A screenshot from 'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture'

It's a minute before I realize my mouth's hanging open, "catching flies" as my mother might say. I'm just staring at what's before me, soaking in the sight, the splendor of it all. It's past 1:00 AM and Brighton-based studio The Chinese Room's Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is in its final moments, and above my virtual eyes the aurora borealis dances before countless stars, coloring up the creases of my pale, late-night skin. Stirring orchestral music swells around me, carrying my feet that never appear on the screen, up steps and towards an observatory, fulfillment, finality, the end. I snap back to reality and reposition my slack jaw, somewhat unwillingly—this is a game that I'm not sure I want to see the credits roll for, so enthralled by it have I been for the past five hours.

And yet, Rapture is one of those releases that has some gamers asking—arguing—Is this really a game at all? For the first hour or so of its bucolic embrace, my wife sits beside me. "So, you just walk around, and open doors?" There's slightly more to it than that, but, essentially, yes: if you played one of The Chinese Room's previous games, Dear Esther, you'll know all about the restricted interactivity of the experience Rapture offers. You, the player, are as much a viewer as an active participant. Your control is limited to moving, looking, and a single "action" button that can switch on radios, answer phones, and open doors and gates around the rural Shropshire setting, an almost-too gorgeous rendering of the British countryside that could only have been built by a domestic team that understands the small details: the empty pint glass on the pub garden bench; the claustrophobic interior of a holiday park's stationary caravan; the predictably puerile marker pen graffiti of an English country bus shelter. An environment that is devoid of any human life.

'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture,' launch trailer

It's hard to write all that much about Rapture without giving away spoiler-rated aspects of its steadily emerging storyline, one that builds from a curiosity-piquing (very) small-town tale of kitchen-sink dimensions to something with repercussions on a galactic scale. But the preview campaign for the presently PS4-exclusive game talks about the apocalypse, about the end of days, certainly for humanity, so it's giving precisely nothing away to confirm that you—whomever "you" are, and that's open to interpretation (again, I won't say anything more on that for fear of influencing how you might personally read the game, but I have my own ideas)—are the sole human-like presence left behind after everyone else in the local community, and quite possibly further afield, has vanished, leaving behind nothing but Redacted For Spoilers, Redacted For Spoilers and the overall impression that fate came quickly. The very title of the game can be taken literally, to explain the abandoned houses, halls, stores, and farms.

And it's worth repeating the G word: game. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is very much one, and that's clear in its gamified use of crackling radios and ringing phones—the chunky mobile ones, incredibly expensive in the 1984 of its setting, suggesting that this fictional spot of Shropshire, on the line between the very real Shrewsbury and Wrexham, wasn't short of affluent residents—which serve as story-expanding audio logs. These can be found in any order, as the game world is effectively an open one (save for its final sequence), but assuming you follow each of the game's character- and chapter-specific orbs of light down the lanes and up the public footpaths, they generally make a sort of sequential sense. And it's worth paying attention, closely, to everything that's said, both in these recordings and when glowing disruptions in the air are found. Tilting the PS4 pad when close to one of these causes it to expand and explode into an almost holographic display of events that previously occurred in that exact location, conversations between members of this close-knit but secrets-withholding community. Listen carefully, as it's in these (unrepeatable) exchanges where clues for where to head next can often be found, and the past becomes a palpable present.

Related: Watch VICE's film, The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

A screenshot from 'Submerged'

Death is soon enough everywhere in Rapture, as deceased birds begin to litter the roads as the story develops, but "you" cannot die. There's no threat to the player in this particular post-apocalyptic scenario, and the same is true of Submerged, a recently released game set in a flooded world, made by Australia's Uppercut Games, a small independent team featuring talent that previously worked on the Fallout and BioShock franchises. In this danger-free adventure, viewed third person, you are Miku, a young girl who arrives amid the (seemingly) abandoned skyscrapers of a city long-since drowned by a spectacularly raised sea level with her injured brother. The object of the game, which is seen and done barring the optional extras within four hours, is simple: get him better, whatever the cost to yourself.

Which is nothing much at all. Miku's skin begins to change, taking on a slightly stony complexion, over her days in the mostly submerged city, but it's ultimately nothing to worry about because she can't die (and besides, something happens later on, but that too must remain Redacted For Spoilers). Looking after her brother means scaling tower blocks only reachable by boat, the climbing a simplified version of what you'll see in the Uncharted games, or even Shadow of the Colossus, without the worry of falling to your death. At the top of these buildings there are supplies—water, food, bug repellent, pain killers, all of which "unlocks" in the right order however you tackle the small open world's targets—and once you've found them there's no need to make your way back down, as the game merely cuts to your base camp. Repeat the process a total of ten times and it's game over, roll credits.

'Submerged,' launch trailer

There's more to do: landmarks to spy for achievements, creatures to spot with your telescope and clip right through if you're close to them (at least, that's what happened to me when one of the game's species of whale surfaced beside my vessel, but it's inconsistent). Miku's boat can be upgraded, using spare parts spread around the map, leading to longer speed boosts, and small, shining collectibles fill in a purely pictorial tale that explains why the world is in this state. Everything's very pretty, but unlike Rapture's somewhat linear central narrative, which keeps you moving to very different parts of its world, Submerged's go-anywhere-straight-away freedom stifles its storytelling. It's easy to just drift on the ocean, missing supply points, going in circles. And the climbing soon becomes a chore—no building is particularly difficult to get up, but every one of them features the same array of ledges and drainpipes, balconies and windowsills. Once you've done one, you've done them all.

What Submerged, and Rapture for that matter, does very well, though, is manifest in the player, at least to begin with, a queasy unease with its surroundings. Both games are beautiful, but for all the wrong reasons—it's the lack of life that's led to this enveloping isolation, these wonderful spaces free of society's droning hubbub and the hubris of humankind. I could feel my skin tingle during my first half-hour within Rapture—I knew no harm could come to me, but walking amongst these strange, spectral shadows had me on edge. Submerged takes a turn for the (ever so slightly) sinister around its halfway mark, when it becomes apparent that Miku is being watched by Redacted For Spoilers. That eeriness dissipates quickly, but while it lasts it gives Submerged something extra, the possibility that this simple, meant-as-meditative-but-more-like-mundane game could be as memorable as, say, Journey, another game of zero risk but massive emotional resonance.

