Download or read book Hubs and Fictions written by Tobias Berger and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hubs and Fictions, originally a touring forum, invited international curators, writers, and producers to probe how fiction plays out in a globally distributed art-world ecology, and how infrastructures are invented against its background. In 2012, the forum was staged sequentially at Cooper Gallery (Dundee), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead), Goldsmiths University of London, and operated as a satellite event to Edgar Schmitz's exhibition "Surplus Cameo Decor," curated by Sophia Yadong Hao at Cooper Gallery. The book functions as a deliberately discontinuous reader; it juxtaposes documents, negotiations, and reflections from and on these conversations. The publication also includes a preface by Andrea Phillips, a new image sequence by Schmitz, and a suite of reflexive annotations exchanged between Hao and Schmitz. Contributors Tobias Berger, Guy Brett, Simon Groom, Sophia Yadong Hao, Lisa Le Feuvre, Ma Lin, Markus Miessen and Federica Bueti, Tom Morton, Vanessa Joan Müller, Wang Nanming, Paul O'Neill, Edgar Schmitz, Gemma Sharpe

Download or read book Matter Fictions written by Margarida Mendes and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matter Fictions addresses fiction as a mode of producing reality as well as the significance of matter--animal, vegetable, mineral, hybrid--beyond binaries. Recounting a partial history of our relation with matter, the eponymous exhibition at Museu Coleção Berardo (May 4-August 21, 2016) explored how the crossover between cosmological narratives, spatial revolutions of concrete poetry, and hypertextual and territorial fictions might impact our understanding of human agency in a time that calls for action on climate change and technocratic policies. This companion reader features contributions from participating artists and like-minded writers that address the scope of this project as it exceeds the frame of art and the exhibition into the realm of nonhuman ecologies, ontologies, and temporalities. The texts are oriented around the four threads that structured the exhibition. The science-fiction approach to the ethics of code and digital space is addressed in the texts by Kodwo Eshun of the Otolith Group, Ccru (Cybernetic culture resource unit), and N. Katherine Hayles, and the excerpt from 0(rphan)d(rift>)'s 1995 novel Cyberpositive. Contemporary psychogeophysics and the material realities of the digital are explored by Jussi Parikka's text and printed drawings throughout the book based on Joana Escoval's sculptures on electromagnetic conduction. The hybridity of contemporary bodies and rituals is contextualized by Margarida Mendes's essay on agribusiness and GMOs. And the critique of technocratic and extractionist environmental policies is represented by Jason Waite's text on Fukushima and artist statements by Ursula Biemann and Mariana Silva. The contributions from Jennifer Teets and Francis McKee straddle all four threads--Teets's through a reflection on the ongoing series at Museu Berardo, The World in Which We Occur, which she organizes with Mendes, and McKee's through a newly commissioned work of fiction. Copublished with Museu Coleção Berardo Contributors 0(rphan)d(rift>), Ursula Biemann, Ccru, Kodwo Eshun, N. Katherine Hayles, Francis McKee, Margarida Mendes, Jussi Parikka, Mariana Silva, Jennifer Teets, Jason Waite

Download or read book Fiction as Method written by Jon K Shaw and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: See the world through the eyes of a search engine, if only for a millisecond; throw the workings of power into sharper relief by any media necessary; reveal access points to other worlds within our own. In the anthology Fiction as Method, a mixture of new and established names in the fields of contemporary art, media theory, philosophy, and speculative fiction explore the diverse ways fiction manifests, and provide insights into subjects ranging from the hive mind of the art collective 0rphan Drift to the protocols of online self-presentation. With an extended introduction by the editors, the book invites reflection on how fictions proliferate, take on flesh, and are carried by a wide variety of mediums—including, but not limited to, the written word. In each case, fiction is bound up with the production and modulation of desire, the enfolding of matter and meaning, and the blending of practices that cast the existing world in a new light with those that participate in the creation of new openings of the possible. Contributors Justin Barton, Delphi Carstens & Mer Roberts, Tim Etchells, Matthew Fuller, David Garcia, Dora García, M. John Harrison, Simon O'Sullivan, Erica Scourti, Jon K Shaw and Theo Reeves-Evison

