Just Jo Rosenthal

January 10, 2019

Sometimes the best conversations that can occur between two individuals are the ones that have no purpose, no boundaries and no clearly defined beginning or end. They include a lil bit of everything, with nothing too taboo to relegate to the back burner—just two individuals trying to make sense of the conventions that pervade the world around them.

This was the case when Jo Rosenthal stopped by the office Newsstand on a sunny Tuesday afternoon at the end of the year.

An artist, writer and model, Rosenthal is one in a handful of genuine New York creatives who uses her work as a means of exploring love, intimacy and identity in a cultural climate that leans more and more towards impersonality. Her repertoire, which includes a whimsical portrait series of every guy she’s kissed over the last couple of years painted from memory, brilliantly combines an innocent playfulness with an unpretended vulnerability, and it’s confrontational—in a good way.

Interview by Kennedy Fairfax
Photos by Marie Elaine Gagn é

As we sat with Jo inside the coffee shop, we decided to pick her brain about everything—from love and Truman Capote, to masturbation with a pickle. Read our interview, below.

Tell me about yourself.

My name is Jo Rosenthal and I’m originally from Miami, Florida. I moved to New york six years ago, to study art, art history and writing at The New School. I just stayed after working on art and fashion—and I’m having fun.

What do you think is the most unsettling film?

All movies are unsettling! But the worst movie I’ve ever seen, which I feel like is also very unsettling, is Suicide Squad. I mean, I could say a movie like Eraserhead, which isn’t necessarily scary, but it is very disturbing. But a movie that just made me think like, ‘Oh my god, this makes me sick’ was Suicide Squad. Everything, from the plot to the actors, who had absolutely no chemistry with one another—it just didn’t sit well with me.

I read the comics, so I was super pumped for the movie, but it was such a letdown. They always do that—they take the most compelling storylines and turn them into shit films.

I know. There’s this genre of movies—I think it’s called Troma—and it’s just these really fucked up, niche ‘80s movies that are just super gory, and everybody’s naked, having sex and screaming. I remember watching it and thinking it was so fucked up. There’s this one part in one of the films where this girl is fingering herself with a pickle—it’s crazy.

No! Why would someone do that?

I know! I felt bad for the pickle. And she’s gonna get a bad yeast infection—she’s not going to be okay after that.

So, you don’t like gore?

I like scary movies when something is actually scary, but everybody lives in the end. I just don’t like when people are cutting each other’s arms off with all the blood spurting out. That’s not for me.

What do you think about the phrase ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ Is it true?

I think so. I mean, you could totally cut someone’s head off with a sword, but there have been times when I’ve written about people and it cuts way deeper. One of the bravest stories I’ve ever written was about the abusive relationship that I was in for two years. The person ended up getting cancer and blaming me for it. It’s a fucked up story, and I wrote about how it really scarred me, and how I had to rebuild myself from there. I was so emotional all the time—I couldn’t handle doing anything except for writing about it, and it was such a relief to be able to share my experience with the world. I didn’t realize how many people go through similar situations.

It got published and he saw it. Of course, he called me after and cursed me out, but it was my story, my perspective, and I really needed to say something about it. He treated me so poorly, and I needed to express it in a way I knew how, and I didn’t think that anything would come of it. But I ended up getting so much support, which was something I really didn’t have at the time. For me, writing it all down just felt really good. I think people should always write about things that take a toll on their emotions, or changed their life in some way—it’s so much better to let it all out. When you share your story, you realize that so many other people have gone through similar experiences. You build a community and you’re able to heal in a healthier way than if you were just to keep it all inside.

And you write poetry, as well?

Yeah, the most popular book that I’ve written is one where I painted portraits of everyone I’ve ever kissed—it’s an ongoing project until I kiss someone for the rest of my life or die. I painted everyone from memory and then I wrote a little poem about each of them. It was interesting for me to do because I felt like I was accessing places in my mind that I hadn’t touched in a long time. The portraits create such a bonding experience because they always manage to spark a conversation. At a book fair this past year, this girl came over to me and said, ‘Oh my god, I kissed that guy too!’ Someone else came up to me and was like, ‘How could you put me in there!’ But everybody goes in there—for me, it’s a good memory.

I did realize going through it that in the beginning, all of the people looked like the same person, but now, everyone is an individual and different. I also feel like my painting style has changed, and because I draw each face from memory, some of them are fuzzier than others. It’s interesting because some people I remember perfectly, and when I draw others, they don’t look like the person I remember kissing, but they still go in the book. There are also certain people who I have recently kissed who I am excited to put in there.

That’s cool—then the book becomes like a document of your evolving sexualilty and relationships.

I started it when I was nineteen and obviously I’m still working on it, but I try to reprint it every year. I haven’t gone a year without kissing somebody—maybe I should make 2019 that year. But that would be really difficult for me because I love to kiss everybody—it’s like the coolest thing you can do. To everyone reading this: let’s kiss!

What book describes your personal style?

