Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

this simulation sux is a collection of speculative essays and personal observations commissioned by global cultural institutions and local counterculture zines between February 2020 and April 2021.

"During the moment of pause brought on by the initial lockdown, we chose to write as a form of self care and mediated therapy; writing, for us, is a way to process, orient, and grasp for a moment of clarity in the ever changing media and cultural landscape. In this informational era, in which our attention is in very high demand, the amount of content we are expected to consume is endless. Beset with political unrest, economic uncertainty, and waning emotional bandwidth, we have become datapoints in the vast and saturated marketplace presented to us as “society.”

[...]

Flânerie, the French term describing the act of walking and observing, became a part of our daily ritual; we lapped the outer edges of the island of Manhattan and exploring various neighborhoods during the peak of the pandemic. The images presented on this book’s jacket were captured on these walks, documenting the absurdities of everyday life in this fraying simulation. Personal, anecdotal narratives of an imagined reality are represented through the images, which are placed alongside our speculative observations derived from historical data.

We hope that these writings can provide others with prose and information that can be applied like an antidotal balm to treat our communal ailment of future shock."

—Ting Ding 丁汀 & DeForrest Brown, Jr. 

“I wrote (more or less, for promises are always hard to keep, even those made to oneself ) for five days a week for a year. I wrote no more than a page, or rather, I wrote only for the length of the analytic hour, fifty minutes (though I also practiced the variable session at times)… I followed Freud’s model of train travel for his theory of free association, acting ‘as though, for instance, [you were] a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which [you] see outside’. As for my characters, many of their names begin with A. Some of these women exist or existed, others are from fiction, or write fiction. Some are friends or acquaintances. None are credited but a keen reader could recognise many of them. I invented nothing. I am the aleph.”

In Bewogen selfies onderzoekt Obe Alkema de verhouding tussen landschap en herinnering. Wat treft hij aan bij terugkeer naar belangrijke plaatsen uit zijn geheugen? Wat herinnert hij zich niet, maar Google wel? Is er een gedenkschrift te puren uit zijn metadata?

Memoires, rechtstreeks verteld en met omwegen, uit eerste hand en van horen zeggen. Archieven en herinneringen eisen spreektijd, houden het niet meer droog of worden tot spreken gebracht. Wat hebben ze eigenlijk te melden? Ze lopen helemaal leeg, net als Alkema zelf. Een leven zoals zovele, poedelnaakt en geretoucheerd, vol zin en onzin.

Strange Tales by 
Jean Lorrain / Michael P. Daley / Lou Perliss / Marcel Schwob / Dan A. Stitzer / Jeremy Kitchen / Janice Law / Joris-Karl Huysmans / Julia Bembenek / Mark Iosifescu / Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

“This is the missing link between Baudelaire and the Area X Trilogy, strange, beautiful, and bizarre as any denizen of a romantic ruin, nuclear test site, or poisonous overgrown garden could ever want.” — CrimeReads

“Obscure, hilarious, profane, and human, Echoes of a Natural World brilliantly juxtaposes fresh oddities with classic gems of French literature. Speaking from the margins of fiction, but never marginal, each piece in this collection affirms that great, weird writing never goes out of style.” — Maryse Meijer, Heartbreaker

“Echoes of a Natural World submerges you in the high strangeness of the world around us. The eleven tales herein—both new works and rediscovered gems—form an uncanny menagerie. Its monstrous toads, murmuring fungi, and ghostly boars will haunt your imagination.” — Gabriel Mckee, Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter: The Science-Fictional Religion of Philip K. Dick

Echoes of a Natural World presents a continuum of discomforting reactions to a world perpetually out of whack. Nature—so oft considered the epitome of “order” and “tranquility” in the human mind—is herein explored at its most aberrant, absurd, and nightmarish. Through eleven weird tales, Echoes of a Natural World raises questions about Nature’s influence on the mind and the mind’s unnatural influence on Nature.

Contributions include new translations of fin de siècle Decadent masters—sensual accounts of amphibian horrors and secret caverns below country inns. These sparkling 19th century pieces sit against contemporary American fiction that delivers haunting scenarios and darkly comic ontological routines. Behold accounts of whispering mold and Midwestern strip-mall desolation; occult hypnosis and regenerated limbs; void-bound train rides with a hallucinatory hustler king; ghost boars in German battlefields; spiraling anxiety that only peach trees and country cottages could produce. Parse through questionable documents that detail the aftershocks of a once idyllic world no longer salvageable.

This kaleidoscopic collection wades in those nebulous waters where the inner world and outer landscape mesh. For as we barrel into a reality where technology has seemingly penetrated even the most remote corners of the earth, one must ask: Is it even possible to have a genuine interaction with Nature anymore? Has it ever been? Or have these longings always been the romantic delusions of a species obsessed with itself? Echoes of a Natural World defies easy categorization and easy answers.

“What’s interesting about the project here—and I think that it succeeds beautifully—is that these tales represent American voices and symbolist, fin de siècle, French decadent voices with a century between them and they’re all interlocked perfectly.”—Chris Via, Leaf by Leaf

Edited by Michael P. Daley. Introduction and translations from the French by Sam Kunkel.

Somewhere in England, confined to a room with empty chairs and an old telephone, is I. I wasn’t born here. English is their second language. They’ve given up writing. England With Eggs depicts the psychological aftermath of migration through a personal vortex of foreign experiences. Oscillating between narrator and character, Franz Kafka and long-distance calls, I spends sleepless nights drawing eggs, rearranging the chairs and talking to an uncanny voice on the phone. The isolated protagonist’s inner life is fractured: notions of place and history grow ever more fragile, language ever less certain. Torn between stubborn expectations and the reality of a foreign country, England With Eggs unfolds against a silent backdrop of austerity, colonialism and xenophobia. It is a study of acceptance, a reminder that sometimes the things we flee from are the ones we carry along on our journey.

This publication is limited to 100 copies, which are signed and numbered by the author.

Edited by Angie Harms

In a tonal mash-up of Jenny Holzer’s Truisms, confessional poetry, and fortune telling, Self-Romancing draws you into the amorous and obsessive inner life of an unnamed romantic. Relatable and snarky, heartfelt and horny, L Scully fortifies irony with vulnerability, bringing readers into a narrative as intimate as slumber parties and ordinary as Trader Joe’s. Bursting with the giddy charm of the everyday, Self-Romancing plays with form, turning a book into a crush, a crank call, a manifesto.