GRAPHIC EVENTS:
A REALIST ACCOUNT OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphics have a way of living that is often awkward and unplanned. We see it when they are ripped from walls, littered on streets and faded in shop windows. We wouldn’t say they are that way by design, however this everyday difference between graphics and their designs is underimagined in critical discourses. Graphic Events: A Realist Account of Graphic Design intensifies this difference in a montage of original essays and interviews that coax graphics into unfamiliar dialogues.
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A REALIST ACCOUNT OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphics have a way of living that is often awkward and unplanned. We see it when they are ripped from walls, littered on streets and faded in shop windows. We wouldn’t say they are that way by design, however this everyday difference between graphics and their designs is underimagined in critical discourses. Graphic Events: A Realist Account of Graphic Design intensifies this difference in a montage of original essays and interviews that coax graphics into unfamiliar dialogues.
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BOOK REVIEW:
SEEING <__> MAKING | ROOM FOR THOUGHT by Susan Buck-Morss, Kevin McCaughey, Adam Michaels
Seeing <—> Making: Room for Thought both studies and presents the creative process of constructing ideas with images. By activating the techniques of montage, the book reveals a wide field of view and a space to engage new critical connection between a multiplicity of objects from the past and present. Realized through an intergenerational collaboration of three cultural producers committed to making theory visible, a transformative anthology of critical essays by Susan Buck-Morss anchors this kaleidoscopic project. Images and ideas sync with Buck-Morss’ perceptive texts on visual culture, history, politics, and aesthetics, fusing criticism with visual play and linking collective imagination and social action.
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SEEING <__> MAKING | ROOM FOR THOUGHT by Susan Buck-Morss, Kevin McCaughey, Adam Michaels
Seeing <—> Making: Room for Thought both studies and presents the creative process of constructing ideas with images. By activating the techniques of montage, the book reveals a wide field of view and a space to engage new critical connection between a multiplicity of objects from the past and present. Realized through an intergenerational collaboration of three cultural producers committed to making theory visible, a transformative anthology of critical essays by Susan Buck-Morss anchors this kaleidoscopic project. Images and ideas sync with Buck-Morss’ perceptive texts on visual culture, history, politics, and aesthetics, fusing criticism with visual play and linking collective imagination and social action.
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INTERVIEW:
ERIK KESSELS ON PICTORIAL BEHAVIOUR
I am on the phone with the artist-designer Erik Kessels. He is traveling to Milan for his exhibition As Far as You Can See. Opening June 18th, it will present all 106 vernacular photography books he has made since 1997. The latest is Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch, a collection of nearly two thousand found photographs archiving the human desire to put a hand on things, from airplanes and bushes to statues and windowsills. Like many of Kessels’ photography books, it seems absurd, almost humorous, at first glance but as you turn the pages and the rhythms of the patterns Kessels presents become more vivid, the project takes on a profound weightiness as an insightful commentary on the human condition. Already in its second edition only three months after its first release, I ask Kessels about the encyclopedia’s origins.
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ERIK KESSELS ON PICTORIAL BEHAVIOUR
I am on the phone with the artist-designer Erik Kessels. He is traveling to Milan for his exhibition As Far as You Can See. Opening June 18th, it will present all 106 vernacular photography books he has made since 1997. The latest is Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch, a collection of nearly two thousand found photographs archiving the human desire to put a hand on things, from airplanes and bushes to statues and windowsills. Like many of Kessels’ photography books, it seems absurd, almost humorous, at first glance but as you turn the pages and the rhythms of the patterns Kessels presents become more vivid, the project takes on a profound weightiness as an insightful commentary on the human condition. Already in its second edition only three months after its first release, I ask Kessels about the encyclopedia’s origins.
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BOOK REVIEW:
IN THE CLOUDS WITH ARVIDA BYSTRÖM
Arvida Byström is a multi-hyphenated artist working in photography, digital media, performance and sculpture. Since starting as a proto-influencer in the early 2000s, Byström’s work has come to deal with problems of self-representation in new technologies and platforms, from Tumblr to selfie sticks and now AI. The playfully satirical provocations in Byström’s work frequently raise serious questions about the body as image, commodity, and data and its alignment with the visual languages of sex and pornography.
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IN THE CLOUDS WITH ARVIDA BYSTRÖM
Arvida Byström is a multi-hyphenated artist working in photography, digital media, performance and sculpture. Since starting as a proto-influencer in the early 2000s, Byström’s work has come to deal with problems of self-representation in new technologies and platforms, from Tumblr to selfie sticks and now AI. The playfully satirical provocations in Byström’s work frequently raise serious questions about the body as image, commodity, and data and its alignment with the visual languages of sex and pornography.
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CHEWING THE IMAGE
Online takeaway food photography is a codified genre. The usual scenes are an assortment of dishes laid out in neat constellations on dressed-up tables. The plates, often running past the limit of the frame, look to be part of an infinite offering cropped short. Despite the variety and volume of food, these photographs don’t have a gluttonous or opulent appearance, rather, in a much more vulgar way, they are consuming displays of choice.
As such, our attention is not pulled because of the subject — the stylised foodstuff — but because of the opportunity the photographs present: with so many options the perfect meal must be available, all that’s needed is our deft selection. This narrative is mirrored in the angle of the photographs too. Think of the camera, like an aerial survey, locked parallel to the terrain of tablecloths, plates, and cutlery below. Everything is visible under the bright studio lights, which is to say that nothing is hidden, it’s a disembodied god’s-eye-view that stokes a sense of power in the viewer’s choice as a consumer. As such, these displays of worldly cuisine solicit an appetite for taste, an urge for good judgement.
