Comrades.
I’m about half-way through but the Urgency Reader (2020) organised by people at RISD has been a bit of a breath of fresh air this evening. Another comp-zine on the crisis which I’m sure we’ll be inundated w/ soon enough but this collection of poems and texts and visual work and jokes and petitions and organising tools feels low-key and nice (even if some of it is a bit too ‘graphic design’). So far I really loved Caiti Burroso’s text about being laid off thats just so direct and formless like the best zine writing, not overthought just pure. I also love Elie Andersen’s contribution thats just a daily list of various peoples eating habits which reminded me alot of David Rule’s amazing anecdote zines. Thanks to Arthur ROT who is another contributor for linking this on instagram just at the right moment.
I know I already recommended Social Crisis! Mental Crisis! but the 2nd episode is out and it’s v good. They talk a little this time round about coping strategies and this idea of individual hygeine & the pervasiveness of illness being seen as a personal fault which is great especially after all this last week of fucking Boris fighting the virus on the beaches jingoism.
I enjoyed v much this conversation on the uses and limits of SF with Ken Liu, ElviaWilk, Ted Chiang & Eugene Lim, and this essay by Matt Colquhoun on class & the apolcalpse & D.H Lawrence and getting to know someone through their literary tastes. I also read this on the conservative’s ideological “soft-eugenics” line, & this on Radical America has minor goss but I have to read everything on leftist underground publishing or I’ll die.
Tomorrow for more of the same,
P