will be fluorescent and the mortuary assistant will have...

 

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