New on Motherboard: Hell on High Seas

"The Mourning Tree," from the soundtrack to 'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture'

Rapture's sci-fi-meets-the-supernatural (via a healthy wallop of religiosity) creepiness, lurking just beneath its pastoral veneer, remains for its entire duration. Perhaps it's the Englishness of the experience, but I'm reminded, for its first few hours, of a great Doctor Who episode that's yet to be, probably Mark Gatiss-penned, a story where the Time Lord arrives at an abandoned village and has to suss where everyone's disappeared to, perhaps never quite finding the complete answer. (Or, just maybe, a supremely surreal tangent to the long-running radio soap The Archers, also set in the English midlands.) And certainly, come the climax of the game, it's likely that many players won't know for sure what's happened—and I felt that the dénouement was as much a warning as a wrap-up. But that's almost beside the point—it's how you get to the end that matters, and the path you follow, stunningly soundtracked by in-house composer Jessica Curry (given Journey's score by Austin Wintory got itself a Grammy nod, this definitely deserves to be in the running for a whole bunch of awards), is never dull.

Could it be traveled faster? It could, and can be, but if you're rushing your way through Rapture then you're playing it in entirely the wrong way. Take your time: The Chinese Room's gentle apocalypse is one of the most magically immersive experiences that gaming in 2015 is going to provide, but a second playthrough won't ever be as special as the first. Step slowly, and surely. Stall beneath the stars and, for a second or two, just wonder about what makes a video game. Rapture has fewer traditional elements of player agency to it than Submerged, but I know which of the two impressed me most on a first play, and which I'll happily, albeit with the mystery lifted, sit through all over again. There's no need to run—the credits won't begin without you.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is out now for PlayStation 4. Submerged is out now for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Every day Kryss Black and Rob Vanderveen watch someone new turn up out the front of their house. It's a constant stream of the morbidly curious. Some come to stare and imagine. Others picnic in front of the doors. Some leave cards for paranormal investigators. Some try to break in. Most come to take photos. Sometimes they even bring their own barrels.

"They want to get into the bank," Black says. "They want to get into the vault. That's their mission. Go and look at the vault. If they can get in, they will."

The vault, as most Australians knows, is where eight corpses crammed into barrels were found in 1999, the handiwork of sadistic serial killer John Justin Bunting, assisted by Robert Joe Wagner and James Vlassakis.

It's been 16 years since Australia's most infamous murder case, and people still keep coming to Snowtown. Vanderveen sees them when he goes out for groceries or when he's doing work. Sometimes they even take photos of him.

He and Black bought the bank back in 2012 when they moved over from Melbourne. They were looking for something quiet, they say, and the bank's history didn't matter. Asked how they feel about living in the building next door, they say to them it's just a shop.

"You've got people who have been murdered in houses all around the world," says Vanderveen. "You can't just let it rot."

"Even if they had pulled it down, people would still visit the block," Black adds. "They go to Truro and they look at nothing. A paddock. And they still go up there in flocks."

Now the couple live in the house adjoining the bank and have slowly been restoring the property after years of neglect. The bank itself isn't used for much, they say, except for storage and as an occasional sleeping place for their cat, Gandy.

The pair see themselves as the bank's custodians. To them, it's a part of Australian history—the headlines that followed the discoveries of the bodies, after all, gave Snowtown instant notoriety.

Bunting, the man behind the killings, was Australia's answer to Jeffrey Dahmer. He'd turned up in Adelaide's working class north one day in 1991, and slowly manipulated his neighbors into murdering those he considered society's "waste."

Between August 1992 and May 1999, Bunting, along with Wagner and James Vlassakis, preyed upon at least 10 people. Many of them were brutally tortured, including 24-year-old David Johnson, who was the only person killed in the bank and was found partially cannibalized. Bunting had rented the disused bank in Snowtown, 80 kilometers [50 miles] north of Adelaide, to dissolve eight of their victims in barrels of hydrochloric acid. Instead this had the unforeseen affect of pickling the corpses, which provided conclusive evidence when they were found.

At trial, Bunting styled himself as a vigilante and claimed his victims were "pedophiles." It's a line that some, such as the closed Facebook group calling itself the John Bunting Appreciation Society, seem to have bought entirely.

The catch is, many of those who died were people Bunting simply didn't like. One was a mother. Others were disabled. Bunting went on to claim his victims' welfare payments and give away their property. As Justice Brian Martin said when he sentenced Bunting and his friends to life in October 2003, they were "in the business of killing for pleasure."

Watch: Investigating an Unsolved KKK Murder in the Deep South

Ever since, Snowtown—a sleepy town of 400 people—has had to live with the stigma of the bank and its vault.

"If you look at every other serial killer, there isn't a building connected," Black says. "It's usually bodies in the bush, bodies in the mountains somewhere, bodies in the paddock. But here you've got a building. People can actually see a solid thing and their imaginations run away with them."

I asked to see the vault, but the couple said no. No one gets inside until they open it to the public as a memorial to the victims, a middle- inger to the perpetrators, and a bric-a-brac store for Australian-made Snowtown merch.

The couple say they haven't thought about whether or not they'll charge for entry. They're not even at that stage yet. All they hope is that opening up the bank may help in some way to lift the economic slump that's settled over Snowtown since the railway went federal and their local station closed up.

"People only want to see one thing," Vanderveen says. "The only business you can put in there is something to do with what happened, to be honest. You can't go and make a coffee shop out of it. It's got to happen. There's too much interest. It's part of Australian history now."

Follow Royce on Twitter.

De Montfort's announcement on Facebook via DMU Facebook

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last Thursday, as his students spent their summer break doing menial jobs for minimum wage, the Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University in Leicester sent around a self-congratulatory email to his entire student body, announcing that the Prime Minister had been made a Companion of the University for legalizing same-sex marriage. David Cameron received the honor during a ceremony at 10 Downing Street that was attended by De Montfort's Pro Chancellor and Vice Chancellor, as well as students and financial backers of the university.

Funnily enough, some students didn't take too kindly to having the decision to give the PM a big gong dumped on them without consultation. They took to the university's Facebook page to call Vice Chancellor Dominic Shellard a "social climber" who doesn't care about students' opinions.

