Tag Archives: Alla Davies

TheBottleLogo
22
Apr
Uncategorized

Private. On Display.

Posted on by Alla Davies

At the Tracey Emin exhibition at Tate, Alla Davies confronts how personal pain and private experience are transformed into public art, cultural prestige, and market value. She asks the uncomfortable question: at what point does someone else’s depression stop being pain and become something with a price tag and institutional approval?

In this episode of The Bottle by Alla Davies, Alla examines how someone else’s private depression and pain become displayed, valued, and sold as contemporary art. Short voice notes on style and image (the white wall that authorises pain), taste (distinguishing raw material from the processed form that sells), irritation at the system that makes wounds usable and legible, the dark humour in standing before an unmade bed as if before an altar, and the clear-eyed age perspective on what happens when the personal receives its cultural passport.

Listen to the full episode

These reflections are also available as intimate voice notes on The Bottle by Alla Davies.

Or search for The Bottle by Alla Davies in your favourite podcast app.

Prefer to read? The full written transcript continues below ↓

Private. On Display.

Today you can sell even someone else’s depression.

If you hang the light right and put a price on it.

I kept thinking about that at the Tracey Emin exhibition at Tate. And I had no interest in deciding whether I liked it or not. That is a cheap question. The more interesting one is this: at what point does someone else’s pain stop being just pain and become cultural value?

Because the personal, on its own, guarantees nothing. Not depth. Not form. Not art. But now everything is set up as if bringing trauma, shame, fracture into the open is already enough. As if the wound itself is already talent.

That is what I do not believe.

Tracey Emin is not interesting because she is “brave” or “honest.” Those are lazy words. Bravery does not make art. Confession does not make art. Her strength is somewhere else: she made the personal large. She gave it weight. She did not smooth it over. She did not make it comfortable. And that is her strength.

But that is also where the unpleasant conversation begins. Because the moment the personal becomes language, it changes. It is no longer just pain. It becomes the form of pain. No longer just truth. The form of truth. And anything that becomes legible too easily becomes usable very quickly.

For art.

For institutions.

For the market.

I do not believe in the fairy tale of “pure art” existing somewhere outside money and power. Art has always been tied to commission, status, elite taste, the market. What is new is something else: now we are not only selling the object. We are selling the moral aura around the object.

You are not only being sold the thing. You are being sold the feeling that you are sensitive, perceptive, capable of reading pain correctly. And the viewer is not only buying the work. The viewer is buying themselves next to the work.

The institution is not just background here. The white wall is not neutral. Tate does not simply show. Tate authorizes. It says: this matters, this is culture now, this deserves attention.

The moment personal material enters that space, it is no longer merely personal. It is confirmed. Lit. Packaged. And the question changes immediately: are we looking at pain, or pain that has already been given a cultural passport?

And then the whole thing becomes almost comic.

In ordinary life, not many people would stand in front of someone else’s unmade bed as if they were standing before an altar. In a museum, they will. Because it is no longer just a bed. My Bed sold at Christie’s in 2014 for £2,546,500. At that point, it is no longer mess, depression, or someone else’s difficult night. It is cultural value worth two and a half million pounds.

That is what the institution does best: it does not simply show pain. It makes people look at pain as value.

And people do not come there only for art. They come to look at something that has already been granted permission to be great. And at themselves beside it too. How much they understand. How much they feel. Whether they are the kind of people who go to Tate.

If I am being completely honest, sometimes they come not so much for art as for the feeling of their own importance beside already recognized importance.

And at that point it is pointless to whine that “money ruined everything.” Money does not simply ruin. Money enlarges. The problem is not that the artist gets paid. The problem is that the system starts loving precisely what can already be quickly recognized, quickly explained, and beautifully sold.

The market does not love risk.

The market loves risk once risk has become readable.

The institution does not love chaos.

The institution loves chaos once chaos has been translated into language.

That is one of the most unpleasant truths about contemporary art: what is often sold to us is not truth itself, but its processed version. Not pain itself, but the form of pain that can already be shown, discussed, and sold.

That is why I was interested in looking at Tracey Emin not as a heroine of confession. That is too small. It is much more interesting to see where form is doing the work, and where the work is being carried simply by the force of the material.

Because people constantly confuse the power of the subject with the power of the work. If there is trauma, shame, the body, fracture, they immediately assume they are in the presence of strong art. But heavy material is not the same thing as a strong work.

That is where taste matters. Not to say quickly “I like it” or “I don’t.” But to stop and see what has actually been made here, and what is only being held up by the force of the wound.

And that, probably, is the most unpleasant truth.

The system does not kill pain.

