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It is so very frustrating, makes one almost want to scream - petulantly, childishly even - that it is a deeply unfair world when the one you most want to speak to, to be with, is the very one you can't.Particularly when calling out to you is not so much the thing I cannot do (of course one always can) but the very thing one shouldn't. For, one should try not to forget that - even as it might pain one to do so - words are missiles that explode in your somatic being.Where sending them out might cause damage, even bring ruin;and keeping them in, be catastrophic.I suppose one might say you helped send me on a path towards the beautiful, opened in me the possibility of catching a glimpse of beauty -three stepson the ladderof writhing

Laughter is communication. It is melody without words; it is a song as old as humanity itself. But what does laughter "say"? Tackling this question Anders Kølle leads his readers away from the safety and comforts of reason and into the wilderness of the ridiculous and the absurd. It is a journey to the outskirts of language, to the limits of meanings and words, where laughter grows and flourishes together with the realization of being¿s ridiculous ground. With Paul Celan and Marcel Duchamp as travel companions and in conversation with Ashley YK Yeös breath-taking art this book explores the power of laughter in philosophy and art and invites its readers to laugh and to howl both with and against humanity.

This text attempts to address the question, 'what is the weight of a painting?' A question that came to me not quite as a question, but as a musing. From a painter nonetheless. And perhaps more significantly, from Ng Joon Kiat, a painter who has long been questioning painting, and not just through the question of 'what is a painting', that is the materiality of what is added to, dabbed onto, plastered on, a canvas, on wood, onto aluminium, on a surface, but who is on a quest to explore 'paint' itself, on a journey of 'playing with paint'. So, a question that might never quite have been meant for me. Thus, quite possibly only a quest that I am embarking on only because I have heard it as a question, have heard it call out to me, heard its call as a question, have taken it as to be a question, have inscribed the mark of a question on it. Have made it significant because I first started marking on it, have let it weigh on me. 'What is the weight of a painting?' Which is not the same question as, 'how much does a painting weigh?' For that, all you have to do is to get a scale. But rather, a question of 'its weight': of how much it 'weighs down' - not just on you, even as that is certainly part of the question, but perhaps even on itself. And where the text opens the possibility that the image is 'the weightless weight' one encounters - is the site of a coming-together of the work and the one who stands before it, whether by sight or in the mind's eye - in the 'gap between the frame and the viewer'; and like the feather of Ma'at, is the juncture in which judgment occurs, where there is a weighing out, where the status of the work as art is quite possibly weighed up, where there is a weighing in by everyone involved, and where what is considered 'good' might well entail an absence of weight.

This book opens with a provocation by Slavoj ¿i¿ek to cut ourselves off from the decaying corpse of the old Europe in order to keep the European legacy alive . Which is not an attempt to merely cherry-pick good features over bad ones, but an argument that the main reason to stay with the name Europe , to keep a certain faith in Europe , is the fact the that European legacy provides the best critical instruments to analyze what went wrong, has been going awry, in Europe. It is nothing other than a challenge for us to imagine, perhaps even conceive - give birth to in the precise sense of manifest - the possibility of a Europe that acts in a global way that is not focused on Europe. It is followed by a reading of his manifesto by Jeremy Fernando - who performs a reading which tries never to forget that what is being read is a manifesto, has been called, entitled, is named, A European Manifesto . For, names name possibilities. And a manifesto is a text, and like every text, comes with its particularities, its inherent specificities: and, in its case, foregrounds the fact that it manifests itself, shows itself, stages (theoria) itself. Puts itself on a stage whilst fully aware of the fact that it is staging itself. Thus, always also brings with it the question, what is the effect of a manifesto?, alongside its compendium, how does one read a manifesto? Which is not to say that reading is passive, and that the one who reads has nothing to do with what is being read. For, as Paul de Man continues to teach us, not that the act of reading is innocent: far from it. It is the starting point of all evil ; where, reading not only resounds with echoes of the primordial question, rings with potentially unanswerable questions, but might well be a quest that continually writes itself into us. Nor devoid of risk. For in attempting to attend to a text, in opening oneself to the possibilities of a text, one risks the possibility of falling, along with all the potential disasters this entails, in love; that is, of seeing, of being in, the world no longer from the perspective of the One but from the perspective of Two (Alain Badiou). That in reading, not only is one bringing forth certain potentials of and in a text, but that one opens oneself to the text writing itself onto oneself, manifesting itself in one's very self. And where there is the possibility that an attempt to read Europe , even as one might be trying to be as critical of it as possible, even if one is maintaining a distance from it, keeping a gap from what one has named Europe , in reading one has opened oneself to being called by Europe - summoned by spectres of a Europe that we might not even think, realise, imagine, we are reading - being shaped by Europe into becoming European , whatever that may even begin to mean...

