News
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
XYZT Excerpts in e-flux Journal #97 - February 2019
e-flux Journal #97 (February 2019) has published a few excerpts from my novel XYZT here. I'm excited to write that XYZT will be published by Urbanomic and distributed by MIT Press this spring! From MIT site:
Summary
Genre-defying fiction that accelerates “cross-cultural dialogue” into a kaleidoscopic rush of sensory estrangements, fairy tales, and alien encounters.
“We've been told that there's no difference between us and them.” On this premise the protagonists of XYZT contrive a device capable of shuttling volunteers back and forth between the United States and Iran, hidden from the watchful eyes of immigration police and state bureaucracies. Each volunteer will have a single opportunity to be received by a local host and to have a brief authentic experience of what it means to live as “them” before being transported back home.
Set against the backdrop of escalating hostilities between Iran and the United States, and based on her experiences living in Iran at the end of the first decade of 2000s, Kristen Alvanson's XYZT builds on the idea of a “dialogue between civilizations” only to demonstrate the potentially outlandish ramifications that might result from such a seemingly innocuous idea.
As the tests continue and the “dialogue” progresses, the very fabric of reality begins to deteriorate. Ordinary people become entangled in extraordinary situations where the deep state, mythological fauna, and counterfactual universes start to erupt into our world. Terra firma is exposed as an illusion, but far from heralding the bliss of mutual recognition, this final disillusionment may unleash a terrible malediction.
An audacious cross-genre experiment, a firsthand memoir of what it means to see what “they” see, and a science-fictional, non-standard engagement with anthropology, XYZT reveals fissures and cracks in what the media calls reality, but which in fact is liable to take on all the unpredictable features of a contemporary fairy tale.
More information is available here.
Monday, January 15, 2018
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Aesthetics After Finitude
Baylee Brits, Prudence Gibson and Amy Ireland's anthology Aesthetics After Finitude is available on re:press here. It's my cover image.
Friday, January 30, 2015
For Machine Use Only · Schneiderei Eröffnung, Suchmaschinen, Gruppenausstellung
I participated in this group experiment in Vienna at Schneiderei, curated by Mohammad Salemy and including artists- Abbas Akhavn, Julieta Aranda, Diann Bauer, Amanda Beech, Kevin Bright, Eli Bornowsky, Christine Corlett, Ignacio Corral, Manuel Correa, Jake Dibeler, Samuel Forsythe, Aaron Gemmill, Johann Groebner, Antonia Hirsch, Juliet Jacobson, Gareth James, Khaled Jarrar, Philip King, Atila Richard Lukacs, Tom McGlynn, Christina McPhee, Mani Nilchiani, Rebecca Norton, R. H. Quaytman, Raha Raissnia, Patricia Reed, Brian Rogers, Nooshin Rostami, Nicolas Sassoon, Charles Stankievich, Joni Spigler, Keith Tilford and Paul Wong.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Incredible Machines
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Annihilation
e-flux Journal #52
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook has been out a little over a month and is getting lots of great reviews.
This all-new definitive guide to writing imaginative fiction takes a completely novel approach and fully exploits the visual nature of fantasy through original drawings, maps, renderings, and exercises to create a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring object. Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.
In addition to Jeff's text, Jeremy Zerfoss has created the fantastic graphics running through the book. My artwork is also included along with many artists and sections on featured writers too. The book is huge, beautifully illustrated and has endless ideas to help fiction writers and others recharge their imagination.
Check out this video that gives a glimpse of the layout...
Order your copy from Amazon here.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Blow Your Mind: On Freedom and Enlightenment Event July 20, 2013
The first Happy Hour event features an evening of Promethean conversation on freedom and enlightenment. Three thinkers committed to exploring new trajectories within philosophical realism- Ray Brassier, Suhail Malik, and Reza Negarestani will discuss the stakes of a return to reason in the realms of philosophy, politics and art.
If you happen to be in New York City Saturday night, Ray Brassier doesn't come to town often . . . the conversation between the three should be intense.
Blow Your Mind: On Freedom and Enlightenment
A conversation between Ray Brassier, Suhail Malik, and Reza Negarestani
Saturday, July 20, 2013
7 p.m.
88 Eldridge Street, 4th floor
New York, NY 10002
free
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES IS OUT!
---Features over 60 pieces of art, including four originals by Hellboy’s Mike Mignola
---All-new Fiction from top creators in fiction, comics, and the art world
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Urbanomic is having a Summer Auction!!!
Kristen Alvanson, Amanda Beech, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Cut Hands, Detanico and Lain, FIELDCLUB, Renée Green, Florian Hecker, Kröõt Juurak & Mårten Spångberg, Nick Land, Sam Lewitt, China Miéville, Pamela Rosenkranz, Conrad Shawcross, Keith Tilford
The PDF catalogue, which contains images and details of all works, with links to higher resolution images, and details of how to bid can be found online at http://www.urbanomic.com/auction.php
Friday, February 04, 2011
THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
The Book of Categories - Charles Yu
Hugh Alter, Charlie Jane Anders, Julie Andrews, Christopher Begley, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Nickolas Brienza, Tucker Cummings, Kaolin Imago Fire, Jess Gulbranson, Jen Harwood-Smith, Willow Holser, Rhys Hughes, Incognitum, Paul Kirsch, Michael J. Larson, Therese Littleton, Graham Lowther, Claire Massey, Tony Mileman, Adam Mills, Annalee Newitz, Ignacio Sanz, Steven M. Schmidt, Grant Stone, Norman Taber, Brian Thill, Nick Tramdack, Nicholas Troy, Tom Underberg, Horia Ursu, William T. Vandemark, Kali Wallace, Tracie Welser, Amy Willats, Nadine Wilson, and Ben Woodard.
