By James Rushing Daniel.   Dominique Routhier, With and Against: The Situationist International and the Age of Automation (Verso, 2023) In the contemporary art world dominated by glitzy international fairs and heavily licensed celebrity artists, it’s sometimes hard to fathom that art once held more serious political ambitions. Throughout the history of the avant-garde, from Dada to Fluxus, artists, in vastly different national contexts and through a variety of media, sought to critique — and, sometimes, transform — political culture. As philosopher and art critic Boris Groys contends, “T ..read more

By Claire Carroll.   Creativity Enlightenment: Day Three Someone has stolen our muse. We heard a strange noise and woke up, all of us at once. Then we came downstairs and found that the back door was open and banging in the breeze. Then we went upstairs and found that he wasn’t in his bed. We checked all over the house. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining hall or in anyone’s room. He wasn’t in the print room, or any of the studios, or the music room, or the library. He wasn’t in the store cupboard. He wasn’t at his charging point. He wasn’t at any of the other charging points. We sent ..read more

By Danica Ignacio. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Danica Ignacio is a Filipino writer currently studying at Kingston University. In January 2024, her work was commissioned by the National Gallery and can also be found on @eventualantiques on Instagram & danicaignacio.substack.com. Her writing often explores themes of anthropomorphism as well as other sorts of fantastical concepts that enhance less fantastical realities through poetry & prose ..read more

By Eoghan Smith.     John Holten, The Trains of Europe (Broken Dimanche Press, 2024) Since the Covid pandemic, there has been no shortage of fiction speculating on planetary catastrophes yet-to-come. As with typical iterations of this species of anxiety-driven literature, the cause of the apocalypse is never an abstract entity but a manifestation of an existing mega-threat already facing the world. Recent examples include the technocapitalist hellscape of Niall Bourke’s Line, the spectre of brutal authoritarianism and civil war in Paul Lynch’s Booker-winning Prophet Song, and enviro ..read more

by Addison Zeller.   I never worked my first job at the house barb wire came from. That was in high school. We lived in a little rented place and barb wire came from an old mansion two blocks down. I could walk there in three minutes, but I didn’t. Performance anxiety, social anxiety. The training sessions went badly. I mumbled too much, my posture was awkward. I didn’t like the touch of the brass faces I had to tug to open doors and cabinets. The metal was cold, I expected cobwebs; as soon as I slid my fingertips up their mouths I heard a sound, a groan or simply a noise, for which ther ..read more

by Sam Glover.     And if I see a dog running, it is just as much the run that is dogging – Michel Leiris   On my heels, following, I can hear them, they’re after me, I’ve always known, I could always tell, but told myself no, those are the footsteps of other people, they are after somebody else, following somebody else, now I know there is no one else, they can’t have been following or ever followed someone else, always after me and me alone, that is who they want, what they’re after, I know, I can tell, listen, so close, where are they, so close to me, clamouring, reaching ..read more

By Nicholas Rombes.   How did I know the annotated manuscript of the Beyond Blue Tomorrows novel would be waiting for me at the Old Miami Bar? Maybe Rachel told me. Or Patti. And despite the warnings about Yama, that’s why I decided to go to the Old Miami. That and the fact that it would allow me to spend more time with Rachel. By the time Rachel and I had crossed Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, turned left after Orchestra Hall and cut our way through some lots to Cass Ave. I could feel the tug of the place, like some dull magnet pulling gently at my knees and thighs. Rachel took my h ..read more

by Skyler Melnick.   The giant orphan girl stood at the entrance to the carnival, handing out lollipops. Lolly? she said, tap dancing. No, said every single person who passed by. Mothers hissed. Children latched onto the giant orphan girl, swinging from her shoulders until she lost balance and fell to the ground. Also, they stole her lollies.   The giant orphan girl cried for seven minutes, then got on the ferris wheel. She was sat next to a long man who resembled a baguette. Sir, said the orphan girl. May I rest my head on your shoulder? The man said nothing. Read his newspaper. No ..read more

By Des Barry. Torrential rain and flickering neon, pedestrians of miscellaneous ethnicities bump umbrellas, struggle through tight alleyways between a downmarket electronics store and a line of crowded street-food stalls. Seated at the counter of a sushi bar, close-up on his face and open shoulders, an unnamed man in a noir-style classic trench coat rubs the splinters off his chopsticks. Behind his right shoulder appears a uniformed torso with a police badge pinned to a bulky stab-vest. The cop has a deep bass voice: —Hey, idi-wa. The man in the trench coat leans toward the uniformed cop. Loo ..read more

by David Sheskin.   On the first day of the first month one year after his parents bought him his first bicycle William Soskill a boy of below average intelligence had his skull fractured when a one-eyed bald eagle dropped onto his head a one-legged pit bull it had abducted from a junkyard in Brooklyn. On the second day of the second month two years after his skull had been fractured William Soskill emerged from the coma he had been in for two years, and two weeks later when tested by a psychologist obtained a world record IQ of 222 on the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children. On the ..read more