Unconscious/Television

Featuring contributions from various artists and authors, including Louis Morelle, Persis Bekkering & Crisis Acting. 

Dialogues on CoreCore & the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde gathers the work of over forty artists, writers, and philosophers to address the trajectories of the underground avant-garde digital art-world. A variety of topics and visual styles are represented in this anthology, but particular attention is paid to CoreCore, the DIY experimental filmmaking meta-trend which emerged on TikTok in the dusk of 2020. In part an anthology of critical and experimental essays, in part a curatorial artbook, in part a volume of conference proceedings, this text invites the viewer to explore the grassroots conference of a particular cybercultural moment. 

This book follows on from the proceedings of All Things are Nothing to Us, a symposium on CoreCore and the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde, held on December 2nd. 2023, at the School of Visual Arts, NYC; organized by 0nty and OnMyComputer (Dylan Smith). 

FEATURES WORK FROM:
0nty - Dylan Smith (OnMyComputer) - John-Robin Bold - Bebe_Crotte - Societyiftextwall - Aemmonia - Emonie Fay Chetwin (Xleepyfay) - Alice Aster - Anastasija Pavić - Anastasiia Pishchanska (shelestvetrovki) - Ash Ingram - ChaoticRhizomatic - Crisis Acting - Dana Dawud - Daniel Neeman - Edson Javier Rogil - Hunter Thompson - Joe Iovino (Levels of Nuance) - John DeSousa - John Michael - Jomel - Liam Harding (X._.pulp) - Louis Higgins - Louis Morelle - Maria Puglisi - Mason Noel - Mischa Dols - i0 xen0 - Nicholas Sanchez (Wonderful Cringe) - Nick Vyssotsky - Nikolaos Sakkadakis - Orion Arnold - Persis Bekkering - Redacted Cut - Reed McDonaldson - Rokas Vaičiulis - Rozzlyn Agnes K - Soham Adhikari - Uba - Zoey Solomon - Machine Yearning - Jordi Viader Guerrero - Tommaso Campagna - Kali Masoch  

Meltdown Your Books, the author of Where Does A Body Begin? (2023), returns to Becoming Press for their second book, focusing not, this time, on the body itself, but what comes next. Whether in the sense of Dress, Clothing or Fashion, there is not much beyond the body itself that better signifies humanity than the act of adorning a body with garments, because we have no fur, or because of social codes, whether religious or class-oriented, because of beauty, or because of industrial capital; because, because, because. 

“The mounds of clothing that adorn my floor and the foot of my bed sometimes grow too large, and suddenly I am sinking into the matted mess of fabrics. On days like these I can’t help but feel that clothing, not just my clothing, but the very idea of clothing, is swallowing me up. Clothing is this immensity looming over me, yet somehow a microscopic itch in my brain, prodding me and twisting itself into knots–an irritation I accept for the temporary bliss of scratching it.”

To be human is to wake up, every morning, and to don the costume that completes your identity, for better or worse, by choice or by coercion. 

The task this book undertakes requires a particular kind of author, one who can recognise and sort through the contradictions on a theoretical level, but also someone who does not abstract the topic from their position as a subject—a critical book of fashion must be written by someone who lives it, someone who is passionate enough to write in good faith, because fashion isn’t just Gucci and Sweatshops—which themselves are rightly condemned for all kinds of reasons—because fashion itself is merely the tip of what may be one of the biggest, deepest ice bergs of all—Fashion is a philosophical black hole, one which drags everything into its infinite stomach, from semiotics to psychoanalysis, to art, design and craftsmanship, to economics and production chains, to speculation and historicising, to algebra, journalism and so on. 

Yet, this isn’t a philosophy book because it is simply too down-to-earth and relatable; it is just as celebratory and excited as it is critical. M.Y.B. begins by simply looking down, and beginning to describe the shoes upon their feet—it unravels dialectically and uncovers long chains of connections that stretch back through time.  

Meltdown Your Books (M.Y.B.), the pen name, was made as a portmanteau of the seminal essay Meltdown by Nick Land, and the landmark film Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets by Shuji Terayama. I chose the name, almost 3 years ago now, to reflect the political and digital black hole I saw hovering at the edge of contemporary media experience, and to present my work without the muddy veneer of personal identity. It has remained, since its inception, an anonymous project in only the loosest terms. The dedicated could always find my real identity, and some have, and so its anonymous character existed primarily as an element of presentation. Its anonymity existed to emphasize its deindividuated character. The things I discuss and emphasize under the M.Y.B. label are not items with definitive characteristics, they are collective experiences. M.Y.B. is something I cherish beyond self.