No matter who was made a "Companion," someone would likely have a problem with the decision. And Cameron's record on LGBT issues is up for debate: He gets a big tick in the gay-friendly box for introducing the Same Sex Couples Act in 2013. On the other hand, LGBT support groups have faced massive funding cuts as a result of Cameron's government's policies. And you have to wonder why Cameron would appoint Caroline Dinenage to be Equalities Minister when she voted against equal marriage in 2013.

Related:We went to a student house party to take laughing gas and talk politics ahead of the election

But the problem here seems to be more that the university didn't allow that debate to happen before they chose to give Cameron a big pat on the back. When I asked the university about it they said that the university's LGBT community supported the move, but it turns out that's not really the case.

According to a university spokesperson, the award "is not about political colors but recognizes the overwhelmingly positive change that equal marriage has brought about for thousands of people across the UK. We were delighted that students and staff from the university's LGBT communities were able to be part of this historic day." The spokesman pointed out that two members of the student LGBT+ Society were at the ceremony

In reality, the Chair of De Montfort's LGBT+ Society, Tim Deves, told me that, "While two members of the society attended, they were not informed prior that there was any political agenda behind the event." The event was billed as an honorary graduation ceremony, and the true reason for the trip to Downing Street only became clear at the last minute.

Aidan Keenan is one of the society members who made the trip. He said that he was "escorted up to the room the ceremony was to take place in... and it was literally at that exact moment I learnt that David Cameron was being presented with the award, and it was for his 'hard work and dedication' to legalizing same-sex marriage. Of course it was too late to protest or complain, so I had to stand through the ceremony, seemingly looking like I supported this award when truthfully I didn't."

Daniel Murgatroyd, the student union's elected LGBTQ+ representative, was similarly in the dark. He only realized what had happened after the story started to spread on social media, and says that Cameron was not an appropriate choice for the honor: "It is hard to credit a single man, even a Prime Minister, with ever getting a bill passed, especially considering that 45 percent of his party rebelled against him and voted no."

Cameron was nominated by Lord Alli, a Labour peer who was previously De Montfort's Chancellor. A conferment Committee made the final decision over whether to award the honor, which is supposed to give the honor legitimacy and the support of the whole university. In reality, the committee is only made up of senior management and a couple of academics chosen by Vice Chancellor Shellard. No students were consulted before Cameron was given the award.

The university responds to some of the comments, and the comment of a pissed off student via DMU Facebook

Students taking to De Montfort's Facebook page got really, really angry. Their posts were frequently taken down, with the uni saying that it is "hiding obscene or abusive comments... in line with our normal social media policy."

Danni Spooner, a dance student at De Montfort, claims she was phoned by two members of staff who told her to remove a post containing the hashtag "#fuckyouDominic," referring to the Vice Chancellor, as it could hurt her future career prospects. Danni told me that she agreed to meet them halfway and remove just the hashtag, but now feels "watched by my own institution, a place that openly said that they... respect an individual's right to their opinion." For Danni, the claim that the award was apolitical is absurd—both the staff that phoned told her to put her political opinions aside.

A university spokesperson denied any knowledge of staff members phoning students regarding social media posts, and said: "Academia is all about debate. The university understands that, of course, people will react in different ways to this award and DMU respects their right to express and debate opinion."

Students may be left wondering about the point of having such a debate when a decision has already been made.

De Montfort's LGBT+ Society have started a petition asking the university to explain its decision in full, and justify its decision not to consult students on the award.

University management has now agreed to meet with society representatives to discuss their concerns. But considering De Montfort haven't stripped FIFA President and football's biggest piss-taker Sepp Blatter of his honorary degree—which he got for being "forthright, visionary, ethical and, above all, professional"—it looks unlikely Cameron will lose his award.

Joan Crawford wielding a shotgun in 'Trog'

This September, a major retrospective of cult filmmaker John Waters's work will be shown for the first time at the BFI London. Alongside his own films—like Pink Flamingos and Serial Mom—the institute will show a program of Waters' favorite British films. As any Waters fan would expect, the program consists of some of the biggest garbage to ever be shat out of the UK film industry.

One such piece of garbage is the little-seen and poorly acted Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton film, Boom! Based on Tennessee William's play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, it tells the story of Frances "Sissy" Goforth, a terminally ill woman living on a remote island which is invaded by a mysterious poet, Christopher Flanders, a.k.a. "The Angel of Death." Waters has previously described it as "Beyond bad." He said: "It's the other side of camp. It's beautiful, atrocious and it's perfect."

Waters' second selection features another of Britain's most famous leading ladies, Joan Crawford. Trog is a 70s sci-fi horror film about what happens when a living troglodyte is discovered in a cave in the British countryside. Crawford plays the scientist who attempts to domesticate the beast, which goes quite well until it escapes and mauls everyone.

In honor of all this, we called up John Waters at his home in Baltimore to talk about the star quality of Crawford, the eternal appeal of Taylor, and the influence they had on his own leading lady, Divine. The three are, together, a kind of holy trinity of camp icons. Waters also explained what it is he loves about the movies Trog and Boom!, and how they impacted his accomplishments on screen.

Let's start with Trog. Trog is a movie you watch with your mouth hanging open. Trog is a howler. But it wasn't made it to be funny. It's Joan Crawford's last film and it's totally heartbreaking to see her doing serious acting with a man in a monkey suit pretending to be a troglodyte. It's so sad because she just wanted to work. And you hear all these rumors, like she had to change her clothes in the car on set (which has been angrily denied by the director who says he spent a fortune on her). The thing is, this is a studio movie. It wasn't even cheap! And yet she had dialogue like, "Trog! Here Trog!" So you kind of feel sorry for her and then you don't because she was Joan Crawford.

I would like to have met her. Im still a fan of hers and I hate that daughter. Have you seen Mommy Dearest? The film about Crawford's adopted daughters? It's a really great movie. If you cut out that coat hanger scene it would have got an Oscar. I just hate that the daughter wrote Mommy Dearest. Later, when she ran out of money, she was on stage with drag queens in San Francisco taking it out of her mother... and I think, Oh please, if you were so injured by her you sure are milking it for 25 years!