Download or read book Seating Arrangements written by Maggie Shipstead and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • The irresistible story of a summer New England wedding weekend gone awry—a deliciously biting satirical glimpse into the lives of the well-bred and ill-behaved, from the New York Times bestselling author of Great Circle. The Van Meters have gathered at their family retreat on the island of Waskeke to celebrate the marriage of daughter Daphne—seven months pregnant—to the impeccably appropriate Greyson Duff. The weekend is full of champagne, salt air and practiced bonhomie, but long-buried discontent and simmering lust stir beneath the surface. Winn Van Meter, father of the bride, is not having a good time. Barred from the exclusive social club he’s been eyeing since birth, he’s also tormented by an inappropriate crush on Daphne’s beguiling bridesmaid, Agatha, and the fear that his daughter, Livia—recently heartbroken by the son of his greatest rival—is a too-ready target for the wiles of Greyson’s best man. When old resentments, a beached whale and an escaped lobster are added to the mix, the wedding that should have gone off with military precision threatens to become a spectacle of misbehavior.

Download or read book The Hub written by Chris Beebee and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book All the Sad Young Literary Men written by Keith Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of A Terrible Country and Raising Raffi, a novel of love, sadness, wasted youth, and literary and intellectual ambition—"wincingly funny" (Vogue) Keith Gessen is a brave and trenchant new literary voice. Known as an award-winning translator of Russian and a book reviewer for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times, Gessen makes his debut with this critically acclaimed novel, a charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century. The novel charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.

Download or read book The Cult In My Garage written by Duncan Birmingham and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-09 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An office worker hopes a new drug will remedy her toxic personal life... A food blogger moonlights as a detective to give meaning to his gluttony... A rehabbed addict proselytizes with an increasingly bizarre methodology... Lovesick strangers try to heal through a dating app that promises a unique form of catharsis... A quarantined man starts having vivid dreams he's convinced aren't his own... At a party where everyone's "somebody" the crowd grows feverishly reverential of one guest's anonymity... In the prescient world of 'The Cult in My Garage', the characters are desperate for meaning and hungry for connection. Time and again, their attempts at betterment snowball into disaster or backfire spectacularly. And yet they still find ways to dust themselves off and salvage meaning.

Download or read book Blue Ticket written by Sophie Mackintosh and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *BELLETRIST'S AUGUST 2020 BOOK PICK* "[Mackintosh's] writing is clear and sharp, with piercing moments of wisdom and insight that drive toward a pitch-perfect ending...Blue Ticket adds something new to the dystopian tradition set by Orwell’s 1984 or Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale." --New York Times Book Review From the author of the Man Booker Prize longlisted novel The Water Cure ("ingenious and incendiary"--The New Yorker) comes another mesmerizing, refracted vision of our society: What if the life you're given is the wrong one? Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you marriage and children. A blue ticket grants you a career and freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one? When Calla, a blue ticket woman, begins to question her fate, she must go on the run. But her survival will be dependent on the very qualities the lottery has taught her to question in herself and on the other women the system has pitted against her. Pregnant and desperate, Calla must contend with whether or not the lottery knows her better than she knows herself and what that might mean for her child. An urgent inquiry into free will, social expectation, and the fraught space of motherhood, Blue Ticket is electrifying in its raw evocation of desire and riveting in its undeniable familiarity.

Download or read book And I Do Not Forgive You Stories and Other Revenges written by Amber Sparks and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amber Sparks holds her crown in the canon of the weird with this fantastical collection of “eye-popping range” (John Domini, Washington Post). Boldly blending fables and myths with apocalyptic technologies, Amber Sparks has built a cultlike following with And I Do Not Forgive You. Fueled by feminism in all its colors, her surreal worlds—like Kelly Link’s and Karen Russell’s—are all-too-real. In “Mildly Happy, With Moments of Joy,” a friend is ghosted by a text message; in “Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park,” a teen coming-of-age in a trailer park befriends an actual ghost. Rife with “sharp wit, and an abiding tenderness” (Ilana Masad, NPR), these stories shine an interrogating light on the adage that “history likes to lie about women,” as the subjects of “You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women” will attest. Written in prose that both shimmers and stings, the result is “nothing short of a raging success, a volume that points to a potentially incandescent literary future” (Kurt Baumeister, The Brooklyn Rail).

