Mucus in my Pineal Gland

During a residency on Fire Island, artist and writer Hannah Black decided to tackle a highly daunting project: the 2020 novel.

The result of her efforts, Tuesday of September or the End, is a slim, playful work of speculative fiction. Written in the aftermath of the early months of the pandemic and the uprisings of summer 2020, the novel explores the ruptures of the year with a satirical sci-fi bent. Black chronicles the lives of two characters, Bird and Dog, as they contend with rapidly changing political possibilities during the pandemic while the run of Moley Salamanders (i.e. Bernie Sanders) concludes and aliens finally invade earth. Through a galvanic vision of how the riots of 2020 might have turned revolutionary, Black offers a meditation on collective life. This crucial novel invites readers to consider who we are—and, by extension, what we are here for—when our normal referents are muted, deleted and upended.

Hannah Black (born 1981) is a New York-based visual artist, critic and writer from Manchester, England. Her work spans video, text and performance and draws from communist, feminist and Afro-pessimist theory. She is the author of Life (2017, with Juliana Huxtable) and Dark Pool Party (2016). Black is represented by the gallery Arcadia Missa in London and Isabella Bortolozzi in Berlin.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ first monograph, Untitled. Spanning three bodies of work, this 200-plus page monograph includes poems by Ser Alida and Aurora Masum-Javed, a conversation between Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard, and essay by Bill Gaskins. Designed by Studio Lin.

As recipient of the second annual Capricious Photo Award, Sasha is a vital, emerging voice in contemporary photography, engaging the charged line between documentary and fine art. Her work ranges from affecting studies on diaspora, family and place to revolving social phenomenons in which energy, beauty and power meet.

The second annual jury panel was helmed by Capricious Founder and Publisher Sophie Mörner and Associate Publisher Anika Sabin alongside Lauren Cornell, Katherine Hubbard, JOFF, Matt Keegan, Guadalupe Rosales, Ka-Man Tse, and Lyndsy Welgos.

First launched in 2012, and published by mfc michèle didier (micheledidier.com), == is a small-run arts publication, edited by Matt Keegan. ==#2, 2015, is designed by Su Barber and published in an edition of 500 by Capricious Publishing. Barber and Keegan worked together on North Drive Press (northdrivepress.com) between 2005-2010, and this publication shares a variety of traits with NDP.

==#2 is a non-thematic arts publication contained in a box with a 96-page bound volume featuring artist-to-artist interviews, texts, and transcriptions. Six loose multiples are also included.

Contributors include: Sam Anderson, Uri Aran, Fia Backström, Darren Bader, Judith Barry, Stefania Bortolami, Daniel Bozhkov, Milano Chow, Anna Craycroft, Lucky DeBellevue, Cristina Delgado, Haytham El-Wardany, Jake Ewert, Vincent Fecteau, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Harrell Fletcher, Rachel Foullon, Aurélien Froment, Kenny Greenberg, Calla Henkel, Leslie Hewitt, Jaya Howey, Adelita Husni-Bey, Iman Issa, Ruba Katrib, Jill Magid, Jo Nigoghossian, Aaron Peck, Max Pitegoff, David Placek, Olivia Plender, Lisa Robertson, Andrew Russeth, Amy Sillman, Diane Simpson, Greg Parma Smith, Jessica Stockholder, Martine Syms, and Anicka Yi.

Se Te Subió El Santo is a collection of self – portraits taken by the artist directly after she awoke every morning while away on a week-long residency in Iowa City, IA at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies in Spring 2016. This daily practice confronts notions of the artist’s interests in rendering a full self implicit of gender, race, sexuality, and spirituality while challenging and collapsing the intersections of each identity as well.

The title of the work is taken from Ana Mendieta, the Iowa Years: A critical study, 1969 through 1977 where Julia Ann Herzberg writes in the dissertation:

Ana and Raquelin Mendieta’s vocabulary contained many Afro-Cuban idiomatic expressions. For example, they would often respond to a friend who was acting in an unruly or hyperactive manner by asking” “Se te subió el santo? (“Are you in a trance?”) In the Afro-Cuban context, the expression “subirse el santo” is used in religious ceremony when the orisha/saint takes possession of the believer.