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Online takeaway food photography is a codified genre. The usual scenes are an assortment of dishes laid out in neat constellations on dressed-up tables. The plates, often running past the limit of the frame, look to be part of an infinite offering cropped short. Despite the variety and volume of food, these photographs don’t have a gluttonous or opulent appearance, rather, in a much more vulgar way, they are consuming displays of choice.
As such, our attention is not pulled because of the subject — the stylised foodstuff — but because of the opportunity the photographs present: with so many options the perfect meal must be available, all that’s needed is our deft selection. This narrative is mirrored in the angle of the photographs too. Think of the camera, like an aerial survey, locked parallel to the terrain of tablecloths, plates, and cutlery below. Everything is visible under the bright studio lights, which is to say that nothing is hidden, it’s a disembodied god’s-eye-view that stokes a sense of power in the viewer’s choice as a consumer. As such, these displays of worldly cuisine solicit an appetite for taste, an urge for good judgement.
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TREES HEIL:
ROOM 01
Two models are variously splayed and stacked in a small, Paris hotel room. They are staged in Trees Heil’s distinct style that fuses adolescent dress-up with complex eroticism. The room interior is sparsely furnished, like a make-do doll’s house; bed, lamp, side chair.
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ROOM 01
Two models are variously splayed and stacked in a small, Paris hotel room. They are staged in Trees Heil’s distinct style that fuses adolescent dress-up with complex eroticism. The room interior is sparsely furnished, like a make-do doll’s house; bed, lamp, side chair.
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A FALLING HAS COME
A short fictional essay about a paranoid aesthete that finds solace in dried glue at a grievous time of mourning. A Falling Has Come was presented at Dying.dialogues as part of Toronto Design Week 2023 and was exhibited at Galerie Teleport in 2025 as part of Zinobranípart.
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A short fictional essay about a paranoid aesthete that finds solace in dried glue at a grievous time of mourning. A Falling Has Come was presented at Dying.dialogues as part of Toronto Design Week 2023 and was exhibited at Galerie Teleport in 2025 as part of Zinobranípart.
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BOOK REVIEW:
FLOATING SIGNIFIERS: CASE STUDIES ON IMAGE, ORIGIN AND REPRESENTATION by Daan Paans
Floating Signifiers: Case studies on image, origin and representation is Daan Paans’ second book with the independent publisher and book designers The Eriskay Connection, whose publications mostly focus on “contemporary storytelling at the intersection of photography, research and writing”. Often, it seems, those stories are told quietly and seen through acute, deeply personal optics, it gives them a fleshy vulnerability and meaningful sincerity. Paans’ latest work is no different. Generally, Floating Signifiers is concerned with the “constant transformation that things and phenomena undergo under the influence of a complex set of factors”. This wonderfully uncooperative description works well to give an awkward density to the book that resists immediate or simple understandings. As such, it fittingly presents itself as existing in the same confusing condition as the subjects written about inside.
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FLOATING SIGNIFIERS: CASE STUDIES ON IMAGE, ORIGIN AND REPRESENTATION by Daan Paans
Floating Signifiers: Case studies on image, origin and representation is Daan Paans’ second book with the independent publisher and book designers The Eriskay Connection, whose publications mostly focus on “contemporary storytelling at the intersection of photography, research and writing”. Often, it seems, those stories are told quietly and seen through acute, deeply personal optics, it gives them a fleshy vulnerability and meaningful sincerity. Paans’ latest work is no different. Generally, Floating Signifiers is concerned with the “constant transformation that things and phenomena undergo under the influence of a complex set of factors”. This wonderfully uncooperative description works well to give an awkward density to the book that resists immediate or simple understandings. As such, it fittingly presents itself as existing in the same confusing condition as the subjects written about inside.
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BOOK REVIEW:
SYSTEMS ULTRA: MAKING SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Georgina Voss
Written with compassion and earnestness, Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a book concerned not only with the ways that systems are made understandable but also with the ways we experience how systems behave. “At their core,” Georgina Voss writes, “systems are about the relationships between things, and then the relationships between those relationships” (p. 7). It is this complex entanglement of connections that Voss gives plain-spoken narrative to in Systems Ultra.
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SYSTEMS ULTRA: MAKING SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Georgina Voss
Written with compassion and earnestness, Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a book concerned not only with the ways that systems are made understandable but also with the ways we experience how systems behave. “At their core,” Georgina Voss writes, “systems are about the relationships between things, and then the relationships between those relationships” (p. 7). It is this complex entanglement of connections that Voss gives plain-spoken narrative to in Systems Ultra.
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BOOK REVIEW:
MONUMENTAL GRAFFITI: TRACING PUBLIC ART AND RESISTANCE IN THE CITY by Rafael Schacter
Rafael Schacter’s latest book, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (2024) is a study that challenges the way we (should) think and act in the places where we live (105). In an argument overlapping recent works such as Smooth City and the Designing Friction manifesto, Schacter similarly finds that the “frictionless” is an increasingly dominant logic of contemporary culture (348). It can be felt, for instance, in our experiences of the city as an “image curated and marketed as one commodity among a host of competing commodities” (314). Public spaces, Schacter argues to the contrary, should be spaces for activity, not passivity, they should be “a site for speech” (242). Graffiti is central to this argument because it is a kind of speaking for speech’s sake (130-131) that actively challenges and rejects the normative uses of and interactions with public spaces; it “emerges through the medium of the city or not at all” (3).
