Louis Mason

Raised by a fascist father in Nazi Germany, the Surrealist artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975) dedicated his œuvre to a perverse rewriting of the symbolic order. Famous for the two dolls he constructed in the mid-1930s, his transgressive ideas around the body as anagram were shared by his partner Unica Zürn. Both broke received codes of behaviour and the implicit rules of language, providing fertile ground for artists and other thinkers, including feminists, to similarly rewrite the body. ON FIGURE/S is published in parallel with the exhibition FIGURE/S: drawing after Bellmer (Drawing Room, London, September 2021). It gathers responses to its themes: body as letter, word and sentence; perversion and enjoyment; technical and forensic drawing in pursuit of pleasure; the other than human—becoming object, plant, animal. This book is a way to think through and with works of art and their histories, involving multiple textual forms, collage, and drawing, which take the radical and transgressive energy of Bellmer and Zürn in unexpected directions.

Contributors: Paul Buck,  Lola Bunting , Alice Butler, Paul Chan, Iris Colomb, Vincent Dachy, Zoë Dowlen, Rachel Genn, Aurelia Guo,  Mathew Hale, Tom Hastings, Rebecca Jagoe, Sharon Kivland, Sarah Lederman, Kate Macfarlane, Kumi Machida, Louis Mason, Reba Maybury, Jade Montserrat, John Murphy, Michael Newman, Bernard Noël, Tamarin Norwood , Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Aura Satz, Sophie Seita, Anne Lesley Selcer,  Isabel Seligman, Sarah Wilson 

Deleuzine: A Zine for Nobodies Without Organs is an experimental publication inspired by the writings of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, as well as figures whose life or work can be said to exemplify aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy of life, including Antonin Artaud, Ezekiel Mphaphele’s Wanderers and Kathy Acker among others. Encompassing the fields of literature, philosophy, ethnography, archaeology, and the arts, the publication aims at a radical exploration (and exploitation) of word, image, and printed matter towards beauty, but also aesthetic and political freedom.

1 Laurence Pritchard, Memories of the Penes 6 Natascha Nanji, Crisis in Three Parts 16 Max Henninger, From Poems For Two Voices 18 Sascha Akhtar, Now, You Become D/eath, Destroyer 34 Karina Bush, Claws; I Spit; Sonnet VI 36 Francesca Dobbe, Dog Lady’s Becoming Animal 9 George Micah Kuhn, Pharmacophilia 54 Uma Breakdown, The Graveyard of Extension 60 MUCK, ‘IN A FOLD, THE OUTSIDE IS NEVER FULLY ABSORBED…’  73 Anouk Asselineau, Angel’s Share 78 Maria Sledmere, Zebra; Lens Flare; Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco; Jewel Organza; New Weird Kirsty 82 Paola Valentina, Tube people 85 Dalia Maini, Water Lilies Syndrome 88 Hugo Hagger, Death Dissensus 95 Michal Leszuk, Curating Cruising Culture in the Anthropocene 108 Joshua Jones, Petřín Hill, Dusk 111 Chiara Gambuto 143 Isaac Harris, Helioelagablaus Reborn 163Helen Samuels, Winterize 174 Aimilia Efthimiou, A Recipe 176Simon Barraclough, Vampire in the Funhouse, Part I 178 Suki Hollywood, Mortal Combat 186 Louis Mason, The Executioner 198 Rebecca Close, The Acephale Sonnets 204Sites Of Horror RU, RmIH8 U 90’s Ancestors 206 MUCK, THE STORM 215 George Finlay Ramsay, Raven’s Reprise 228Mike Templeton, The Window Journal: Looking out my Window onto Court Street 232 Caitlin Merrett King, She Has No References; Dylan Thomas; For S 235 Phoebe Eccles, Hold Me in Your Watchful Presence 238 Isabelle Bucklow, Some Bears, Some Moves 244 Alistair McCartney, The Textual Animal 248 Caspar Bryant, Diffraction of a Waterfowl 249 Flo Josephine Goodliffe, Alive Border (Husk or Shell) front & back cover(s) Jean-Robert Alcindor (dispersed) drawings by Rossen Daskalov designed by Alessia Arcuri