Joan Crawford in Trog

Anyway, does Trog influence me? Yes! It taught me: Get a star and build a vehicle around her. That's how to get your movie made. I always got along with stars, I never had any trouble. When you have a meeting with a star you do have to think, Right, have they got a sense of humor? I'm willing to bet Joan Crawford did not. Not even in Trog! Just that word is funny! "Trog!" It's enough to make you laugh. But not her. Or the director. Freddie Francis who directed it refused to speak of it later in his career. And some people say it's the worst film ever made. Of course, it's not. The worst films ever made aren't funny, they're just tedious. That's the tyranny of good taste.

Now, Boom! got even worse reviews than Trog! Except from Tenessee Williams, whose book it was based on. He said it was the best film ever made. Which to this day only he and I can agree on. He's right though. The play was called The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, but that was too long to put on the marquee so they called the film Boom!, which is the sound of a bomb going off—ironic, considering how hard it bombed.

It's so awful it's perfect. My favorite bit is when Elizabeth Taylor pukes into a handkerchief, looks down and there's blood, and she says, "Ah! A paper rose!" The script is ridiculous. Come on, it's about the richest woman in the world, called "Sissy Goforth," and the Angel of Death. Maybe everyone does need an angel of death who comes to them when they die and so what if your angel of death steals something from you.

Liz Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of 'Boom!'

The point is, it's a staggering movie and it's worth seeing it with a live audience because you just don't know how to react at the beginning. You think, What is the tone of this? That's the thing that is so bizarre. Apparently Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were drunk for the whole time they were filming it. Elizabeth Taylor kept wanting to buy the set and it had a roof and they had to tell her it wasn't real. She wanted to live there and they had to say, "We're making a movie! This isn't a real house!"

I remember I met Elizabeth Taylor and the first thing I said is, "I loved Boom!" and she got real mad and shouted, "That's a terrible movie!" And I said "It isn't! I love that movie! I tour with it at festivals!" Then she realized I was serious. Because it is a great movie. I feel like if you don't agree with that I hate you. If you don't like Boom! I could never be your friend. Right now I live by the water and every time I see a wave hit a rock I shout, "Boom!" like Richard Burton.

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If you haven't seen it, it is similar to that other Richard Burton and Liz Taylor movie, Suddenly Last Summer—only that was a well-reviewed, Oscar-nominated movie. Boom! closed in a week. I think the director, Joseph Losey, was the first person ever to lose money on Liz and Richard Burton. Apparently they asked Katharine Hepburn to play the part of Sissy Goforth and she turned it down because, quote, "It's insulting to have been asked." Liz Taylor makes it though, her tone of voice is so squeaky in it. At one point she pushes her X-ray machine off the cliff while screaming, "Baby buggy from hell!" What a line.

Divine and I saw this movie together in Baltimore—Baltimore played all the movies they wouldn't show anywhere else. I probably saw it on acid with Divine. I used to take Divine to see Ingmar Bergman movies on acid and he would freak out and hate them. He'd say, "Take me to see movies about rich people please." So we went to see Boom! I think we were at least on pot when we watched it.

Divine in Pink Flamingos

This movie, no one can imagine but, it was a huge influence on Pink Flamingos. I saw it right before making that and, in the movie, Goforth is writing her memoirs, and in Pink Flamingos Divine is writing her memoirs in the trailer. No one would notice that, though. I'm such a big Liz Taylor fan and so was Divine. At the end of Boom!, Liz Taylor looked like Divine. And Divine always looked like Elizabeth Taylor at the beginning of her career.

How will Trog and Boom! go down now? With people who like me and my films? At a John Waters retrospective? I think it will go down just fine! It depends what state you come in, though. I think people who like my films like highbrow movies and lowbrow movies and it's mid-brow movies that they have trouble with. I show lots of films at festivals and really I pick the films so I can see them. I like to put the spotlight on the movies that everybody wants to forget, but I just won't let them. Trog and Boom! are two of those movies.

As told to @MillyAbraham

It Isn't Very Pretty... The Complete Films of John Waters (Every Goddam One of Them...) runs at BFI Southbank from the September 1 to October 6.

The season includes six British films personally selected by John Waters for a dedicated sidebar: Teabaggin' in the Kitchen Sink: My Favourite British Films

More stuff like this:

Female Trouble Was the Film That Taught Me I Didn't Need to Have an Ordinary Life

John Waters Still Loves Justin Bieber

The John Waters Retrospective Made Me Shit Myself with Happiness

Marilyn Minter, Michele Lamy, 2015, enamel on metal, 64 x 72." Courtesy of Salon 94 and Regen Projects

This article appears in the August Issue of VICE Magazine

The painter Marilyn Minter is having her first retrospective, which represents 45 years of the artist's work and will open next month at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver before traveling to Orange County and Brooklyn in 2016. When I arrived at Minter's bustling Manhattan studio, another visitor was preparing to leave. "This is Fabiola. We did Plush, the pubic series, together!" exclaimed an ebullient Minter, introducing me to the publisher of her limited-edition book that featured close-ups of hair-coated vaginas being stroked by manicured hands. "Richard Prince bankrolled it, and it sold out in a week! Five hundred copies."

She proceeded to lead me through her workshop, where her assistants tend to sit quietly, applying layers of enamel to several large-scale, highly detailed images, most of which are painted as though seen through glass—a frosted or textured window, a steamy shower door. Both sublime and lurid, Minter's work is populated by splashes, spills, and those little dots of light that appear when a camera is out of focus. Gesturing toward a painting of an aging female face with red lipstick and gold teeth, partly blurred by windshield-wiper-like marks, Minter said, "This is like if you drove past a billboard with a wrinkled lady on some rainy night... Of course you never would see an advertisement of a woman with wrinkles." Much of the artist's oeuvre invokes the aesthetics of fashion photography yet focuses on images that we rarely see represented in that form: the reddish creases that socks leave on ankles, freckles, dirt in between toes and on nails.