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MONUMENTAL GRAFFITI: TRACING PUBLIC ART AND RESISTANCE IN THE CITY by Rafael Schacter
Rafael Schacter’s latest book, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (2024) is a study that challenges the way we (should) think and act in the places where we live (105). In an argument overlapping recent works such as Smooth City and the Designing Friction manifesto, Schacter similarly finds that the “frictionless” is an increasingly dominant logic of contemporary culture (348). It can be felt, for instance, in our experiences of the city as an “image curated and marketed as one commodity among a host of competing commodities” (314). Public spaces, Schacter argues to the contrary, should be spaces for activity, not passivity, they should be “a site for speech” (242). Graffiti is central to this argument because it is a kind of speaking for speech’s sake (130-131) that actively challenges and rejects the normative uses of and interactions with public spaces; it “emerges through the medium of the city or not at all” (3).
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BOOK REVIEW:
VISUAL CITIZENSHIP: COMMUNICATING POLITICAL OPINIONS AND EMOTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA by Catherin Bouko
Catherine Bouko’s Visual Citizenship is concerned with a particularly mundane level of online image-based political communication. By dismissing accusations of online engagements with politics as mere “slacktivism” (p. 17) or as “weak substitutes” (p. 21), Bouko blurs (or: pixelates) the division between what is considered worthwhile, sensible deliberation and what is often disregarded as flippant sharings of opinions and more generally just entertainment. As such, what Bouko makes explicitly clear from the outset is that this study takes seriously the way citizens “express their civic voice in everyday political talks on social media” (p. 29). Such expressions could include anything from memes and selfies to hashtags and image captions. For Bouko, these are all modes of legitimate political engagement. This common level of political expression that is often-overlooked, disregarded or undermined in academic research is what Bouko explicitly calls, albeit infrequently, “everyday visual citizenship” (p. 11).
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VISUAL CITIZENSHIP: COMMUNICATING POLITICAL OPINIONS AND EMOTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA by Catherin Bouko
Catherine Bouko’s Visual Citizenship is concerned with a particularly mundane level of online image-based political communication. By dismissing accusations of online engagements with politics as mere “slacktivism” (p. 17) or as “weak substitutes” (p. 21), Bouko blurs (or: pixelates) the division between what is considered worthwhile, sensible deliberation and what is often disregarded as flippant sharings of opinions and more generally just entertainment. As such, what Bouko makes explicitly clear from the outset is that this study takes seriously the way citizens “express their civic voice in everyday political talks on social media” (p. 29). Such expressions could include anything from memes and selfies to hashtags and image captions. For Bouko, these are all modes of legitimate political engagement. This common level of political expression that is often-overlooked, disregarded or undermined in academic research is what Bouko explicitly calls, albeit infrequently, “everyday visual citizenship” (p. 11).
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BOOK REVIEW:
VITAMIN TXT: WORDS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Phaidon’s Vitamin series has been running for over twenty years, producing eleven titles with focuses ranging from mediums such as clay, ceramics, thread and textiles to material processes like collage and drawing. The latest title, Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art is a global survey of over one hundred contemporary artists, chosen by a panel of industry nominators—a variable mix of collectors, writers, curators, critics, directors, and historians—that use text in their works. There are instances of text used to evoke the slipperiness of language, text pulled from everyday street-level places, text to express the poetically ambiguous, text as a “bombardment of language”, and so on.
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VITAMIN TXT: WORDS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Phaidon’s Vitamin series has been running for over twenty years, producing eleven titles with focuses ranging from mediums such as clay, ceramics, thread and textiles to material processes like collage and drawing. The latest title, Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art is a global survey of over one hundred contemporary artists, chosen by a panel of industry nominators—a variable mix of collectors, writers, curators, critics, directors, and historians—that use text in their works. There are instances of text used to evoke the slipperiness of language, text pulled from everyday street-level places, text to express the poetically ambiguous, text as a “bombardment of language”, and so on.
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EXHIBITION REVIEW:
ANTHONY GORMLEY/PAVLA MELVOKÁ
In lead, plaster cast, crude oil, clay, steel, inks, or bread, Antony Gormley is a sculptor. In this new collaborative exhibition with poet and architect Pavla Melková, Gormley’s faintly anthropological fascination with the human form and forms of humanity is entangled with Melková’s words and sustained across seven rooms in the Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague.
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ANTHONY GORMLEY/PAVLA MELVOKÁ
In lead, plaster cast, crude oil, clay, steel, inks, or bread, Antony Gormley is a sculptor. In this new collaborative exhibition with poet and architect Pavla Melková, Gormley’s faintly anthropological fascination with the human form and forms of humanity is entangled with Melková’s words and sustained across seven rooms in the Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague.
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LUCIA MOHOLY: EXPOSURES
I copy edited the exhibition text for Kunsthalle Praha’s 2024 exhibition Lucia Moholy: Exposures, curated by Meghan Forbes, Jan Tichy and Jordan Troeller. It is the first comprehensive account of the Prague-born writer and photographer Lucia Moholy (1894–1989).
