Lampoon #32: (soap)

Lampoon SOAP is a journey through stains, purity, and contradiction – a visual and textual exploration that stretches from microplastics in oceans to blood on our hands. Soap as the act of cleansing, but also as metaphor: of moral stains, of humanity’s endless cycle of defeat and renewal. Soap is never just soap. It washes, it heals, it purifies – but it also reveals.

Lampoon 32 SOAP dives into the paradox: what does it mean to be clean, when the act of cleaning dirties the water itself? From polluted rivers to stained consciences, this issue uncovers the truth that every life carries its own grime, that sincerity emerges only through contradiction.

/ Features and Photography
We follow the slimy traces of snails in Vienna and Madrid, commission a hemp-based artisanal soap, and photograph Ignazio Gardella’s Tuberculosis asylum. Microscopes, bacteria and molds, imagining the biotechnological futures of microplastic digestion. Sofia Alazraki’s still-lifes are dirty, sticky, refusing polish. Francois Berthoud says it straight: he doesn’t want to look at the computer anymore. Olivier Zahm and Annabelle Wearthly melt under the sun until they blur. Naguel Rivero keeps fashion stripped to the bone. Mircea Cantor carves Aleppo soap into shapes that still carry the smell of war. Along the Ganges, Rid Burman photographs the collision of sacred water and floating plastic. A tribute to Mr. Giorgio Armani – archival shots mixed with artificial intelligence

/ Soap and Art
Anthea Hamilton confesses, “I’m an oil person.” Andrea Rinaldo, Nobel Prize in tow, calls humanity what it is: “a biological invasion.” Maurizio Cattelan repeats that art is not a detergent. Alex Lawther talks about AI, films, and the pleasure of playing teenage sociopaths. Lara Giliberto writes about saints and dirt, Amanda Wall about stains as scars. Richert Beil leaves instinct in raw space, with latex as skin. Elska Magazine dissects exclusion inside the so-called inclusive gay community.