A Mycological Foray: Variations on Mushrooms

The legendary 1975 "Schizo-Culture" conference, conceived by the early Semiotext(e) collective, began as an attempt to introduce the then-unknown radical philosophies of post-'68 France to the American avant-garde. The event featured a series of seminal papers, from Deleuze's first presentation of the concept of the "rhizome" to Foucault's introduction of his History of Sexuality project. The conference was equally important on a political level, and brought together a diverse group of activists, thinkers, patients, and ex-cons in order to address the challenge of penal and psychiatric institutions. The combination proved to be explosive, but amid the fighting and confusion "Schizo-Culture" revealed deep ruptures in left politics, French thought, and American culture.

The "Schizo-Culture" issue of the Semiotext(e) journal came three years later. Designed by a group of artists and filmmakers including Kathryn Bigelow and Denise Green, it documented the chaotic creativity of an emerging downtown New York scene, and offered interviews with artists, theorists, writers, and No Wave and pre-punk musicians together with new texts from Deleuze, Foucault, R. D. Laing, and other conference participants.

This slip-cased edition includes The Book: 1978, a facsimile reproduction of the original Schizo-Culture publication; and The Event: 1975, a previously unpublished and comprehensive record of the conference that set it all off. It assembles many previously unpublished texts, including a detailed selection of interviews reconstructing the events, and features Félix Guattari, William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michel Foucault, Sylvère Lotringer, Guy Hocquenghem, Gilles Deleuze, John Rajchman, Robert Wilson, Joel Kovel, Jack Smith, Jean-François Lyotard, Ti-Grace Atkinson, François Peraldi, and John Cage.

Silence: Lectures and Writings is a book by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992), first published in 1961 by Wesleyan University Press. Silence is a collection of essays and lectures Cage wrote during the period from 1939 to 1961.

Most of the works are preceded by a short commentary on their origins, some have an afterword provided. Several works feature unorthodox methods of presentation and/or composition. "The Future of Music: Credo" juxtaposes paragraphs of two different texts. The text of the first part of "Composition as Process" is presented in four columns, the text of "Erik Satie" in two. "45' for a Speaker" is similar to Cage's "time length" compositions: it provides detailed instructions for the speaker as to exactly when a particular sentence or a phrase should be said. "Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?" is presented in several types of typeface to better reflect the concept of the lecture, which was originally presented as four tapes running simultaneously. "Indeterminacy" is a collection of various anecdotes and short stories taken from life or books Cage read: the concept is to tell one story per minute, and to achieve the speaker has to either speed up or slow down, depending on the length of the story.

Chris Mann is an Australian-American composer, poet and performer specializing in compositional linguistics. Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. Mann has recorded with the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments, and Chris Mann and The Use. Mann currently teaches in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School.

I acquired Sonia’s copy of Fraser Darlingʼs book in 2010 when my cousins, sister, and I were going through Soniaʼs house following her death. From one of her glassed-in bookshelves, the spineʼs distinctive artwork caught my eye. When I put my hand in to grab it, it was immediately apparent there was something odd. Turning it over, I realised the book contained enclosures. It had been used as a flower press. Between its pages were eleven sheets of specimens, each sheet masked off with two pieces of neatly arranged blotting paper. All the sheets were titled in pencil: ‘Aviemore—May 1961’. 

Sonia Campbell Penney was a professional gardener, keen botanist, and the author’s aunt. Her ‘book’ is a copy of Natural History in the Highlands and Islands by F. Fraser Darling, interleaved with eleven sheets of plant specimens, guarded by blotting paper, which Sonia collected around Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands in May 1961. Functionally, if sporadically, annotated with plant names and, occasionally, places of finding, these sheets might be interpreted as a form of nature writing or a holiday diary almost without words. Sixty years on, Bridget Penney asks what a close, though thoroughly unscientific, consideration of these unmediated traces might reveal.

More than a mere extension of the hands, the garden tool is what helps the gardener materialise their vision. Much like the painter’s brush and the sculptor’s chisel – without it, one would be helpless. This issue of Pleasant Place dives into the world of garden tools, the essential, the practical, and the beautiful. 

Including:
Instruments of Care – An introduction by Norbert Peeters with some philosophical remarks on garden tools.
Wardens of Good – A visual essay of the wonderful objects of Garden and Wood, a business selling vintage garden tools and ephemera.
Trusted Tools – Gardeners like Piet Oudolf and Jonny Bruce talk about their favourite tools that are illustrated in detail by artist Floris Tilanus.
Passing the Trowel – A visit to Sneeboer, the Netherlands most famous garden tool company, where the trowel has been passed down for four generations.
Toolmorrow – Artists are challenged to create new types of garden tools, for lazy gardening, stylish gardening and collective gardening.

Cover by Lou-Lou van Staaveren
Inside cover by José Quintanar
Centrefold miniatures by Zilan Zhao

Graphic design is by fanfare
Concept and editing by Guus Kaandorp, Floor Kortman and Lou-Lou van Staaveren

Basta Now - Women, Trans & Non-binary in Experimental Music is a non-academic essay by French poet, novelist and music enthusiast Fanny Chiarello. It’s also the first book to be published by Permanent Draft, an all-female record label and micro-press founded by Chiarello & musician Valentina Magaletti, dedicated to promoting contemporary female, non-binary and transgender artists. 

Basta Now is essentially a huge (yet admittedly not definitive) overview of 3867 womxn in the global experimental sound & music scene. It’s been written in playful and compelling prose and stylishly presented with photos, illustrations, and discographies. 

Now in its expanded edition, the book includes 80 more pages and an additional 1496 names than the first edition, extended lists and discographies, and updated chapters – especially Wild Things, All-Stars and Madame Bricolage. “This book has nothing against men, it’s just not about them” (Fanny Chiarello)

Writing from the body, from nervous impulses, sensations and gestures, but also from our being carried by matter, language and history, Sabina Holzer explores how writing may become ‘a way of singing and slip over into liminal, latent meanings and potentials.’ How to stay close to the body of the word? To perceive some of the multiplicity of our reality and ways of being, she incorporates somatic practices, ecology and new materialism, fables and science fiction in her writing. Allow me to dream a body with you gathers poetic essays and stories that delve into the fine grain of our corporeal entanglements and embeddedness. ‘Would an encounter between you and me be possible without all this?’

Sabina Holzer works in the field of expanded choreography. Her performances, interventions and texts explore the ecologies of human and more-than-human bodies with particular attention to movement and matter. She engages in practices of collaboration, philosophy, ecology, science fiction and poetry.

Graphic design: Michaël Bussaer

Geoff Rickly’s debut novel Someone Who Isn’t Me is a feverish journey through the psyche of someone who no longer recognizes himself. 

When Geoff hears that a drug called ibogaine might be able to save him from his heroin addiction, he goes to a clinic in Mexico to confront the darkest and most destructive versions of himself. In this modern reimagining of the Divine Comedy, survival lurks in the darkest corners of Geoff’s brain, asking, will he make it? Can anyone?