Hello! We’re back for another month of blog digesting.
I’m still mostly working behind the scenes at the moment, but a few things broke free of various embargoes and became blog content. I actually had a meeting with Repeater this month about book details — I had been scheduled to deliver a new manuscript by September. In all honesty, the deadline made me shit myself, and I jumped around and felt very insecure about what I have been producing and whether it will be good enough. (Not a blog perfectionist in the slightest, but if it’s gonna go into print, neuroticism takes over.)
Thankfully, things are back on track. I’ve put yet another project on hold and returned to my book on accelerationism, which I think is in a lot better shape than I thought it was when I hit my last wall with it. A first draft may even be ready for the now-defunct September deadline. Fingers crossed!
I’ll keep you Patreons updated on that. In the meantime, here’s everything that went down this month.
K-Punk, Vol. 3
The third installment of the Spanish translation of K-Punk is out now, completing the set. I was invited to write a new introduction for it at the start of this year. Patreons have had access to it for a while, but now it’s available for everyone to read now that the book is out.
You can read the English language version on the blog via the link below, and you’ll also find a link to the Spanish translation there too, which is both in the book and on Caja Negra’s blog.
— Introduction to K-Punk, Vol. 3: English Language Version
That Grimes TikTok…
I wrote about the Grimes TikTok about communism in the context of Reza Negarestani’s Intelligence & Spirit, which gained way more traction that anticipated and ruined my mentions for at least a day. There was some good discussion that went on around it though, including a long comment from Hypnosifl, which I shared in a separate post.
— AI is Good Actually: Notes on Commie Grimes and Intelligence & Spirit
— AI is Good Actually: A Further Note from Hypnosifl
The Memeing of Everything
After the cover of Mike Watson’s forthcoming book for Zero launched a thousand subtweets, I wanted to try and write something that wasn’t entirely cunty but at least addressed one of the prevailing problems with how a new generation of content makers is engaging with Fisher’s legacy and the legacy of the Ccru and its affiliates more generally.
— Memeing History
— Memeing Politics
Cultural Critique
I wrote a lot about TV this month? It’s been ages. I feel like I haven’t really watched anything in months. So much of lockdown is spent sitting around, I tend not to like doing it by choice. It’s also hard to concentrate.
Despite all that, three posts about films or TV shows that feel zeitgeisty? I thought Mare of Easttown was good, precisely because it showed how counter-productive most policing is, and I thought Cruella was a weird anachronistic mess, and I thought Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock and the entire Conservative government starts to make total sense when you consider them in the context of “zany” TV characters from I Love Lucy, Parks & Rec, Veep and The Thick of It.
— Mare of Easttown: 2021’s One True Cop Show
— Cruella
— Our Zany Ministers: On Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson, the Personal and the Political
That last one was basically half of a chapter that I wrote for the forthcoming book on narcissism, but I’m not sure I liked it for that context any longer. Still, a decent sneak peek if you want to know where I’m heading at the moment.
Poetry and Poetics
Speaking of “where I’m heading at the moment”, I’ve been thinking a lot about poetry recently. I’m reading a lot and still formulating thoughts, but these two posts contain a load of inchoate takes on stuff.
— Stronger Than Death: A Note on Poetry and Grief
— Blogging as Infinite Conversation: Preamble
Hull
This post was basically an excuse to share an article written for MAP Magazine about the experiences of Chilean refugees in Hull in the 1970s, who fled the violent rise of neoliberalism under Pinochet only to find a seemingly more innocuous version taking root in England. The fact this all took place in my hometown of Hull was also fascinating to me. It’s a short piece with some excellent photos and it stayed with me for weeks afterwards.
— Hull and the Rise of Neoliberalism
Photography
Just one photography post this month, but I took a lot of photos in the meantime. There are currently fortnightly photoblogs scheduled all the way up until September, so look out for those.
Podcasts and Appearances
There were quite a few events happening this month. Alongside the last two installment of our reading group, before we move onto Benjamin Bratton’s The Revenge of the Real, there was Repeater Radio’s mammoth K-Punk marathon, which I’m hoping will go online soon. I also spoke to our friend Bec for her Liminal Worlds website and roleplayed as spermatozoa for two episodes of After the Maestro.
— Repeater Radio presents: K-Punk Marathon
— XG Reading Group 2.8: Interlude
— XG Reading Group 2.9: The Social
— Literary Ley Lines: XG in the Liminal Lounge
— After the Maestro
That’s all for now. See you again next month!