Q&A: Haloscope
SO MUCH MORE THAN A PLATFORM FOR GEN-Z - Haloscope is highlighting a range of our evolving and growing culture. Haloscope provides a space for the youth to express themselves, get inspired and connect with others. Created by Savannah Bradley, Haloscope continues to be an organized but growing endeavor, with plans always evolving. Read below to learn more about Haloscope, their upcoming plans and more.
LUNA: For those unfamiliar, can you please introduce Haloscope?
BRADLEY: HALOSCOPE is the Gen-Z digital bible, with news on art, culture, film, music, fashion, sex, and politics, along with original writing and art. We’re a digital platform by (and for) young creatives. And we’re here to shake things up.
LUNA: What ultimately lead to you creating Haloscope?
BRADLEY: I personally wrote for a couple of music magazines— as well as Rookie Magazine— when I was fifteen. I started my career incredibly early, working in journalism and criticism. But those mags were all very DIY, and they all folded before their prime. In 2017, as a junior in high school, I realized I wanted to create a landscape to fill that gap, especially considering the zine community, at that time, lacked a rigid skeletal structure. I reached out to many of my peers I’d worked with at Rookie, Things, Guided, and so on— who became the basis of our original staff.
By Katie Grace Clayton
LUNA: Can you share a bit about the transition from Haloscope as just a zine to a platform as well?
BRADLEY: By the time we were only a few months in, I quickly realized that zines— while they gave me a necessary voice and helped form the bedrock of my career— did not have the longevity that digital platforms afforded. Zines exist to fill a niche, and we wanted to mutate into something larger, more permeable. It was a very natural, inevitable transition, especially considering our audience was interested in daily content versus print issues— I ended up working with friends I’d made at VICE in an effort to study how the digital media machine worked. We didn’t want to just make print issues— we wanted digital content, we wanted podcasts, we wanted to expand into video work, we wanted to accrue smaller publications under the HALOSCOPE Media roster. Many of us in the zine community share a common interest in serving young creatives and giving them the latitude to tell their stories— digital media was always the next step in that evolution, and we jumped on it.
LUNA: Who is the team behind the zine?
BRADLEY: I’ve been the Editor-in-Chief and CEO since 2017. Gabrielle Vaillancourt serves as our Outreach Director; Olivia Colby works as our Marketing Director; we’re in the process of taking on several new assistant editor roles as well. All in all, we have a staff composed of artists, graphic designers, photographers, writers, reporters, and even more genre-defying creators from 30+ countries around the globe.
LUNA: What have you been inspired by lately?
BRADLEY: I just started watching Hollywood, because Ryan Murphy owns my ass, and it’s been surprising finding little mirrors between its (fictional) power dynamics and the ones that are alive and well in the media and publishing industry today. That was one of the reasons HALOSCOPE came about— I was working as a teenage writer and just wasn’t protected by editors or people in other managerial roles. I was covering house shows and other tiny concerts, having to interact with 20-something-year-old men who ended up flirting with me. #MeToo has been the crucible in a period of institutional change— but it hasn’t radiated as deeply, in my eyes, in this industry. Men have always controlled it, and no one is trying to interrogate that control. I was fed up with how women were treated on an editorial level and on a reporter level. I still am. HALOSCOPE grew because I wanted a safe space away from the corrupt media empires of the past.
By Katie Grace Clayton
LUNA: How do you stay motivated in your creative endeavors?
BRADLEY: I’ve worked with many people over the years, and seeing their passion projects grow, things that I’ve helped to nurture, always inspire me. But the biggest point of inspiration, for me, has always been the fact that you can put 200% into a project and still not wholly fix the lacuna that’s there. There’ll never be a time where digital media is perfect, or where every single person’s story can be told. There’s oversight, there are missteps, there are constraints. But that’s the motivation— it’s about making that gap as tiny as possible. You realize that projects are not an A to Z shift, but rather an M to P one. You make peace with the fact that endeavors like HALOSCOPE are not static— oftentimes conditions change as you’re working away at a project, like waves reshaping ground. You step back, you reconfigure, you adapt— and you just keep working at it.
LUNA: What do you love about your audience?
BRADLEY: I’ve always loved how outspoken and inquisitive every reader is. We’ll post a question on an IG story and get 500 responses. We’re a generation defined by our vocality. Being able to have that kind of open dialogue has always been an immense privilege.
By Katie Grace Clayton
LUNA: Do you have any dream collaborations / features?
BRADLEY: I’d love to talk with XXL’s freshman class. Same goes for Barbie Ferreira and Hunter Schafer.
LUNA: Why is it important to have a community for Generation Z creators?
BRADLEY: We’re a very diverse, outspoken generation, and with that, we’re often marginalized. We get lumped in with millennials, we’re characterized by archetypes that operate on a dime; on one level, we’re passionate activists demanding a better future (which serves as a romanticization, or perhaps selfish voyeurism, on the behalf of millennials), and, on another, we’re self-obsessed crypto-fascists who only care about our phones (which serves as an ego boost on behalf of millennials). By creating a community that’s actually by and for us, we’re able to examine the reasons why, exactly, we’re bifurcated into these categories, and we’re able to talk with one another in a forum that’s expressive and transparent.
LUNA: If you could share any piece of advice for those wanting to start a zine or creative project, what would you like to pass along?
BRADLEY: You will 100% fuck up. It’s inevitable. But one fuck up (or even a series of poorly-timed fuck ups) do not dictate your ability or creative capacity. When you’re managing a large project like a zine, mistakes happen on both a personal or managerial level. Maybe you and a publicist have it out about an article’s release date; maybe someone couldn’t deliver on a project and now you’ve had to scrap it entirely. It’s an unhelpful platitude to say “learn from your mistakes and grow.” Sometimes you have to get knocked down a couple of times by the same guide stone in order for you to get it through your head. You’ve got to learn to make peace with the chaos, and not take it personally when things aren’t immaculate.
LUNA: In what ways would you like to see Haloscope expand?
BRADLEY: We’re moving into both video work and podcasts, which is very exciting, and we’ll be expanding into a sports vertical quite soon. We’d love to expand into IRL events and meet-ups, but we’re principally concerned with everyone’s physical health; we’ll be putting those off until the world starts looking a bit closer to normal.
LUNA: How are you taking care of yourself during quarantine?
BRADLEY: It’s all in routine— I get up at a reasonable hour. I don’t check my phone when I get up. I actually turned Gmail notifications off the other week so I don’t go fucking crazy. I do my skincare routine, some light yoga, pour some Russian tea. I work out twice a day and try to eat nourishing food, which has been great for my abs and terrible for my Five Guys addiction. I work on HALOSCOPE intermittently, taking breaks to work on other projects. I know when to mentally check out and give myself some time to play Animal Crossing, FaceTime my partner, watch Netflix. All in all, I try to keep my blood pressure low, and part of that is keeping a nebulous routine— sometimes I’m not out of bed before 11. Sometimes I need a day to relax and not work. It’s a very day-to-day experiment.
LUNA: Do you have any upcoming plans / goals you’d like to share?
BRADLEY:We’re prepping our HEAT Issue, our first quarterly print issue, which is all on climate change and environmentalism, with 100% of the proceeds going to Sunrise Movement. You can snag yourself a copy on June 1st!
