Category: Interviews

Diálogo con Matt Colquhoun:
Discussing Egreso with Pepe Tesoro for the IECCS

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I had the pleasure of talking to Pepe Tesoro a few weeks ago about my book Egress, which has recently been translated into Spanish by Matheus Calderón Torres and published by Caja Negra Editora.

The interview was conducted in English but has Spanish subtitles, and a full Spanish transcript will be published at a later date. We spoke about Mark’s enduring legacy, how Egress responds to it, and how the pandemic changed both. We also talk about psychedelia, Sally Rooney, Westerns, my next book, and various other things.

As ever, I’m grateful to be accommodated as a shamefully monolingual Anglo. Below are some tweets from a couple outlets and individuals introducing the discussion en español.

🔥 Hace unos días, nuestro compañero @pepetesoro estuvo charlando con @xenogothic sobre cultura popular, Mark Fisher y psicodelia, a raíz de la publicación en castellano de su libro: «Egreso. Sobre comunidad, duelo y Mark Fisher» (@cajanegraedit, 2021).

Originally tweeted by Instituto de Estudios Culturales y Cambio Social (@ieccs_) on December 13, 2021.

Con la excusa de la traducción de su libro ‘Egreso: sobre comunidad, duelo y Mark Fisher’ por @cajanegraedit, entrevisté a @xenogothic para el @ieccs_. Aquí tenéis la entrevista subtitulada, donde hablamos de Fisher, Sally Rooney, psicodelia y mucho más!

Como supongo que comprobaréis, los nervios traicionaron un poco mi inglés, pero creo que lo esencial de la entrevista, el extraordinario discurso de Matt, y los temas que trata (cultura popular, el legado de Fisher, el western, el mito de Narciso…) merecen de sobra la pena.

Originally tweeted by Pepe Tesoro (@pepetesoro) on December 13, 2021.

Hoy publicamos esta fantástica entrevista de @pepetesoro a @xenogothic en la que hablan del legado de Mark Fisher, psicodelia y otras muchas cosas. La he disfrutado muchísimo, especialmente el intercambio sobre series y la importancia de lo popular.

Originally tweeted by Manuel Romero (@ManuelRomeroFer) on December 13, 2021.

The Philosophy and Politics of Accelerationism — Course Promo

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Meta-Nomad very generously asked me to collaborate with him on a course about accelerationism six weeks ago. He suggested that he’d cover the philosophy of accelerationism and I could cover the politics of accelerationism. I thought this was a really interesting idea. The result is a load of content that we’re going to be releasing this Friday (24th July 2020) via his Teachable page.

I don’t want to give away too much — we’ll be sharing more info later in the week, including course outlines and costs — but we have recorded the above chat which begins a particular conversation that we hope this course will go on to further develop.

A promotional video for the second Hermitix course called The Philosophy and Politics of Accelerationism, a collaboration with Matt Colquhoun (www.xenogothic.com). The course will be a paid course consisting of 10 lectures and transcripts, with optional seminars and one-on-ones. James Ellis (Meta-Nomad) will cover the philosophical aspects of Accelerationism and Matt Colquhoun will cover the political aspects.

Enjoy!

Dialectical Modernism: XG for the Pseudodoxology Podcast Network

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On Saturday afternoon I had what might be the most productive conversation yet about my book Egress with the inimitable Kantbot.

There was so much we could have kept talking about and maybe we’ll chat again sometime for your pleasure. First, we laid the groundwork of what my book is about and then — as Kantbot has put it out in the episode’s tags — we dove into “Accelerationism, Capitalist Realism, Dialectic Materialism, Flying Nightmare Skulls, Grandpa Munster, Hauntology, LSD, Matrix 2 Rave Scene, Mrs Dalloway was Hegelian, Nick Land”.

For me, the core of this episode emerged about two hours before our conversation began when Kantbot DMed me with: “And also want to get your thoughts about dialectical materialism”.

This totally sent my mind spinning as I hadn’t considered this in the context of the book at all but it got right to the very core of what I think I’d implicitly wanted to do with it and also went a long way towards helping me articulating what I’m doing next — far more explicitly, at least — with my current work-in-progress One Or Several Mothers — currently a purposefully disjointed book of two halves: one on psychoanalysis and the other on literary modernism.

(I ended up writing a blogpost immediately before our conversation, trying to make my initial thoughts somewhat coherent before jumping into things, which I might post in a few days time as a little something extra.)

So, personally speaking, this conversation was amazing and I am very grateful to Kantbot for having me on the podcast and for being such an excellent host. I look forward to talking more soon!

You can listen to the episode here.

Support Kantbot’s podcast on Patreon to hear more of his excellent conversations in future and, of course, buy my book!

(NB: Coronavirus lockdowns are throttling distribution channels at the moment so physical copies of Egress are becoming quite rare commodities. It is probably most readily available from Amazon right now but, if you’d rather not give Bezos your money, best to hold out as they will become more readily available soon. For now, you can either check the ebook on Repeater’s website or buy me Kofi or something if you want to support the blog directly during these weird quarantine days.)

Tank Magazine: XG Interviewed

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How can the experience of death become an occasion to imagine new ways of living together? In this episode of the TANK Podcast, Guy Mackinnon-Little speaks to Matt Colquhoun about his new book Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher, which narrates the collective mourning of Fisher’s death while using this experience as the basis for a new politics of community and post-capitalist desire.

It was a pleasure to chat to Guy Mackinnon-Little from Tank Magazine about Egress the other week.

The chat we had is excellent and I’m very grateful to him for cutting through to the very heart of the book in such little time. We talk about writing personally about the impersonal / impersonally about the personal, philosophies of community, the weird and the eerie in acid communism, and how this is all the more pertinent under our present circumstances. (Speaking of which, please blame desocialised coronabrain for my occasional ramble.)

You can listen to the podcast here.

Music Journalism Insider: XG Interviewed

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For those that don’t know, Todd Burns runs an excellent newsletter called Music Journalism Insider. It’s an amazing resource for music journalists and music journalism fans alike.

I’ve been a subscriber for a few weeks / months now — what even is time right now anyway? — so I was honoured when Todd popped into my inbox asking if I’d like to be interviewed for the newsletter.

As of yesterday, the interview is now live. You can read the full thing here — it’ll be live for two weeks and then go behind the paywall — and the rest of the newsletter here.

I talk a bit about how I got to this point in my life, trying to be a photographer for a bit and why I stopped. I talk about how that connects to my new book Egress and about the context from which the book emerged. Elsewhere in the newsletter, I recommend some stuff I’ve been reading and listening to recently and I also offer up a tip for would-be music writers (which is probably a bit rich coming from me because I’d hardly describe myself as a music writer — I’m a writer who likes music and other people’s writing about music — but I hope it’s of interest nonetheless.)

If music journalism is your passion — whether you love reading about the latest stuff or you want to get involved or you’re already involved but want to feel connected to a wider community — I really recommend signing up for the full version of Todd’s newsletter. It is a weekly inbox highlight for me and a truly formidable one-man magazine — the sort of thing this blog tries to be and which is, frankly, a dying breed.