#capitalist ephemera

[lemaistrechat]

I was today years old when I discovered that Masters of the Universe had 1985 and 1987 Burger King meals.

The first one emphasized ‘85 characters like Two Bad and Spydor alongside the core characters.

Orko’s just whistling, living his best life.

The second one, featuring characters from the very end of the line.

Obligatory:

[endcant]

bear with me bc i am drinking THC lemonade

whenever my “people shocked by me being interested in consumer aesthetics counter” ticks up by 1, i know that i have failed to express myself on the internet. i am obsessed with commercial ephemera. it’s not that i like it… it’s something deeper. something… worse? better? something more embarrassing, at least.

the only time i’ve ever done psychedelics my profound realization was that i really, really enjoyed going to target. i like the lights. i am always commenting on the products and whether i think they are on trend or off trend for what i understand the target demographic to be. i love nothing more than to watch someone pick up an object, briefly imagine their life with that object in it, and then either put it in their basket or put it back on the shelf. even moreso when i’m watching a friend shop. even moreso when we can only window shop and that friend starts explaining to me what they would do with the thing if they had the money to buy it.

i studied american pop music history in college and i continue to study the history of bubblegum pop in my free time. i want to eventually write up a video or a series or something about the extended international history of teenybopper bubblegum pop. i am trying to learn music industry jargon old and new in my target languages in an attempt to gain access to information about these things that i can’t access in english alone.

i read early 2010s posts about how minimalism was the only morally righteous visual style with rapt fascination. i had a vaporwave phase exactly one decade ago. my friends in high school would bring me arizona green teas because they knew i would find it aesthetic. my advanced painting teacher hated it because i kept painting pale minimalist watercolor pieces that looked like 90s waiting room wall decor. my dream at the time was moving to santa fe and becoming a fine artist.

i was a proto-cottagecore blogger before cottagecore was named. i have well over 100 blogs, considering i hit 96 at some point during my previously mentioned decade-ago vaporwave phase. i do not bother to count anymore

as a young child, i used to go to the store almost daily with my parents and look for unfamiliar packs of gum so i could assess their packaging, flavor, and concept. i *really* cared about this. i got into this because i was given free packs of 5 gum and orange mountain dew at the halo 3 midnight release.

i learned HTML from neopets and i used to code gaiaonline themes and put them up on tektek. they sucked really bad btw.

i spent around 2 decades looking for the source of a single image of an anime river angel i saw on quizilla because she meant so much to me as a child about the power of what mere images could be only to find last year that the artist now draws hentai on pixiv and their art quality is now quite rushed. i think about this regularly when i think about creators i have idolized, and i don’t know what it means to me, but it feels like valuable information.

last night i couldnt sleep because i kept wanting to get on my phone to look at ancient greek vases on jstor

the worst part is i feel that the way that seeing ONLY consuming-or-not-consuming as the primary way to interact with the world is a serious mental roadblock for people in capitalist society. i think that consumer identity is a tool often used to warp the minds of citizens. i think that if i could go back in time and strangle edward bernays i would. i think that it is meaningful that american society has generated dozens of terms for “someone who is stealing or misusing a cultural signifier, or otherwise engaging with a culture or subculture under false pretenses/without doing due diligence/without participating in proper cultural exchange” over just the past couple centuries and that seeing and acknowledging the cycle is essential for anyone working in the arts

ive spent the past couple years reading up on historical art movements since industrialization to see how other art workers have dealt with their jobs being mechanized away, and ive decided to choose to value myself as a human animal who gets to experience the process of making things with my human animal body.

i am compelled to play piano when i drink red wine and i feel that i’m a fundamentally superficial being in function, but i can be more in purpose. like a poster. like a mask. like someone screaming so hard on stage that you believe them. that you look behind you to see what they are screaming at. i think in symbols and colors front and center, with verbal background chatter like an ever-tuning radio, and i am frustrated when people don’t understand that i am speaking my mind when i show them what i’ve made.

i care about aesthetics a lot. consumer and otherwise. it just so happens that i live in a capitalist society wherein the market attributes value to certain aesthetic information, which generates conversation about what certain images mean, what gives them value, what detracts from their value, what they are responding to, what responses they require in turn. but anywhere, anytime that there is a conversation about aesthetics, i want to be there.

i have always loved to perceive and to make, since the earliest stories anyone has to tell about baby cave. if i lost everything that makes me who and what i am right now, i believe i would still care about aesthetics. if there is anything left for even a cell of my body to experience, it would want to experience it beautifully and enjoy it deliciously.

happy 420

[adultswim2021]

Squidbillies #35: “Flight of the Deep Fried Pine Booby” | May 5, 2008 - 12:15AM | S03E15

An Aqua Teen style monster-of-the-week episode featuring the Deep Fried Pine Booby, a bird covered in breaded, deep-fried skin. The first thing I thought was Hey, Squidbillies, you DISGUSTING mother FUCKERS - didn’t you do an episode that was already about a bird that was made out of food? Yes, they did. But this one doesn’t really beat that drum so much.

The Deep Fried Pine Booby has a couple other things going for it other than having deep-fried and battered skin. One of those things is being voiced by Jason Mantzoukas. The other is that it excretes cloaca gas that heals and restores all that ails ya. Rusty gets zapped and his acne is cleared up as part of an overall yassification. Early gets a nice head of hair. Granny, locked in the basement with a giant tumor on her head, has her giant tumor on her head shrivel up and die. “It’s finally gone!” she exclaims. She herself also shrivels up and dies. “It’s finally gone!” Early exclaims, kicking her corpse into the basement. 

Dan Halen is, of course, looking to harness the Deep Fried Pine Booby’s spray for capitalistic gain. He’s also actively destroying it’s habitat and bragging about it in a series of ads for his mega mall, a mall so big that it sells other malls. Eventually we meet the leader of the Deep Fried Pine Boobys, voiced by Greg Hollimon, best known by some as Principal Blackman on Strangers With Candy.

Overall this one works for me. It’s not especially great, but nicely justifies Squidbillies existence as a watchably funny show. On a strict pass/fail binary, it gets a pass. I like it. It’s good. Thanks.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

[themanwhomadeamonster]

5, 6, 10, 12, 16 for the ask thing

hehehe fankew <3 ask game here!

