Tank # Spring 2025

“Community” is everywhere. There is a seemingly inescapable consensus that community is what will save us: find your tribe, build networks of mutual aid, transcend your personhood on the dancefloor. But what do we mean by a term that is used so readily by left and right, marketeer and activist alike? In this issue of TANK, we consider how community is indexed, what it offers us politically and – ultimately – how might we move beyond it.

Semiotics studio Axis Mundi deciphers the role of community in corporate advertising, while Rosanna McLaughlin uncovers loneliness and transphobic handicrafts at the LGB Alliance Conference. Amy Ching-Yan Lam and Aurelia Guo reflect on the meaning of home, and Emily Steer examines the cult-like allure of the Landmark Forum. Francisco Garcia investigates the poison-pen letters causing chaos in rural Yorkshire, and we ask artists, theorists, and a dominatrix: what’s wrong with community?

We explore Hamad Butt’s toxic art, publish new fiction by Sarah Bernstein, and step into Hetain Patel’s world of dedicated hobbyists. At her factory in Paris, we speak to Marine Serre and meet her chosen family, Christian Louboutin's Miss Z embraces the dancefloor and Dior Beauty glows up. Xiaopeng Yuan captures a heartfelt reunion, Melissa Schriek looks to the shadow self, and in Seoul’s printing district, Hubert Crabières encounters familiar faces.

Plus, we speak to Francesca Albanese on the Palestinian genocide, Jeff Koons on metaphysics, Payal Kapadia on the surrealism of rice cookers and Álvaro Siza on interdisciplinary architecture.