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4’33”

4’33” is a new audio magazine, broadcasting short stories by some of the best contemporary writers. You can join Nicholas Royle, Mark Piggott, Nicholas Hogg, Rosie Adams, Emer O’Toole and Gavin Inglis by submitting here.

SW11

The SW11 Literary Festival is in full swing (a programme of events can be found here) and includes the Stuart Evers-hosted Spin City, a night of short stories and music on the 29th September. SW11 Literary Festival, 9 to 30 September.

Auckland Bob

krissaknussemmBob and I were drinking. Of course we were drinking – heavily – back when he was alive (although I still drink with him now) – and I’m not going to dismiss the possibility that he’s playing records on his own jukebox on a back island in the Philippines or cooking up some decadent French coconut cream based dish on a crumbling vanilla plantation in Mauritius. Body never found, man abroad, I say. Bob and I had nothing in common on the surface other than liking to drink. He was twenty years older, twice my size, and had resources I could only imagine – then, and now. But we both had theories. We didn’t just solve the problems of the world while drinking, we created new ones, to keep things interesting.

By Kris Saknussemm.

ampere’s and

This week’s visuals: Salvador Dali‘s illustrations for Dante‘s Divine Comedy [via] & Lego classics & “Robot” images Cybernetics A to Z by V. Pekelis (Moscow, 1970 & 1974) & Indian textile designs & Linotype, the film & Une Cyclop édie & Lisa Congdon’s A Collection A Day & Künstlerplakate: artists’ posters from East Germany, 1967-1990 […]

Five for: David Shrigley

1) What are you working on at the moment? I’m working on a new set of drawings that I will show at the Frieze Art Fair in London in October. 2) What’s the most over-used word about your work? Faux-naive. 3) Which piece of art best describes you? Probably a Keith Haring painting. I feel […]

Mutations

nedbeaumanThe analogy I like to draw is with the rave era. Putting on drug-fuelled parties in disused warehouses was illegal, of course. But because the government didn’t crack down on it in time, Britain developed the finest dance music scene in the world, and it’s now an enduring part of our legitimate creative economy. If you stifle deviant behaviours early on — whether it’s bored teenagers sitting on steps, or the 1930s gay nightclubs where some of the novel is set — you block off mutations in society that may in retrospect come to seem not just acceptable but indispensable.

Ned Beauman interviewed by Susan Tomaselli.

Japanamerica: A Tribute to Satoshi Kon

paprika2More than almost any other animator in Japan, Kon had truly liberated himself from what anime was supposed to be. He didn’t envision his audience to be mainly young children or adolescents, and he shied away from creating stories laden with robots, cute sexy girls, and inane, formulaic, feel-good plots. As a result, he was able to create works that stand up well to the best in serious live-action film making. But he was also able to exploit the strengths of hand-drawn animation, and to utilize its potential for infinite deformation and flexibility, while still retaining a special human warmth. In the process, he created something uniquely powerful, a blend of the reality we live in, with the borderless imagination of his own mind.

By Roland Kelts.

3:AM Asia Screening

Enter the Void is the highly anticipated new film from Gaspar No é (Irreversible), the enfant terrible of French Cinema and one of the most exciting and provocative directors working today. Oscar and his sister Linda are recent arrivals in Tokyo. One night, Oscar is caught up in a police bust and shot. As he […]

Five for: Paul Stubbs – Black Herald Press

                                        1) Where did the idea for Black Herald Press originate and what is the significance of the name? To begin with, we had the idea to self-publish two of our own works, to be for […]

The Haunted Room: Atomanotes

ll-atomanotesThe Piece of Paper Press of the mighty Tony White has produced an astonishing miniature entrance point to the mysterious works of the remarkable Lilianne Lijn. Atomanotes asks questions of science. She continues with puzzles begun in the sixties, investigations into how to understand humans, creating art out of this, asking scientists fundamental questions and then staying with them to get their answers. She remains hungry for answers after forty-two years, requiring answers from various scientists such as Janet Luhmann, Andreas Keling, Tom Immel, Bill Abbett, David Brain, John Vallerga, Jose Huchin and many many others. Lijn has moved from Paris to California to London, knows many things, has met many people, is an investigator of the physical poetics of magnetic fields, never falling for the merely symbolic nor denying the place that finds deliria between drab realism and its opposite, so is neither Dreiser nor Whitman.

Richard Marshall reviews Liliane Lijn‘s Atomanotes.