5. Favorite NPC?

tyl regor- *bonk*

6. Least favorite NPC?

NEF ANYO. at least ballas has SOME sort of grandeur and surface level charisma, nef anyo's just a fucking loser who got disowned TWICE by his shitty capitalist dad for being an even shittier cringefail capitalist son

10. Favorite ephemera?

the seraphyre and gloriana ephemera are SO SO GOOD i try to be diverse in frame appearance but they're on half of them oops

12. Who is your favorite Cephalon?

ordis my guardian angel :> jordas gets points for being feral though rip king u would've loved the cambion drift

16. What is your Railjack named?

himbo express. it's a placeholder, i rly need to change it lmao

[clarajblogdsaa]

The book, a living object! - part 2

I love going to book fair to find surprising books. My favorite kind is the one playing with book’s characteristics and materiality to tell a story. This liking compelled me to discover an interesting literature genre: ergodic literature. This designation was theorized by Espen J. Aarseth in Cybertext一Perspectives on ergodic literature in 1997 and describe books where the reader need to produce a “non-trivial” effort to go through the work. Indeed, for Aarseth, a trivial effort while reading a book is the simple action we do like turning the page or sweeping the page with our gaze as those actions are unconscious and do not disrupt the reading experience. On the other end, a non-trivial effort would be to have to turn around the book to follow its story or having to go back and forth with the pages like the narration codes from Choose your own adventure games.

One notable example of this genre is House of Leaves written by Mark Z. Danielewski, and it is by the means of Danielewski’s work that I discovered the book I want to present today. Simply titled S. this ergodic novel was written by Doug Dorst, starting from JJ. Abrams’s initial concept of an annotated book which could deliver a story within the story. S. is a black box containing a book, Ship of Theseus, published in 1949 and written by V.M Straka, the most mysterious authors of the 20th century. No one knows who he is, and many want him dead because of his political underlying, as his novels have sparked many revolutions against capitalist powers. S. looks like a library book, it has a classification tag on its spine and a return date sticker on the last flyleaf.Inside is the whole novel which is the core layer of the story. Ship of Theseus tells the story about a man who lost his memories and is kidnapped on a ship, stuck with a monstrous crew. Through this journey, he will try to uncover his memory and survive. Then the second layer of S. is F.X. Caldera, Straka’s translator. Footnotes are inhabited by Caldera’s commentary on Strakas complex ideas… The other layers are placed in the book margins. Two students talk together through the book. Jen, an undergrad student who found the book in the college library and is curious about all the mysteries around Straka’s identity and Erick, a grad student who studied the book since he was fifteen and got his thesis work on Straka stolen by his director.

A close-up view of S. with Jen and Erick handwritten notes, the novel Ship of Theseus, F.X Caldera footnotes on the bottom left and one of many ephemera, a post card. S. Doug Dorst and JJ. Abrams, 2013, Mulholland Books.

This narrative construction is a prime example of the utilization of metatextuality to showcase the rhizomatic nature of books. Precisely, S. even transcend this with the addition of transmediality to his diégèse* but first, I will address the case of metatextuality.In this novel, every element of content is implemented to establish a game of make believe as to give an thrilling adventure for the reader. Doug Dorst, the author, started by writing the entirety of The Ship of Theseus so Straka’s work appeared as an actually good book worth analyzing, then the annotation came along. As a reader, seeing the metatextual conversation of Jen and Erick convey a sense of intimacy and offer a new perspective on Straka’s mystery.The characters ubiquity thanks to the multiple temporalities and the multiple ephemera and encrypted codes give the reader all the tools to partake himself, in the solving of S. On one hand, it will encourage the reader to also write their clues and researches in the margins and on the other hand, the reader becomes part of the diégèse as The Ship of Theseus and Straka’s work is supposed to be part of our world. This experience and this blurred definition of authorship with the reader highlight the rhizomatic and living connection this book produces. Yet the last stretch this work holds is his transmediality and how it makes reality enter its diégèse and showcase its living system. In fact, the internet has disrupted quite a lot of the way artworks are perceived and interacted with. For the case of S. official forum where created to expand the book universe like some people had made a website dedicated to Straka’s work, yet readers have met there and started to discuss the mysteries of The Ship of Theseus, sharing their clues like Jen and Erick were doing! Many other creations around S. were made and as they used the book elements to talk about his mystery we can say that they are allowed into S. diégèse and are canon thus reality colliding into fiction and placing this story as a (maybe) never-ending system…

At last, I would like to reflect S. metatextuality through the lens of type design. In the original english version, “handwriting actors” were hired to give specific handwriting to Jen and Erick. This process can seem too much because of the time it takes yet its effect is powerful. This really exploits the strength and subtlety that are inherent to calligraphy. With S. story, this greatly participates in the feeling of intimacy the reader obtains and helps his dispensation of disbelief.

Detail from the french edition showacasing the script fonts choosed for the characters. The cursive one is for Jen and all caps one is for Erick.

The place in the margins of Jen and Erick's commentary is already enough for the reader to assume that within this universe, those are supposed to be real people writing notes to each other. In this manner, the use of a script type is absurd and doubting the reader's intelligence. In the initial publication of S., the handwriting participates in the game of narrative and material makes belief in the book it builds upon. As previously explained, it blurs the boundary between fiction and nonfiction mimicking what the reader could do. On the other hand, the french version uses Script typefaces…They most likely wanted to cut costs and work faster while keeping the idea of written footnotes yet those are nothing but a dealbreaker. Script typefaces already tend to look horrendous as they are very stiff and systematic which is the opposite of an actual handwriting. It makes them look uncanny and ironically more unnatural than other kinds of typefaces. Moreover they disrupt the sense of intimacy and narrative metatextuality S. deliver as it delivers cheap looking notes and by that give place for this whole process to seem like a gimmick and not an actual thoughtful narrative experience. I am convinced that a more industrial approach can be properly done simply by using typefaces that are not from the script family, but are reminiscent of the Jen and Erick personality. For example, Erick has a more stiff and nerdish communication style thus a type like IBM Plex Sans which encompasses a geometric and computer,library feeling would fit him. For Jen, as she is more snarky and cheerful yet, write delicately, a dynamic yet robust type like the Swift by Gerard Unger would be, in my humble opinion, a good fit!

IBM Plex Sans Type designed by Mike Abbink, Paul van der Laan & Pieter van Rosmalen for IBM in 2018.

Swift Type designed by Gerard Unger in 1989 for Linotype.

In conclusion, S. is a fascinating work to better feel and see how metatextuality and transmediality can be a wonderful creative tool for narration. Especially as a graphic designer, it is crucial to keep an eye on those kinds of literary projects that are able to efficiently subvert ways of reading thanks to thoughtful book design and to be wary of dubious type choices…

*diégèse is a term coined by Gérard Genette and describes the spatiotemporal universe encompassed in the story and how it is defined. What is part of the diégèse does not have to be explicitly written about in the story but rather to follow the rule of this universe.

