Category: language

When the present seems to have abandoned the future, we need to observe the here and now more closely. These artists’ works are clear and detached, analytically precise and calm to present the state of affairs right now in all its complexity. In doing so, they undermine and refuse to comply with an omnipresent immediacy that manifests itself in the form of accelerated availability, speed, consumability, and instant legibility. Defying powerlessness and paralysis, the works address contemporary wars and their economic and political implications, dealing with climate change and socioeconomic power structures in various societies. Yet they invariably retain an awareness not only of our planetary present being permanently and repeatedly reconfigured from assorted constructions of the Real but also of the extent to which we are part of it all.

UNDERMINING THE IMMEDIACY curated by Susanne Pfeffer and Julia Eichler. MMK Frankfurt.

Perhaps what we’re all looking for, …

though beautiful, was untenable in the long term.

the more beautiful the setting, the purer the horror.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from the french by Lara Vergnaud

What makes “Good Girl” so powerful as a novel of development or bildungsroman is that it respects self-destruction as an effective tool of self-discovery.
[…]
In her wild behavior, her pursuit of chaotic situations and turbulent relationships, there is exhilaration with a purpose. She is cutting ties with safety to fling herself into life.

Nersessian reviews “Good Girl,” by the German-born writer Aria Aber.

Tratado de geometría, Tana Oshima, menoslobos taller editorial, S.L., 2025.

An excerpt/(earlier version) was in LL Journal, 2021.

Satellogic announced an open satellite feed programme and named their dataset “Satellogic EarthView”. marksblogg

The Black Outdoors: Humanities Futures after Property and Possession, 2016.

“Anybody who thinks that they can understand how terrible the terror has been, without understanding how beautiful the beauty has been against the grain of the terror, is wrong.” Fred Moten

via Sarah Jane Cervenak’s IG

It was only thirty-three seconds long, this “satirical” video, but it is one of the most comprehensive depictions of what I want to call the American Imaginary that I have ever seen. Within the American Imaginary, there is and always has been a subcategory of people in this world who are not only born to suffer but are habituated to it. They come from the “shithole countries,” as previously defined by the president, during his first term.

…

In America, AI is a copyright issue, an uncanny video, a propaganda tool. Through the portal, it is the destructive, extractive and violent contest to get sufficient cobalt and coltan out of African ground.

…

strong case Fanon made for a radical humanism as the necessary basis of any progressive socialist politics. “What matters today,” Fanon claimed, “the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences might be.” Not us, not them: humanity.

“Trump Gaza number one”, Zadie Smith in New York Review of Books.

Kishin Shinoyama, Shoku
Publisher by Ushio Shuppan, 358 pages, 1993, Hardcover under dust jacket, in a slipcase, 32,5 x 24,5 cm.