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I copy edited the exhibition text for Kunsthalle Praha’s 2024 exhibition Lucia Moholy: Exposures, curated by Meghan Forbes, Jan Tichy and Jordan Troeller. It is the first comprehensive account of the Prague-born writer and photographer Lucia Moholy (1894–1989).
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SILVIO LORUSSO:
EXAMINING THE DUST ON HIS DESK
Considering the everyday ubiquity of design – UX, graphic, product, and so on – it’s surprising that everyday realism is not a more common topic in design’s conversations. Dirty Furniture, the design magazine, certainly offers a thought-provoking alternative to the familiar chrome-polished sheen of high-end furniture publications, and graphic design has never felt as real as it does in Kevin Lo’s latest work Design Against Design, but these are fringe exceptions.
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EXAMINING THE DUST ON HIS DESK
Considering the everyday ubiquity of design – UX, graphic, product, and so on – it’s surprising that everyday realism is not a more common topic in design’s conversations. Dirty Furniture, the design magazine, certainly offers a thought-provoking alternative to the familiar chrome-polished sheen of high-end furniture publications, and graphic design has never felt as real as it does in Kevin Lo’s latest work Design Against Design, but these are fringe exceptions.
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TREES HEIL:
SIGHTING THE IMAGINARY
Trees Heil uses photographs to imagine life. In one deadpan series, eclectically-styled pole dancers are photographed in unusual public settings; twirling on lamp posts, splayed up street signs, and contorted around handrails. The series is provocative and in direct tension with regular, everyday life. “Some people were politely curious and even supportive”, Heil says, “but others walked over with their camera phones ready, they leered and encroached.” Heil’s production assistant had to act as security to protect the magic circle of the playful dance-world from the mundane jeers of the neighbouring real world.
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SIGHTING THE IMAGINARY
Trees Heil uses photographs to imagine life. In one deadpan series, eclectically-styled pole dancers are photographed in unusual public settings; twirling on lamp posts, splayed up street signs, and contorted around handrails. The series is provocative and in direct tension with regular, everyday life. “Some people were politely curious and even supportive”, Heil says, “but others walked over with their camera phones ready, they leered and encroached.” Heil’s production assistant had to act as security to protect the magic circle of the playful dance-world from the mundane jeers of the neighbouring real world.
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A PRIVATE PULSE FOR LONELY PEOPLE
As an installation and performance artist, Nile Koetting builds obscure scenarios. He assembles mundane objects and animates them among sound, lights, and performers making them more lively than mere products. These hyper-liminal spaces look like dissident nichés hidden in a greater, imagined metropolis; they have a bizarre tranquillity.
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As an installation and performance artist, Nile Koetting builds obscure scenarios. He assembles mundane objects and animates them among sound, lights, and performers making them more lively than mere products. These hyper-liminal spaces look like dissident nichés hidden in a greater, imagined metropolis; they have a bizarre tranquillity.
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IN CONTRAST TO RESPECTABLE THINKING
According to cultural critic James Dyer, Pop today is less an aesthetic and more an at- titude. Specifically, it is an attitude that cultivates the easy-going, digestible version of events. He urges artists and designers to immerse themselves in complexity, nuance, and the realisation that no problem has a definite solution.
In this issue we deconstruct Pop to discover elements of irony, satire and escapism, and we look at how Pop’s biggest power lies in how it unifies, how it breaks the boring binary, and how it offers fans a temporary reprieve from the challenges and complexities of real life — and not just a peripheral ‘aside’. Critics can condemn pop culture for its commercialism, and for prioritising narratives and visuals that are merely uplifting and entertaining. What the sternest of detractors undervalue, however, is the relief such distractions from harsh realities can bring; the psychological calm amidst the worst of upheavals that a piece of pop refuge provides. And in times like these, when we all feel so divided, confused and scared, this feels like a crucial reminder that a common-ground amid division can still exist.
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According to cultural critic James Dyer, Pop today is less an aesthetic and more an at- titude. Specifically, it is an attitude that cultivates the easy-going, digestible version of events. He urges artists and designers to immerse themselves in complexity, nuance, and the realisation that no problem has a definite solution.
In this issue we deconstruct Pop to discover elements of irony, satire and escapism, and we look at how Pop’s biggest power lies in how it unifies, how it breaks the boring binary, and how it offers fans a temporary reprieve from the challenges and complexities of real life — and not just a peripheral ‘aside’. Critics can condemn pop culture for its commercialism, and for prioritising narratives and visuals that are merely uplifting and entertaining. What the sternest of detractors undervalue, however, is the relief such distractions from harsh realities can bring; the psychological calm amidst the worst of upheavals that a piece of pop refuge provides. And in times like these, when we all feel so divided, confused and scared, this feels like a crucial reminder that a common-ground amid division can still exist.
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BOOK REVIEW:
CROONER: SINGING FROM THE HEART FROM SINATRA TO NAS by Alex Coles
It is made explicit from the start, and not repeated until the conclusion, that the aim of Crooner is to reanimate the underappreciated history of crooning. Coles claims that “[n]o other archetype has been as persistent as the crooner in the past sixty years, and no other archetype has been so continually overlooked by music historians” (176). Throughout, Coles characterises the crooner as an icon running vein-like through diverse spreads of popular music genres from disco (55-70) to reggae (111-128) to hip hop (159-172) and more. Careful to define the limits of this ambitious study and manage the reader’s expectations, Coles clarifies that Crooner is not a “musicological study” or a “sociological analysis”, rather “Crooner seeks to simultaneously describe the impact each voice has on the archaeology of the archetype” (8).