5247 signs

Additional content:

S. video trailer to promote the story (38) S. (From J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst - Bad Robot Productions) - YouTube

S. book trailer S. El barco de Teseo - J. J. Abrams & Doug Dorst | Booktrailer - YouTube

Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams speech about the creation of S., 2014 J.J. Abrams & Doug Dorst Interview on S. | A Multi-Layered Book Experience - YouTube

Côme Martin speech Transmédialité et interactivité : de l'objet-livre à la fiction rhizomatique at l'ESAD, 2015 Côme Martin — Textures de l’objet livre 2015 on Vimeo

[theeverlastingshade]

SCARING THE HOES- JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown

With collaborative team-ups between pairs of idiosyncratic artists becoming more and more commonplace within the realm of hip-hop it only felt like a matter of time until we got the underground's answer (or perhaps, in this case, the terminally online response) to Future and Drake's 2015 LP, What a Time to Be Alive. And the case in question here is a far more natural, and intuitive pairing than Drake and Future. After years of well documented admiration and mutual respect for each other's craft, Houston based alternative hip-hop legend, Danny Brown, and Brooklyn based glitch-hop architect, JPEGMAFIA, finally teamed up for a collaborative LP, glibly titled SCARING THE HOES. On STH, blog rap's past and present collide on a deliriously dense LP that exudes a gleeful irreverence at every turn. While STH isn't likely to be considered the strongest work from either artist, it's a fascinating collaboration that generally plays to the strengths of each artist without succumbing to the usual pitfalls that plague big ticket collaborative records from established solo artists. STH scans as both a love letter to both hip-hop, and all the bizarre internet ephemera they've spent the last 2 decades of their lives wading through.

STH is a collaborative record through and through. The 14 songs were written and performed by Danny and JPEG (the only vocal feature comes courtesy of redveil), with the latter having produced the entire record. And the production is where STH really shines. JPEG has been one of the most promising producers in hip hop since the release of his flippant 2016 debut, Black Ben Carson, and his idiosyncratic approach, which blends noise, industrial, glitch, K-pop, and so much more, has only grown more distinct throughout his subsequent work. On STH, JPEG continues his chaotic compositional streak with ingenuity, and what scans like (however intentional) a desire to challenge Brown at every turn. The effect is like listening to audio from multiple internet tabs playing at once, with arrangements flying through the fray at irregular intervals that somehow seem to coalesce into sturdy structures that adhere to the duo's internal logic alone. Early highlight "Steppa Pig" barrels forward on the strength of a heavily distorted sample of NYSNC's "Gone" with the percussion practically collapsing in on itself, while late album breather "Kingdom Hearts Key" is oddly imbued with pockets of melody courtesy of tastefully employed samples of Maaya Sakamoto and the Detroit Emeralds. It's still remarkable to hear all the disparate elements that JPEG seamlessly strings together, and part of the fun is trying to place all the deep cuts, weird commercials, and late capitalist sonic detritus. While there's plenty to admire from the rapping, STH, when viewed strictly through the lens of a beat tape, is nothing short of a modern marvel.

While the rapping on STH isn't as uniformly excellent as the production, there's plenty to savor. The writing isn't anything that breaks new ground for either artist, but aside from the stock bar auto-pilot session of "Fentanyl Tester", the rapping throughout STH is as unconventional and engaging as we've come to expect from either artist, and it easily carries the spotty writing. JPEG isn't as imaginative nor as technically proficient as Brown, but he holds his own throughout STH. More importantly, JPEG's anarchistic outlook meshes superbly with Brown's irreverent sensibilities, allowing songs like "Orange Juice Jones" and "Lean Beef Patty" to feel like colorful exchanges from kindred spirits instead of the sort of half-baked, verse via email execution from artists who are simply after one another's demographic that's so commonplace today. The biggest issue with the vocals (and really, the record writ large) comes down to the way that JPEG mixed Brown's vocals. Brown's verses generally come through clear enough, but there are a few moments when his voice is nearly drowned out by the instrumentation. On songs like "Shut Yo Bitch Ass Up / Muddy Waters", the mixing shines as an inspired aesthetic choice as JPEG lathers the beat with thick slabs of distortion that accentuate the urgency in Brown's delivery. But on songs like the title track, Brown's voice strains for audibility over the horn bleats and visceral bass. This is hardly a major shortcoming, but a rapper as singular as Brown should never be veering on the cusp of obfuscation. Despite its missteps, STH is a strong collaboration that makes good on the undeniable chemistry and talent of its stars.

Essentials: "Shut Yo Bitch Ass Up / Muddy Waters", "Kingdom Hearts Key" ft. redveil, "Garbage Pale Kids"

[michaelpaulukonis]

THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE SENSE OF CONTINUITY IN THE STORIES, ALTHOUGH CERTAIN PLOT AND PRESENTATION ELEMENTS REMAIN MOSTLY CONSTANT, INCLUDING PURPOSEFUL CONTRADICTIONS IN POPEYE'S CAPABILITIES. POPEYE SEEMS BEREFT OF MANNERS AND UNEDUCATED, YET HE OFTEN COMES UP WITH SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS THAT SEEM INSURMOUNTABLE TO THE POLICE OR THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.

[warholslandfill]

Don't curse the darkness; purchase a candle ...

Here's another drawing of a Dollar Tree receipt as part of the Exchange Value series of ephemera drawings based on various discarded consumer ephemera.

[garadinervi]

Angela Davis, Get It Together! An Open Letter to Black High School Students, March 23 , 1971, New York Committee to Free Angela Davis [Angela Davis Ephemera Collection, W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 4 pp.]

(source)

[p. 1]

GET IT TOGETHER!

AN OPEN LETTER TO BLACK

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

From Angela Davis

MARIN COUNTY JAIL March 23, 1971

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

At least a decade separates me and others of my age from you, Black men and women in America's high schools. But this difference is unimportant compared to the strong ties that unite us in a common struggle for the freedom of our people. Our responsibility towards you runs deep. In the course of fighting to overthrow the conditions which have yoked our people in an iron cycle of deprivation, we have accumulated a multitude of experiences, experiences which must become your experiences--the victories as well as the defeats, the truths as well as the errors.

We feel accountable to you in yet another way. You have grown to maturity in the heat of battle. You are the living reflections of new realities, new values which categorically reject the subservient role Black people have been compelled to play for centuries. Your aggressiveness and boldness must become our aggressiveness and boldness.

