Welcome to (Month 9: Volume 1), the new exclusive collection for paid subscribers! Thank you again for supporting this project, I really appreciate it!
(Month 9: Volume 1) 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…
A diatom pond vibrates. The diatom clumps in the slime, flowing with cool currents, rejoining together. It digs and burrows deep into the soil. The diatom pond sends out cool and wet air and rains where it falls and soaks in and moves through new water.
— from Three by Barrett White, via The Brooklyn Rail
Contemporary American artist Aaron Worley
When I was born, they covered my eyes and washed my feet like a dead man. It was here I grew into my first rites as a wild garden, gnashing girl.
— from Valentines: “Petition” by Shakeema Smalls, via Honey
Contemporary South Korean artist Bonam Kim
“Internatural” (2019) by Nina Waisman
Contemporary Brazilian artist Ana Maria Farina
Contemporary American artist Theo Trotter
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007): Stimmung, per 6 voci (1968).
Collegium vocale Köln diretto da Karlheinz Stockhausen
Contemporary American artist Kelly Chuning
[Editor's note: the following text was generated using OpenAI's GPT·3 text generator. The only prompt we provided (after some initial training) was "i = U ∴ U = i" and then we let it feedback on itself w/ minimal intervention (essentially we only edited/censored potential real-world references). When we asked what title to give this text, they wrote "A Day in the Life". Under OpenAI's publication policy we are required to claim authorship and state that "The author generated this text in part with GPT·3, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model. Upon generating draft language, the author reviewed, edited, and revised the language to their own liking and takes ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication."]
— from “A Day in the Life” via Sleepingfish
“Kanye West is Not a Fashion Designer (Yeezy x GAP x Balenciaga Analysis)”
by Bliss Foster
Contemporary American artist Lizzie Zelter
Contemporary American artist Julia Kier Wilson
Contemporary American artist Judith Mullen
The disaster, French philosopher Maurice Blanchot wrote in 1983, “ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact.” It is a state of permanent suspension; a “sleepless night … lacking darkness but brightened by no light.” A quiet, nuclear undoing, it spells the ultimate ending and yet things continue to happen within it. The banal apocalypticism of our current moment has resulted in, among other things, a decidedly regressive, cannibalistic pop cultural landscape. The particularity of this moment’s pop-cultural poverty is up for debate, but what feels unique to it is the extreme protraction we are witnessing of nostalgia’s life cycles.
— from "Everything in Retrograde: Pop Nostalgia in an Era of Slow Disaster" by Julieta Caldas, via Majuscule
Contemporary Filipino artist Malu Tan
hot to the touch or hot from the touching Cage said “thinking the sounds worn out wore them out” deterioration but also as one wears a costume out
— from "radiant failure" by Zach Savich, via A Dozen Nothing
Contemporary American artist Lily Prince
“atopos” by björk
Director : Viðar Logi
Creative Director : Björk
Creative consultant : James Merry
Producer : Sara Nassim
Director of Photography : Shadi Chaaban
Contemporary British artist Maisie Cousins
Jean Paul Gaultier | Haute Couture Fall Winter 2022/2023 by Olivier Rousteing | Full Fashion Show
Contemporary Kurdish artist Kaiwan Shaban
Contemporary German artist Ruprecht von Kaufmann
In the eighth circle of hell, the false prophets walk backwards, unable to see what's ahead of them. Friday night, I swipe the side mirror off my Nissan Sentra and can no longer see what's behind me. No major loss. I've never been particularly interested in what's going on back there anyway.
— from “CAPEESH” by Mike Nagel, via Hobart
Contemporary Pakistani–American artist Anila Quayyum Agha
The ruthless sensitivity of Eden Eden Eden draws on the Classical as much as it does with (and beyond) the avant-garde. As philosopher Raymond Brassier once described: “he forces the reader to participate in the experience that he is inscribing. Clearly the precedent is epic poetry. I think the emotion suffuses every single word.”
— from “And now we are no longer slaves: notes on Eden Eden Eden at fifty” by Scott McCulloch, via 3:AM
Agatha Ruiz de La Prada | Spring Summer 2022 by Águeda Isabel Ruiz de la Prada | Full Fashion Show
Contemporary Canadian artist Michelle Nguyen
Contemporary American artist Sarah Miska
Needle-point appendages. A fore jaw that can break stone or bone. Acid reservoirs. A bladed tail to pierce a fleeing man. The progenitor smiles, imagining from the dark writing room. Content for his creation to tear leg from torso, implant larvae in digestive systems, kill indiscriminately.
— from “XENOMORPH” by Mícheál McCann, via Mandrake
Contemporary American artist Jodi Hays
César was talking about an experiment he read about where they shot photons up into two completely different galaxies. But the readings they got back were exactly the same. Apparently this would not be possible—ciphers were coded into the message that couldn’t be duplicated. Every signal was unique. Do you know what that means? he asked. And I was thinking about how I write story after story like this.
— from “Fear of Height” by David Ryan, via Blue Arrangements
Contemporary American artist William Glaser Wilson
Ann Demeulemeester | Fall Winter 2022/2023 | Full Fashion Show
Contemporary Danish artist Rune Christensen
One could write an entire book on the so-called "new fiction." For now, suffice it to point out that the cultural situation in America, insofar as it borrowed from French ideas, was already changing by 1960. If we want a zero hour, we might look toward a 1959 trip to America undertaken by Claude Ollier and Robert Pinget, two nouveaux romanciers central to the group, socially speaking.
— from “Susan Sontag and the Americanization of the Nouveau Roman” by Ben Libman, via Post 45
Contemporary Russian artist Natalia Smirnova
there are too many planets on the human right now. and look at all the fugitivity in flowers. they just come where they see fit — they just come — and that sort of open rebellion must be pulled out at the root. at the root of nefertari is beauty. nefer is a root of aesthetics.
— from "synastry" by fahima ife, via Mercury Firs
Contemporary South Korean artist Yu Jinyoung