COLLECTIVE CURRENTS
In a genuine attempt to stay as close as possible during the cold months, we are bringing you our current theme, COLLECTIVE CURRENTS. Now running.
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Spanish illustrator Laura Mestre transforms emotional overflow into tender visual poetry, using symbols of water, flowers, and cracks to map the quiet beauty hidden within difficult experiences. Discover how metamorphosis, instinct, and a fanzine called "Hay que volver" helped her reclaim drawing as both refuge and release.
In my last year’s review, I wrote that some part of me wished to keep PAF jealously to myself. Either that wish has not been intercepted in the ether or has been twisted completely because the 2025 edition of PAF, Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art in Olomouc, Czechia, was bursting at the seams; again. However, it’s one of the Czech festivals that deserves to be sold out and a bit cramped, and I’ll tell you why.
Czech painter Lukáš Šmejkal traces the unstable boundary between body and terrain, composing lyrical visual assemblages where electric pylons become threads and human figures dissolve into the landscapes they inhabit. Discover how photography, movement, and Baroque verticality shape his meditations on perception in today's interview.
Between November 14 and 16, 2025, the international and multidisciplinary FASHIONCLASH Festival once again descended upon Maastricht, the Netherlands. SWARM MAG’s co-founder, Kateřina, was kindly invited to be a member of the jury awarding the best fashion film at the festival’s 17th edition. We also dispatched the other co-founder, Markéta, on a little delegation to accompany her and glean the strongest currents and tendencies in contemporary young fashion design and performance art. Together, they now present their highlights from the three-day event.
Czech painter Jiří Bartoš captures the fleeting architecture of human memory through soft, atmospheric cloudscapes entirely from imagination. In today's interview, discover how a shift from flora and fauna to sky and light reflects his own journey of learning to walk alongside his past rather than against it.
Georgian designer Lado Bokuchava, the founder of the eponymous fashion label, describes his upcoming Spring/Summer 2026 collection as “exploring the contrast between sophistication and unease”, among other things. In the interview with Lado, we went over finding femininity in unusual things, the timeless appeal of horror cinema, and the vision he wants to bring to our shared fashion ecosystem.
Visual artist Ekaterina Skvortsova-Kowalski celebrates the overlooked yet aggressively present: stray cats, neon-clad janitors, dust-covered plants... transforming everyday resilience into joyful resistance. Discover how three cities, spontaneity, and a refusal to darken the world shape her vibrant practice in today's interview.
“The idea is that we are not powerless and we refuse to be at the mercy of a system that hates us – find the others!” Horde, a new intriguing music project centred around Icelander Palli Banine, a multimedia artist and musician, recently released the debut single from their upcoming album, ‘Taking Reality by Surprise’. In the exclusive and extensive interview, Palli reveals the collective roots of Horde, the personal struggles of being “beached” on life’s shores and finding hope and deep affection regardless, and so much more than can fit into a single opening paragraph. We invite you to take your time with this genuine, sans-filter, and raw reflection of one’s life intertwined with art.
Czech glass artist Anna Jožová transforms molten glass into synthetic paradises that question our curated relationship with nature. In today's interview, you will learn how New Zealand's wild landscapes awakened her practice, and why her artificial Eden might be more unsettling than darkness itself.
After several years of publishing, researching, reaching out, celebrating, checking in, bonding, and connection-making, our archives have now grown vast, deep, and bountiful. Therefore, for our upcoming theme, COLLECTIVE CURRENTS, we have elected to do a sort of look-back and look-in. We welcome you among friends and kin, collaborators and muses, admirers and admired. Accompanying artwork by Ekaterina Skvortsova-Kowalski.