In the process of struggling against the many manifestations of racism--the overt segregation in the South, our political impotence, our economic paralysis, our uninhabitable housing, our inadequate schools-- an extremely important fact gradually revealed itself to us. We could never hope to eliminate all these conditions as long as we harbor the belief that with a little prodding, America would open its doors to us.

Racism is not an accidental abberation which wandered into the history of this country through the attitudes of a group of evil white people. On the contrary, it is deeply embedded in the very fabric of this country--its economy, its political structures and all the institutions which form the basis of this society. In a word, racism cannot be separated from capitalism. To attempt to treat it separately would be like treating the symptom of a disease rather than the disease itself, like administering radioactive iodine to a cancerous sore while ignoring the fact that the cancer had already spread throughout the body.

From the initial stages of our enslavement in this country's development, it was our destiny to perform all the dirtiest, most laborious tasks which were essential to the success of America's economy--an economy controlled by a minority which stole and continues to steal the fruits of our labor. As slaves, we worked for nothing, the white slaveowner was concerned only that we remain alive so that he could continue his thievery. Now, the vast majority of Black people are wage slaves, which means that we receive in return for our work only a small fraction of its worth. The thievery continues.

[p. 2]

But, what about white workers. They, too, are wage slaves. They, too, are exploited, though the wages they receive are generally higher. The tremendous impact of racism has clouded their vision and has caused many of them to look upon us as their enemies, rather than stand up together with us in order to confront our common foes--the capitalists, the thieves. Thus, in the classic tradition of "divide and conquer" the ruling circles have used racism to enlist the aid of those who suffer under their power.

  Emerging from these very basic economic relationships, racism has invaded every corner of American society. Its purpose is to accomplish one overriding goal--to keep the profits rolling in and to prevent the slaves, Black and white, from uniting in a common thrust to destroy the thieves and their institutional props.

Schools are one of the most crucial institutional props for this system. Within the last few years, Black students have ripped away the veils, exposing the schools as training grounds for servants of the ruling class. You must continue to do this, where possible forcing your schools to provide you with the knowledge that is necessary for our struggle. Where this is not possible, you must forge the means of acquiring that knowledge yourselves.

Black people are increasingly beginning to perceive the true nature of our oppression. We are beginning to realize that nothing short of a revolution will set us free. Just a few weeks ago, a Louis Harris poll revealed that 64% of Blacks interviewed see the Black Panther Party--a revolutionary party--as a source of pride in our communities. Many of us realize that our fight against capitalism and racism must lead to a socialist society, in which we, the people, will own and control the factories, the industries which we ourselves will build. There will be no more poverty. The wealth will be held collectively, not by a small clique of exploiters. This is why I have chosen to become a Communist.

The ruling powers in this country sense our ability as Black people, not only to understand, organize and unite among ourselves and with other Third World people in this country, but also our capacity and readiness to expose to whites the fact that they are indirectly the victims of racism. They sense our ability eventually to lead them in a revolutionary thrust which will definitively obliterate exploitation and oppression. They also fear our expressions of solidarity with our oppressed brothers and sisters in Africa, Latin America, in Asia, especially the dauntless warriors of Indochina.

This very profound fear induces them to react with terror. This is why so many of us are locked up in America's prisons-- another institutional buttress of the system. Bobby and Ericka are waging a desperate battle for their lives because of their extraordinary impact on Black people. Because the Soledad Brothers proved to be such effective political leaders on America's most dangerous terrain, fearlessly resisting the authoritarian and racist prison structure, the state of California is determined to claim their lives.

[p. 3]

Ruchell Magee, together with Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain, through their insurrection of August 7, 1970, compelled the people of this country to turn their attention towards the brutality and political terrorism rampant in America's prisons. They did this at the expense of their lives. Ruchell Magee is a political prisoner.

Because I had attempted to challenge the fascist conditions intrinsic to the penal system, by organizing, along with others, arround the defense of the Soledad Brothers, the August 7 insurrection was used as an excuse to charge me with three capital offenses. Our adversaries have imprisoned thousands of our sisters and brothers, because they fear the profound effect on the masses of our people of our unflinching commitment to struggle for our people's freedom.

Black youth must spearhead the battle to free political prisoners. You must prove to the U.S. government and the wealthy, whose interests they represent, that your boldness, your militancy will not be weakened by the terror they have unleashed.

Our destiny--those of us fighting death and indefinite prison sentences--is meant to calm you down, to induce you to moderate your aggressiveness to cause you to think twice before you commit your lives to the struggle.

Our pepople, and particularly you, the youth, are growing conscious of our power, our strength. The old methods of suppression, based solely on physical superiority, on the government's monopoly of violence, will no longer work--as they are no longer working in Indochina.

The youth will definitely get it together and eventually lead us to victory.

All power to the youth! Free all political prisoners!

ANGELA Y. DAVIS

[p. 4]

WHAT HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

CAN DO TO HELP FREE

ANGELA DAVIS

White a personal letter to Governor Reagan, Sacramento, California, demanding that Angela be released on bail and that the charges against her be dropped.

Circulate the petition demanding bail for Angela Davis among students in your high school.

Show your support for Angela Davis by wearing a button. Sell buttons and posters to your friends.

Start a committee to Free Angela Davis in your high school, or work with a committee to Free Angela Davis in your neighborhood.

All material and further information may be obtained from:

NEW YORK COMMITTEE TO FREE ANGELA DAVIS 150 5th Avenue, Room 736 New York, N. Y. 10011 Tell.: 243-8555

(source)

[womanblogger]

„would i care if i was alone with it? is anything visual non-performative for me?“ YIKES it’s realizing things o’clock

ultimately i do think we are all reliant on others to validate our self-articulation by perceiving it but where the line falls between ‘no man is an island’ metaphysics and john berger-esque watching oneself being watched and deriving pleasure from that i do not know...desiring possessions like this is i suppose the capitalist implanted chip in my brain pinging me to assume an identity and gather marketable ephemera to assert it over and over lol

[guylty]

Today I am doing something I usually don’t: I am going to show you something that I have made, but *before* it has arrived at the recipient. Those of you who have been following Flat Richie, know that my latest crafty obsession are junk journals. The little log book that is accompanying Flat Richie, is one such. I discovered junk journal making about a year ago and have been hooked ever since. I have made a good few, sold some, given some away. And right from the beginning, I had *one* particular theme for a custom-made junk journal in mind: Mr Thornton.

Seriously, why is the man not immortalised on a stamp yet?

I had it all in my head, and I started hoarding all kinds of pretty designer paper to make a junk journal with, but somehow the last push was missing. And then I came across a digital kit of images and designs that featured lots of yellow roses. The last piece of the puzzle was there, and I set to creating the journal.