A queering of psychoanalysis put together by the forerunner of Inactual Magazine. 

Organ Multiplication Manifesto is an essay that delves into the transformations of sociality and sexuality in the context of digital technologies. Using an interdisciplinary approach that blends philosophy, erotic literature, media theory, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and neuroscience, the text explores how devices, platforms, and technologies shape and produce normative systems that influence our perceptions, desires, and relationships with others. By examining the interplay between desire and digital mediation and drawing comparisons with authors such as Deleuze, Ballard, Žižek, Butler, Preciado, Bataille, and others, this book aims to present a new theoretical, critical, and philosophical perspective in the contemporary discourse on the relationship between humans, technology, and society.

This book begins with an analysis of three iconic erotic texts from Masoch, Ballard and Bataille, and uses this analysis as the departure point for its main theoretical work on the four topics listed in the subtitle. The book passes through a lot of interesting phases, including an analysis of Phenomenology and Gucci, class struggle and OnlyFans and much more, until eventually arriving at the actual manifesto for Organ Multiplication and the beautifully named notion of the "Caged Sun". 

Foreword by Vincenzo Estremo.
Afterword by Franco "Bifo" Berardi.

"One may think that the history of the human culture is going to be enormously impoverished by the disappearance of the body, one may think that, on the contrary, human culture has been enriched by the renounce to presence and physical contact. It is not the intention of Damato to save this dilemma, His intention is rather to open a new field of investigation, and possibly to start a reflection on a more advanced dilemma: will the change of perception make possible the emergence of a new ontology, or is the disappearance of the body going to mark the final dissolution of human life itself?" — Franco "Bifo" Berardi

Christian Nirvana Damato is a writer, curator, and independent researcher working in the fields of philosophy, technology, psychoanalysis, and visual culture. He teaches media theory at the IED in Turin and runs various workshops on publishing and writing. He writes for and collaborates with various magazines and publishing houses. He is the founder and editorial director of Inactual. He has also published Medial Disorders. Interpretive and Non-statistical Compendium of Technological Disorders. Vol I, with contributions by Geert Lovink, Alfie Bown, Isabel Millar, Eyal Weizman (Forensic Architecture) et al. (ed. by, Inactual, 2024), Wearable Statistical Desires. Re-programming the performativity of the body through digisexuality (Mimesis 2025; Everyday Analysis, 2025) and Medial Disorders Vol II.

This is a limited edition book. The author trained an LLM on the texts of a deceased theorist, and then proceeded to interact with the LLM and produce simulations of what the theorist may have said in regards to various pertinent topics. The book is primarily a free online resource, but a few copies are being printed to commemorate the work. It has a foreword and afterword by the Editors. 

At the core of this project is a translation of “Marxist Islam or Islamic Marxism,” a groundbreaking text written by Bizhan Jazani during his imprisonment in the 1970s under the Shah’s oppressive regime. Translated by Parham Ghalamdar, this work is accompanied by an introduction contextualizing Jazani’s radical vision. Ghalamdar also contributes a series of ASCII-style illustrations and diagrams—AI-assisted reinterpretations of Jazani’s original paintings and photographs—that bridge the past and present, offering a new perspective on his revolutionary artistry. 

Siahkal names a place in the forests of Gilan and a threshold in revolutionary time. In 1971 a guerrilla action near Siahkal shook the order of the Shah. The action failed militarily yet seeded a myth for the People’s Fedai Guerrillas. Bizhan Jazani, a founding thinker, wrote and painted in prison and was executed in 1975. His work teaches that strategy rather than sentiment endures. // This book treats Siahkal as a Deep Object, a persistent attractor that gathers memory, images, and tactics. An AI model trained on Jazani’s writings and paintings translates his essay on Islamic Marxism and proposes annotations. The machine functions as a probe that widens attention while remaining accountable to the source. Parham Ghalamdar trained the AI, wrote the introduction, and composed ASCII diagrams and diagrammatic readings from Jazani’s artworks. Parsa Esmaeilzadeh contributes an essay that reads Jazani through Karatani and left accelerationism. // It is a call to reimagine and export revolution as a Deep Object that asks for Deep Time to unfold. This clandestine edition invites the reader to study, test, and build strategy that can outlast the news cycle and meet the future head on. 

Parham Ghalamdar is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in the UK. Ghalamdar’s work traces forgotten mythologies, buried philosophies, and visual ruins, reconfiguring them into speculative worlds where memory, fiction, and futurism collapse into one another. Drawing on cybernetic theory and generative AI, he explores how systems of feedback, simulation, and machine vision mediate our understanding of history and possibility. Through painting, film, and writing, he builds narratives that feel both ancient and yet-to-come, haunted by lost histories and animated by possible futures.