While Minter's talent has always been for conceptually oriented representation, in her early days she was told she was simply a photorealist, and a boring one at that—abstract expressionism was still de rigueur at the University of Florida when Minter studied there in the late 60s. At 21, she shot Coral Ridge Towers, an exquisite and arresting black-and-white series of domestic portraits of her mother, a glamorous-looking drug addict. Her classmates were scandalized and "horrified" by the images, sensing that they had been shown too much. Ashamed, Minter put the photographs away for 25 years. This would not be the last time her work caused a stir. At the end of the 80s, after a failed attempt to become an expressionist, a more conventional pop art phase in which she employed a dot screen, and a couple trips to rehab in order to kick her own addictions, Minter developed a fresh new style and process, using enamel paint to depict close-up images taken from hardcore pornography. Porn Grid, a graphic quadriptych of blowjobs and breasts, features drips of orange, red, and white, as though the paintings themselves were enjoying an orgasm. (Think: Pat Steir Does Dallas.) Condemned by anti-porn feminists who considered her nothing more than a patriarchal collaborator, Minter was effectively exiled from the art world. Only when Minter revealed the portraits of her mother from decades before was she allowed back in. "Because if you come from dysfunction, you're legitimized as an artist," Minter explained. "Are we that predictable? It's such a corny story."

In the past 20 years, Minter has come to be regarded as one of our most important living artists, and her work continues to deepen. Lately she has escaped the role of "unwitting provocateur," but it doesn't seem that she'll be putting trigger warnings on any of her paintings in the near future.

Portrait by Robert Melee

How does it feel to be touring your first major retrospective?
It's pretty cool. I've always suspected that I've kept making the same image over and over since I was 12. When all the work was put together it was clear to me: It's about the overlooked. You know, sweating, or getting your feet dirty—with a nice manicure. These images always look really beautiful to me. None of them look disgusting to me. They could be alluring and at the same time make you uncomfortable because we as a culture want to tidy everything up. I believe in the untidy.

Does this connect to your views on pubic hair? How did Plush come about?
A lot of boys your age have never seen female pubic hair. I was trying to make it look attractive, so that young girls wouldn't get laser surgery. I don't care what they do, but I don't want them to get laser. Because fashion changes. And then they're stuck being baldies.

Baldies from another time. You always say fashion is "debased" in our culture.
It's easy to kick the fashion industry. It's so easy! But it gives so many people pleasure and tells them what tribe they're from. This is how we greet one another. It's so primal. Advertising images are not shallow. They're almost the most important thing around.

But Quentin Crisp said, "Fashion is instead of style. If you don't know who you are, you consult the glossy papers."
Another truth. That's where I always am—all of this is true. We can hold all of these ideas in the same conversation. My favorite is Cocteau's. "We must forgive fashion everything because she dies so young." Isn't that brilliant? I wish I'd thought of it!

For more arts and culture, watch our series 'Take It or Leave It' with photographer Bruce Gilden:

You've often said, "Nobody has politically correct fantasies." We're seeing a resurgence of political correctness. On the left, in academia, and in the arts there are all these internecine language squabbles. This is becoming the age of trigger warnings—
I hate that! I'm a progressive, and I'm horrified by progressives getting more conservative.

How do you see that playing out?
Trigger warnings! It makes me crazy! I'm against all censorship. Unless: cruelty to children and animals. Otherwise the answer is to create in response to something you don't like. Repression leads to distortion. Shaming is disastrous. Shame is the worst thing you can put on other people.

No major female artist had worked with porn in the way you did. But you were not rewarded for it at the time, to say the least.
I was surprised by the reaction. But there was that whole fear factor from the first-wave feminists. Repurposing or reclaiming sexual images was unheard of for them, though now it seems so normal. But if you're young it's still very threatening to both women and men. I've said this before, but there's the famous picture of Louise Bourgeois by Robert Mapplethorpe, where she's holding that giant dildo. She looks so adorable! She's a post-menopausal old lady. But if Miley Cyrus does it, look at the kind of blowback she gets.

With female pop stars there's always the question of agency—whether you're owning the sexuality.
Does Madonna own it? You bet your ass she does!

Marilyn Minter, Coral Ridge Towers (Mom in Wig), 1969, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Salon 94 and Regen Projects

Though they are friendly, Bell Hooks recently told Laverne Cox that she was playing into a patriarchal vision in the way she presents herself.
That's the left's shaming of glamour.

When you got so much flak, how did you keep going?
I had two thoughts. One was that I wasn't communicating, that I wasn't getting my thoughts across. And two: If you think this is bad, wait till you see what I do next.

So you kept pushing it and tried to go further.
Yes, I had enough of a support system to know I was doing the right thing. And there was this organic flow—I was playing with lipsticks being phallic. They were getting longer, longer than the tube. And that translated into advertising, which mutated into what I do now. From Plush I got into the steam. I'm going to be working with steam for a while now.

Are the mother photos the earliest work in the retrospective?
Yes. And when you look at the arc of my history—I was brought up by this woman who happened to be a drug addict, and who was very glamorous and beautiful, but was always off. So it's not like I invented this story about an off-kilter beauty. It's all I knew. It's who I am. I actually see things like this.

There are certain groups of your work that didn't make an impact at the time but had a delayed effect.
That happens with women artists. We're going to see a woman hit that white heat, but we haven't yet. Marina [Abramovic´] and Cindy [Sherman] are both really fantastic artists who have contributed to art history in a major way. I'm proud that they're even approaching the white heat. They haven't been burned out by it. It's too soon. Jeff Koons is the only one I can think of who still makes amazing work after being in that heat for quite a while. It's very difficult to survive it, but women don't get that opportunity. I have enough success to keep going. I'm like a choo-choo train.

You have to be in it for the long haul. But would you say that now there's an ever-increasing expectation for a young artist to arrive formed?
It's impossible! I feel really bad for all the artists who are in the rubric of zombie formalism because there could be some real talent in there. There are investors treating art as a commodity and artists as pork bellies. You can't just come into this world without learning the language. They're using a Wall Street algorithm on a secret language. Some people know right away where there's fresh vision, but most people don't. And if there's a way to take advantage of an artist, it's going to happen. Because we want so much to believe that we have admirers.