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CROONER: SINGING FROM THE HEART FROM SINATRA TO NAS by Alex Coles
It is made explicit from the start, and not repeated until the conclusion, that the aim of Crooner is to reanimate the underappreciated history of crooning. Coles claims that “[n]o other archetype has been as persistent as the crooner in the past sixty years, and no other archetype has been so continually overlooked by music historians” (176). Throughout, Coles characterises the crooner as an icon running vein-like through diverse spreads of popular music genres from disco (55-70) to reggae (111-128) to hip hop (159-172) and more. Careful to define the limits of this ambitious study and manage the reader’s expectations, Coles clarifies that Crooner is not a “musicological study” or a “sociological analysis”, rather “Crooner seeks to simultaneously describe the impact each voice has on the archaeology of the archetype” (8).
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DESIGN REALISM PART TWO:
WHAT’S IN IT FOR MY MOTHER
Residency for the People hangs annex-like off the back of Eindhoven’s looming St. Catharinakerk. It is a sort-of-art-space, that’s how Lucas Massen, its creator, describes it: “we're a sort-of-art-space and a bar, it's how we embed ourselves in society.” During the day, the poky main room is lit by street-facing windows dressed in short drop cafe-style curtains. In the evenings, a soft light glows from candles and a few ceiling bulbs. Bistro dining chairs hug the walls and wooden-topped stools hem the tables. A low metal counter serves as a bar. I ask for a beer and make my way back outside. Despite its fringe-like appearance, this place has been in concert with Eindhoven’s design scene for several years. This year they host New Store, a project initiated by the Nieuwe Instituut.
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WHAT’S IN IT FOR MY MOTHER
Residency for the People hangs annex-like off the back of Eindhoven’s looming St. Catharinakerk. It is a sort-of-art-space, that’s how Lucas Massen, its creator, describes it: “we're a sort-of-art-space and a bar, it's how we embed ourselves in society.” During the day, the poky main room is lit by street-facing windows dressed in short drop cafe-style curtains. In the evenings, a soft light glows from candles and a few ceiling bulbs. Bistro dining chairs hug the walls and wooden-topped stools hem the tables. A low metal counter serves as a bar. I ask for a beer and make my way back outside. Despite its fringe-like appearance, this place has been in concert with Eindhoven’s design scene for several years. This year they host New Store, a project initiated by the Nieuwe Instituut.
Read more
DESIGN REALISM PART ONE:
THE INEPTITUDE OF THE INTERPRETATION
This article was commissioned by Dutch Design Week 2023 as part of their Creative Voices initiative. It responds to two themes set by DDW: the “narrative” of Speculative and Social Design and the “mission” of Creating our Living Environment.
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THE INEPTITUDE OF THE INTERPRETATION
This article was commissioned by Dutch Design Week 2023 as part of their Creative Voices initiative. It responds to two themes set by DDW: the “narrative” of Speculative and Social Design and the “mission” of Creating our Living Environment.
Read more
PRAGUE CITY UNIVERSITY INTERVIEW
Last semester we welcomed James to PCU where have gave a Visiting Artist Lecture, as well as a workshop for Graphic Design students. The workshop included a street walk to document fonts, which the students then took back to Bishop's Court studios to use to create new design pieces under his guidance. We asked James for a short interview to introduce him to the PCU community, and to learn more about his professional background, the types of projects he will be implementing, and his insights on the future direction of design.
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Last semester we welcomed James to PCU where have gave a Visiting Artist Lecture, as well as a workshop for Graphic Design students. The workshop included a street walk to document fonts, which the students then took back to Bishop's Court studios to use to create new design pieces under his guidance. We asked James for a short interview to introduce him to the PCU community, and to learn more about his professional background, the types of projects he will be implementing, and his insights on the future direction of design.
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DECEIVED DECEIVERS
In the opening scenes of Blood Sucking Freaks, a controversial mid-70s splatter film set in New York’s SoHo, the self-proclaimed master of the theatre of the macabre, Sardu, has just interrupted his assistant who was excitedly applying thumb screws to a restrained, naked woman on stage. Speaking like a knockoff Vincent Price, Sardu addresses the meagre audience:
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In the opening scenes of Blood Sucking Freaks, a controversial mid-70s splatter film set in New York’s SoHo, the self-proclaimed master of the theatre of the macabre, Sardu, has just interrupted his assistant who was excitedly applying thumb screws to a restrained, naked woman on stage. Speaking like a knockoff Vincent Price, Sardu addresses the meagre audience:
If you find what you see a little upsetting to your stomach, then just pretend we are playacting. But if you are sceptical or bored then just pretend that what you see is real.Later, unsurprisingly, it’s revealed that Sardu truly is mutilating, murdering and dismembering women during his shows; there is no “playacting” on his stage.
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FLASH DESIGN FICTION:
95
95 is a short (flash design fiction) story written for the 2023 Urban Tree Festival. It was long listed for the competition. It is also hosted on Walk Listen Create, the home of walking artists and artist walkers.
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95
95 is a short (flash design fiction) story written for the 2023 Urban Tree Festival. It was long listed for the competition. It is also hosted on Walk Listen Create, the home of walking artists and artist walkers.