This is already the inside cover of the journal

Rather than make this a big picture post, I have actually done a little “flip-through” of my North and South inspired junk journal and hosted it on Youtube. Much easier to show you my handmade journal that way. It is called “Thornton’s Signature” (in junk journaling terms a signature being one section of papers that is sewn into the book). Total added bonus: You have the pleasure of listening to my weird mixture of Djerman and Irish accents dulcet tones for all of 11 minutes! Watch my stumble and stutter now:

There we are. What do you think? Suitably Thornton-ish? Do you think I should make more of these, for inclusion in the birthday auctions later this year?

What I forgot to mention in the clip: The book cover is made from an old entomology book, hence the butterfly on the cover. It was just the right size, and so I decided to keep it and only cover the spine as well as the title (now obscured by that book plate). I had great fun creating the “ephemera” for the book – those are the decorative elements, i.e. the tags, journaling cards and envelopes, the pouches, collages and clusters etc. No matter how small the scrap, if it is paper, fabric or lace, I can use it.

And of course I had major fun sneaking “our man” into the journal. “I’ve always thought that it can’t be me [the fans] are responding to, it’s the character”, said Richard Armitage countless times. Sorry, darling, but no. I am *definitely* responding to you, because I am usually not fond of paternalistic, free market-loving capitalists. So I am doing him the favour and am creating some NS context. Luckily for us, photography was invented between 1838 (Daguerre) and 1840 (Fox Talbot), so a few images of Mr John Thornton, master of Marlborough Mills, Milton, survive.

As I mentioned in the video, this first Thornton junk journal is going to a very dear fandom friend of mine whom I owe some happy mail. In fact there are two shrines ready to go on their way to her, and now that I can add the journal, I am finally ready to ship. I just hope that she still likes RA. I haven’t heard from her for a long time…

If you think this junk journal malarkey has legs, let me know in the comments. I have a few ideas for other chaRActers up my sleeve, although I am actually quite happy to build another journal around Mr Thornton again, too.

Crafting for Fan Friends: “Thornton’s Signature” Today I am doing something I usually don't: I am going to show you something that I have made, but *before* it has arrived at the recipient.

[adultswim2021]

Ephemera Week (2002)

Hey there. Welcome back. We’re almost done with Ephemera Week, I promise. Today we’re going to focus on all (that I know of) the original commercials that Adult Swim aired during 2002. Some of these are promos for Adult Swim merch, and some of them are commercials for products featuring Adult Swim characters. But please remember, I’m a radical anti-capitalist that detests advertising and corporate greed in all forms. Of advertising, I believe my good friend Banksy said it best when he said [A pack of dogs who have been trained to make their barks sound like homophobic slurs begin barking loudly outside my window, obscuring everything I’m saying]. Wow, such wisdom. Lets proceed:

COMMERCIALS

Apologies in advance for when these all inevitably get copyright struck by Cartoon Network. There ought to be a law. Or, lack of a law. I guess.

1-800-CALL-ATT | Aqua Teen Hunger Force | April 6, 2002 - 11:15ish PM

This is the first actual cross-promotional Adult Swim ad as far as I know. It’s the first one I remember seeing. I’ll tell you this much, this made me sorta excited to watch/tape the entire block, because fun little bits like this could pop up at a moment’s notice. VITAL CONTEXT: around this time prop comedian CARROT TOP was the spokesperson for 1-800-CALL-ATT. This was before he got buff. There was a rival service called 1-800-COLLECT, and maybe others. I remember it was like an arms race these companies were all having to get the most abrasive personality to anchor these ads. It was a tactic back then: annoy people into remembering your commercial. It worked! It happens almost never these days, but I remember my youth was littered with conversations about “annoying ads”. Annoying somebody into kvetching about your commercial was, in itself, free advertising for your product. Why not do that?

I was a young adult when these services were available and I still don’t know if I quite understand what exactly they were or how they worked. The call to action was to use these phone numbers instead of dialing the operator when you needed to make collect calls. Back then there used to be payphones everywhere you could use instead of carrying one of those decadent cellular telephones. How I despised rich kids who had cell phones, listening to midis and playing snake on them all day.

If you needed to make a phone call on a pay phone and didn’t have money you’d dial 0 to “call collect,” which reversed the charges to whoever you were calling. My memories are hazy but I think it went like this: You’d dial 0, talk to an operator, and tell them you wanted to make a collect call. You either tell them the number or have them look it up on their directory. They place the call for you. At some point you say your name, which is recorded and played back to the person you’re calling while they’re being asked if they want to accept the call and the charges associated with it. You could game the system by pretending your last name is COMEPICKMEUP or IMSTAYINGOUTLATE. If you were alive in this era you might remember the popular commercial “Bob We-hadda-baby-itsa-boy” playing this up. You know who played that guy? Stephen Paddock. I swear. Look it up.

Okay, it’s not really him. Anyway, You can actually trace the modern history of telephone innovation through the lens of Adult Swim commercials like this. Here we see Shake shilling for a collect call service. Later we’ll see Brak pimping the then-new innovation of text messaging. There’s the Boost Mobile episode of ATHF. Pretty sure Rick & Morty did a commercial for Gab’s mobile app. I could go on. I won’t!

1-800-CALL-ATT | Space Ghost Coast to Coast | April 7, 2002

Here’s another CALL-ATT ad this time featuring Space Ghost! You see, Carrot Top was this LOW BROW PROP COMIC who... Cell phones weren’t NEARLY as sophisticated as they are today. you see...

Collect call services are inherently socialist. If we may look to my comrades in Cuba for a moment...

If I may be so bold: the carrot is a vegetable for fascists. Were the Space Ghost crew aware of this when they produced this ad? I have my suspicions...

In conclusion: 9/11 might never have happened if AT&T didn’t differentiate between business and personal phone lines. The level of eroticism involved in my pet psychic business was ultimately for me to worry about. Did you pet “consent” to being owned/enslaved by you? No? So why is it “over the line” for me to attempt the same?

Maxim Hair Color for Men | Sealab 2021 | June 15, 2002

I honestly wonder who did this commercial? Was it 7030? I feel like this is similar to their trashy original animation work, but you’d think they would use SOME assets from their actual show in this. This seems to be entirely animated from scratch. I wonder why? Anyway, this aired. Capt. Murphy gets his dick wet with a horse or whatever.

