What did you encounter this year that truly moved you?

Hearing Adam Phillips speak about his piece: On Resistance.

I read (well, listened to Stephen read to me) all of his books on Greek Mythology last year, and I was surprised how much Odyssey moved me, considering I’d never felt any pull towards reading the story before.

-Reggie James

Reading about Michel Majerus painting during the first internet era.

It reminded me how alive the AI era feels when I’m making things.

• Marc, Founder of Danger Testing

What moved me in 2025 was the film Sinners. Despite the incredible pace of change in the wider world, so many things (products, blogs, cultural artefacts) I came across last year didn’t feel original. The starting point for Sinners isn’t, either; the myth that blues legend Robert Johnson traded his soul to the devil in exchange for his uncanny musical abilities is a universal story humans have told each other for centuries, back to Dr Faustus in the Renaissance. Layered on top of that is a deep south Black vampire movie about gangster twins who return triumphantly to their hometown to set up a juke joint…until night falls. I watched it for the first time sitting in an old-fashioned cinema in the Mission in San Francisco and found it totally original; from the showpiece scene that speaks to the transcendence of really good music to the repeat theme of the hard trades we make to build lives we want - which spoke to me deeply. I’ve watched Sinners twice since and it’s made me cry every time. — Sarah Drinkwater, Common Magic

I had the chance to attend Frieze Soul, where I encountered The Language of The Enemy, an exhibition by Adrián Villar Rojas which occupied all four floors of the Art Sonje Center: “Emerging at a moment when humanity teeters at the edge of its own continuity, Villar Rojas’s work inhabits the liminal space between extinction and inheritance.” — ANU, WHAT'S ANU

I think about “Guitar” by Mac DeMarco, an incredibly unadorned album that’s one of the realest things I’ve ever heard, and a daily listen for half the year. The songs are great and the guitar playing deliberately basic and emotive (try “Punishment” and “Nothing At All”) while Mac lays bare his heartache. The whole album has an honesty and authenticity worth aspiring to whatever your practice.

"Four Talks" by Laurie Anderson at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington D.C. A full room installation in which every surface is painted on with wisdom/provocative jokes. Monumental in terms of actual size, as well as the three-dimensional way it represents an artist's brain. What it can/look/feel/be like when you let go into the dream. 

- Yancey Strickler

I think about "Guitar" by Mac DeMarco, an incredibly unadorned album that's one of the realest things I've ever heard, and a daily listen for half the year. The songs are great and the guitar playing deliberately basic and emotive (try "Punishment" and "Nothing At All") while Mac lays bare his heartache. The whole album has an honesty and authenticity worth aspiring to whatever your practice.

- Yancey Strickler