The system makes it usable.

Usable for display.

Usable for respect.

Usable for price.

Usable for sale.

What is being sold today is not only art.

What is being sold today is the form of truth.

And if you do not see that, it becomes very easy to mistake well-presented pain for depth.

TheBottleLogo
15
Apr
Uncategorized

Taste. Or Not.

Posted on by Alla Davies

Alla Davies challenges the lazy claim that “everyone has their own taste,” drawing sharp lines between mere preference and true taste—the physical, instinctive capacity to feel measure, restraint, and when something still holds air instead of collapsing under its own ambition.

In this episode of The Bottle by Alla Davies, Alla dives into what real taste actually is, beyond simple preference or liking. Short voice notes on style and image (knowing when one more detail kills the whole thing), taste as refusal and editing rather than accumulation, irritation at rooms that suffocate or perfumes too pleased with themselves, a touch of wry humour in the difference between appetite and restraint, and the maturing realisation that taste is less about what you add and more about what you leave out.

Listen to the full episode

These reflections are also available as intimate voice notes on The Bottle by Alla Davies.

Or search for The Bottle by Alla Davies in your favourite podcast app.

Prefer to read? The full written transcript continues below ↓

Does taste exist?

I keep asking myself that because people throw around that line — everyone has different taste — as if it solves everything. It doesn’t. It just ends the conversation quickly, which is probably why people like it.

Of course people like different things. That part is obvious. One person wants clean lines and empty walls. Someone else wants velvet, mirrors, gold, and enough atmosphere to redecorate a minor collapse. Fine. People differ. That’s not the interesting part.

The interesting part is this: preference is not the same as taste.

Liking something doesn’t prove very much. You can like something because it’s familiar. Because it flatters you. Because it cost too much and now you need to believe it was worth it. Because your whole feed has been teaching you to call it beautiful. None of that means taste is present.

Taste begins later than that.

It begins when a person can feel when something has tipped over. When the room is too packed. When the perfume is too pleased with itself. When the outfit is no longer sharp, just busy. When something expensive starts reading as cheap because it’s trying too hard. That shift matters.

And the opposite matters too. You feel when something holds. When it has air. When it knows where to stop. When it doesn’t need to shout.

That, to me, is taste.

I’m not very interested in dividing the world into good taste and bad taste. That language gets stiff very quickly. It turns into a school report or a social performance. I’m interested in something simpler: is taste there, or not?

Because taste is not the object itself. It’s not the lamp, the chair, the coat, the painting, the perfume, the hotel, the book on the table. People love turning taste into props. They collect the right signals and hope the signals will do the work for them.

They don’t.

You can have all the correct objects and still have no taste at all.

What matters is how things are held together. What gets left out. Where someone stops. Whether they know when one more detail will kill the whole thing. That’s where taste starts to show itself.

Which is why I think taste has a lot to do with refusal.

Not what you add. What you don’t add. What you don’t wear. What you don’t say. What you don’t explain again. What you don’t push just to make sure people noticed.

That’s uncomfortable for people, because restraint is never as popular as freedom. Freedom sounds glamorous. Restraint sounds annoying. But without some sense of measure, taste just turns into appetite.

And appetite is a different thing.

Appetite grabs. Taste edits.

Appetite wants more — more shine, more impact, more signal, more sex, more meaning, more proof. Taste is the thing that knows when enough is enough. Not because it’s timid. Not because it’s boring. Because it can feel the line.

That line is real.

Not universal in some dead, moral way. Not fixed for all people in all times. But real enough that your body usually knows it before your theory does.

That’s another thing people don’t admit enough: taste is physical.

You walk into a room and know. Something in you clocks it immediately. Too much. Too cold. Too eager. Too decorated. Or the opposite: this works. There’s air in here. Same with perfume. Same with clothes. Same with people. Your head starts explaining later. The body gets there first.

That’s why I don’t trust the lazy version of taste is subjective.

It’s true only up to a point.

Yes, taste is shaped. Obviously. Background matters. Money matters. Exposure matters. What you grow up around matters. What you’ve spent years looking at matters. All true.

But shaped doesn’t mean imaginary.

And personal doesn’t mean random.

That distinction matters.

Otherwise we end up pretending everything is equal the moment someone says they like it. I don’t believe that. I think people say subjective a bit too quickly when they don’t want to admit that some things are tighter and some are sloppier, some things hold and some collapse, some things are alive and some are just extremely well managed.

You can feel the difference.

And yes, I know the danger here. Taste can become snobbery very fast. It can turn into social cruelty. It can become a nasty little theatre of superiority. The second it becomes a weapon, something in it rots.

