Suite (212)

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 23 - Oleksiy Radynski 14.07.2026 46min

In our latest session, Juliet talks to Kyiv-based filmmaker and writer Oleksiy Radynski about four of his works – his feature-length documentary Infinity According to Florian (202x), his two works about the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s infamous nuclear plant, Chornobyl 22 (2023) and the longer Special Operation (2025), and his docu-fiction Where Russia Ends (2024), using found footage from the Science Film Studio in Kyiv. They discussed the project to save modernist buildings in Kyiv and the contradictions of the fight to preserve futurist architecture, as well as the experience of working with Soviet artist, musicologist and architect Florian Yuriev; how Oleksiy sourced the CCTV and other footage that made up his two Chornobyl films; the experience of working in Kyiv since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began; and the importance of understanding the nature of Russian colonial expansion and imperialist in the east, and its parallels with the occupation of the Americas. For a full list of references from this episode, please subscribe via https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212 for as little as £3.50 per month.

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 22 - Imran Perretta 11.07.2026 52min

In our latest Session, Juliet talks to film director, visual artist and composer Imran Perretta about his new feature film Ish (2025), due to be released in the UK and Ireland on 31 July, as well as his short film the destructors (2020) and his installation A Riot in Three Acts, first exhibited at Somerset House in 2024. They talked about how the works were shaped by Thatcherism and neoliberalism, the War on Terror and the genocide in Gaza, institutional racism and police profiling, as well as how the works combine formal experimentation with deeply personal narratives, bringing in cinematic influences such as Abbas Kiarostami, Steve McQueen and Cristian Mungiu.

Rows of Great Yarmouth: An interview with Red Herring Press 23.06.2026 1h 8min

Juliet talks to poet and writer Lotte L.S. about Red Herring Press, which Lotte set up in 2020 to print, publish and distribute local writing in Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. They discuss what Red Herring Press does; how it grew out of the COVID-19 lockdown; Lotte’s idea of ‘amateurising professionalism’ and the advantages of working outside a literary market; how cheap commercial rents and lack of affordable housing shape the Press, and the town’s arts scene more broadly; the Press’ Creative Writing workshops and publications; their membership model and how other local groups use their space; the town’s relationship with Norwich, a designated UNESCO City of Literature with the National Centre for Writing and the famous Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia; Great Yarmouth’s past as a fishing town, its recent history of deindustrialisation and migration, and how their publications draw on this; and Lotte’s long essay An Economy of Starlings (2024), responding to the election of Rupert Lowe as a Reform MP in 2024, and foundation of the far-right Restore Britain. To subscribe to Red Herring Press and/or buy their publications, go to https://www.redherringpress.org/ A full list of references is available to Suite (212) subscribers. To support us on Patreon for as little as £3 per month, please go to https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212.

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 21 - William Raban 11.06.2026 1h 7min

In our latest Session, Juliet talks to William Raban about his five decades in film, and especially his engagement with London, from his time in the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative in the early 1970s to his most recent work in 2020. They discussed William’s origins in the Structural and Materialist movement of the Seventies, and his use of different film formats from 8mm to digital; how he made his feature-length Thames Film (1986), narrated by John Hurt and shown on Channel 4; his A13 (1994) and Island Race (1996), made partly in response to the election of a British National Party councillor on the Isle of Dogs in east London; how authors such as Charles Dickens and T. S. Eliot have come into his work; and the difficulty of making films in the wake of the atrocities in Gaza and elsewhere. A full list of references, with links is available to Patreon subscribers – go to https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212 to subscribe to Suite (212) for as little as £3.50 a month.

The Suite (212) Sessions no. 20 - Jill Westwood 09.06.2026 48min

In the first of our Sessions for five years, Juliet speaks to artist, filmmaker, performer and art psychotherapist Jill Westwood (b. 1960) about her work in the early 1980s and its rediscovery after it was included in Tate Britain’s landmark exhibition Women in Revolt: Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 in 2023. They also discussed how Jill’s practice was formed in the Black Country, where she encountered punk as a teenager, at art school in Stourbridge, and then in Sheffield amidst the city’s post-punk music scene, with deindustrialisation, misogyny and the Yorkshire Ripper in the background. We talked about her photography, performances and films, made as a student at the Royal College of Art in London between 1979 and 1984, how her art intersected with the queer and fetish scenes, and her subsequent work as an art psychotherapist in Australia and London. Finally, we talked about how group exhibition, Protect Me from What I Know with Sohrab Hura and Adam Lewis Jacob at Glasgow International, and how people respond to her work decades after its creation. For a full list of references, as well as links to Juliet’s Frieze article on Jill’s work, please go to https://patreon.com/suite212 and subscribe for as little as £3.50 per month.

