Welcome to (Month 8: Volume 2), the new exclusive collection for paid subscribers! Thank you again for supporting this project, I really appreciate it!
(Month 8: Volume 2) contains tons of contemporary art, music, fashion, literature, videos, and more stuff that resists categorization!
Don’t forget this newsletter will exceed most email limits, so you’ll need to click through to “view entire message” at the bottom of this email or click over to the website to enjoy the whole thing.
And remember, every entry comes with a link so you can explore more and more.
Now then, without further ado…
Contemporary British artist Roxana Halls
In every poem, there is a ghost. The page’s emptiness between words. White space where what’s said falls short of what, at the most essential level, needed be said.
For every image, a negative. A lit room gone dark. Against it, the outline of a face, its vague features.
— from “A Poetics of Failure: On the Truths That Lie Between Words” by D.S. Waldman, via Lit Hub
Contemporary Chinese artist Tao Siqi
…if every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate.
— “Philip Pullman calls time on the present tense,” via The Guardian
Contemporary Australian artist Michelle Mischkulnig
Contemporary Nigerian artist Victoria Udondian
It is fitting that this is a poem about emancipation. With its revolt against reason, surrealism aspired to free the mind from conventions and to overturn societal expectations. Through automatic writing and the description of dreams, the unconscious mind could be unlocked. Photocollage could reassemble and thus reimagine the accepted order of things.
— from “Children of the Surrealist Revolution” by Robyn Jensen, via LARB
Contemporary Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen
STEP SIX: Taste their cities. Wear their skeletons. Do it with our pride. Their foundations will implode silent on our signal.
— “HOW TO MAKE CONTACT WITH A LOST STAR SYSTEM” by HENRY FARNAN, via Strange Horizons
Contemporary Canadian artist Cal Lane
My father built his house on the waters’ edge, and every day he packed the clouds in, spun the machine. Those who wanted to sleep bought Father’s pillow. All night, eyes peeled, I bent my body and straightened my body, over and over.
— from “Pillow” by Lee Young-ju, via Poets
Contemporary German artist Liina Klauss
The official music video for “Low Rider”, the iconic 1975 song by the funk band War, was remastered from the original 16mm film footage to high-def 4K resolution.
Contemporary American artist Jordan Casteel
Refinement (and expansion) of purefunk (i.e. P-Funk) as a concept, which has been Clinton’s lifelong mission and continues to this day, necessitated an abandonment of cultural codependency, which meant ultimately trimming away the rough-hewn blues rock edges from Funkadelic and developing a new vocabulary, without precedent from within the existing cultural power structure.
— “The New Vocabulary of Funkadelic (1970)” by Nick Mitchell Maiato, via Aquarium Drunkard
Music Video for 'Nikes' by Frank Ocean
Director Tyrone Lebon
DOP André Chemtoff
Editor Adam Biskupski
Contemporary American artist Jerrell Gibbs
Angela Davis - “Revolution Today” — the whole lecture can be found here
Contemporary American artist Jammie Holmes
Like how your eye compensates for the migraine’s transparent blotch. Or does the terror Stay with its spectral fizz bringing you outside of your own lungs and back in
— from "Executive Function" by Alicia Byrne Keane, via Ghost Protocol
Contemporary Russian artist Alex Kanevsky
Contemporary Russian artist Ilya Shkipin
Jnr Choi, Sam Tompkins - TO THE MOON (Official Music Video)
Contemporary American artist Jenna Gribbon
Contemporary Polish artist Martyna Czech
Film Comment audio interview with Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler celebrating avant garde cinema in New York during the years 1962 through 1964
Contemporary American artist Christina Quarles
That was what they called themselves, she had found out after it was all over, tumbling down a rabbit hole of Snapchat accounts and Slack groups and .onion sites before she could find out the first thing about them: their name. They claimed that they weren’t political, except in the sense that nothing was political any more, and therefore everything was.
— “the milton bradleys” by Paul Currion, via 3:AM
Contemporary South Korean artist Koo Jeong A
In October 2021, about sixty days before my house burned down, my husband found a tooth in his donut.
— from “DAMAGES” by Sabrina Orah Mark, via Astra
Contemporary British artist Somaya Critchlow
Contemporary Swedish artist Ragna Bley
Contemporary German artist Peppi Bottrop
Years later, a late-night petrol stop, passing through. Same smile, languid smile, behind the counter. Shaven head shining. “He was there, in the hair. Now, just the Awa, Awa, safe.”
— from “Rivers, rivers, Awa” by Martin Beauchamp, via Flash Frontier
Contemporary German artist Ulla von Brandenburg
Anyone who has ever tried to sell a book has had some version of this same experience: the editor loves your work, except they want you to change much of what makes it essentially yours.
— from “The Difficulties of Helen DeWitt” by Jared Marcel Pollen, via Gawker
Robert Crumb & Aline Kominsky Crumb Interview by Martin Krasnik in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark in August 2019.
Contemporary American artist Sedrick Chisom
My friend says she lives across the street
From a funeral home,
Is that an omen, or an amulet?
— from “Love Poem” by Molly Zhu, via No Contact
Contemporary Israeli artist Keren Cytter
Spending the War Without You | Laurie Anderson's Norton Lectures 2021
(Here is the entire lecture series, six total lectures)