But throwing the whole idea away doesn’t help either.

Because then you lose the ability to talk about measure at all. You lose the ability to say this room is suffocating, this perfume is dead, this outfit is overworked, this brand has no pulse, this thing has style, that thing only has effort.

And those differences are real.

I don’t want to pretend that a room with air and a room suffocating under its own ambition are the same. I don’t want to pretend that a perfume with movement and one that just smells expensive are the same. I don’t want to pretend that style and control are the same, or that boldness and noise are the same.

They aren’t.

Taste is what helps me feel those distinctions without turning them into morality.

That’s why I still think it exists.

Not as status. Not as a badge. Not as a list of approved purchases. Not as some sad little club for people with the right references.

As a capacity.

A way of sensing when something is alive, when it’s exact, when it’s gone too far, when it’s false, when it still has breath in it, and when it’s just performing intelligence and hoping no one looks too closely.

That’s all I mean.

So the real question, for me, isn’t do I like it?

That’s too easy.

The better question is whether there’s any life in it at all. Whether it has air. Whether it has measure. Whether it holds. Or whether it’s simply trying very hard to impress me.

That’s where taste begins.

TheBottleLogo
07
Apr
Uncategorized

Beautiful. And Dead.

Posted on by Alla Davies

Drawing from a haunting visit to stores in Moscow, Alla Davies examines the unsettling ease with which something can be exquisitely beautiful yet completely lifeless. She questions how we so readily mistake polished arrangement, flawless seams, and visual coherence for genuine pulse and vitality—whether in perfume, fashion, interiors, or people themselves.

In this episode of The Bottle by Alla Davies, Alla reflects on how beauty can be perfectly staged while feeling utterly dead inside. Short voice notes on style and image (the false vibration of over-finished luxury), taste (sensing when something has no oxygen left), irritation (the quiet shock of coherent emptiness), the absence of humour in something too resolved, and why, at this point in life, we start trusting “weather,” friction, and imperfect breath over flawless surfaces.

Listen to the full episode

These reflections are also available as intimate voice notes on The Bottle by Alla Davies.

Or search for The Bottle by Alla Davies in your favourite podcast app.

Prefer to read? The full written transcript continues below ↓

I keep thinking about this.

About how easy it is now to mistake beauty for life.

And I don’t mean ugly things.

Ugly is easy.

Bad taste is easy.

Cheap things are easy.

You look at them, you know what’s going on, and that’s that.

I mean the opposite.

I mean things that are beautiful.

Properly beautiful.

Well-made.

Well-positioned.

Well-lit.

Thought through.

The kind of things that make you think there must be something real underneath.

And then you get closer.

And there’s nothing there.

That, to me, is one of the strangest things now.

How much can look alive without actually being alive.

I really understood this properly once in Moscow.

There was this visual world I’d been watching for a while online.

Strong imagery.

Strong references.

Contemporary art, books, brands, a very controlled atmosphere, a very specific tone.

The whole thing gave the impression of mind, taste, depth. Not just product. A world.

And I believed that.

Not blindly.

But enough.

So when I was in Moscow, I wanted to see it in real life.

I went to the stores.

All of them.

I wanted to know whether the thing survived the screen.

It didn’t.

And that was the shock.

Because nothing was obviously wrong.

The clothes were well made.

The seams were neat.

The products were arranged properly.

The perfumes weren’t cheap.

Everything looked considered.

Everything looked coherent.

And still — dead.

That was the feeling.

Not ugly.

Not stupid.

Not fake in the obvious sense.

Worse than that.

Empty.

And that, to me, is much more interesting than obvious failure.

Because obvious failure is easy.

You walk in, you think, fine, nonsense, and you leave.

But this wasn’t nonsense.

This was something much more convincing.

And that’s why it stayed with me.

Because online, it carried charge.

Or what looked like charge.

Through the screen it felt alive. Intelligent. Deliberate. Like there was an actual pulse underneath it all.

But in the room?

Nothing.

No current.

No friction.

No surprise.

No breath.

No life.

Just arrangement.

That’s the phrase, really.

The vibration was false.

And that’s what got me.

Not the products.

Not the city.

Not the stores as such.

The false vibration.

The sense that something had been built very carefully to suggest life without actually containing any.

And I think that’s when something clicked for me.

I realised how easy it is now to stage life.

Not life itself.

The image of life.

The suggestion of depth.

The styling of pulse.

The packaging of meaning.

And once you notice that, you start seeing it everywhere.

In brands.

In shops.

In perfume.

In interiors.

In art.

In language.

In people.