Creative Growth: Labour's cultural policy since 2024 05.06.2026 1h 2min

Since Labour returned to power in the 2024 UK General Election, announcing their landslide victory with a speech at the Tate Modern, little has been made of their cultural policy. In this free episode, Juliet talks to Dr David Hesmondhalgh – Professor of Media, Music and Culture at the University of Leeds, and the author of Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (2015) and five editions of The Cultural Industries – about Labour’s approach to art and culture, looking at their policies and the ideology behind them. Looking primarily at England as cultural policy is devolved in the rest of the UK, Juliet and David discussed the move away from Jeremy Corbyn’s arts policies; Labour’s Plan for the Arts, Culture and Creative Industries and the 2024 manifesto; the centrality of local government and education to cultural policy; Margaret Hodge’s review of Arts Council England; the timidity of Labour’s approach and the limits of their idea of ‘creative industries’; how this has differed (or not) from the Conservative and New Labour governments before them; and the need to shift the emphasis from financial returns to the intrinsic social and cultural importance of the arts. Subscribe to us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212 for £3.50 per month to get a full list of references from this episode, as well as bonus episodes, Juliet’s archived articles, and more.

New horizons: The Return of Suite (212) 22.05.2026 1h 14min

Suite (212) returns after five years – and true to form, it’s with an episode analysing the current political and cultural climate in the UK and beyond, and why we brought the show back into it. There’s a twist, however, as frequent guest Owen Hatherley asks regular host Juliet Jacques the questions, about why Suite (212) ended in December 2021, what’s changed since, and what the programme might do differently this time around. Along the way, we talked about the differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Zack Polanski as leaders of political projects and their respective tastes shape them; how the left reacted to the defeats of 2019-24 and the cultural effects of their withdrawal; the decline of the US as a cultural hegemon, and the rise of Chinese and Korean culture in the west; the international far-right attacks on the arts and the parts of society that uphold them; the concept of ‘counter-counterculture’; the impact of developments from the genocide in Gaza to the coming of AI on the arts; the crushing disappointment of Starmer’s Labour and their lack of interest in culture; how ‘stanning’ sells artists short; and some ideas for future episodes, ending with an appeal for our listeners to get involved in shaping its new direction. To subscribe to Suite (212) for as little as £3.50 per month, please visit https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212.

EXTRA: It's a Sin [unlocked] 01.03.2022 1h 6min

Following from December 2021’s Resonance 104.4fm show on the cultural impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with James Butler and Sarah Schulman, Juliet talks to writer Huw Lemmey about Channel 4’s landmark miniseries 'It’s a Sin'. Written by Russell T. Davies and broadcast across January and February 2021, 'It’s a Sin' follows a group of friends who meet on London’s gay scene in September 1981, just as the first British cases are being diagnosed, and charts the impact of HIV/AIDS on their sex lives, relationships, families, friendships and careers over the following decade. In this subscriber-only episode on the miniseries, Juliet and Huw talk about the conservatism of British television and their reluctance to commission it; critical reactions to the show, and call-backs to the 1980s ‘moral panic’ about homosexuality; Davies’ skill in writing for television; how the programme looks at the personal impact of HIV/AIDS, and its portrayal of LGBT activism and its relationship with wider British politics; and how 'It’s a Sin' is ultimately a show about care, and how it represents models of queer (and straight) kinship.