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BOOK REVIEW:
RADICAL PEDAGOGIES by Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister (eds.)
Radical Pedagogies surveys experiments in architectural education from the 1960s and 1970s. Broadly, it was in these decades that the responsibility of the architect and the role of the building were made problematic and when the participatory status of previously excluded social groups was being reimagined. As a consequence, the techniques and theoretical frameworks used to analyze and teach architecture were in urgent need of radical change.
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RADICAL PEDAGOGIES by Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister (eds.)
Radical Pedagogies surveys experiments in architectural education from the 1960s and 1970s. Broadly, it was in these decades that the responsibility of the architect and the role of the building were made problematic and when the participatory status of previously excluded social groups was being reimagined. As a consequence, the techniques and theoretical frameworks used to analyze and teach architecture were in urgent need of radical change.
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VENICE PIZZA
Venice Pizza is an exhibition curatedby Nick Deakin. My contribution to the exhibition was a conversation with Nick on May 21, 2022 sat outside Bragazzi’s café on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield.
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Venice Pizza is an exhibition curatedby Nick Deakin. My contribution to the exhibition was a conversation with Nick on May 21, 2022 sat outside Bragazzi’s café on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield.
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DE-SIGNING AMBIGUITY
This paper challenges the way ambiguity is made understandable in William W. Gaver, Jacob Beaver, and Steve Benford’s well known disambiguation of ambiguity Ambiguity as a Resource for Design. Rather than assuming ambiguity to be an epiphenomenal relation between designed artefacts and their users, which seems to be the argument they make, Christian and I instead find ambiguity to exist firstly, and at a higher intensity, in the primordial moments of design practices. As such, we propose that ambiguity is primarily a condition of the not-yet-designed artefact; we claim that all things in the world are inherently ambiguous, and secondly we prioritise the role of ambiguity in the process of designing.
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This paper challenges the way ambiguity is made understandable in William W. Gaver, Jacob Beaver, and Steve Benford’s well known disambiguation of ambiguity Ambiguity as a Resource for Design. Rather than assuming ambiguity to be an epiphenomenal relation between designed artefacts and their users, which seems to be the argument they make, Christian and I instead find ambiguity to exist firstly, and at a higher intensity, in the primordial moments of design practices. As such, we propose that ambiguity is primarily a condition of the not-yet-designed artefact; we claim that all things in the world are inherently ambiguous, and secondly we prioritise the role of ambiguity in the process of designing.
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EVERYDAY GRAPHIC DESIGN
In this brief Collision, we explore a tension between the contemporary graphic designer David Carson and the 1960s artist Jacques Villeglé, an artist Carson has never heard of. By highlighting this awkward difference between an ideal designerly intention (Carso) and a grubbier everyday reality (Villeglé), we stimulate appetites for more realist-inspired discourses of graphic design.
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In this brief Collision, we explore a tension between the contemporary graphic designer David Carson and the 1960s artist Jacques Villeglé, an artist Carson has never heard of. By highlighting this awkward difference between an ideal designerly intention (Carso) and a grubbier everyday reality (Villeglé), we stimulate appetites for more realist-inspired discourses of graphic design.
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EP Vol. 2: DESIGN FICTION edited by Alex Coles
After the first EP volume on the activities of the early Italian avant-garde, the second volume in the series identifies the current fascination with fiction across art, design, and architecture. Practitioners and theorists explore this strategy by pushing the debate into both speculative and real-fictitious terrains. Newly commissioned interviews, artist projects, and essays shed light on topics such as parafiction and algorithmic ambiguity. Included in the volume is one of the final interviews to be published with novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco; a conversation with Bruce Sterling, in which the science-fiction author responds to designers who reference his writings; and design theorist Vilém Flusser’s 1966 essay “On Fiction,” in its first English translation.
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After the first EP volume on the activities of the early Italian avant-garde, the second volume in the series identifies the current fascination with fiction across art, design, and architecture. Practitioners and theorists explore this strategy by pushing the debate into both speculative and real-fictitious terrains. Newly commissioned interviews, artist projects, and essays shed light on topics such as parafiction and algorithmic ambiguity. Included in the volume is one of the final interviews to be published with novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco; a conversation with Bruce Sterling, in which the science-fiction author responds to designers who reference his writings; and design theorist Vilém Flusser’s 1966 essay “On Fiction,” in its first English translation.
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QUANTIFIED BODIES: A DESIGN PRACTICE
Self-trackers are a diffuse and diverse group that quantify their lives. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, intimate and vital happenings that occur on (infra)-empirical planes are cast as legible events. The tracked data consists of blood pressure, heartbeat rate, testosterone levels, posture, diet, muscle tension, social activity or geographical position. These are now happenings to be intervened upon and rendered as units of measurement and comparable variables. These measurements may give insight to help rebuild a recognition of oneself (Catani 2015), or allow a brooding recall of lost moments (Kalina 2012) – this is the manifest quantified body, a body read and a body written.
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Self-trackers are a diffuse and diverse group that quantify their lives. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, intimate and vital happenings that occur on (infra)-empirical planes are cast as legible events. The tracked data consists of blood pressure, heartbeat rate, testosterone levels, posture, diet, muscle tension, social activity or geographical position. These are now happenings to be intervened upon and rendered as units of measurement and comparable variables. These measurements may give insight to help rebuild a recognition of oneself (Catani 2015), or allow a brooding recall of lost moments (Kalina 2012) – this is the manifest quantified body, a body read and a body written.