I know a few of your former students, and it's clear how fond they are of you, how much they respect you, and how important your influence has been. How do you think about your role as a teacher?
Sometimes I wonder if I'm a good artist, but I know I'm a good teacher. It doesn't sound very humble, but I have seen that I can show young artists where they're good. I've got so many formal skills, and I know when someone has something I don't have. I believe that the thing that comes really easy to you is what you should be exploring. They're always throwing it away because they think it's too easy. I fight my students to convince them that you can't exhaust it and you won't come to a dead end. I've heard other teachers say, "You should challenge yourself. Don't do that thing you already know how to do." Well, there are going to be plenty of challenges in embracing your gifts.

Illustration by Johnny Ryan

Back in 2009, VICE celebrated its 15th anniversary by putting out a 1994-themed issue of our magazine and pretending it was actually a lost issue from 1994.

Yesterday, in 2015, YourNewsWire.com, a vaguely paranoid website, published a post about an "eerie 1994 article taken from VICE magazine," featuring a cartoon by the incomparable Johnny Ryan that shows Beavis and Butthead in turbans flying planes into the Twin Towers. The site calls calls it "eerie" because the assumption is that "What Is Al Qaeda?" really is something VICE wrote in 1994. Says YourNewsWire:

Could the article with accompanying picture, written some 7 years before the actual September 11th attacks, be some kind of hint of what was to come by the powers that be? Or is it all a massive coincidence?

Someone call Alex Jones!

Someone did call Alex Jones, all the way back in 2012. The "thought criminal against big brother" did a whole segment on his show about the 100 percent not real article we wrote in 2009 that struggled to figure out what the connection between VICE and 9/11 might be.

What made that whole episode so funny was that Jones wasn't the first to fall for it. Back in 2011, a group called "Pilots for 9/11 Truth" got wind of our connection to the perpetrators of the largest act of terrorism in human history. Apart from the fact that it implied that we at VICE were in some way guilty of mass murder, that was funny too.

But it's starting to get less funny. A while ago, we stuck a note at the bottom of the original fake parodic article cluing confused readers in to the fact that we're pulling shenanigans. In order to find a way to get tricked again, YourNewsWire author Sean Adl-Tabatabai dug up a six-year-old hard copy of the magazine (which didn't have a note, of course) and took a photo of it. At some point he apparently went online and found one of our articles that explained the joke, but it appears he doesn't believe us.

We don't know how to make this clearer: That article was written in 2009. At the time, VICE thought it would be funny to pretend it was written in 1994. Or, to put it another way: The article where we "predicted" 9/11 is faker than the human suit George W. Bush wears to disguise his reptilian form. Got it?

But that article isn't going anywhere. People can keep falling into that trap all they want. This isn't fun for us anymore, but we're masochists.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Dara Wasserman and Jon Beck

There are an estimated 50 million feral cats living in America right now. That's not outdoor cats, the ones who roam the neighborhood but whose owners call them in at night. That's 50 million feral cats: domestic cats that have returned to the wild and generally don't want anything to do with humans.

Most animal advocates agree that the number of cats roaming US neighborhoods is a problem—in part, because cats have a huge impact on the environment. A 2013 report published by Nature estimated that cats kill between 1.3 and 4 billion birds and somewhere between 6.3 and 22 billion mammals nationwide, each year. Researchers have pinned the extinction of 33 kinds of birds on cats, and the Invasive Species Specialist Group lists domestic cats on its top 100 list of "the world's worst invasive species."

On VICE News: Cats are causing one of the world's biggest extinctions crises.

But rounding up millions of feral cats is next to impossible, and some cat advocates insist that cats should stay outside. "Cats have lived outdoors alongside people for about 10,000 years," said Liz Holtz, Associate Director of Law and Policy with Alley Cat Allies. "Kitty litter wasn't invented until the 1940s, so there were no indoor cats." Cat owners, too, are reluctant to change: Despite reports that cats are having a major impact on wildlife, a recent survey of cat owners found that, regardless of how many animals their furry friends might kill, they would still let them out.

That's why bird people say it is well past time for cats to be controlled. "They are an introduced predator," said Grant Sizemore, director of Invasive Species Programs at the American Bird Conservancy. "In 1492 there were zero domestic cats in North America, and now we have over 100 million in the United States. And each one of them has an impact when allowed to roam outdoors."

The way both sides see it, there will be blood.

In the past, extreme bird advocates have called for eye-for-an-eye (or cat-for-a-bird) measures. In 2013, a now-former editor of Audubon Magazine penned an editorial in the Orlando Sentinel, suggesting that people poison feral cats with Tylenol, which is fatal to felines. In June, two cats were stabbed in Portland—and the Animal Legal Defense Fund is now $5,000 reward for information about the culprit. "Cats vs. birds: who has to die?" asked one CBS report from earlier this year.

"It's funny, I work on a lot of different issues, like spotted owls—highly controversial issues," said Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland. "Nothing has the antagonism that the cat-bird issue does. It's really quite a spectacle."

But Sallinger adds that while the debate is heated, it's also simplistic: "Cat advocates claim there's no significant [environmental] impact, and bird advocates say that we should round them up and kill them."

VICE talks with Patrick Brown about the illegal trading of animals in Asia:

Obviously, it's neither realistic to kill all outdoor cats nor to let them roam without abandon. And in spite of the heated debates, there are people striving for solutions—people who both love cats and want to hear songbirds in their backyards. People like Dara Wasserman and Jon Beck.

No matter how hard they try, Wasserman and Beck can't hide how much they love cats. The walls of their Portland, Oregon, home are decorated with portraits of felines. "We brought those ones home from Europe," Wasserman told me, pointing to a series of three square paintings above their fireplace. There are glasses of water scattered around the house for one of their pet cats, who prefers to drink that way. And there's a heated cushion tucked by the bay window where their cats, Cordelia and Willow, like to relax and watch the birds.

A few years ago, Wasserman and Beck adopted their cats from a local agency that pushes a strict indoor-only policy. They wanted to honor that, Wasserman said, but they'd owned outdoor cats in the past, and were afraid the new cats were bored. As Cordelia and Willow would sit, staring at the bird feeder from their heated cushion, Wasserman and Beck wanted to let them out, but they also wanted to keep them safe and minimize destruction.

"We love to feed the birds," Wasserman said, pointing to the bird feeder, "but what you don't want it to be is an all-you-can-eat buffet."