I’m thinking 50 Shades of Grey—just kidding! Harry Potter? I don’t know, I could say my favorite book, but I don’t think that would describe how I dress. I do read a lot of Truman Capote short stories, and he does a really great job. My favorite ones were written in the ‘60s, but he also wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's, which a lot of people don’t know. I mean, from In Cold Blood to that? It’s crazy. But his stuff is all about portraiture, which I love—like how do you capture someone in writing in a way that makes you feel like you’re with them, but you don’t know exactly what they look like or who they are, or if they’re even real.

I think about that a lot with my own artwork. I go out and create or write something, and I constantly think about his writing and how I wished I was him, or that we lived in the same time period—or that maybe I’m him reincarnated, which sounds really narcissistic. But his writing style is how I want to live my life: very intimate and personal, that you can share with everybody because you’re not closed off, and you immediately care about every person on the street and what’s best for them.

What’s the most interesting piece of advice that you’ve ever received or that has resonated with you the most?

I heard this great piece of—well, I don’t know if you could call it advice—but I was at a dinner party last night and I’m not sure if she was talking to me or about me to me, but this woman said that her therapist told her this crazy thing about the three types of people that you meet in your life. Basically, it’s that you can categorize people by three types of chairs: the baby chair, which is a person who is childish and can’t do things on their own and have to have people help them; the adolescent chair, which is a person who can do some things for themselves but they still need help from others; and the adult chair, which is a person who’s self-sufficient and doesn’t need the help from anyone. I’ve been thinking about that a lot—like, which stage of my life am I in? I feel like I’m in between adolescent and adult, but I’m trying to lean more towards adulthood—I’m at a stage of my life where I’m just trying to grow up.

What character, dead or alive, do you think you are most like?

My brother likes to tell people that I’m Tony Soprano reincarnated, because he’s really, really tough on the outside, but on the inside, he has a heart of gold.

How close are you and your brother in age?

Really close—we’re almost three years apart. He’s older, but we’re super close. He’s one of the best people I know, and he lives in New York, too, so we have a lot of the same friends. He’s one of the reasons why I feel like I have good taste in music even though, now, his music taste has changed a lot. He really paved the way for why I’m ‘cool’ now.

What’s your go-to karaoke song?

Last time I sang karaoke I had just gone through a break-up so I sang Fiona Apple, and everybody was like, ‘Boo! Get off the stage! You are to depressed!’ But whenever I go to karaoke with my close friend Will, we always sings ABBA—we always like to sing duets. I like “Dancing Queen”—that’s really fun. But, you know, every time you do karaoke you end up really drunk, so you don’t necessarily remember your favorite one.

What about your own sexual identity do you find the most confusing?

Everything. I’ve always struggled with my identity, especially my sexual identity. I have a hard time enjoying sex and a hard time understanding my sexuality because I feel like that’s something that people don’t respect in each other. People can so easily treat each other really badly, especially when it comes to sex, because of the fact that people can so easily have sex but not care for each other whatsoever. So, that always makes me very confused, as if I’m doing something wrong with my body, or if it’s the people I choose to surround myself with. I never know how to interpret a situation like that—it always makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me, or if I’m just confused about who I am, or if there is something wrong with the way somebody else treated me because they are confused about who they are. I really think that if people cared more about the identities of other people, and cared more about caring about other people’s bodies, then people would have a lot easier time figuring out who they are as people and identifying who they are.

The lack of care our society has for each other makes people feel confused and put into a box, but they don’t really have a place, and I wish there was something I could do to change that. We have to try to understand each other better. Now, especially in New York where we are surrounded by young people, we do not give a shit about one another, which is really, really hard to process—it makes it really difficult to pursue things. Being an emotional person is a profoundly special quality, not something that makes you weak. Since so many people are not in tune with their emotions, possessing that quality actually makes you really strong. We have the luxury of feeling every single thing that we do—a luxury that most people aren’t afforded—so, why would we want to live a life where we could feel everything and not express it? This is the only life we have—we should live it to the fullest.

I write a lot about this idea and talk a lot about it in my work, because it’s something that needs to change. If we start caring more about each other, or at least become more introspective with how we’re feeling and how others feel, then we can really be more empathetic of other people’s experiences. What makes people so confused about their sexuality is not feeling validated in their sexual identities. As much as you can feel confident in yourself, if somebody makes you feel bad, or makes you feel that there is something ‘wrong’ with you, you’re just going to feel confused, and so disturbed.

Or you bottle it up and it eats at you, just waiting for you to explode. I’ve just recently started to understand that it’s okay to feel upset about something and to let it out, as long as you confront what the source of that feeling is—there are healthy ways to express your emotions.

That’s a reason why dating and making friends is so hard—because people don’t want other people knowing that they feel certain things, when in reality feeling those emotions is the most beautiful thing we have in life. Every time I‘ve been really hurt, or every time I’ve been really upset or mad at the world, I realize that it’s just somebody else’s hurt, and I don’t have to feel the same pain as they do. I can feel what I’m feeling and move on from it, and become a bigger person instead of harboring resentment for someone or something else. It’s their problem that they can’t express their emotions—not mine. Everyone should do that.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

Shop Psyche Organic at Happier Grocery and Dimes. Coming soon to @citarellagourmetmarket @unionmarket @gourmetgarage @deciccos @fairwaymarket plus many more.

Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.