There are perfumes now that are technically flawless and spiritually dead.

Everything is right.

The bottle is right.

The story is right.

The notes are right.

The price tells you to take it seriously.

You smell it and think: yes, very accomplished.

And also: absolutely nothing happened.

No memory.

No flicker.

No little internal shift.

No danger.

No pleasure, even.

Nothing.

Just something very well finished.

And I think that’s what I react to more and more now — this over-finished quality. This sense that something has been so carefully managed, so carefully resolved, that there’s no oxygen left in it.

Same with people.

I see people sometimes — beautifully dressed, perfectly arranged, every detail handled — and I feel nothing.

Not because they don’t look good.

They do.

Sometimes incredibly so.

But the whole thing feels sealed.

And when something feels too sealed, I stop trusting it.

Because life usually leaks a bit.

Life is usually a little off.

A little weathered.

A little inconvenient.

A little mistimed.

That’s part of what makes it alive.

Sometimes I look at someone and think: the look arrived, but the person didn’t.

That sounds cruel, but I mean it precisely.

Everything is there.

The hair.

The shoes.

The bag.

The skin.

The whole studied ease of it.

And yet somehow the whole thing feels flatter than a showroom wall.

And then someone else walks past — less perfect, less expensive, maybe slightly strange — and suddenly there’s electricity.

A real face.

A strange coat.

Bad posture.

A live nervous system.

And that person has more presence than an entire luxury campaign.

That’s the difference I’m interested in.

Not beauty on its own.

Pulse.

Not just style.

Charge.

Not just coherence.

Breath.

I think that’s what I’m looking for now, in everything.

Does it breathe.

Not: is it beautiful.

That’s too easy now.

Beautiful can be built.

That’s the whole point.

You can build beauty now at scale.

You can produce it.

You can light it properly.

You can style it.

You can write the concept.

You can add the references.

You can make it look intelligent.

And there it is.

Beautiful.

But alive is different.

Alive still resists.

Alive is less obedient.

Alive is harder to package.

Alive usually has some weather in it.

That’s what I trust now — weather.

A difficult perfume.

A room with some friction in it.

A face that has actually lived.

A sentence that hasn’t been over-cleaned.

A person who looks like they’ve lived inside their own life, not just curated it.

That gets me.

Much more than perfection.

Because perfection now is everywhere.

And a lot of it feels dead.

Art does this too.

You go into a show and everything is right.

The text is right.

The politics are right.

The pain is right.

The body is right.

The references are right.

The room is right.

And still you stand there thinking: fine. But where is the pulse?

Where is the thing that still breathes?

Where is the risk?

Where is the thing that hasn’t already been prepared for me to admire in exactly the correct way?

Because not every raw thing is alive.

That’s another mistake people make now.

They think raw automatically means real.

It doesn’t.

Raw can be staged.

Raw can be marketed.

Raw can become a style just like anything else.

There is a lot of beautifully presented damage now.

A lot of vulnerability with a visual system.

A lot of pain that arrives already edited.

I’m not saying all of it is false.

I’m saying arrangement can kill things.

Too much styling can drain the blood out of a thing.

Too much self-awareness can kill voltage.

Too much control can leave you with something that looks perfect and feels absolutely dead in the hand.

And once you notice that, surface stops being enough.

That was the useful part of that experience in Moscow.

Not the disappointment itself.

The click.

The moment I realised how easily I can still project life onto beauty.

How easily I can see a coherent visual world and assume there must be soul underneath it.

How easily a strong atmosphere can make me believe in pulse.

And sometimes there is pulse.

Sometimes there really is a living mind behind the thing.

But not always.

Sometimes there’s just a very good set.

A very good moodboard.

A very good tone of voice.

A very good visual argument.

And no life in the room.

That’s why I’m getting more suspicious of finished things now.

Things that are too coherent.

Too resolved.

Too aware of their own intelligence.

Too fluent in their own positioning.

The moment something becomes too smooth in its self-presentation, I start listening for oxygen.

Can it still surprise me.

Can it still move.

Can it still misbehave a little.

Can it still breathe without permission.

That, to me, is the real test now.

Not whether it’s expensive.

Not whether it’s stylish.

Not whether it’s clever.

Not whether it photographs beautifully.

Does it breathe.

That’s it.

Because beautiful can be made very easily now.

Alive still can’t.

TheBottleLogo
01
Apr
Uncategorized

Among People. Not Available.

Posted on by Alla Davies

Stepping into the polished world of Mayfair’s perfume boutiques, Alla Davies craves something deceptively simple: to smell exquisite scents, feel the texture of cream and glass bottles, and simply be left alone. In this reflective debut, she captures the quiet tension of wanting beauty and atmosphere while fiercely protecting her personal space from intrusive sales pressure and emotional demands.