The monograph also includes an essay by author Akwaeke Emezi.

First edition, 94 page, black and white, leather bound hardcover with white foil embossment 

TIONA NEKKIA MCCLODDEN is an interdisciplinary research-based conceptual artist, filmmaker and curator whose work explores, and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and social commentary. McClodden’s interdisciplinary approach traverses documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, and sound installations. Themes explored in McClodden’s films and works have been re-memory and more recently narrative biomythography.

This issue uses the font designed for german news magazine Spiegel by amazing Lucas de Groot. The color poster is part of the full print of the series “Les Filles d’Amsterdam” by photographer Jean-Luc Moulène. It is the first time this series is printed in book form and in an exclusive interview the artist tells the story of that work.

Contributors: Lily Wittenburg, Maren Grimm & Jakob Krameritsch, Michael Milano, Assaf-Evron, Sophie Thun, Juliana Huxtable, Interview with Jean-Luc Moulène, poster by Jean-Luc Moulène, Magda Tóthová, Peter Machen on Brenda Fassie, Mariah Garnett, Shady El NoshokatyTommy Støckel

Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption.

Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.

& colin kaepernick is my president, who kneels on the air
bent toward a branch, throwing apples down to the children
& vets & rihanna is my president, walking out of global summitswith wine glass in hand, our taxes returned in goldto dust our faces into coins
& my mama is my president, her grace stuntson amazing, brown hands breaking brown bread overmouths of the hungry until there are none unfed & my grandma is my president
& her cabinet is her cabinetcause she knows to trust what the pan knowshow the skillet wins the war  
—from “my president”

"These sentences—they—will begin having already been sentences somewhere else, and this will mark their afterlife, and this will be their debut." So begins Renee Gladman’s latest interdisciplinary project, Plans for Sentences. A tour de force of dizzying brilliance, Gladman’s book blurs the distinctions between text and image, recognizing that drawing can be a form of writing, and vice versa: a generative act in which the two practices not only inform each other but propel each other into futures. In this radical way, drawing and writing become part of a limitless loop of energy, unearthing fertile possibilities for the ways we think about poetry. 

If Gladman ascribes to any particular type of poetics, here in Plans for Sentences, we are sure to find that it is robustly grounded in a poetics of infinite language.

'In de poëzie kunnen twee verschillende werelden elkaar ontmoeten, door gedichten kunnen we zonder ID denkbeeldige grenzen overschrijden en in dezelfde denkbeeldige ruimte verblijven. Maar is die ruimte wel dezelfde? Kunnen we losbreken uit onze rollen van slachtoffer en medeplichtige? Kunnen gedichten ons leren ons te identificeren met ongevoelde pijn? Wat spreekt er uit onze ontmoeting op papier?' - Anne Vegter

'Een dichter moet egoïstisch zijn, moet een eenzame wolf zijn, maar soms ontmoeten eenzame wolven elkaar in de wouden en jagen ze samen. Twee dichters, één boek: niet noodzakelijkerwijs om iets nieuws te bouwen, maar om de muren af te breken die ons tegenhouden wanneer we naar de andere oever willen oversteken. De Steen van Rosetta, die ervoor zorgt dat we het ongelezene lezen.' - Ghayath Almadhoun

Ghayath Almadhoun (1979) werd geboren in het Palestijnse vluchtelingenkamp Yarmouk in Damascus als zoon van een Palestijnse vader en een Syrische moeder. Hij studeerde Arabische literatuur aan de Universiteit van Damascus en werkte als cultureel journalist. Sinds 2008 woont hij in Stockholm. In Nederland verscheen in 2014 zijn lovend besproken dichtbundel 'Weg van Damascus'. Anne Vegter woont en werkt in Rotterdam. Van haar hand verschenen onder andere de verhalenbundels 'Ongekuiste versies' en 'Harries hoofdingang' en de dichtbundels 'Aandelen en obligaties', 'Spamfighter' en 'Eiland berg gletsjer'. Haar werk werd meermaals bekroond. De afgelopen vier jaar was ze Dichter des Vaderlands. De gedichten van Ghayath Almadhoun zijn uit het Arabisch vertaald door Djûke Poppinga.