riots and/or poetics [9/2023]

there are the hunters & the hunted. the missing link. before the appearance of monsters. that apocalyptic orange stream of light. 45 degrees at 5 am despite this rain. brain images. the white spots that become part of the images. transformations in response. of the social imaginary. guerilla tactics. codes & alien signs. something that wants to be more than sound or sight. the countertendency of véga/lyotard & souyri [le marxisme qui n’a pas fini, esprit, janv. 1982, 6, p.11-31] or the super-macho stuff of general creativity. as fiction becomes reality. there are no distractions. exactement de la même manière. along the…

Best Books of 2021

    Nanni Balestrini, Primo Moroni | The Golden Horde. Revolutionary Italy, 1960-1977 Translated by Richard Braude [Seagull Books] The Golden Horde is a definitive work on the Italian revolutionary movements of the 1960s and ’70s. An anthology of texts and fragments woven together with an original commentary, the volume widens our understanding of the full complexity and richness of this period of radical thought and practice. The book covers the generational turbulence of Italy’s postwar period, the transformations of Italian capitalism, the new analyses by worker-focused intellectuals, the student movement of 1968, the Hot Autumn of 1969, the extra-parliamentary groups…

riots and/or poetics [1/2021]

A Reading List Galina Rymbu | Life in Space (Ugly Duckling Presse). Can poetry be a revolutionary practice? Under what conditions can poetry trigger change? In All The King’s Men, Guy Debord states: “The point is not to put poetry at the service of revolution, but to put revolution at the service of poetry.” As a political activist, Rymbu participated in the 2011-12 protests for fair elections during her time at the Moscow Gorky Literature Institute. The street is still the place where the anti-capitalist fights, the struggles for a better life take place. The poems of the cycle White…

Best Books of 2020

  Galina Rymbu | Life in Space (Translated by Joan Brooks) To be political, poetry does not have to turn into advertising, advocate for parties or platforms. Poetry becomes political when it represents the world as having a nature that is not “natural,” but rather negotiated, an Indra’s net that is political, social, and economic; made up of contingencies, and having to do with power—mainly of people over people—which is buttressed by ideology first and coercion second. A poetry that represents the world as political is political. It is also secular. A poetry that represents the world as immutable is…

riots and/or poetics [7/2020]

This racism is scattered, diffused throughout the whole of America, grim, underhanded, hypocritical, arrogant. There is one place where we might hope it would cease, but on the contrary, it is in this place that it reaches its cruelest pitch, intensifying every second, preying on body and soul; it is in this place that racism becomes a kind of concentrate of racism: in the American prisons, in Soledad Prison, and in its center, the Soledad cells.  If, by some oversight, racism were to disappear from the surface of the United States, we could then seek it out, intact and more…

riots and/or poetics [5/2020]

the high degree of social danger inherent in the choice of implements and the method of execution / expropriations and searches proletarian fires and corruption of the public good kidnappings and sequestering of persons beatings wounds / sufficient evidence of guilt can be inferred from the laws as formulated in the index books / carried out in houses and adjacent rooms in the middle of the night / 1) the copious documentation seized or acquired above all those parts that celebrate and program the violence and the armed struggle / the final goal being the general overthrow of the existing…

riots and/or poetics [3/2020]

  Lisa Robertson | The Baudelaire Fractal I’d never had an idea for writing a novel before, though I’ve been curious about the form. I’m a poet who has always loved writing prose. Essay writing and the writing of verse have been overlapping and interchangeable activities, and the shape of the sentence has always been at the core of my writing practice. This Baudelaire idea was very funny to me, and it kept opening up more pathways of inquiry the more time I spent with it. It was a way to write a bildungsroman in the feminine; it opened questions of…

Best Books of 2019

    Miyó Vestrini | Grenade in Mouth Those who write are not even of a race. Nor a caste. Nor a class. Nor are they one. They ruin the point of living, like women in a world of science. Behind thick lenses, the court is never dull. They have all privileges: from philosophy up to anger, passing through conjugal relations, and the length of the paragraphs. Between the rights of man it is figured that the writer should write largely for himself first, then for the others, with a purpose well or poorly defined: to flood the window displays,…

riots and/or poetics [8/2019]

The exact link is uncertain. But we know the Nazis loved / America; Hitler yearned to paint a twin, // a green room where the dead are everywhere. / Asked Abraham before the flame, to the obedient tribe // What are these statues you cling to? // Why calico, why Spanish moss, why the crickets scream. / Confederates raise the undead everywhere. // In a segregated graveyard, no stone reads / private or public; the local jail is everywhere. // Before another body is buried, a window is broken. / A window was broken. The window is broken. // I look everywhere for Fanon’s knife, waiting for…

riots and/or poetics [4/2019]

December Journal / 2017 secret idea / of yours / that you / could become a better person / if you read the right books // at the ica fred moten speaks of “battling with identity against / the backdrop of the denial of identity” // yes yes yes // I have to fight against my urge to ascetism and self-sacrifice / but I’m reading about simone weil again – she seems like the / most beautiful / she says, “when you decide something always do what will cost / you the most” // I would like there not to be grants / no crowdfunding / no paperwork to prove your need / no application to decide who…

riots and/or poetics [01/2019]