While presented as a contiguous work, the book is formed of different essays that have been dissected, recomposed with artificial connective tissue. The result lies somewhere between the rhizomatic continuity of a Body-without-Organs, and the disjointed assemblage of roadkill; either way, the question of where to even begin remains the same. 

These essays each grow out of a particular resentment that developed through years of experience as a working-student of biology, but the task of the book was to transform this into something productive, something that sticks granular propositions into Biology like acupuncture needles. Inherent sexism within Biological research is, after all, not entirely disconnected to Pharmaceutical giants flooding the streets with opiates—and it is simply a writer’s hope that some well positioned words can remind enough people of how its all connected. 

In what could be perceived as a philosophical turn, the importance of talking about science, as much as doing it, is re-entering the popular scientific consciousness, and it is high time, too. What was already getting bad under Biden, became catastrophic under Trump, and the infiltration into public research by private institutions and capitalist enterprises, which this book highlights, is proving dire. The capitalisation of all things bio, whether -yoghurt, -metric data or -logical institutions, is necrotic—MeltdownYourBooks didn’t flinch, they just grabbed the scalpel, dowsed the flesh in ethanol, and asked the question we all forget needs answering: where first, Doc? 

Meltdown Your Books (M.Y.B.), the pen name, was made as a portmanteau of the seminal essay Meltdown by Nick Land, and the landmark film Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets by Shuji Terayama. I chose the name, almost 3 years ago now, to reflect the political and digital black hole I saw hovering at the edge of contemporary media experience, and to present my work without the muddy veneer of personal identity. It has remained, since its inception, an anonymous project in only the loosest terms. The dedicated could always find my real identity, and some have, and so its anonymous character existed primarily as an element of presentation. Its anonymity existed to emphasize its deindividuated character. The things I discuss and emphasize under the M.Y.B. label are not items with definitive characteristics, they are collective experiences. M.Y.B. is something I cherish beyond self.

Performer, activist, and writer Jill Johnston was a major queer presence in the history of dance and 1970s feminism. She was the first critic to identify postmodernism’s arrival in American dance and was a fierce advocate for the importance of lesbians within feminism. In Jill Johnston in Motion, Clare Croft tracks Johnston’s entwined innovations and contributions to dance and art criticism and activism. She examines Johnston’s journalism and criticism—in particular her Village Voice columns published between 1960 and 1980—and her books of memoir and biography. At the same time, Croft attends to Johnston’s appearances as both dancer and audience member and her physical and often spectacular participation at feminist protests. By bringing together Johnston’s criticism and activism, her writing and her physicality, Croft emphasizes the effect that the arts, particularly dance, had on Johnston’s feminist thinking in the 1970s and traces lesbian feminism’s roots in avant-garde art practice.

Orbiting around the saddest house in the history of Grand Designs, Sam Moore’s Chesil Cliff House and other failures takes us to North Devon where, standing at the cliff’s edge, we meet Edward Short: a man with a Fred Perry shirt and a dream. Amongst a chorus of characters including Kevin Mcloud as Father Time, Moore by means of Short leads us into a study of creative failure, gender, and, ultimately, the desire to keep writing.

"I struggle to see anyone living here. It feels like a distorted wonder of the world, a cautionary tale. Something that could never have been lived in, but that had to be made."

About the author:
Sam is a writer, artist, and editor. They are the author of All my teachers died of AIDS (Pilot Press), Long live the new flesh (Polari Press), and Search history (Queer Street Press). They are one of the co-curators of TISSUE, a trans reading and publishing initiative based in London.

About A Series of Attempts:
This new series published by Sticky Fingers Publishing explores the essay form through the etymological root of essay: to try, trial or attempt. In 1508, French theorist Michel de Montaigne published a collection of 107 texts called Essais, described by his contemporaries as ‘self-indulgent and embarrassingly confessional.’ It is through these roots we find the attitude and intentions at the heart of this series; that through thinking together, through trying to figure it out on the page, we can reach new and increasingly nuanced ways to understand each other and the worlds we inhabit.

“Today is the day with the letter,” Celan writes to Bachmann on October 30, 1957. Theadora Walsh’s essay-poem, The Almond concerns, for I hesitate to write “about” or “is in relation to”, the love between Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Two Austrian writers flung across Europe by the atrocities of the Holocaust, excavating the narrows of a language not theirs, or taken from them. An almond is the closest two people can be, and becomes the binding structural conceit of the book, two segments reaching across the blank page to each other, across history, time and language.