The End: Politics, culture and criticism in the UK in the 2020s 01.03.2022 58min

For Suite (212)'s final edition, host Juliet Jacques talks to writer/editor Owen Hatherley (Tribune and elsewhere) and Fatema Ahmed, acting editor of Apollo, about the current state of British cultural criticism and what the next few years might have in store. They discuss the reasons for stopping Suite (212) and the changing cultural climate between and after the General Elections of 2017 and 2019, and what's happened to the Labour Party; the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic; state funding, the media and the BBC; and what the left might focus on when thinking about the arts and culture.

We: An interview with Pil & Galia Kollectiv 16.11.2021 59min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm, Juliet spoke to London-based artists, writers, musicians, curators and teachers Pil and Galia Kollectiv about their practice, the art world's reaction to Covid-19 and the state of British higher education, especially in arts universities. They talked about Pil & Galia's Immigrants exhibition (2018), their short films, their bands WE and UrBororo, their background in Israel and their writing for the music press, and more. A full list of references from this episode is available to Patreon subscribers. To sign up for as little as £1 per month, visit patreon.com/suite-212.

These are the Times: An interview with Trevor Griffiths 19.10.2021 59min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to playwright and screenwriter Trevor Griffiths, born in Manchester in 1935, about his life in writing for stage and screen since the late 1960s. Although Griffiths wrote the scripts for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) and Ken Loach's Fatherland (1986), this interview focused on his plays Occupations (1970) and Comedians (1975), his TV series Bill Brand (ITV, 1976), his BBC TV film Food for Ravens (1997) and his play A New World, staged at Shakespeare's Globe in 2009. A full list of references for this episode is available to Patreon subscribers for as little as £1 per month. You can subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Poetry and Politics in 21st Century Britain 21.09.2021 58min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poets Ed Luker (based in London) and Nat Raha (based in Edinburgh) about the state of poetry, publishing and funding in 21st century Britain. She asks Ed and Nat to share their poetry and their influences, discussing the Cambridge school of poets around J. H. Prynne and their studies at Sussex with Keston Sutherland. They discuss the divides between 'big' and 'small' presses and what sort of work(s) they publish, and the flaws of the 'underground' vs. 'mainstream' binary; the relationship between contemporary poetry and new currents in feminist and socialist politics; funding models for poets and publishers; and how new left-wing media might work with sympathetic poets. For a full list of references from the show, please subscribe to our Patreon for as little as £1 per month, via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

EXTRA: Literature about and after Corbyn's Labour [unlocked] 06.09.2021 52min

Now unlocked, this subscriber-only bonus episode came about because Juliet enjoyed talking so much to Sam Byers and Carl Neville about the 'state of the nation' novel for our monthly Resonance 104.4m show that they decided to keep going. They expanded on the question of what literature about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party might look like, and how both the defeat and the intensification of neoliberalism might shape the form and content of British literature throughout the 2020s. For a full list of references with links, please subscribe for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Rebellion: The life and work of Forough Farrokhzad 20.07.2021 59min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poetry, editor and academic Golnoosh Nour about the life and work of Iranian poet, writer and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad (1935-67). Featuring plenty of readings from Farrokhzad's work (in the original Farsi and English translation by Sholeh Wolpé), Juliet and Golnoosh talk about Farrokhzad's early life and emergence on the post-war Iranian poetry scene, how her erotic feminist poetry scandalised the literary establishment, and her interest in traditional Persian literature. They discuss her only film, the short documentary The House is Black (1962) about a leper colony in Tabriz, northwest Iran; her relationship with filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan; and her influence on later Iranian filmmakers. Finally, they talk about Farrokhzad's enduring legacy in Iran despite her work being banned after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and her influence on Golnoosh's poetry.