Four Letter Words Michael Kearney (author)Djohan Hanapi (illustrator)Setsuko Adachi (contributor)Priyageetha Dia (contributor)Lim Lee Ching (contributor) Four Letter Words has at its core a unique concept of the collaborative effort. The author/poet, Michael Kearney, came up with the idea for a book of poetry and retinal art over twenty years ago. Inspired by William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman's collaborations, and Roland Barthes' notion of 'The Death of the Author', Kearney envisioned a work where the only communication between the poet and the artist would be the artist's readings of the poems. After a long search, Kearney found Delere Press, who ventured to take on the challenging concept. The press placed Kearney's poems with risograph artist Djohan Hanapi of Knuckles & Notch. Hanapi created his illustrations sans communication with Kearney until after the project was completed. The result is a work where the poems and illustrations can be examined/enjoyed as stand-alone pieces of art, or as a whole, which exposes the pitfalls of any attempt at forming a tight, concise, interpretation of these pieces. Four Letter Words is a work that is open to the possibility of a myriad of readings; it allows each reader to discover their own meaning(s), and perhaps also discover something(s) about themself.

In the spirit of Bataille, Dufourmantelle, Freud, and others, The Toilet God presents an invitation to engage in an achronological excursion through prose that conceal moments of ambiguity - deploying rhetorical devices such as paranomasia. Exploring the richness of Japanese culture, questions of economy, hospitality, and catharsis reside just beneath the surface. Consider the posture of Buddha, handcrafted yosegi-zaiku, or the prescient dreams of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Accompanying illustrations by Hannah Walsh proffer a glimpse into the world of mojie and the vistas of Japan setting a familiar territory for The Toilet God who awaits your visitation.

to drift -perchance to dream. In which one can never quite tell if a thought that comes to one came from one, had arrived onto one, or if one might have merely slid to it, drifted into it. Where, one can never quite know if one is responding to works - to the beautiful pieces brought forth by Priyageetha Dia, Anne Dufourmantelle, Gabriela Golder, Mariela Yeregui, Jacques Tati - or if one is writing onto them, speaking over them. Or, if the works might have written themselves onto me, into me, have been guiding the hand (manus) which thinks it is, have been leading the scribe who imagines he is, inscribing onto the manuscript. Where, the very notion of having a thought might well only be thought teasing one. And where, teasing out a thought always already opens one self to being teased. But perhaps we are always only - can only ever be - playing.

Our skin --all over us, inside us;multiple, divisible, same same but different; different in parts within, and all over, the same self; a multiplicity. And where, it is our scars -- that write themselves onto us, the keloids that hold us, claw us (khele) together -- which give us form (eidos). Without which, there is no possibility of even knowing (eidenai), catching a glimpse of, our very self. The skin upon which I write, upon which I writhe. Which writhes on me as I write. As I am writing skin.

Somewhere, tonight, two strangers. If not tonight, the next few nights. His low moan is like his voice on the phone, only more manly. Her ungentle touch. Love sprouts? Is this really love? What they do not know they could not tell us. And what they could not tell startles little. Afterwards, all was peaceful. And 'love' was not mentioned. Afterwards, 'love' was not mentioned. And all was peaceful.

This book addresses the question: what happens after the betrayal?

This text attempts to respond to the question of the relationship between art and resistance, to the possibility of art as resistance - that is, it is an attempt to meditate on the possible relationship between resisting and art. Whilst doing so, it also tries to attend to the notion that art is an encounter - between one and something that is brought forth in the movement from craft to something other than what is created through tekhn¿. And, if so, it is always also potentially unknown, unknowable, until it happens, perhaps even after it happens. That, even as it might be experienced, felt - an encounter through aisthesis - it is quite possibly a moment beyond cognition; un pas au-delà, as it were. And if so, then perhaps all attempts to know it potentially do nothing other than to frame, to confine, its potentiality.Thus, perhaps the very thing that one has to do - if one is to attempt to maintain the possibility of resistance in art - is to resist what one thinks art itself is.