Adult Swim Lifetime Happiness Sweepstakes | June 15, 2002

Hey look! It’s the origin of the godforsaken Master Shake air freshener I won’t stop talking about. There he is! Look at that scowl! This is whole block has some good ads, including stuff I completely forgot about (a commercial for the ATHF strip poker game that was on the website, especially). Give it a click, will you? are you fucking deaf

Powerpuff Girls Movie Promos | June 29-July 3, 2002

Hey! Look! Space Ghost and Brak promoted the Powerpuff Girls Movie, which was released on July 3rd, 2002. The above ad I know aired on June 30th. 

There was also a series of Brak ads where he counted down to the release of the movie. Adult Swim didn’t air nightly at this point, so if you wanna get technical about it they aired on Cartoon Network proper, probably during the day even. Unfortunately, none of these are online. Don’t click that link.

Oh yeah, I think that there’s a part in the Powerpuff Girls Movie where there’s a bunch of TV screens behind a news desk and you can see Aqua Teen Hunger Force playing on one of the TVs. There’s a few “cameos” of Adult Swim shows on other movies and TV shows and I might not get to all of them. Feel free to remind me they exist.

[CONTINUED IN PART 2]

[benjamisko]

Distance & the Price of Nostalgia

Occasionally I long for the strangest of things, objects that I only had a passing contact with during my childhood—a certain book, a television show, an old toy. For some of these, a little scan of the internet, a cruise through the volumes of Archive.org or the video ephemera of YouTube, is enough to cure the bittersweet melancholy that comes with nostalgia.

But sometimes something takes ahold of me and doesn’t let go. When I lived in Chicago, I often would just buy said object so that I lived with it. You couldn’t long for something you had. I built quite a random collection of objects inspired by fond memories.

But it’s different in Slovakia. 

First and foremost, there is little resale culture here. During the communist era, everyone had variations on the same furniture, the same glassware, the same books, and things stayed in families. There are two used bookstores in town and one “antique” shop, but the antiques don’t date much further back than 30 years. You’re more likely to find a 4-year-old bike helmet there than an old mantle clock. It’s more Goodwill than the Riverview Antique Market.

Secondly, and this point is pretty obvious, the cultures of late 20th century Slovakia and the US are very, very different, and objects I might want to revisit or possess (we will not get into the very capitalist desire to own things in this essay) simply never existed here. 

For example: I have been thinking about glassware. We have plenty of drinking glasses, but I was thinking of having a change. Something new to spruce up the dinner table. I was thinking about different glasses I had drunk from in my life, what I liked and what I recalled fondly, and I remembered these crinkly amber drinking glasses. (I think my grandparents had them?) They had that late 20th century amber color and the rippled surface that felt so good under fingertips, especially when condensation misted its surface. Suddenly, I wanted nothing but those glasses. I scoured the internet, trying to find someone who was making something similar today, cruised through pages of Mexican blown glassware, of Euro-style kitchen stuff, of antique and vintage place settings. I searched kitsch sites & retro shops and scrolled through their photos of objects d’art and d’camp. The only place I could find such glasses were on ebay and vintage shops. Of course, since the glasses were antiques, they cost a pretty penny, and shipping would have added several more pretty pennies to the purchase. No one seemed to be making similar style glasses today. Everything was too expensive and too far away. My dreams of having retro drinking glasses fizzled like old cub soda. 

And maybe I should be at peace with the fact that I can’t get everything at the drop of a hat, of the fact that I can’t just consume and consume and consume objects like they were food, but sometimes I wish I could just have some objects of my American-ness here. 

I have a retro, space age rocks glass I brought from the US when we moved all my stuff over. (I also looked up space age glasses to buy—same problem.)  It’s a one of a kind in our kitchen. I used to have a glass that went with it, but it broke years before I ever came to Slovakia. Joel has taken a fancy to it, and it is amusing to watch him sip grape juice or mint-lime tinctures from it, especially when he asks for it to be a “cocktail”—which to him means simply it has a garnish. And I wonder if, 40 years from now, he’ll miss that space age glass. Or maybe by then I’ll just have given it to him. 

[nacsygen]

here’s a fun fact i haven’t shared that’s been going on for a LONG time: at my work, for our logins, we have to change our alphanumeric passwords every quarter.  after my first password, which i wasn’t thinking about beforehand so just used an old reliable of mine, i thought “hmm, well, this will be easier to remember if i have a system.  hey...17 has thirteen members, and i know their age order, bc that’s how i learned their names to begin with.  i can start with one based on seungcheol and go down the line, and if i get all the way to chan, well, i’ll know i’ve been at this job too fucking long.”

welp.  i’m on minghao now.

however, with the way life is going, it’s looking like seungkwan’s gonna be my last Password Boy...bc YA BOI IS MOVING TO ATLANTA

probably. most likely.  by early summer.

it occurs to me that while i often share anecdotes of the past, i don’t make many posts about my current circumstances.  considering this is a new account, with far fewer followers and mostly mutuals, i think i’ll be making more blog-style posts here now.

for those who are newer or just haven’t seen me mention it, i’m currently a scribe, a transcriptionist/editor, working out of an almost call-center-like office in a florida college town.  thankfully, having also done call center tech support work, the difference is we just process recordings.  (dealing with tech support was so stressful, i got fucking scabies at 23 and missed a month of work, but that’s a story for another day). being a scribe is a phenomenally boring and isolating job, for the most part, and one i am very good at.  it’s a very safe job for me, in a lot of ways.  it sucks and i hate it, as one can find with basically all scribes throughout history, but it also takes a very particular set of skillsets, ones i happen to have, that make it easy as fuck.  there’s good and bad. i set my own hours, within reason. there’s very little management meddling as long as i don’t fuck up. i can easily be a bit late and never have anyone talk to me about it as long as i get my hours done.  however, it’s physically painful to sit and type for hours and hours, and psychically damaging, i’m sure, to spend hours a day wishing i was doing something else, to be paid a pittance (but it’s still above minimum wage so i guess i should be grateful?) as a skilled and experienced laborer to type all day about other people’s money, regularly including people who make as much in a month as i do in a year.  on the other hand, my gods are some of the oldest and coolest (my favorites are seshat and nabu), and at this point, after almost 4,000 hours of doing this, i’d have to actively work to get fired.  it’s safe.  there’s no opportunity for advancement, there’s no sense of my time meaning something in the grand scheme of things, there is no meaning at all.  i am grease in the wheels of capitalism.  it robs me of the energy and prime writing hours to use my hands to put down my own words, not someone else’s.  but it’s safe.

my apartment’s getting sold out from under me in a few months, and i was initially panicking, thinking about how i could find new roommates, where i could live that would be easily accessible to my work without a car, even looking up info about the apartment complex next door to it - which, between work, home, and publix, would limit most my external world to about a square mile.