In this episode of The Bottle by Alla Davies, Alla explores what it feels like to be among people without being available to them. Short voice notes on style and image (the calm of unhurried perfume exploration), taste (checking whether you’re still awake inside), irritation (hovering staff and guided moisturiser journeys), dry humour (the irony that space makes you stay longer), and the age-old art of saving energy while still chasing the voltage of the city without handing yourself over.

Listen to the full episode

These reflections are also available as intimate voice notes on The Bottle by Alla Davies.

Or search for The Bottle by Alla Davies in your favourite podcast app.

Prefer to read? The full written transcript continues below ↓

I came into London today and all I really wanted was to smell perfume and be left alone.

That was the plan.

A simple one.

Not healing. Not shopping. Not “treating myself.”

Nothing so embarrassing.

Just London.

A few beautiful places.

Perfume.

Cream.

Glass bottles.

A bit of texture.

And nobody standing too close to me with a smile that means sales target.

I love those little beauty boutiques.

The ones in Mayfair.

All that skincare, perfume, polished glass, expensive cream, artificial calm.

I can spend ages in places like that.

Not buying.

Checking.

That’s the real point.

Sometimes I don’t go in because I need something.

I go in to check whether taste is still working.

Whether I’m still awake in there.

Perfume is good for that.

Very efficient.

One second and you know whether you’re alive — or just nicely arranged.

The problem is not people.

The problem is pressure in a nice jacket.

The second you walk into some of those little boutiques, someone is on you.

Too close.

Too quick.

Too ready.

And I know, yes, they’re doing their job.

But sometimes I do not want a guided emotional journey through moisturiser.

Sometimes I want to smell perfume and be left the hell alone.

And then today something slightly different happened.

I stopped at Amouage.

And I stayed there for about half an hour.

Partly because the perfumes were good.

Partly because I wanted to smell everything.

Partly because I was in the mood to study, not shop.

But mostly because the man there didn’t suffocate me.

Arab.

White teeth.

Maybe around fifty.

Calm.

Present, but not hovering.

He had the rarest retail skill on earth: he didn’t crawl into my nervous system.

He let me smell.

He let me think.

He let me take my time.

And because of that, I stayed.

That’s the irony.

If someone gives me space, I stay longer.

I get interested.

I actually want to explore.

If they come at me too fast, I’m gone.

Mentally first. Physically a minute later.

That’s why I usually prefer department stores.

More people. More air. Less pressure.

Nobody acts as if your presence is a legal commitment.

I remember walking into a perfume shop once just to look around quietly, and the man would not leave me alone.

One bottle.

Then another.

Then another.

As if “no” was just decorative language.

Eventually I looked at him and said, very clearly:

I want to be alone. Please leave me alone.

He hated that.

His whole face tightened, like I’d insulted the family business.

Then he went over to his colleague, said something, and the two of them stood there staring at me as if wanting silence was a social crime.

I wanted to walk over and give them a short lecture on boundaries, overstimulation, and why not every woman entering a perfume shop is there to be professionally handled.

But I didn’t.

I saved my energy.

That, actually, may be the theme of this period of my life.

Saving energy without becoming dead.

I still want the city.

I still want beauty.

I still want perfume, texture, people, style, atmosphere.

I just don’t want to be emotionally grabbed every five minutes like a handbag with legs.

And today I noticed something else.

I’m not rushing.

Usually there’s some cultural sprint involved.

An exhibition.

A gallery.

A reason.

A little intellectual alibi so the day can justify itself.

Today I just walked.

I looked at people.

I looked at buildings.

I stopped.

I made notes.

I looked at an old building with a spa inside and thought: I’d love to go in there.

And then immediately thought: absolutely not.

Because they’ll descend on me, explain things to me, offer me packages, ask me questions, and dry me out like furniture polish.

The building itself was enough.

I’m starting to understand something, I think.

Sometimes I don’t want the experience.

I just want the edge of it.

The smell.

The atmosphere.

The voltage.

The possibility.

Sometimes I don’t want to go in.

I just want to know it’s there.

And I’ve noticed something else too: I’m done with impulse decisions.

Now I look.

I wait.

I check the energy first.

I ask myself a rude question:

Do I want the thing?

Or do I just want the brief chemical flirtation of almost wanting it?

Those are not the same thing.

Maybe that’s where I am now.

Learning how to move through beautiful places without immediately handing myself over to them.

How to want beauty without becoming available to it.

How to be among people — and still belong to myself