Shy Radicals

distinguish the limit from the edge is an intergenerational dialogue between Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Jimmy Robert. Their connection emerges through the intersection of text and image between selected work from Cha’s oeuvre and Robert’s practice that share the formal strategies of the fold.

Robert’s work utilizes paper as a sculptural material, and his hand sometimes appears to shape the page. For Cha, the fold is present in her compositions enmeshing language through strategies of visual poetry, as in L’Image Concrete feuille L’Objet Abstrait (1976),  and Untitled (après tu parti) (1976) which are both previously unpublished. The possibility of overlaying one’s work with the other, emphasised by the book’s spiral-bound double spine, and reverse fold-outs, forges an intimacy, a shared sensibility, and an encounter with the corporeal. In conversation with editor Jacob Korczynski, Robert refers to Fred Moten’s In The Break, stating, ‘Suddenly time falters. Words don’t go there. And if words don’t go there, then what does?’ 

distinguish the limit from the edge is commissioned by Book Works, edited by Jacob Korczynski and designed by Wolfe Hall. The book is published in association with Participant Inc. with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts Management Services, after the exhibition:

flipping through pages keeping a record of time: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha & Jimmy Robert curated by Jacob Korczynski at Participant Inc., 6 September – 3 November, 2024, supported by a Fall 2020 Curatorial Research Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

An experimental essay on voice, narrative, literature and translation. In this text Daniela tunes into the hums of voices heard within books, to the recollected csitation, to singing with stitched lips.

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. 

Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universal culture from which friendship, camaraderie and solidarity could emerge.

Now, comedy is characterized by edgy humour and misplaced jokes that provoke personal and social anxiety, causing divisive cultural warfare in the media and among people. Our comedy is fraught with tension like never before, and so too is our social life. We often hear the claim that no one can take a joke anymore.  But what if we really can’t take jokes anymore?

This book argues that the spirit of comedy is the first step in the building of society, but that it has been lost in the era of divisive identity politics. Comedy flares up debates about censorship and cancellation, keeping us divided from one other. This goes against the true universalist spirit of comedy, which is becoming a thing of the past and must be recovered.

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. 

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.  

Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.  

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.  

Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

The Salvage Editorial Collective on the Covid-19 crisis.

Including: ‘Mothering Against the World' by Sophie Lewis on ‘Momrades’, ‘The Bushes’ a new fiction by China Miéville, ‘Hookers and Other Angels’ photography from Juno Mac, ‘Prepared for the Worst’ by Richard Seymour on Disaster Nationalism, ‘Welfare State Populism and the “Left-Behind Left”’ by Kevin Ochieng Okoth, ‘A Glimmer of a Shell of a Husk’ by Maya Osborne; ‘The Phallic Road to Socialism’ by Sebastian Budgen; A newly translated interview with Daniel Guérin, ‘Nationalism After Coronavirus’ by Sivamohan Valluvan, ‘Striking in Striking Times: Capitalism’s Coronavirus Crisis’ by Gregor Gall, ‘Getting Dressed for a Pandemic’ by Camila Valle, ‘Out of the Iron Lung: A Miasma Theory of Coronavirus’ by Matthew Broomfield.

Poetry by Nisha Ramayya, this issue’s featured poet, and an interview with her conducted by Salvage poetry editor, Caitlín Doherty. Plus the return of the Salvage Editorial Collective perspectives pamphlet, and a postcard.

Salvage is a bi-annual journal of revolutionary arts and letters. Salvage is written by and for the desolated Left, by and for those sick of capitalism and its planetary death-drive, implacably opposed to the fascist reflux and all ‘national’ solutions to our crisis, committed to radical change, guarded against the encroachments of ‘woke’ capitalism and its sadistic dramaphagy, and impatient with the Left’s bad faith and bullshit.

Published June 2020