Since the 17th of November, from the smallest rural village to the largest city, we have risen up against this deeply violent, unjust and unbearable society. We will not let this continue! We rebel against the excessive cost of living, precariousness and misery. We want our loved ones, our families and our children, to live in dignity. 26 billionaires own as much as half of humanity; this is unacceptable. Let’s share the wealth and not the misery! Let’s finish with social inequalities! We demand the immediate increase of wages, social assistance, allowances and pensions, the unconditional right to housing and…

Best Books of 2018

Anne Boyer | A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (Ugly Duckling Presse) Leslie Kaplan | Excess — The Factory (Commune Editions) Mark Fisher | K-Punk (Repeater) Bertolt Brecht | The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (W.W. Norton) Wendy Trevino | Cruel Fiction (Commune Editions) Lola Ridge | To the Many (Little Island Press) Auguste Blanqui | The Blanqui Reader | Political Writings (Verso) Jackie Wang | Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e)) Roberto Ohrt, Wolfgang Scheppe | The Most Dangerous Game (Merve Verlag) Arthur Rimbaud | Korrespondenz, Briefe, Texte und Dokumente (Matthes & Seitz Berlin) Nathalie Quintane | Un oeil en moins (P.O.L.) Fred…

riots and/or poetics [10/2018]

“History is full of people who just didn’t. They said no thank you, turned away, escaped to the desert, lived in barrels, burned down their own houses, killed their rapists, pushed away dinner, meditated into the light. Even babies refuse, and the elderly also. Animals refuse: at the zoo they gaze through Plexiglas, fling feces at human faces. Classes refuse. The poor throw their lives onto barricades, and workers slow the line. Enslaved people have always refused, poisoning the feasts and aborting the embryos, and the diligent, flamboyant jaywalkers assert themselves against traffic as the first and foremost visible daily lesson…

riots and/or poetics [8/2018]

“he is as a neighborhood beauty queen / lauded with ribbons and canes / and with his lapdogs / who lick at the rottenness / seated at the right side / of mama democracy / he dialogues long / with the mouth of a murderer. / he raises his hand in that sustained and easy style / wiggles his fat ass / and with the boyish brilliance of an ephebe / he shits in the country / with all his soul“ Roberto Jorge Santoro | POETRY IN GENERAL (II)   Manson & Mendoza; Windsuckers & Onsetters: Sonnots for Griffiths Andrea…

riots and/or poetics [6/2018]

“[…] But here: distillation, composition, narrow-mindedness; and the oppressive summers: the heat isn’t without respite, but given that good weather is in everyone’s interests, and that everyone is a pig, I hate how summer kills me when it appears even briefly. […] The worst is that all of this will bother you as much as it will. It seems for the best that you read and walk as much as possible. Reason enough not to remain confined to offices and homes. Mindlessnesses must be given free reign, far from confinement. I am not about to be selling balm, but I imagine…

Best books of 2017

Nanni Balestrini; Blackout / Commune Editions Heriberto Yépez; Transnational Battle Field / Commune Editions Attila József; Liste freier Ideen / roughbooks Ursula Andkjaer Olsen; Third-Millennium Heart / Action Books / Broken Dimanche Press Sean Bonney; Ghosts / Materials Georges Didi-Huberman; Die Namenlosen zwischen Licht und Schatten / Fink Pierre Guyotat; In der Tiefe / diaphanes Aimé Césaire; The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire / Wesleyan University Press The Invisible Committee; Now / Semiotext(e) Mark Fisher; The Weird and the Eerie / Repeater François Dosse; Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari / Turia + Kant Harun Farocki; Zehn, zwanzig, dreißig, vierzig. Fragment einer Autobiografie /…

READING LIST [08/2017]

Atlantic Drift; An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics Francois Dosse; Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari Maurizio Lazzarato; Marcel Duchamp and The Refusal of Work Bertolt Brecht; Arbeitsjournal Étienne Balibar; The Philosophy Of Marx Pier Paolo Pasolini; The Selected Poetry Of Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini; Unter freiem Himmel Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov Sean Bonney; Letter Against the Firmament MÜTZE # 16 URS ENGELER (Robert Kelly, Jerome Rothenberg, et al.) Georg Baselitz, Alexander Kluge; Weltverändernder Zorn Ellen Meiksins Wood; Das Imperium des Kapitals

Best books of 2016 / Herausragende Bücher 2016

Pierre Guyotat; Herkunft (Diaphanes Verlag) Paul B. Preciado; Testo Junkie (b_books) Erin Moure; O Cadoiro (roughbooks) Pjotr Pawlenski; Der bürokratische Krampf und die neue Ökonomie politischer Kunst (Merve Verlag Berlin) Jacques Rancière; Politik und Ästhetik (Passagen Verlag) Daniel Bensaid; Ein ungeduldiges Leben (LAIKA Verlag) Andrew Duncan; Radio Vortex (Brüterich Press) Georges Didi-Huberman; Atlas oder die unruhige Fröhliche Wissenschaft (Wilhelm Fink) Rosmarie Waldrop; Ins Abstrakte treiben (Edition Korrespondenzen) Samuel Beckett; Wünsch Dir nicht, daß ich mich ändere (Suhrkamp Verlag) Tom McCarthy; Satin Island (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt) Robert Kelly; Die Sprache von Eden (roughbooks) Cyrus Console; Brief Under Water (Brüterich Press) Sophie Wahnich; Freiheit…