Four Prose Poems from Outskirts of the World by María Negroni, translated from Spanish by Michelle Gil-Montero
How does a disciplinary sea compare to a didactic sea? Or a choppy sea to a verbalized sea? You never know. Meanwhile, this sea begins to seem remarkably like the sea. You only need to wait for the day and night of reality. The sea’s strategy is its own concern... Read More
Three Po-Proses by Kim Hyesoon, translated from Korean by Jack Jung
We question and answer to be nearer to “poetry.” / Literature is inherently unreal. / Poetry lies against the conventional use of language and / Fiction lies against the conventional use of reality. / Perhaps, a writer is someone who knows that after we disappear, what will remain is our lies... Read More
Cognoscenti In a Room Hung with Pictures by Benjamin K. Rice
The cruelty of an image is that it excites us toward an anticipation that it can’t fulfill. It gives by taking away. Though, when Cotán gives me an image of fruit, he does not take away from me any particular instance of pear or pomegranate—instead, he takes away the whole idea of fruit... Read More
Acéphale or the Initiatory Illusion: Paule Thévenin and André Masson, translated from French by Rainer J. Hanshe
In the mid-1930s, during a flagitious political era, Georges Bataille founded the journal Acéphale as a protest against the horrors of Nazism, all forms of fascism, and decadent democracy. In addition to serving politically as a contra-force to the populist spirit of the times, Acéphale was also to function aesthetically as a Dionysiac contagion... Read More
Four Poems by Ashley David
Difficult to locate, my heart bleeds / while they feed at my breasts. Slice / my tongue twice with a sword. Horses / are hungry, the serpent and moon waning, / volcanic sun socks a line to bread and iron. / Water virgin and a cow with one arm feel / a heart that does... Read More
Dark Chamber by Jimmy Chen
An illustration in Albrecht Dürer's The Painter's Manual (1525) shows a man attempting to master perspective using a grid through which a reclining model is seen. In the background, two adjacent windows, one functioning as a landscape and the other as a still life, act as grids themselves. For unclear reasons, the model's hand hovers... Read More
Hot Mess: Breaking the Skin by Rebecca Norton
When observing a figure depicted in a painting, we usually take a few moments to notice how the skin is painted. This informs us of the genre of the painting, the artist’s style, the ideas about the figure, etc... Read More
Art, Money, Beauty, Shit, Representation, the Communal by Sam Kriss
In Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, Martin Heidegger attempts to account for and justify the phenomenon of modern art. While maintaining his own somewhat conservative tastes, he claims that modern art possesses autonomous value... Read More