Some of the texts, sounds, and sights currently swerving and breaking my thinking.
Reading
How to See Like a Machine by Trevor Paglen. “Magicians have long understood how malleable perception is.”
Peterborough, NH, a poem by Márton Simon in The Dial — “Because God is a $30 Taiwanese drone from which a $157 mortar hangs.”
Looking Like a State: On Frederick Wiseman, an essay by Mariana Mogilevich in n+1 — “Comparisons to Beckett and purgatory are easy and on one occasion direct.”
Listening
Beneath the Sun by Amina Claudine Myers — What’s yours, what’s mine?
Honest Labour by Space Afrika — I belong to nothing.
In E by Water Damage — Nothing belongs to me.
Seeing
Disordine by Georgio Griffa — X-raying an X-ray.
“A Bicycle Journal Across Brazil to Find a Vanishing Savannah” by Natascha Otoya — Unearthing the earth.
“Makina!” a Boiler Room & British Council documentary — Stories slaying stories.
PAST Currents
Reading
The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling by Peter Handke — Tiredness from frisson. Music for idlers. A night-long motionless image.
The Moon Is a Pill by Aušra Kaziliūnaitė — Trolleybus sparks as fighting dog.
The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch — M and D.
City Dog: Essays by W. S. Di Piero — Fathead. Pocketbook. Bonnard. Thunderbolt.
Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary — Bravado as pain and love and desire.
“Seam and Pattern: Thinking Forms” by Dirk Lauwaert — Impure making as healing, loving.
Listening
May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable by Charbel Haber — Time as chewing gum.
Sol.Hz by Seefeel — Chewing gum as time.
Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band — Out of out of time.
Demilitarize by Nazar — Shed your armor.
“Boots on the Ground” by Massive Attack x Tom Waits — Spit on your shoes.
The Collective by Kim Gordon — Blow out your dub.
Seeing
“Iain Sinclair: The Last London” from the LRB — Vanishing in plain sight.
“Post-digital psychogeography,” a lecture by Herbert Wright — “Setting out a subjective, emotional dimension to our interaction with the urban environment—I think that sounds pretty good, it’s also analog.”
Legends created by Neil Forsyth — “He smokes, I don’t.”
“Hashem Shakeri’s Portrait of a Climate Hotspot in Iran” on Aperture — Gados swim away.
“1982 News Special: The South Bronx | Wasteland” on the Way Back Archives — “They stole the pipes out.”
The Apartment dir. by Billy Wilder — “Four apples, five apples…percentage wise.”
