Róisín Tapponi

About this episode

Robert meets Dr Róisín Tapponi to discuss her decadent debut novel Scene City, an insider's tale of hedonism and identity amid the London art world. The effervescent first novel from film programmer and writer Róisín Tapponi, Scene City follows art history student Romy into the belly of the beast that is London's commercial art world. At risk of becoming too caught up in the rarefied glamour of it all, she tries to earth herself by writing what she sees, and soon begins developing a storyline starring her own merry band of gays... and a version of herself. Dynamic, smart and gossipy in the style of Babitz or Capote, Scene City is a book about authorship, authenticity and whether the search for meaning and the pursuit of pleasure are at all compatible. Dr Róisín Tapponi is an academic, curator and founder of Shasha Movies, an independent streaming platform for South-West Asian and North African film and video. As a writer and critic she has contributed to frieze, Artforum, The Guardian, Vogue and more, and has delivered talks on film at institutions such as BAFTA, Venice Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, CPH:DOX and Sheffield Doc Fest. Aside from her writing, Tapponi is a