Afterimage No. 7, Seeing: Hearing

The independent British film journal Afterimage published thirteen issues between 1970 and 1987. International in scope, it surveyed the many forms of radical cinema during an extraordinary period of film history. Having emerged in the wake of post-1968 cultural and political change, Afterimage charted contemporary developments with special issues on themes such as the avant-garde, Latin American cinema and visionary animation, and also looked back at early film pioneers. It published many of the leading critics of the period and vitally provided a forum for filmmakers’ writings and manifestos.

A meditative reflection on language and its loss.

How does one language inherit another? Defeat, erase or live through another? How to speak dead is Walid Sadek's meditative reflection on language, dead or victorious. At heart, beyond defeat and victory, it is a reflection on how one can approach a speaking that is of neither a living language nor a dead one. A speaking that knows loss and knows it is woven into every uttered word, every spoken sentence. A loss that becomes syntax.

"There, where the battle is lost and won and where, after the hurly-burly is done, we may approach a speaking that is of neither a living language nor a dead one. A speaking that knows loss and knows it is woven into every uttered word, every spoken sentence. A loss that becomes syntax."
Walid Sadek

Walid Sadek (born 1966 in Beirut) is a Lebanese artist and writer. He is a professor at the Department of Fine Arts and Art History of the American University of Beirut.

Guest edited by artist Helen Marten and literary agent Harriet Moore with Matthew Stuart, this volume of the journal considers what it means for a publication to be an allegorical container. A simple box in which to gather multiple things, an economical set of permutations — rational in one sense, yet defiantly flexible to move. Contributors were approached with an open invitation; some explored the multiplicities of containing or containers, while others filled the printed vessel with their own ongoing preoccupations. The following pages perform as envelope, bag, shell, net, fold, alarm, letter and instruction. There are holes to disappear within; smoke to knot and wind; shadows to unfold — a context that takes in and binds, finding new kinships from unforeseen proximities.

THE FIRE FLOWERS AND THE FLOWER LIGHTS UP –
Lucy Mercer
(spine)

WE SHALL GREET THE MOON AGAIN
Walter Price
(front cover)

BACK PAGES OF ALGIERS DIARIES 2018
Lydia Ourahmane
(inside front & inside back cover)

AN INTRODUCTION TO / NOTES ON / INSTRUCTION FOR THE FRONT NOVEL
Eliza Barry Callahan
(pp.1–16)

SATURDAY MORNING
Kathryn Scanlan
(pp.25–29)

KILLDEER
Jason Schwartz
(pp.33–38)

ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS
Rosmarie Waldrop
(pp.45–61)

"THE BATHROOM"
Najwa Barakat
(pp.67–76)

ARMY ROLLS, A CIRCUMSCRIPTION
Roy Claire Potter
(pp.81–91)

CONCHOMANIA
Felix Bernstein
(pp.95–109)

O-POEM
Line-Gry Hørup
(pp.113–129)

THIS MUSCLE
Cally Spooner
(pp.133–153)

STERLING PARK IN THE DARK
Susan Howe
(pp.159–179)

COCONUTTERY
Mathelinda Nabugodi
(pp.183–193)

YOUR SELF CONFIDENT BABY
Aurelia Guo
(pp.197–206)

BIOGRAPHY OF A NET: HOLDING A VOLUME
Daisy Hildyard
(pp.211–225)

A GUIDE TO THE POETRY OF LI HO
Eliot Weinberger
(pp.229–235)

WOMEN SMOKING
Charline von Heyl
(throughout & p.239)

INFRATHIN
Marcel Duchamp
(throughout & p.239)

THE MAZED WORLD
Rachael Allen
(bookmark insert)

UNTITLED
Helen Marten
(back cover)

I Want reviews the eponymous duo's double-projection film installation examining issues of gender, sexuality and performativity—and inspired by the words of punk poetess Kathy Acker and convicted whistle-blower Chelsea Manning. This publication documents the major film installation I Want (2015) by collaborative artists Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, which was presented at their 2015 solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich and Nottingham Contemporary.

The double-projection film installation is based on a script that borrows texts from American punk-poet Kathy Acker (1947-1997), as well as chats and materials by convicted whistle-blower Chelsea Manning that speak of her reasons for revealing nearly one million secret military and diplomatic documents through WikiLeaks, at the same time exposing her transgender identity to her superiors.

Through poetic gestures of appropriation and recombination, Boudry and Lorenz examine issues around gender, sexuality, the performance of identity, and the nature of collaboration. Alongside generous color documentation, written contributions by Gregg Bordowitz, Laura Guy, Dean Spade, and Craig Willse unpack and reflect upon both the historical context and contemporary significance of this multivalent work.

‘I am concerned with the power of sound! and what it can do to the body and the mind,’ wrote composer Pauline Oliveros. In the body, histories and politics come together with sound and listening, memory and feeling. Bodies of Sound offers a resonant exploration of feminist sonic cultures and radical listening in over fifty contributions. In this book of echoes, a variety of forms – from essays to text scores to art, fiction and memoir – speak across gender, ways of knowing, witnessing, sounding and voicing, translation, displacement, violence and peace.

With contributions from: 

Sara Ahmed, Ximena Alarcón, Svetlana Alexievich, Ain Bailey & Frances Morgan, Anna Barham, Xenia Benivolski, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson & Kite, Elena Biserna, Karen Barad & Black Quantum Futurism, Anne Bourne, Daniela Cascella, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maria Chávez, Don Mee Choi, Carson Cole Arthur, Petero Kalulé & AM Kanngieser, Lindsay Cooper, Julia Eckhardt, Lucia Farinati & Claudia Firth, Ella Finer, Annie Goh, Louise Gray, Christina Hazboun, Johanna Hedva, Sarah Hennies, Tomoko Hojo, IONE, Lee Ingleton, Hannah Catherine Jones, Christine Sun Kim, Nat Lall, Cathy Lane, Jeanne Lee & Lona Foote, Marysia Lewandowska, Annea Lockwood & Jennifer Lucy Allan, Cannach MacBride, Elaine Mitchener & Hannah Kendall, Alison O'Daniel, Naomi Okabe, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Gascia Ouzounian, Holly Pester, Roy Claire Potter, Anna Raimondo, Tara Rodgers, Aura Satz & Barbara London, Shortwave Collective, Sisters of the Order of Celestial Nephology, Sop, Syma Tariq, Marie Thompson, Trinh T. Minh-ha & Stoffel Debuysere, Salomé Voegelin

A text on speaking, listening and being understood made in conversation with iOS speech-to-text software.