Over 60 images by: Aeron Alfrey, Kristen Alvanson, Rikki Ducornet, Greg Broadmore, John Coulthart, Scott Eagle, Vladimir Gvozdariki, Yishan Li, Mike Mignola, Jonathan Nix, Eric Orchard, James A. Owen, Ron Pippin, J.K. Potter, Eric Schaller, Ivica Stevanovic, Jan Svankmajer, Sam Van Olffen, Myrtle von Damitz, III, and Jake von Slatt.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
NEW YORK TO LONDON AND BACK – The Medium of Contingency
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
dESIRE Gloss: A Specimen in Glossator
Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary Vol 3 has just been published and is also available online: http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/glossator/issue/view/45.
Included in the volume is a specimen of dESIRE Gloss, a collaborative commentary on a series of 100 photographs drawn from my dESIRE Project. Befitting the polysemy of the word gloss, dESIRE Gloss is designed to demonstrate the amorous relations between photography, commentary, and desire. This specimen includes gloss from Nicola Masciandaro and Scott Wilson two of the commentators in the collaborative.
Articles in the volume:
The Night Vigil of Shen Zhou J. H. PrynneThe Rhetoric of Commentary Carsten Madsen
Fourty-Four Ways of Looking at Marginalia Louis Bury
A Curious Mistake Concerning Cranial Sutures in Aristotle's Parts of Animals, or, the Use and Abuse of the Footnote Barbara Clayton
Kinesis of Nothing and the Ousia of Poetics (Part Review Essay, Part Notes on a Poetics of Auto-Commentary) Daniel C. Remein
dESIRE Gloss: A Specimen Kristen Alvanson, Nicola Masciandaro, Scott Wilson
Thursday, September 02, 2010
THE REAL THING September 3, 2010 at Tate Britain
Also part of the event will be a curatorial intervention in which I have also been involved (in collaboration with China Miéville, Robin Mackay, Eugene Thacker, Reza Negarestani and others): The entire collection of paintings in Room 9 which is currently themed Art and the Sublime has been relabeled according to the paradigms of speculative / weird realism, transcendental nihilism and other emerging philosophical lines of inquiry.
For more details visit Urbanomic’s website: http://www.urbanomic.com/event-uf12-details.php.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Update on Protocol Architecture
I posted earlier about the Protocol Architecture Competition. Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, one of the other judges, has written more about the Protocol Architecture competition and the group’s other projects (guided by v. progressive thinker Ed Keller). Check out Geoff’s post DOCUMENTS, MAPS, AND FILES OF A FICTIONAL ARCHITECTURE. He has included some images from the publication Protocol Architecture – Recovering Berlin (Danil Nagy, Yvual Borochov, Lisa Ekle) on his blog. You can download the book here. But the printed book is very nice if you can buy it (order here).
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Transmission Annual: Hospitality
The annual includes clusters of ‘friends’ who asked each other to participate. Contributors include: Graham Allen, Kristen Alvanson, Amanda Beech, Jerome Carroll, Clegg & Guttmann, Kris Cohen, Clare Connors, Nigel Cooke, Michael Corris, Eileen Costa, Juan Cruz, Meritxell Duran, Tim Etchells, Marcia Farquhar, Rachael Garfield, Charlie, Gere, Judith Goddard, Laura Heit, Vit Hopely, Nancy Hwang, Alfredo Jaar, Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Ahuvia Kahane, Sharon Kivland, Esther Leslie, Yve Lomax, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Robin Mackay, Marko Maetamm, Victor Mazin, Penny McCarthy, E. Elias Merhige, Forbes Morlock, Reza Negarestani, Hayley Newman, Dany Nobus, Haralampi G. Oroschakoff, John W. P. Phillips, Cesare Pietroiusti, Jeanne Randolph, Antonio Santos, Javier Santos, Naomi Segal, Roy Sellars, Blake Stimson, Thomson & Craighead, Irene De Vico Fallani, Rodrigo Villas, Nina Wakeford, Sarah Wood.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Open Space in Singapore
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Anonymous Materials Opening
Neither does this examination of materiality entail a fashionable celebration of those aesthetic effects commonly associated with processual tropes of artistic production (the presentation of raw materials, open-endedness, and so on). It does not rely upon the unfinished status of an artwork as a form of process-oriented practice. It could be said that such artistic sensibilities only exacerbate or obfuscate the enigma of materiality, semantically supercharging materiality in a way that can only be grasped by an audience hungry for meaning. Therefore, these processual tropes reestablish the authority of a privileged sentience whose correlation with meaning is ultimately a complete dismissal of both independency and contingency of materials in art production. As opposed to this approach, the artists in this show were chosen because their practices involve clear decisions towards the problems mentioned. In tracking the traces of production in the artwork, this group show could even be understood as a critical response to a current tendency to be too “sensitive” to materials; a tendency that could further be defined as an eclectic approach to the visual reminiscence of conceptual art.
The title of the show is taken from Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani’s book Cyclonopedia: Complicities with Anonymous Materials. It refers – in an open manner – to the book’s take on the problem of ‘inauthenticity’ whereby the subjective identity of the author is repeatedly overturned and undermined by the intervention of references, materials and narrative processes which enjoy autonomy and contingent complicities of their own. The show opens up, unfolds and reinvents this problematic embracing of materiality by evoking the randomness of functionality attributed to artists’ materials and allowing a multiplicity of relations between the artwork and its arbitrary context. Systematically blocking the tendency for a ‘higher meaning’ to emerge, the show resolutely focuses on the active, contingent role of the material conditions of the artwork. The studio-like installation itself explores the process of creating art in its very contingent and disruptive character.