The Gleaming Man is a conversation between the texts of Jeremy Fernando, the paintings of Ruben Pang, and the poems of Lim Lee Ching. Among other things, it is an attempt to meditate on the question of how different forms of work can speak with each other without speaking over - or, even worse, speaking for - an other. For, if art is the transformation of something that is brought forth through craft, through tekhn¿, into something else, it not only potentially lies beyond us, it might well also transform the one who looks at it. Thus, writing on art - even if one thinks one is picking up a call from the work - not only risks completely missing the point, but is quite possibly always already writing art itself. Thus, to write on art, one must open oneself to the possibility of the impossible. Which is precisely why Jeremy Fernando attempts to bring forth an impossible writing. And where alongside Lim Lee Ching's poems - keeping in mind Michel Deguy's reminder that poetry is not about seeing the invisible, nor the very visible; poetry instead is about seeing the slightly visible - the texts attempt to open us to not just what can be seen in the paintings of Ruben Pang, but what shimmers there; both within and always also slightly beyond seeing itself. But not just as words, in words - but in its sound, its musicality. And when in reading, in seeing - the paintings, the poems, the texts - it is the reader who brings them all together, in an impromptu conversation, if only for a moment.

Yanyun Chen draws, and is driven by the question,"how far can I go with this?"How far can one go with charcoal and papers, and where does this bring one, lead one, leave one? How far can one go with a line, a stroke, a shape, a light, a shadow, an area, a turn, a form, a subject, an object, a trace, a place, a space, an empty whiteness where the paper takes its stance and refuses to leave, refuses to stay. Refusal. Refusing - a story. A fiction.In the space of bound papers, images have a dialogue with text. Both are birthed by the empty spaces that shape their form; a form that becomes readable only with the presence of darkness and light. In its shadow, four authors sit together to have a silent conversation. Perhaps that is what being intimate is all about; in there, fiction goes far beyond non-fiction.After all, drawings are fictions. So are writings.Perhaps, that is what makes them real.

In her lecture entitled 'Cosmopolitics: Learning to Think with Sciences, Peoples, Natures', Isabelle Stengers issues a challenge for us to rethink our relationality with the world: to move from an anthropocentric conception - one of her main critiques is the casting of Nature as a "loving mother," as if we are its offspring - to a response to, "with," the unknowability that is Nature; in its, and our, multiplicities. This book offers a reading of the notion of the mother; and, in particular, why Science relies on it. Rifting off, and with, Stengers' notion that the familial, familiar - that naming - is an attempt to tame Nature, this reading opens the possibility that Science's reliance on the correspondence between a notion and a phenomenon, for legitimacy and ultimately authority - allowing all echoes of daddy to resound here - is hinged upon the figure of the mother. However, a reading of the mother also unveils the mystical foundations of the daddy figure of Science, or at least that which Science has become. Thus, it is not so much that we need to revoke Mother Nature, or recast her as an ancient Gaia (as Stengers suggests), but that, more than ever, we need to take the notion of the mother, in all its profundity, seriously. And by doing so, we might perhaps reopen the register that Friedrich Nietzsche never quite lets us forget; that of the gay scientist - the one who tests everything, even the test itself. And in the spirit of Nietzsche, the book opens a conversation with Stengers through multiple channels: written text by Jeremy Fernando; paintings by Maureen Burdock; Mariane Klettenhofer's layout which brings both together whilst maintaining their singularities. Thus, a triptych of responses: all disparate yet always also with Stengers; quite possibly in an attempt to respond to the possibility of a community that she calls for.

Part performance script, part poetic endeavor, part philosophical meanderings, 99 Problems to be told to a plant & The Excavation of Its Future Memory engages words with and through the material they find themselves embedded in/amongst. The project was first intended to be set of aphorisms as part of a performance script performed and displayed alongside plants. The first set of aphorisms accumulated through a spiraling-out from an original set of 13, not necessarily mimicking the growth of a plant or the golden ratio particularly, but following the writer's own convictions and rhythms. The second half, a meditation and index of the first 99 problems was written some years later; returning impossibly and expanding gregariously the pertinent issue of where the grass meets the ground by providing a possible and probable ground from where the leaves of the 99 aphorisms sprouted. Where exactly is this text? Is it on the page or in the photo of the page, in reading it aloud or performing it or is it an archive of a performance of writing it? Where does one thing become another, and what have our distinctions done for us anyhow?

