“…Originality is a hallucination of intertextuality…” P.K. Saint-Amour They say all poetry is theft, but I prefer to see it as borrowing. Caroline Bervgall, artist-poet, recasts The Seafarer, an Old English poem in her most recent poetry book Drift (2014) by playing with the materiality of the language. This experimental work of art delves into… Keep Reading
Pornografia is the story of a manic obsession that overtakes the protagonists, Mr Witold and Mr Fryderyk, upon their encounter with a young couple, Henia and Karol. It takes place in occupied Poland, in 1943, but the grave setting and circumstances are of relatively little importance for the story itself: the true drama, the substance of the book,… Keep Reading
In the spirit of living up to Ark Book’s mantra “Home of the best stories you’ve never heard”, this is a short story of a magnificent author, well-known to some but forgotten by many. An author who lived in turbulent times and in a turbulent way, and whose stories are all the more relevant for… Keep Reading
A few months ago, I became incredibly drunk while catching up with a friend of mine, the writer of strange and sadly funny stories of social commentary, Luke Hilton, when I hit upon a way to articulate something that had been playing on my mind for a while. Of course owing to the effects alcohol… Keep Reading
Despite its seemingly innocent composition, the term ‘essay film’ tends to perplex those newly introduced to it. The words ‘essay’ and ‘film’ are often understood as juxtapositions: the audio-visual versus the symbolic and the semantic. This is no wonder, I suppose, when we consider the rigidity with which an over-arching, more conservative art-ideology teaches us… Keep Reading
I am part of a group, the members of which consider themselves to be individuals who do not constitute a group. This is, in fact, an essential truth about any group, that groups are not ‘real’ in anything but name and the material consequences resulting from the act of categorization. The majority of these consequences,… Keep Reading
This piece is dedicated to the task of illustrating what Angst is. It will conclude with one of the most concise, direct and telling accounts of the mood I know of: the one from Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics?. But before it gets there, I would like to make some prior remarks, point to some other sources, quote from others… Keep Reading
In my previous column on Kafka and Lacan we looked at the operation of the Law in Kafka’s novels. I argued that Kafka’s work demonstrates that the Law is situated in the Lacanian dimension of the Real. That is, Kafka’s Law is situated beyond the limit of any hermeneutic capability, and yet the Law as… Keep Reading
I want to share my first time with you. A wooden bench in St. James Park, London. June 14th 2013. A sunny day, ducks in the pond and that sweet smell of summer, and then ahh. Pure pleasure. Because this happened: Let me repeat that for you: You came to me this morning And you handled… Keep Reading
I happened upon this picture of the actor, writer, musician and former pornographic actor, Sasha Grey, reading Slavoj Žižek’s 2008 book, In Defence of Lost Causes, on my Facebook timeline posted by a fan/meme page dedicated to the Slovenian philosopher. The photograph itself was clearly part of an attempt to mould Grey’s public persona in… Keep Reading