Then, the couple learned about a tour of local "catios"—that's a cat patio—Wasserman realized she found a solution. "I came home and I said, 'I know what I want for my birthday. I want a catio.'"

Cordellia in her catio. Photo courtesy of Dara Wasserman and Jon Beck

Catios are outdoor enclosures for cats, sort of like a screened porch. Some of them are small and simple while others have elaborate features, like spiral staircases and elevated walkways. It's an elegant compromise for people who want to let their cats outdoors without letting them roam around killing birds and other animals.

"There are a lot of cat lovers who also love birds," said Olivia Hinton of the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon (FCCO), which co-sponsors Portland's catio tour. "We like the idea of protecting those little critters out there."

Since opening its doors in 1995, the FCCO has neutered over 74,000 feral cats. And while catios might seem like the most Portlandia thing imaginable, when used alongside trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs like the FCCO, they have been credited with helping to stabilize and eventually decrease feral cat populations. The catios also protect birds, which is why the catio tour is co-sponsored effort between the FCCO and the local Audubon Society.

"Portland still stands out as really the only place that has anything like this," Bob Sallinger said. "I always tell my friends in the bird community, much to their chagrin, that I'm very close with the feral cat coalition."

That's not to say that cats aren't killing birds in here: Sallinger says that 40 percent of the birds his organization sees at it's emergency care center are there because of cats.

Sizemore, of the American Bird Conservatory, agrees that catios could help birds. But, he says, people need to adjust how they think about cats. Pet cats who crave outdoor access can be given it with restriction—like a dog on a leash. "That's one of the things we'd like to change: to elevate the status of cats within the family," Sizemore said.

Related: Portland, Oregon, Is a Paradise

On a recent summer day, Wasserman and Beck lead the way to their back patio, which has been converted into a modern cat palace of sorts. There are wooden ramps and platforms, a tree converted into a scratching post. There's even a spiral staircase, perfectly measured for cat paws. The space is enclosed with screens, and Willow and Cordelia access it any time—day or night—from their cat door.

Beck said sometimes he misses the way their old outdoor cats would follow them to the mailbox. Or the times when he'd garden and the cat would lay nearby, watching from the grass.

But here on the catio, there's enough room for two lounge chairs, where Wasserman said she likes to sit, read a book, and be with her beloved pets. The cats are safe from the coyotes that roam the neighborhood, as well as from dogs, cat fights, and cars. And they're a little closer to their prey here. Close, but not too close.

Follow Leah Sottile on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Bradley Gordon

Did you come to VICE for in-depth coverage of parenting? Good. Read these:

So You Had a Baby

How to Pay for a Baby

Things You Learn When You Become a Dad for the First Time

A horrifying study published last week in the journal Demography suggests that being a new parent makes you miserable. The study, by the Canadian demographer Rachel Margolis and others, titled "Parental Well-being Surrounding First Birth as a Determinant of Further Parity Progression" was carried out in Germany, a country that recently surpassed Japan as the place with the lowest birthrate in the world.

The researchers set out to understand the difference between the number of children people want, and the number they end up having. German people in particular say they want an average of two kids, and then only have one and a half. This statistic suggests that a huge number of people who want kids think better of it after they have that first one. Why would that be?

The study blames a "drop in well-being surrounding first birth," also known as "unhappiness."

To gather data, the study asked people about their "overall wellbeing" over the course of about five years encompassing the three years prior to the birth of a first child, and the two years afterward. Respondents weren't asked about parenting point blank, because of a "taboo" against admitting that your kids are sucking the life out of you.

The drop in the reported happiness of new parents is beyond the level you might expect from sleepless nights, and dealing with poopy diapers. In fact, somewhat alarmingly, the unhappiness didn't set in until the first and second year after the birth. And when it did, it was some major misery.

The Washington Post points out that this isn't the only study where people were asked to rate their happiness during a certain life event on a scale of 1-10. Since there are others, we can make some quick comparisons. For instance, people report an average drop of 0.6 for a divorce, and one full point for experiencing unemployment or a spouse's death. The birth of a first child? That blows them all out of the water at an average decline of 1.6.

The study lumped sources of unhappiness into three categories. The first and second category consisted of the slings and arrows of conceiving, being pregnant, and giving birth: fertility problems, puking and the like. The other category was the "continuous and intense nature of childrearing in the first year," which included such ordeals as "depression, domestic isolation, and relationship breakdown."

So look forward to depression, loneliness, and fights with your partner if you're planning to have kids soon.

The authors do point out that this only covers the strains of being a new parent, not the parent of an elementary school student, or a full-grown adult person, which might be a barrel of laughs for all anyone knows. That's because it began strictly as an effort to figure out what was going on with family size in Germany. They add that further research would be the only way to "address the ways in which parenting experiences throughout the life course affect fertility behavior upward or downward."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Independent paramilitary groups have a long tradition in Poland. Since Russia moved into Ukraine, these groups have seen membership triple to about 80,000—by comparison, the Polish Armed Forces are 120,000 soldiers strong.

For this episode of VICE INTL, our German office visited Poland to get a close look at these independent militias. They accompanied trainers, weekend warriors, and the so-called "uniform students" to see how Poland was prepared to defend itself from invasion with a homegrown paramilitary resistance.

The Melbourne Period Project hands out tampons, pads, and other sanitary items. Images by author

It's 7:00 PM on a Friday night. At a warehouse in suburban Oakleigh, Australia, 20 or so people are milling around, chatting, smoking cigarettes. It's cold enough to see your breath.

The group is made up of volunteers for Anonymous X, a collective that supports Melbourne's homeless. It's a pretty varied lot: a nutrition student, Amber, puts together high-calorie meal packs; another woman, Yvonne, heads out with pet food and coats for dogs.

The Melbourne Period Project (MPP) is a recent addition to the crew. Its co-founder, Nat, is stuffing a bag with period packs to hand out on tonight's run.

A selection of the packs

The packs, which could pass as bags of coffee beans, come in four varieties—Sunflower (super), Rose (regular), Poppy (pads-only), and Tulip (tampons-only). There's also a fifth option, Hemlock, for transgender men. Each has a month's supply, plus wipes, sanitizer, and, pragmatically, a chocolate Freddo Frog.