The aim of this book is to show that precisely in the indeterminacy of literature we can find the possibility of ethics and it will start with the examination of a work that clearly has a paradoxical nature - Sreten Ugri¿i¿'s Infinitive. The paradox of Infinitive consists in the fact that it is a monograph, but a monograph about a non-existent book. The examination of the paradox on which Infinitive is based will be associated with Maurice Blanchot's analysis of the (im)possibility of literature from his essays "Orpheus's Gaze" and "Encountering the Imaginary." This study will claim that two most important features of the (im)possibility of literature are: the passage from je to il and the temporal paradox of the time of time's absence. These two features are interconnected: a loss of personality (and the inability to subsume the work of art under terms of decision and intention) leads to a strange realm that is governed by the time of time's absence. This is the realm of imaginary or a place where, to paraphrase Blanchot, language becomes its own image. Through the analysis of specific literary works (Infinitive, Marbot: A Biography and The Lost Estate) this book will try to describe the most important paradoxes of literature. In its final part, through a dialogue between Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas, two theses will be formulated: first, the passage from je to il will be associated with the impossibility of death and close reading of Blanchot's reworking of Levinas's concepts will open a perspective according to which art is capable of offering the experience of fundamental alterity; second, the time of time's absence will be described as the temporality of artwork, but also as the temporality of the other.

This book is an attempt to respond to a text message, a textual call - to a missive sent by Tombie Rautenbach that arrived at three in the morning on 7 March 2007 - which read, « Baudrillard is dead ». But more than a eulogy, more than a mourning - if such a thing is possible - this is an attempt to think with Baudrillard, all whilst keeping in mind the fact that his work, his writing, his thought, always brings with it a little chuckle, a sly grin. So, perhaps an attempt at the impossible: thinking with a smile at a point where there might not have been much, if anything, to smile about.Trying never to forget that in attempting to speak with the dead, one always also runs the risk of rewriting them, writing over them, quite possibly effacing them. But, of course, Baudrillard already knew this: after all, he was the one who called for his own disappearance even before his death. So perhaps, this book is an imaginative response: a reading in fidelity to JB; not to the man - nothing so banal - nor even to his work; but a reading that opens itself to the possibility of the grin of the one who has already disappeared, to the shadow of his silent smile. The responses are composed of writings by Jeremy Fernando; alongside translations by Setsuko Adachi & Daniel Kwang Guan Chan; a poem by Laura Parker; art-works by Russell Bennetts, Cecília Erismann, Michael Kearney, Sorelle Henricus, Julia Hölzl, Grace Euna Kim, Jeanette Lamb, John WP Phillips, Kenny Png, Kristy Trinier, Sean Smith, and Berit Jane Soli-Holt. These conversations between - perhaps even attempted séances by - the various texts, modes of responses, were mediated by Yanyun Chen.

Bejn S¿ab u Dü¿an (Between Clouds and Smoke) brings together the body of work in video, photography and drawing-painting entitled Terrain Vague by artist Vince Briffa, and a reflective essay entitled Tryst as a reaction to the work by philosopher Michael Zammit. Terrain Vague encapsulates the artist's continued interest in trying to define a co-existence of realities in conditions of vagueness. The works are inspired by Victor Hugo's coining of the phrase in Les Misérables, referring to the banlieue or the suburbs; the existing urban void or neglected post-industrial space, or more precisely, the place where the city meets nature. They display a continued search for a dividing line, if indeed one clearly exists, that acts as the seam that holds together distanced, even at times opposing truths. These works do not only personify the uncertain relationship between man and place, but also act as an agent for the restitution and creation of new metaphor and meaning; harbouring equivocal spaces of becoming that are splay to infinite possibilities of engagement and interpretation. The works underpin and further unfurl the notion of the no man's land, not seeking to act as chronicle or commentary, but rather question the very core of the many truths which they themselves suggest. Tryst deals with the spoken word, held hostage by the very context in which it is uttered, which reveals by means of this very otherness, depths of meaning, mines of wealth and infinite possibilities vying to become manifest whenever and wherever any utterance dares be whispered. This is the prosperity (artha in Sanskrit, implies meaning) that upholds and sustains the speaking creature and its woven (protam) realities. Thus the sense of the limitless that certain forms of speech (e.g. bhasha: the language that came to be known as Sanskrit) conjure, is attractive and regarded very highly in the non-dual (advaita) philosophy addressing the isolated and fragmented human condition, exploring the echoing vague terrain lying beyond the seeming dual nature of self and the other. The transcendental therefore is distinguished as witness, a sort of no one, there where the visible recedes into the invisible and vice versa.