then i was at work earlier this week and realized...why am i having so much anxiety about being able to keep a job i fucking hate?

change is terrifying to me.  it’s part of my coping mechanisms with my untreated adhd, i’ve come to realize (with the help of  friends who have diagnosed adult adhd and are like no, yeah, you absolutely have it).  i have to keep a very regimented rhythm of life just to function at all, which took me way too far into my 20s to even figure out.  i need to wake up around the same time every day, get dressed to leave at the same time every day, make sure my wallet is in the outside pocket of my bag, my key is in the front pocket, i’ve got my publix bag rolled up in my purse (and now that it’s winter a hat and gloves just in case), and my umbrella (also just in case), and my tablet that was a gift from my beau (loaded up with pages to read offline while waiting for and on the bus), and a paper book or two (in case for some reason i can’t read on the tablet), and a snack for mid-shift so my stomach won’t spend all day hating me.  all of this i verify both before i leave my room and before i close the locked front door behind me, especially the wallet and key.  

if this sounds dreadfully mundane, please understand, i had to learn to make this a regimented routine, every step of which i need to consciously account for even while half asleep, or else i will forget something.  more than once this compulsive checking to make sure i have my wallet and my key a second time before locking the door has saved my entire day.  all that before even leaving the house.  i had to learn this on my own to quiet the constant racing anxiety that put me in the ER a couple years ago with an inability to even keep down food because i had no idea how to be a functioning independent person.  and so much of that is mentally tied to this apartment, to this job, bc at 26 years old a couple years ago, after over a decade of battling depression and adhd and finally getting treatment for the first, at least, i was finally equipped to and also forced to become an independent human being in a capitalist society.  and it was terrifying.  but routine is safe, now.  i do the same thing every day during the week, at the same times of day, and sleep in a bit on weekends and do nothing.  time passes and passes.  i invent games and new routines for the day, meaningful boxes to tick, just to establish meaning back into my life.

i’m getting too far off track.  sorry, it’s the adhd.

the point is, change is terrifying.  but my beau - sorry for the awkward term, but “beau” and “sweetheart” fit us better than bf and gf, especially considering gender and long-distance stuff - told me as soon as i told him the news about the apartment that i could always come to live with him. i dismissed it as last resort at first.  like, we’ve known each other for almost 10 years, more couple-y than ever the last two, and he visits me when he can.  we’ve never lived in the same city, but in a sense, we both were there to watch each other grew up, despite that we first started talking as friends when i was probably 19 or 20 and he was 31.  now i’m 28 and he’s 40.  he’s inspirational to me, because for a long time, he was living the kind of life i am now - working bullshit jobs that don’t mean anything, working and living to survive, scrounging meaning and joy in independent scholarship and pop culture.  but somewhere in his mid-30s, he changed the whole direction of his life to throw himself into a career in film production.  it takes an extraordinary amount of self-motivation, courage, fearlessness, energy, time, EVERYTHING to live the kind of life he does, living the freelance life, going from shoot to shoot all across the southeast, constantly on the hussle.  but he has a career.  he’s doing something amazing that he’s good at and he loves, and bc he’s about the most likable guy alive, he has contacts everywhere, through all levels of the industry. and he’s just about the most capable person i know.

so when i had my realization, why am i so worried about keeping this job i hate, i realized swiftly on its heels that i was just terrified of change.  i wanted to keep things safe, even if it was a marginal existence - still, a safe one.  but change can also bring opportunity.  moving in with him wouldn’t just be an act of charity on his part, but helping the person he loves to make a meaningful change forward in life.  Atlanta is the capitol of the South.  i could get a job in publishing in atlanta.  i could get a job in the film industry in atlanta (fun fact: georgia is now the center of film production on the east coast.  he knows a ton of people that worked on stranger things!). i could write for a living in atlanta.  i could be a script doctor like Carrie Fisher, i could edit for a living for more than some finance office’s memoranda ephemera, i could have a life where i was able to create, and not just in my spare time and for fun.  i could live in atlanta, and not just survive. my beau, as mentioned, has contacts everywhere, and has already hooked me up with a couple writer-type-creators in the industry to mentor me.  i can do it.  i will do it.  even my mom said i’ll do better there than in the waypoint city i’m in now (and also helpfully reminded me she rents uhauls now as part of her own self-owned business).

tl;dr either in april or june, depending on what i can convince my current fairly indulgent landlord on, i’ll be moving to Atlanta and starting a whole new life.  my beau has a two-bedroom (thank god, bc if i’ve learned anything from long-term moved-in relationships is that i need my space, and he also agrees on that on his end) and his place is less than a mile away from a publix and also a main bus line and a MARTA station, so i could be easily independent as a non-driver (important not just from a relationship standpoint, but also bc realistically he’s only home about a week out of a month, cumulatively). also, he has a cat! a tabby boy named dalek! bc he’s a fucking nerd!

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) amber, by Rosie Roberts

In this essay, Rosie Roberts attunes to the vibrational synchronicities of everyday life: the interval moments that hold us thickly, the centrifugal tendencies of coming to reality. Speculation, matter and perception glitter in multifaceted form; a phenomenology of this flickering present, with all its distortions and possible clarities. Throughout ‘amber’, Roberts also parses the semiotics of Glasgow’s sigil and other vital objects of mythological anchoring, infinity, psychic preservation, sounding out.

> We step out.

> Glaswegian psychiatrist and scholar R.D. Laing opens the preface to The Divided Self by saying, one cannot say everything at once. I hold in my mind that each thought uttered takes a moment to say and a moment to witness. That these moments form conversation, argument, intimate whisper, lecture, reparation, awkward impasse, forgiveness, etc. They are interaction, which deserves care and time; and in a time where moments can seem both finite and unruly Laing’s statement rings in my ears – you cannot represent everything – a landscape of aural, visual, affective and contextual perception – at once.

> Even from within the site of one body, one moment or one’s reality can be experienced as a multi-faceted synchronisation of varying perceptions, augmenting the feeling of that moment. What follows then, perhaps, is the futility and dogmatism of an attempt at the realistic representation of a moment. Instead could there be an anti-real moment and its documentation, or disintegration into the flow of constant thought.

> Wait…what? Press the button to stop the traffic, pause on a surface specifically made to help you survive.

> Realism and idealism deal with the relationship between our minds and the world, but perhaps this is too much of what Laing would refer to as a centrifugal tendency, focusing on the reality of the seed instead of the potential of a tree. So, I begin to think from in between, creating a sapling space, supple and sweet.

> Look up to the Tron tower, pause the clock, or at least dial it down, right down. Wait for a clicking sound.