Download or read book Miami written by Joan Didion and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing account of Cuban exiles, CIA informants, and cocaine traffickers in Florida by the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West. In Miami, the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking looks beyond postcard images of fluorescent waters, backlit islands, and pastel architecture to explore the murkier waters of a city on the edge. From Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination to Oliver North and the Iran–Contra affair, Joan Didion uncovers political intrigues and shadowy underworld connections, and documents the US government’s “seduction and betrayal” of the Cuban exile community in Dade County. She writes of hotels that offer “guerrilla discounts,” gun shops that advertise Father’s Day deals, and a real-estate market where “Unusual Security and Ready Access to the Ocean” are perks for wealthy homeowners looking to make a quick escape. With a booming drug trade, staggering racial and class inequities, and skyrocketing murder rates, Miami in the 1980s felt more like a Third World capital than a modern American city. Didion describes the violence, passion, and paranoia of these troubled times in arresting detail and “beautifully evocative prose” (The New York Times Book Review). A vital report on an immigrant community traumatized by broken dreams and the cynicism of US foreign policy, Miami is a masterwork of literary journalism whose insights are timelier and more important than ever.

Download or read book A Terrible Country written by Keith Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture "This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year." —Ann Levin, Associated Press "The funniest work of fiction I've read this year." —Christian Lorentzen, Vulture.com A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and author of Raising Raffi When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is. Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly—but surprisingly sharp!—grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid. A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.

Download or read book The Melancholia of Class written by Cynthia Cruz and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be working-class in a middle-class world? Cynthia Cruz shows us how class affects culture and our mental health and what we can do about it -- calling not for assimilation, but for annihilation. To be working-class in a middle-class world is to be a ghost. Excluded, marginalised, and subjected to violence, the working class is also deemed by those in power to not exist. We are left with a choice between assimilation into middle-class values and culture, leaving our working-class origins behind, or total annihilation. In The Melancholia of Class, Cynthia Cruz analyses how this choice between assimilation or annihilation has played out in the lives of working-class musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers — including Amy Winehouse, Ian Curtis, Jason Molina, Barbara Loden, and many more — and the resultant Freudian melancholia that ensues when the working-class subject leaves their origins to “become someone,” only to find that they lose themselves in the process. Part memoir, part cultural theory, and part polemic, The Melancholia of Class shows us how we can resist assimilation, uplifting and carrying our working-class origins and communities with us, as we break the barriers of the middle-class world. There are so many of us, all of us waiting. If we came together, who knows what we could do.

Download or read book The Boy in the Earth written by Fuminori Nakamura and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A darkly melancholic tale that combines Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Camus’s The Fall —Nakamura’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel is here translated into English for the first time and is another high-water mark in this important writer’s career. As an unnamed Tokyo taxi driver works a night shift, picking up fares that offer him glimpses into the lives of ordinary people, he can’t escape his own nihilistic thoughts. Almost without meaning to, he puts himself in harm’s way; he can’t stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in obsessive fantasies that soon become terrifying blackout episodes. The truth is, his long-estranged father has tried to reach out to him, triggering a cascade of traumatic memories. As the cab driver wrestles with the truth about his past and the history of violence in his childhood, he must also confront his present, which is no less complicated or grim. A precursor to Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist The Thief, The Boy in the Earth is a closely told character study that poses a difficult question: Are some lives so damaged they are beyond redemption? Is every child worth trying to save? A poignant and thought-provoking tour de force by one of Japan’s leading literary voices.

Download or read book Fiction written by Victor Hugo and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A State of Freedom written by Neel Mukherjee and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature What happens when we attempt to exchange the life we are given for something better? Five people, in very different circumstances, from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more. Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.

Download or read book As the Crow Flies written by Melanie Gillman and published by Iron Circus Comics. This book was released on 2017 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A black teenage lesbian finds herself stranded in a dangerous and unfamiliar place: an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp.

Download or read book Broken Sleep written by Bruce Bauman and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2015 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet everyman Moses Teumer, whose recent diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukaemia has sent him in search of a donor. When he discovers that the woman who raised him is not his biological mother, he must hunt down his birth parents and unravel the intertwined destinies of the Teumer and Savant families. Bauman skilfully weaves the threads that intertwine these characters and the histories that divide them, creating a postmodern vision of America that is at once sweeping, irreverent and heartbreaking. Bruce Bauman's Broken Sleep is a postmodern epic.