« … It has taken me years to admit - perhaps only to myself - that I don't care about writing something important, something significant. That my only hope, wish - dream even - is to write something beautiful … » (139) This book attempts to open the dossier of fidelity; and, in particular, attend to the question of the relationship between fidelity and its object, to the question of: must there be an object to fidelity? For, if one is faithful to something or someone, is one responding to the what, the characteristics of the thing, the person; or the who, the person, thing, as such? Which is not to say that what and who are necessarily distinguishable, separable, to begin with. However, if we open the possibility that the who is always already beyond us - outside of knowability, if even only slightly - this suggests that it is the spectre, the potential unknowability, that haunts all relationality. Thus, even if there is an object to one's fidelity - for, without which one cannot even begin to speak of fidelity, speak of relationality - this might well be an objectless object or, at least, an object that remains veiled from us. In order to explore this relationship - in which one cannot even be sure if there is a relationality; for, without the object, the nature, if one can call it that, of the relation is speculative - the text takes the form of an exploratory fiction. Where it attempts to bear witness to the possibility of fidelity - keeping in mind that fiction is both the limit to, and condition of, testimony - whilst quite possibly only testifying to the possibility of being able to testify. Nothing more.

At the heart of this book lies attempts to read: reading here being understood as theopenness to the possibility of another; a relation that occurs prior to any semantic or formal identification, and, therefore, prior to any attempt at assimilating, or appropriating, what is being read to the one who reads.Thus, an event.It opens with Lim Lee Ching's reading of this book; a reading before your reading, as it were. And is followed by Jeremy Fernando's attempts to respond to the many Roland Barthes - all whilst foregrounding the risk that, even as one attempts to read as openness to the possibility of another, all reading potentially re-writes the other; that his reading may well be an inscribing of his R.B.; that whilst reading it, you may well be making your very own R.B.. In the midst of which, you will find a piano score composed by Jachin Pousson: which is both a nod to the fact that Barthes was a pianist, and also a note to the musicality of the thought of Roland Barthes. The hope is that these readings bring, open the possibility of, pleasure: not just for the one who reads, but perhaps even for - if one allows oneself to imagine - the text. For the one we call, name - can do nothing but name - Roland Barthes.

This book is an attempt to read, to respond to, the Occupy Movement in four movements. Opening with a reading of Flann O'Brien's evocative short story, 'John Duffy's Brother', it opens the dossier of the generative powers of imagination: not just in opening possibilities in the world, but that what is brought forth is always already a world onto itself. This is followed by a reading of Hermann Melville's 'Bartleby the Scrivener', with a particular focus on the utterance, « I would prefer not to » ; not just as a phrase of negative resistance, but as a potential challenge, as a seductive challenge. The third movement is an attempt to directly respond - if such a thing is even possible - to the Occupy Movement in all of its potentiality: in no way, shape, or form, does the text attempt to explain it; instead, it attends to it in all of its possibilities, unknowabilities, absurdities even - en bref, as an event. It ends with an attempt to reflect on what it means to speak of something, especially an event - through, and alongside, the slippery figure of the subject, the « I ».

A love story about a man and his leg."Juli Crockett is one of the most original and imaginative voices in the American theatre"~ Travis Preston, Artistic Direction: CalArts Centre for New Performance

In the Emergence of Brood III, Gabriella Torres uses the life cycle of the seventeen- year cicadas as a vehicle to explore ideas of home-a home that perhaps may or may not have ever existed. Known as the Iowan Brood, Torres takes on the collective voice of the emerging cicadas and re-imagines them as teenagers on the verge of adulthood in a summer of desire and song. Through their voices, the poems weave a narrative of discovery and loss to create what Gina Myers describes in her foreword as "a haunted poetry.... where the ghosts of the past and the ghosts of what could have been co-mingle."