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BOOK REVIEW:
DESIGN STORIES: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON A COLLECTION edited by Johanna Agerman Ross
What is design and what difference can it make in our lives? The traditional perspective of the Global North is that design shapes things to make them more attractive to consumers, easier to manufacture and use, and to generate market value. However, it is just as much a matter of creation linked to change – a way to protest against injustices, or to comment on the current social order. How design is understood, practised and consumed affects the possibility of challenging dominant power structures, which over time have themselves determined what design is, could be and should be.
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DESIGN STORIES: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON A COLLECTION edited by Johanna Agerman Ross
What is design and what difference can it make in our lives? The traditional perspective of the Global North is that design shapes things to make them more attractive to consumers, easier to manufacture and use, and to generate market value. However, it is just as much a matter of creation linked to change – a way to protest against injustices, or to comment on the current social order. How design is understood, practised and consumed affects the possibility of challenging dominant power structures, which over time have themselves determined what design is, could be and should be.
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BOOK REVIEW:
SECOND SKIN by Anastasiia Fedorova
In 21st century commodity culture, we are all intimately involved with objects: we covet a Birkin bag; we keep trainers box-fresh. We are, in a sense, all fetishists. But occasionally this desire spills into something more subversive. Second Skin offers a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics commonly fetishised, unpacking their histories, their expressive potential, and the communities they give rise to. Drawing from her encounters with fellow fetishists and kinksters, it is also the story of Anastasiia Fedorova’s own journey: of what it means to come to terms with one’s sexuality.
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SECOND SKIN by Anastasiia Fedorova
In 21st century commodity culture, we are all intimately involved with objects: we covet a Birkin bag; we keep trainers box-fresh. We are, in a sense, all fetishists. But occasionally this desire spills into something more subversive. Second Skin offers a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics commonly fetishised, unpacking their histories, their expressive potential, and the communities they give rise to. Drawing from her encounters with fellow fetishists and kinksters, it is also the story of Anastasiia Fedorova’s own journey: of what it means to come to terms with one’s sexuality.
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BOOK REVIEW:
THE CITIES WE NEED: ESSENTIAL STORIES OF EVERYDAY PLACES by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? In The Cities We Need, photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani introduces us to the complex, political, and eminently personable stories of residents who answered this question in Brooklyn, New York, and Oakland, California. Their universal stories and Bendiner-Viani's evocative images illuminate what's at stake in our everyday places—from diners to churches to donut shops. In this culmination of two decades of research and art practice, Bendiner-Viani intertwines the personal, historical, and photographic to present us with placework, the way that unassuming places foster a sense of belonging and, in fact, do the essential work of helping us become communities.
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THE CITIES WE NEED: ESSENTIAL STORIES OF EVERYDAY PLACES by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? In The Cities We Need, photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani introduces us to the complex, political, and eminently personable stories of residents who answered this question in Brooklyn, New York, and Oakland, California. Their universal stories and Bendiner-Viani's evocative images illuminate what's at stake in our everyday places—from diners to churches to donut shops. In this culmination of two decades of research and art practice, Bendiner-Viani intertwines the personal, historical, and photographic to present us with placework, the way that unassuming places foster a sense of belonging and, in fact, do the essential work of helping us become communities.
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NINETY-NINE GRAPHIC DESIGN WORKSHOPS:
THE WAY WE ATTEND TO THINGS
How we experience the world depends on the ways we attend to it. We live in a moment when our everyday experiences are distracted by a cynical attention economy, as such, there is an urgent need for a new kind of vigilant attention. The workshops in this book are practical challenges to the ways we think about the world we live in. Without relying on specialist equipment or subject-specific knowledge they give clear instructions about how to be mindful of the real world in unusual ways. From the informal and playful to the critical and insightful, each workshop finishes with a diverse list of recommended further reading that extends well beyond the designer’s traditional bookshelf. With contributors ranging from designers and painters to philosophers, dancers, poets, and documentary filmmakers, this eclectic mix of workshops changes how we think about the creative potential of our day-to-day lives.
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THE WAY WE ATTEND TO THINGS
How we experience the world depends on the ways we attend to it. We live in a moment when our everyday experiences are distracted by a cynical attention economy, as such, there is an urgent need for a new kind of vigilant attention. The workshops in this book are practical challenges to the ways we think about the world we live in. Without relying on specialist equipment or subject-specific knowledge they give clear instructions about how to be mindful of the real world in unusual ways. From the informal and playful to the critical and insightful, each workshop finishes with a diverse list of recommended further reading that extends well beyond the designer’s traditional bookshelf. With contributors ranging from designers and painters to philosophers, dancers, poets, and documentary filmmakers, this eclectic mix of workshops changes how we think about the creative potential of our day-to-day lives.
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BOOK REVIEW:
A PRAGUE FLÂNEUR by Vítězslav Nezval
Vítězslav Nezval co-founded the Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia in 1934, four years before the publication of A Prague Flâneur (originally Pražský chodec). It’s a meandering read but despite its lack of fixed direction or definite purpose Nezval’s Surrealist’s-eye-view is always rooted in the parks, streets, bars, and cafes of Prague in a surprisingly concrete way. From the street-level, as he sees it, Prague surpasses its “practical necessity” and expands to become a dynamic host for memories, a rouser of imagination, and a stage for streets peopled with extraordinary characters. As such, this “peripatetic book” sketches a version of Prague that is uniquely personal to Nezval.