Variations: An interview with Juliet Jacques 31.05.2021 1h 5min

In this month’s Resonance 104.4fm show, former co-host Tom Overton returns to interview Suite (212)’s founder, Juliet Jacques, about Variations, her new collection of stories that tells a potted history of trans and non-binary people in the United Kingdom from the Victorian era to the present, published by Influx Press on 17 June 2021. They talk about how Juliet moved on from her ‘Transgender Journey’ series for the Guardian and her memoir, Trans, that came out of it in 2015; why she chose to write Variations as short stories rather than as a novel, or a more straightforward British trans history, or make it as a film; the different forms she uses in each story, and her research processes; how postmodern approaches have intersected with prejudice to make the compilation of trans histories more difficult; how Variations looks at trans people’s complex relationships with industrialisation, law, sexology and media, as well as literature, music and film; the context of a British – and global – backlash against trans visibility and rights as she wrote the book; the absence of trans authors and authentic trans characters from literary history, the influences on her work and the uses of trans writers telling trans stories; and what Juliet might write next. Pre-order Variations for £9.99 from the Influx Press website at https://www.influxpress.com/variations. For a full list of references, subscribe to Suite (212) on Patreon for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Pilgrims of Hope: Writers and the Paris Commune of 1871 18.05.2021 58min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to academics Owen Holland (University College London) and Bertrand Taithe (University of Manchester) about how writers responded to the Commune of Paris of 1871, both during its two-month existence from March to May 1871, and over the following decades. They talk about the print culture and intellectual circles that existed in Paris and France at the time; how writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud, George Sand and Émile Zola reacted to the Commune at the time, and throughout the rest of the 19th century; how British authors responded in the 1880s, and how this shaped the mythology of the Commune; and how this interest in the Commune's memory became less the concern of literary writers and more of political theorists in the early 20th century. For a full list of references in this month's show, please subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 19 - Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven 06.05.2021 1h 8min

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype (so apologies for the diminished audio quality), about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work. In the nineteenth of these Sessions, Juliet talks to Belgian artist, filmmaker and writer Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven about her recent retrospective in Berlin and its relationship to a work by Situationist theorist Raoul Vaneigem; her contribution to a group exhibition on the early 21st century, responding to Paul Van Ostaijen's epic poem Occupied City (1922); and her ongoing interests in feminism, the female body and technology.

State of the Nation: Capturing 21st Century Britain in Literature 20.04.2021 59min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to writers Sam Byers and Carl Neville about how they tried to represent 21st century Britain in their novels Perfidious Albion and Come Join Our Disease (Byers) and Resolution Way and Eminent Domain (Neville), and the concept of the 'state of the nation' novel. They talked about the challenges of writing in a time of rapid political flux, the need for such novels to capture a particular time and place, how the internet has affected ideas of the universal and the specific in literature, patriotic and dissident approaches to the genre, and how much it has been the preserve of straight white men. For a full list of references, as well as an extra subscriber-only episode about how novelists might respond to the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, please subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.

PREVIEW: Literature about - and after - Corbyn's Labour Party 18.04.2021 8min

In this preview of our subscriber-only episode about how British literature might write about Corbyn's Labour, the aftermath of the 2019 General Election and the 2020s, Juliet talks to novelists Sam Byers and Carl Neville about Ed Luker's 'How Did You Survive January?' and how poetry and film were better able to capture the emotions of 'the Corbyn project'. Carl discusses the difficulties of writing counter-factual literature about the 2017 and 2019 elections given the likely response of the state to a Corbyn victory, and how the actual reaction of the state, the media, the Tories and the Labour right to a left-wing Labour Party was far more savage than that portrayed in Chris Mullen's novel A Very British Coup. Finally, Sam talks about how artists and writers may find themselves co-opted into the culture wars that have subsumed the Labour left's structural and material analyses of British society, and the need to be brave in the face of relentless ridicule and hostility. To hear the full episode, subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.

Culture of Crisis: The Visual Arts in Greece since 2008 16.03.2021 59min

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to artist Eirene Efstathiou and curator/writer iLiana Fokianaki, founder of the State of Concept gallery in Athens, about the visual art scene in Greece since the financial crash of 2007-2008, which badly affected the country. They discuss the impact on the arts of EU-mandated austerity, the rise and fall of the far-right Golden Dawn, the election of Syriza on a left-wing platform and the oxi referendum of 2015, the migration crisis, the return to party of New Democracy and the strict Covid-19 lockdown measures. They also consider the nature of Greek arts funding, what the decision to co-host Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens said about Greece's relationship with Germany and the EU, and what it means to be a politically engaged artist in a time of crisis. A full list of references is available for Patreon subscribers - go to https://www.patreon.com/suite212 to sign up. Cover image by Eirene Efstathiou; our theme music is 'Aus' by Fennesz.