RAMBLES
Poetic Seeing for the Aesthetic Being
"Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former can be called a poet, but the latter should be termed a scientist."
– Aristotle
To those who don't know, Empedocles is a pre-Socratic thinker who composed two volumes on Natural Philosophy in hexameter verse. What Aristotle is saying in the above quote is that it isn't verse that makes the poem, it's the content.
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RELEASES
The Apartment in Bab El-Louk
Described as a “fabulous noir poem” by Arablit’s Marcia Lynx Qualey, THE APARTMENT IN BAB EL-LOUK was first published in Arabic by Dar Merit as a slim 40-page experiment of a book that ended up taking away Lebanon's Kahil Award for Best Graphic Novel in 2015.
Translated to English by Elizabeth Jaquette, this new edition from Darf Publishers has been expanded to 84 pages, with meticulous art direction by yours truly.
Admittedly, it’s an odd little book that doesn’t quite fit any narrative or genre norms. I, personally, wouldn't call it a graphic novel at all. It's its own thing really; part zine, part artist-book, part travelogue with a bit of crime noir flare.
You can order it directly from London-based Darf Publishers, or get a free signed copy from me. If you answer me one question: What is your favorite non-English language graphic novel (or illustrated novel) and why?
Translated works count. There is no right or wrong answer, I just get to choose the one I like most. Let me know.
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SHOWS
Unwanted Stories
January 31st saw THE SOLAR GRID participate in an exhibition at the Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst in Oldenburg, Germany. The exhibition, titled UNWANTED STORIES, is on show until April 2, 2018.
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RAMBLES
Overlooking Borders and Making Connections
There were those who spoke of geographical borders, and those who spoke of social borders. Linguistic borders were discussed, as were artistic and disciplinary borders. Three days of borderless talks about borders that were kicked off by a fascinating introduction to the very etymology of the Arabic word for borders (حدود), which shares its root with words like “severe” (حاد), “challenge” (تحدي), “determine” (حدد), “metal” (حديد), and “edge” (حد), which itself is also the word for “limit".
This was at a conference at the University of Balamand in Lebanon, where I was in attendance with my lovely wife Kelsey P Norman who presented an excellent paper on migration and refugee policy in the Middle East and North Africa.
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TALKS
The Work of Alternate Worlds – Cultures of Energy @ Rice University
Just about wrapping up the text for my talk at Rice University's CULTURES OF ENERGY 7 conference, which I am pretty excited about. Not just for sharing the keynote panel with Cymene Howe, Jeff Vandermeer, and Caroline Levander, but because all the panels sound extremely compelling.
Poster with complete list of panels and participants in the following link.
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WORKS
Intellectual Knitting
I'd heard Gaiman compare his approach to writing NORSE MYTHOLOGY to knitting. Something he'd do whenever he had a few idle moments in his day, and I thought to myself: I'd like to do that too. As some of you may already know, I no longer have Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook on my phone. And sometimes I don't have a book on me when I have a few idle moments in the day, either waiting my turn at the bank or awaiting a friend at the coffee shop, that sort of thing. But I almost always have a notebook on me, so I decided I'd like to do a little intellectual knitting of my own. So I started using those idle moments to write stories, shorts that don't require the kind of sustained focus long-form narratives demand. And I decided to make it part of my mission for the year to write one short story a month, with the hopes of coming out of the year's end with 12 complete shorts, all sci-fi. My first draft, I typically write in longhand, and then I type it out in an online application called Writer. At which point, what I have is good enough to send along to two-fisted editor Dan Hill to tell me what a mess I've made. No, but in all seriousness, Dan is an excellent editor who doesn't at all impose his approach onto the writer. He has a sense for tuning in to what you're already doing and bringing out the best of it. Still not sure what I intend on doing with the stories, but the point right now is to just write them.
One of the other reasons why Writer is an excellent app is that it keeps track of your stats; how much you write a day, what time do you write, that sort of thing. Which tells you something about the way you work you might not have been totally aware of. I've made my stats public, so you can keep an eye on my progress if you'd like.
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EATS
Vegan Beet Ramen
If you think that vegan ramen is a tasteless culinary crime that should never be pondered, think again. This version, elevated with beets, will blow your mind.
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RADAR
The Green Era of Penguin Crime
My good friend, graphic-designer/curator/critic and all around awesome person Josh MacPhee has an extensive blog post over at Justseeds on an era in Penguin's Crime series when covers shared a Green/Black/White color palette and abided by a grid designed by Romek Marber. Josh goes to great lengths to analyze how various designers/illustrators worked with Marber's grid, and how its rules began to be bent and eventually abandoned over time. It's a meticulous post, with a total of 150 vintage cover scans. Essential reading for anyone remotely interested in cover design.
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FROM: Szedlák Ádám
SUBJECT: stray signal on an open frequency :)
Hey Ganzeer!
I hope your sabbatical from newsletter writing is going well. Not reading it is going as intended, but I miss the Restricted Frequency.
I've found two things in the past couple of weeks which might interest you.
The older is Penumbra's New Fiction. Robin Sloan, the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore, Sourdough and an all around interesting guy started a publishing effort. You may print the short stories from the page or order a risographed copy, but there's no internet readable version of them. You may mine the text out of the print CSS, but that of course is cheating. I managed to snatch a risod copy, it looks fine and extremely ephemeral. And the first story is a strong one on bullying at school, another plus point. https://wizard.limo/
The newer site is The Disconnect, a magazine that could only be read offline. You load the page, switch of the wifi, then you can see the table of contents and start to read. It's a bit on the agressive side of techno-social commentary for me but at least it's interesting in the technological sense. https://thedisconnect.co/one/
Yours,
Adam
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Adam,
Both of these are really fucking cool. Sloan's initiative was first brought to my attention via Old Man Warren, but I haven't yet had a chance to get my hands on any of them riso'd stories (sells out fast!), nor have I been inclined to print them myself because my current printer is absolute garbage. As a print-head, I'm in love with the initiative though and agree with Robin that the internet, as it stands today, does not lend itself to longish reads.
Which brings me to the absolute brilliance of The Disconnect, where you can only access the magazine's content by disabling your wi-fi. Which means you lose access to everything else on the web, actively forcing you to stick to the magazine and pay attention. Absolute genius. Thanks for passing this along, Adam. The content, I find, is actually really good. I quite liked the cover story, Rescue by Brian Mihok, and Alex Austin's Online Remains is a good one too. My favorite of the issue is Freight by Jen Knox. Really strong debut. Hope they manage to sustain it, which I imagine could be doable with a pay-what-you-want setup.
Thanks again for passing these along, Adam! Fantastic finds.
Cheers,
Ganzeer
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BUILDS
Restricted.Academy
I get a lot excellent recommendations from you, things that ought to be shared with other Frequency Freaks (that's what I'm calling you now). Many of you also seem to agree that Twitter is toxic, and Facebook is awfully intrusive, so I just started an online community. A message forum, if you will. I know, I knooow, I must be mad. But it'll be fine, we're all adults here, right? Right?
I hate having to "sign up" for new things, but creating a new account on this thing is a breeze. Come say hello.
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