The Things We've Seen

In 2015, Jacob finds himself wandering the streets, swamps and cemeteries of New Orleans. Through his search for a man named Ignatius, 'O Fortuna' tells the story of his attempt to make a film. We discover the city’s unique atmosphere and meet a bizarre cast of characters who assist Jacob with his uncertain attempts at shooting scenes of DAT LIKWID LAND.

In this characteristically sexy, daring, and hyperliterate novel, Kathy Acker interweaves the stories of three characters who share the same tragic flaw: a predilection for doomed, obsessive love. Rimbaud, the delinquent symbolist prodigy, is deserted by his lover Verlaine time and time again. Airplane takes a job dancing at Fun City, the seventh tier of the sex industry, in order to support her good-for-nothing boyfriend. And Capitol feels alive only when she's having sex with her brother, Quentin. In Memoriam to Identity is at once a revelatory addition to, and an irreverent critique of, the literature of decadence and self-destruction.

What do we start with when telling a story — What tensions activate it — What does it promise — What do we want from it — How do we deliver it — Must it have an end — What about a story which never began — Stories we wish were told — Stories which have always been there — Stories we don’t know how to start.

Beginnings is a collective attempt at questioning protocols and forms of narration, initiated by Manon Michèle. The publication gathers textual and visual works from twenty-nine artists, writers and collectives. With two covers, ninety-six pages, and no end, the publication remains in flux, with no definitive conclusions but the shape of an ongoing question: Where do we start and where might the act of arriving lead.

There’s bodies thrusted through motion, accelerations, collapses, into the folly of life, death, borders and language. There’s following intuition, rabbits, leaders, and the shape of clouds, switching from script to script to escape latched circles and compliance. There’s braiding together clashing dimensions and vital landmarks, processing ghosts to reclaim space, feeding them to trusted spirits. There’s foreseeing new shapes, and believing in what grows. There’s the poetry of saving what can be saved and the pull of letting go. There’s so much to begin with

Contributors
Alice dos Reis, Anaïs Fontanges, Anna Bierler, Auriane Preud’homme, Bravas Graphix, Calli Uzza Layton, Clara Pasteau, Cleo Tsw, D-E-A-L, Elina Birkehag, Eliott Déchamboux, Emilie Pitoiset, Heleen Mineur, Hyo Young Chu, Josefina Anjou, Juliette Lepineau, Kimberley Cosmilla, Manon Michèle, Maria Paris, Marie-Mam Sai Bellier, Mathis Perron, Mia Trabalon, Pablo Bardinet, Pays de Glossolalie, Philip Ullman, Raphaël Massart, Sanae Oujjit, Silvana Mc Nulty, Yunie Chae

Beginnings was edited and designed by Manon Michèle and Oliver Boulton, and published by Ex. Coda, 2025.

A weird, wild ride across non-narrative vignettes and dryly funny aphorisms exploring the shared intensity of violence and the erotic.

As if hauled up squirming from the bowels of the internet, Sex Goblin metabolizes sex writing, popular culture, and autofiction to present the real and the imagined as equally surreal possibilities. In the narrator’s childlike voice, all things become both mundane and strange—a child and their dog fused after a car accident, moments of tenderness amidst frat hazing, witches, and hiking accidents. At turns charming and bizarre, Cook’s work channels sexual violence through the lens of the absurd to alchemize shame and abuse into something that registers differently than trauma. Sex Goblin is a barely factual but deeply felt field guide to relationships and relatability.

Lauren Cook is a transsexual naturalist and the author of I Love Shopping (Glo Worm Press, 2019). He is from upstate New York.

A Map to the Door of No Return is a timely book that explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery. Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond.

The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history — the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities. In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art.