A Prague Flâneur was written between June 1937 and July 1938. According to the translator, Jed Slast, the finished manuscript was likely delivered “September, 1938, if not early October” which was only months before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. This means that as Nezval wrote about his loves, friendships, and youthful memories of Prague he was also exposing the city's fragility; so much of what makes up a place is the temperamental relations of its inhabitants, much more than its bricks and mortar.
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A PRAGUE FLÂNEUR by Vítězslav Nezval
Vítězslav Nezval co-founded the Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia in 1934, four years before the publication of A Prague Flâneur (originally Pražský chodec). It’s a meandering read but despite its lack of fixed direction or definite purpose Nezval’s Surrealist’s-eye-view is always rooted in the parks, streets, bars, and cafes of Prague in a surprisingly concrete way. From the street-level, as he sees it, Prague surpasses its “practical necessity” and expands to become a dynamic host for memories, a rouser of imagination, and a stage for streets peopled with extraordinary characters. As such, this “peripatetic book” sketches a version of Prague that is uniquely personal to Nezval.
A Prague Flâneur was written between June 1937 and July 1938. According to the translator, Jed Slast, the finished manuscript was likely delivered “September, 1938, if not early October” which was only months before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. This means that as Nezval wrote about his loves, friendships, and youthful memories of Prague he was also exposing the city's fragility; so much of what makes up a place is the temperamental relations of its inhabitants, much more than its bricks and mortar.
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BOOK REVIEW:
DESIGNED FOR SUCCES: BETTER LIVING AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT WITH MIDCENTURY INSTRUCTIONAL RECORDS By Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder
Designed for Success: Better Living and Self-Improvement with Midcentury Instructional Records is the final volume in Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder’s trilogy of books on midcentury American vinyl records. These “anthropological artifacts” (4), according to the authors, have been underestimated in comparison to the other more popular media of the same period, such as film, television, and magazines (2). This particular genre of records are often considered—when considered at all—oddball ephemera with little consequence to serious cultural history. As such, much like the two preceding books in this collection, the primary motivation of Designed for Success is to establish the worthiness of these records in contemporary cultural histories of midcentury America. The initial novelty and arguable urgency of this “extended visual argument” (30) has certainly waned since the first volume was named one of the best books of 2017 by the Financial Times but, that being said, the authors’ have not lost momentum and their fanatic enthusiasm is rock-steady throughout this new volume.
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DESIGNED FOR SUCCES: BETTER LIVING AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT WITH MIDCENTURY INSTRUCTIONAL RECORDS By Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder
Designed for Success: Better Living and Self-Improvement with Midcentury Instructional Records is the final volume in Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder’s trilogy of books on midcentury American vinyl records. These “anthropological artifacts” (4), according to the authors, have been underestimated in comparison to the other more popular media of the same period, such as film, television, and magazines (2). This particular genre of records are often considered—when considered at all—oddball ephemera with little consequence to serious cultural history. As such, much like the two preceding books in this collection, the primary motivation of Designed for Success is to establish the worthiness of these records in contemporary cultural histories of midcentury America. The initial novelty and arguable urgency of this “extended visual argument” (30) has certainly waned since the first volume was named one of the best books of 2017 by the Financial Times but, that being said, the authors’ have not lost momentum and their fanatic enthusiasm is rock-steady throughout this new volume.
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TO BETTER TIMES
She died soon after their child was born, maybe he mentioned how it happened but I remember more clearly the hard way he told me he never wanted the baby. I hadn't met this man before, he must have sunk enough and drunk enough over the weeks since her death that his misery dissolved just as well into strangers as it did into himself. I was sixteen, nervous and glad to be alone as I sat on a curb waiting to play guitar at an open mic. Unsteady, he approached with the light of the pub at his back, his breath was vaporous but he was composed enough to talk straight about his feelings. He spoke so quietly, I wasn’t sure if he meant for anyone but himself to hear, still I listened. As he went on, the death of his lover was eclipsed by his mourning for the life he could never have. He wanted to travel to Asia or the Americas, he told me, but it didn’t matter now that he was lumped with this seven pound six ounce motherless burden. His words signalled in the space between us: “worry for my soul, watch me fall, but see how I know what broke me.”
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She died soon after their child was born, maybe he mentioned how it happened but I remember more clearly the hard way he told me he never wanted the baby. I hadn't met this man before, he must have sunk enough and drunk enough over the weeks since her death that his misery dissolved just as well into strangers as it did into himself. I was sixteen, nervous and glad to be alone as I sat on a curb waiting to play guitar at an open mic. Unsteady, he approached with the light of the pub at his back, his breath was vaporous but he was composed enough to talk straight about his feelings. He spoke so quietly, I wasn’t sure if he meant for anyone but himself to hear, still I listened. As he went on, the death of his lover was eclipsed by his mourning for the life he could never have. He wanted to travel to Asia or the Americas, he told me, but it didn’t matter now that he was lumped with this seven pound six ounce motherless burden. His words signalled in the space between us: “worry for my soul, watch me fall, but see how I know what broke me.”
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W.I.P
TBC, 2025
TBC, 2025
TAKE MY WORDS FOR IT
Short stories drawn from found photographs of everyday lives.
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Short stories drawn from found photographs of everyday lives.
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