We’re in Venice, Italy this week for the opening of the bustling Biennale Arte. Queues everywhere! ■ What’s been great so far? A stroll through the spectacular, just-opened Fondazione Dries Van Noten, the retired designer’s ode to craft and strange beauty. A raucous street cocktail for BUTT, outside the Rupture Arts & Books store (more on BUTT below). ■ The giant bronze-bell-and-human-clapper at the Austrian pavilion, by FLORENTINA HOLZINGER. See above – wish I could insert the video footage. The queer protest night club at the Greek pavilion, by ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS, the artist/architect who co-edited Fantastic Man 30 with us in 2019. ■ And we attended LOUISE TROTTER’s chic drinks at BOTTEGA VENETA’s private palazzo (do check out this series by PAUL KOOIKER in our latest issue) and today we’ll be queing up for ARTHUR JAFA (also gloriously profiled in current Fantastic Man 42) at the Fondazione Prada – everybody says it’s amazing.

Otherwise this week was focused around celebration, as our fellow mag BUTT turned exactly 25 years old (hurray!), and desperation, since BUTT’s Instagram account was deleted by the deities at Meta, as is happening to so many people and platforms who stand for sexual openness and freedom of speech. ■ The celebration came in the form of a fun party at Amsterdam’s supreme gay dive bar, Spijkerbar, with a special reverse striptease and the cutting of a bespoke BUTT cake, by artist CAIN WITTENHAUS, above. ■ The shock of losing our Instagram account perhaps didn’t come as such a surprise, since Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to silence anything queer as of late, probably in service of the current American government. ■ Lots of people offered help in retrieving access to our account, from Amsterdam’s CLUB CHURCH (who had similar experiences) to Playboy’s new editor, PHILLIP PICARDI, the mysterious Instagram account BORING NOT COM and LAUREN SHERMAN of our favourite daily fashion newsletter Line Sheet. Thanks all! We briefly got our account back on Thursday, then it disappeared again, and it seems to be back today… Why? We may never know. ■ Fingers crossed, and please tell all your friends to sign up to BUTT’s monthly newsletter – it may be a more reliable way to communicate digitally, going forward.

If you’re a shopper at department store Selfridges in London, you may have seen our plush Fantastic Man display there this week, part of a two-month pop up by magazine heaven magCulture. It looked like this, above. ■ Just a quick note to say that the issue, and especially the one with super actor PEDRO PASCAL on the cover, is selling out quickly.

The FedEx surprise of the week came in the form of this blockbuster orange beauty, ‘Pet Shop Boys Volume’. It’s a beefy catalogue of album covers, graphic design, videos and other visuals from favourite pop duo PET SHOP BOYS. ■ Fans may already have a similar book of theirs, ‘Catalogue’ (2006), the content of which now forms the first half of ‘Volume’, just with even more visual fireworks (and a new foreword by artist JEREMY DELLER, another Fantastic Man favourite). ■ As with all things PSB, there’s a fun meta-ness (not the dreaded tech company, but the notion of self-referentiality on a higher level of abstraction) to it, when on pages 336-337 the aforementioned ‘Catalogue’ is granted its own entry in ‘Volume’. The comments throughout by PET SHOP BOYS, NEIL and CHRIS, give the book a fabulous honesty. I think it’s endlessly fascinating. ■ You can read our rather recent encounter with NEIL TENNANT here, written by OLIVIA LAING who also happens to have a great new novel out, ‘The Silver Book’, set in circles around cinema legends FELLINI and PASOLINI.

For a story called ‘New!’ in our new issue (p.186-199), featuring five great emerging menswear designers, we made five accompanying videos, the first two of which can be enjoyed now on this platform that I’m fed up mentioning the actual name of. ■ One is with KARTIK KUMRA of KARTIK RESEARCH fame, from New Delhi, India, and the other with LUKE DERRICK who makes DERRICK out of London, UK. Three more soon!