Once homeless herself, Nat explains to me that every month women sleeping rough have to resort to scrunched up newspaper, old socks, or toilet paper from public bathrooms. That or risk swiping a box of tampons from the supermarket.

Getting your period can suck at the best of times. When you're living on the street it's fucking horrific.

Anonymous X also provides a selection of clothes

Tonight's first stop is Whitten Oval in Footscray. Home to the Western Bulldogs by day, tonight the field is pitch black and the gates are locked. A few people wait along the fence line as we pull up.

The Anonymous Xers help people pick through the meticulously labelled tubs, "Boy's Jackets," "Women's Boots, No Heel." If someone is after something specific, a volunteer will note it down for the next fortnightly run.

Mostly though everyone is just chatting. Some variation on How are you doing, mate? is the go-to when a volunteer notices someone looking for a hand. It's simple but effective, noticeably different from other outreach workers.

The tubs contain a selection of clothing. But if anyone is after something specific, a volunteer will make a note to bring it next time

The next stop, Queen Victoria Market, is pretty quiet. There's probably more volunteers than homeless. A young Anonymous Xer, Meagan, explains it's likely because the council has asked people to move on.

Does that happen a lot? She nods. A few weeks ago Anonymous X's founder, Sean, tried to set up a tarp for a guy under Flinders Street Bridge. By the next morning it had already been removed.

"Would you rather there be tarps, or people dying?" she asks.

Leroy works with Orange Sky to provide laundry facilities to the homeless.

Nearby a group called Orange Sky is doing loads of laundry, with a washer and dryer in the back of a white delivery van. The team leader, Leroy, homeless himself for 17 years, proudly explains they can wash and dry in just 40 minutes, free of charge.

Over at the tubs a woman is looking for a pair of jeans. Nat bobs down to see if anything in the men's box might fit because the woman is pregnant, maybe six or seven months along.

A woman looks through a selection of donated jeans.

In the car to Flinders Street, I ask Sean why he started Anonymous X. He's 28 and doesn't really fit the classic do-gooder profile. He says he had a bit of a lightbulb moment after his cousin died from an overdose. After that his life shifted completely, although it's something he doesn't really talk about.

"If I start telling people that I sold my house, I quit my job to do this, then they start believing in me," he explains. "I want them to believe in the cause."

Sean, founder of Anonymous X

At Flinders Street a couple of regulars show up. A woman named Susanne, who tells me she was recently featured in the documentary Homesick, smokes on a bench. She's trying to keep an eye on her friend Helen, who is filling Coles green bags with clothes.

"She's a legend, been on the streets for 15 years," Susanne says, craning her neck to keep Helen in sight. "I worry about her, though. People take advantage of her."

Helen is one of the young women who the group helps out.

Nat explains that for women sleeping rough safety is everything; you can't just get up to change your tampon in the middle of the night. That's why MPP doesn't give out mooncups, despite the urgings of commenters on its Facebook page.

"It's very dangerous to leave your place once you've got it," she says. "Women, they are usually quite hidden away, because you never know who's following you."

A selection of toiletries handed out over the night

By the end of the night, Nat tallies up a total of 16 period packs that she's given out. Around 11:00 PM a girl shows up, looking really young. She's carting around a huge backpack, and her pet rat, Dallas, is hiding out in her hood. Meagan, Nat, and another Anonymous Xer, Bianca, check in to see if she's got everything she needs. They take her laundry and make a note to bring rat food next time.

Anonymous X volunteer Nat holds Dallas, a pet rat of one of the women they met tonight.

"I think a lot of my money will go to hotels the next few weeks," she tells me, as Dallas sits on my shoulder. "I want to get off the streets for a bit." I ask her if she's thought about staying in a hostel, it might be cheaper. "Can't yet," she replies.

It's only in the car on the way home that I realize, it must be because she's not even 18.

Follow Maddison Connaughton on Twitter.

Harvard law professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig unveiled plans to run for president today, launching a campaign centered on a single issue—what he calls "citizen equality."

Essentially, Lessig argues, America is fucked. Corporations and other interest groups can donate as much money as they want to national political campaigns, which gives big money a disproportionate influence over what happens in Congress. Meanwhile, not everyone has equal access to the voting booths, and gerrymandering—a system of drawing voting districts to favor a particular party—determines how some elections will turn out before a single ballot is cast.

Bring On the Class War: Bernie Sanders Dreams of a Revolution in 2016

The cure for this "rigged" system, Lessig said on a conference call with reporters Tuesday, is the Citizen Equality Act of 2017, a blend of campaign finance reform and measures that would expand voting rights. Lessig wants to run as a "referendum candidate"—which means he'd campaign on behalf of that act, and, if elected, stay in office only as long it takes to get the bill passed. Hypothetically, once Congress gave it the OK, Lessig would resign, handing over the reins to a vice president who would fill out the rest of his term.

"My ideal is to be president for a day," Lessig said Tuesday.

Lessig hinted that current contenders for the Democratic nomination, like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders or even Hillary Clinton, could serve as his second-in-command, although he added that he's open to anyone who's "credible, nationally known, and passionate."

"I'd love to get Jon Stewart to think about it," he said.

WATCH: Politico's Ken Vogel on Big Money in American Politics

The campaign, which is still in the exploratory stage, is an extension of Lessig's ongoing crusade to overhaul campaign finance laws. In 2014, Lessig made headlines by launching the MayDay PAC—the "Super PAC to end all Super PACS"— with the goal of electing congressional candidates committed to curbing the influence of money in politics during the midterm elections. MayDay's candidates performed terribly, though, and critics derided it as a quixotic vanity project.

But Lessig saw it as a movement—a movement he hopes to continue with his campaign. He said Tuesday that if he can raise $1 million in small, individual donations through his Kickstarter by Labor Day, he'll enter the race as a Democrat. From there, he said, he would try to gather enough support in the polls to make it onto national TV for the party's primary debates. Acknowledging his low chances of ever winning anything, Lessig said that just getting on to the debate stage would allow him to tie every issue back to the idea of "citizen equality," and force the other candidates to address his platform.

"I'm not claiming it's a sure shot," he said. "I'm claiming it's the best shot."

Follow Drew on Twitter.