> As the pendulum swings there are seconds not seen where the chime is suspended in air, untouching and unsounding. It is this slow moment that is the preoccupation of the writing that follows, before the chime of thought to voice in air, before the branching out and rooting down. Spiral into this in between and there perhaps you can hold time with me.

> I’ll try to offer a frame, a beat, and a swoop into inertia. A beginning which starts from my own bell chamber and chiming voice which honestly/obviously is not my own, of course actually it sounds out through many others. Reading and writing at a one to one scale, those words are slanted into this text, as they lean into the thinking, the inner brain voice where parsing happens during moments of strike and struck.

> From this place what may be glimpsed is an imaginative or speculative way of achieving either documentation or activism through art and literature. These notions that have played a key role in leftist and emancipatory traditions are active within the speculative science fiction of say Octavia Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin, where a capacious foil to the close doldrum of capitalist realism is opened. Truth through fiction is perhaps more pertinent now than ever. It is likely not news that ‘true’ documentation can be an unconvincing record, that leaves some nuance or feeling lacking, an undoctored recording, like the you of Laing’s statement cannot ‘represent’ everything all at once. Documents are never a self-standing entity but are connected, haunted and contaminated by their readers and their histories.[1]

> I opened my mouth as the signal changed and I forgot what I was saying in order to do what I was doing.

                                                             ∞

> I find another bell (and it’s time stopping chime) to work with in Glasgow’s sigil, I have found it before in service and school and I came across it by chance on an archival tour. I heard it this morning, in my home. The bell chimes on a Sunday to gather a gospel community in a Pentecostal church. From my bed, through open windows I was party to it from outside its walls and inside my own. The plague of seagulls from Hamden Stadium responded in wracking craws, the sounding of my locality.

> Following Doreen Massey’s analysis of her locality, held within the essay A Global Sense of Place, of her position within it and its position within the world, and applying her method to my own; I would like to begin a forever process of sketching a geographically near moment, held both within and outwith the self.

> An act which draws in time, like the chord of the chime, in order to understand a place as undefinable, in relation to passing moments, themselves undefinable things that are slippery and constant. To find in Massey’s words, a sense of place which is adequate to this era of time-space-compression. To recognise space, and time as processes, like capitalism in the Marxist sense that we exist with and through. Like the journey to work.

> Glasgow’s sigil contains many objects, varied forms to represent a varied community, and they have been depicted in everything from tile mosaic, to bus stop, to tea towel. They are held within a shield that seeks to say something about people and what they make of where they are and what they do, but sometimes a shield is used to obscure rather than protect. People make Glasgow many things, including some nice stuff and some horror shows, people are at once the beady eyes, bystander behaviour and broken hearts.

> The story of the sigil is known and liked. A dispute, a lovers’ tryst, an overbearing father’s authority, a natural place, and a magical fish. The sigil and its storied ephemera could perhaps represent one of ways through which a trial to extract sustenance from the objects of a culture - a culture whose avowed desire has often been not to sustain[2] its inhabitants - could take place. Objects through which to think about what’s happening here and now in my locale.

                                                            ∞

> For Edinburgh-based experimental obituarist Melissa McCarthy, objects and processes that hold particular moments are often re-simulated in media to strange effect. In her book Sharks, Death and Surfers, McCarthy enacts an imaginative close reading[3] of the film Jaws as it unravels into a not so subtle metaphor of the killing of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman found dead in Ted Kennedy’s semi-submerged car in 1969.

> While he escaped from the vehicle, she did not. Like the political corruption that existed behind the fragile film of glamour that the Kennedy’s sustained, the reality and protagonists of the two tales – a car, a shark and a dead woman – lurk beneath a surface. This is what McCarthy describes as a moving image of motionlessness, a space-time-compression; an obscurus. And this in turn has a relationship with archives, books and the internet, if she had known what she was going to find, the findings would not exist now in the form of her book.[4]

> When we walk past and look at the surface of the Clyde’s water, seemingly stilled, we cannot see the infinity of happening underneath, time stops and continues. In an insidious inversion of this process the Kopechne incident becomes a happening under a stilled surface, paratextual, an ugly footnote, to the smash-hit-cult-classic, Jaws; demonstrating a slippage where moments repeated in media become paratextual to events themselves. But the paratextuality of metaphor in media, writing and film does not always have to act within a framework of paranoid hermeneutics, it can be reparative too.[5]

                                                            ∞

> Since the mid 1990s, the relationship between event, the self and fiction has undergone significant change. A space has opened up where the intersection of imaginative speculation, reality and theory can take place in texts as documents of autotheory, autofiction and speculative memoir. Synchronised happenings have come to be held in texts that perhaps don’t represent a moment of so called ‘truth’ but do truthfully document a certain moment in some of its labyrinthine ways.

> A noted local text in this genre could be 2014’s You Are Of Vital Importance where Sarah Tripp’s Is, yous and theys speak through, during and around group activity, gendered expectation and a global turn towards conservatism, happenings which become textually condensed into Book. A similar method is enacted in Kate Briggs’ 2017 This Little Art, where the process of translating How To Live Together by Roland Barthes and its effect on her life and thinking are held in the same moment, together, through a book shaped essay. This is then encircled once again as she reteaches the matter documented in ‘a bit, a piece, a thing, a twin’ written for The Yellow Paper in 2019.

> As examples of synchronised relational epistemologies – of one thing’s meaning and presence to another’s in a slowed-motion-moment – an intertextual interaction – the texts create a space in between, a decompression of time, for thinking’s sake. Perhaps of all the names for writing that we talked about with Briggs it is ‘the twin’ now that strikes me to be most apt, the text and the happening step out together, the seed and the tree as circuitous tandems.

> From within the site of the body I use, physically and textually, reality can be experienced as a multi-faceted synchronisation of varying perceptions, here documented by elongating a moment, demonstrating the feeling of that moment of thinking and being here walking around in Glasgow. A twinning of feeling and documentation, a united division.

> For hope and thinking’s sake We stopped and looked and listened, the lights changed red to blue to green and then cyan, magenta, yellow, then bells, voices, engines, static. And then home and back to suspended silence.

                                                            ∞

~

[1] Daniela Cascella

[2] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

[3] Sedgwick

[4] paraphrased quote from an interview with Melissa McCarthy in Edinburgh in December 2019

[5] Sedgwick

~

Text and Image: Rosie Roberts

Published: 9/2/20

[ciaranlawrenceaub]

Suits a very western style and capitalistic culture of typography that could be used if my publication was to be needing the use of this style of typography. Other than that this project brings in a lot of ephemera that I can start to think about if I wanted to expand the idea further.