Books and Magazines


Sam Dolbear is the cofounder of the sound and radio collective MayDay Radio. He took up a fellowship at the ICI-Berlin as part of the 2020–2022 Project Reductions and continues working on a number projects, on palmist and sexologist Charlotte Wolff, a diagram of friendship constructed by Walter Benjamin, and a translation of Dora Kellner's feminist sci-fi novel Gas gegen Gas. Esther Leslie is Professor in Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck, University of London. She is frequently invited to speak in the UK, Europe, the US, and occasionally Australia, China, and India.An investigation of the cultures and technologies of early radio and how a generation of cultural operators—with Schoen at the center—addressed crisis and adversity. Dials, knobs, microphones, clocks; heads, hands, breath, voices. Ernst Schoen joined Frankfurt Radio in the 1920s as programmer and accelerated the potentials of this collision of bodies and technologies. As with others of his generation, Schoen experienced crisis after crisis, from the violence of war, the suicide of friends, economic collapse, and a brief episode of permitted experimentalism under the Weimar Republic for those who would foster aesthetic, technical, and political revolution. The counterreaction was Nazism—and Schoen and his milieux fell victim to it, found ways out of it, or hit against it with all their might. Dissonant Waves tracks the life of Ernst Schoen—poet, composer, radio programmer, theorist, and best friend of Walter Benjamin from childhood—as he moves between Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, and London. It casts radio history and practice into concrete spaces, into networks of friends and institutions, into political exigencies and domestic plights, and into broader aesthetic discussions of the politicization of art and the aestheticization of politics. Through friendship and comradeship, a position in state-backed radio, imprisonment, exile, networking in a new country, re-emigration, ill-treatment, neglect, Schoen suffers the century and articulates its broken promises. An exploration of the ripples of radio waves, the circuits of experimentation and friendship, and the proposals that half-found a route into the world—and might yet spark political-technical experimentation.

Sam Dolbear & Esther Leslie – Dissonant Waves

Dual language book. German translation by Lotta Thiessen   “I wanted to remember how to forget:   I found something I thought I knew well—   the colour of a childhood room; the path taken to school each day; a pool of water collecting in the iris,   —took something: lines of a poem or the pages of a book, placed them in these spaces I thought I knew well.   I had to train myself, I couldn’t carry all the pages—”THIS ENERGY WASTED BY FLIGHT​​— traces the trying of language: “first as fact, / then as claim; then finally as call.” Consisting of a long poem and a short essay, the book attempts to both unravel and complicate the she that speaks: gendered experience and its relationship to fragmented memory and the violence of narrative time; to sexual violence; to surveillance and grief; to solitude and collectivity; to song and dissent. "What if the hour is left incomplete?" asks the speaker, twisting and turning through the past, present and future all at once in its possession and simultaneous dispossession of the “‘I am.’ / ‘We are.’”. Oscillating between the gestures of daily experience, and the political and social conditions that shape it, both unflinchingly utopian and wildly sceptical in its outlook, THIS ENERGY WASTED BY FLIGHT— attempts to write through the continual negotiation between the desire to speak and the desire to keep your mouth shut, all the time chasing what it means to live out one's political convictions through poetry, and through life.    "THIS ENERGY WASTED BY FLIGHT— is thought turned [into] song. The singer, an ‘ambivalent woman / of non personhood’, trusts the productive energy of doubt to take her deeper into feeling and farther from naming. Lotte LS reveals the violent imperatives placed on us to speak and inhabit our pains as the limits of our personhood. In tracing the ‘tyranny of language under capitalist authoritarianism’ what emerges is the chance to become a subject always in motion, one who knows that what is not remembered is not identical to what is forgotten. " --Mira Mattar

Lotte L.S. – This Energy Wasted By Flight

"Insightful, passionate, flowing and jarring. Stage of Recovery is a creative journey that invites the reader to reflect on and reimagine society." - Marina Sitrin "This book proposes a singular bio-aesthetic, an original way of living with each other, against the ever more delirious diktats of planetary techno-capitalism. Sagri’s is an extraordinary example of a practice where, as with the Situationists, art becomes indiscernible from politics." - Mehdi Belhaj Kacem "I am convinced that Sagri's thinking in action is ultimately dedicated to the empowerment of the mass corporeality of the nameless, and to self-recovery from psychosomatic pains suffered in this world of hell." - Sabu Kohso Close to spiritual anarchism, Georgia Sagri’s writing happens in the heat of negotiation. Starting in the months leading up to the occupation of Zuccotti Park in 2011, which became the movement for people’s self-governance known as Occupy, this book carries the energy and commitment of open struggle, direct address, self-organisation and public assembly. It is a critique of representation and its implicit oblivion, told through a decade of artistic and activist practice. The writing is a mode of recovery, it is pre-content shared to encourage open processes in art, thinking and action. Georgia Sagri (born Athens, 1979) lives and works in Athens and New York. Her practice is influenced by her ongoing engagement in political movements and struggles on issues of autonomy, empowerment and self-organisation. From 1997 to 2001 she was a member of Void Network, a cultural, political and philosophical collective operating in Athens. In 2011 she was one of the main organisers of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York. Since 2013 she has been a member of the assembly of the Embros Theatre Occupation, and in 2014 she initiated Ύλη[matter]HYLE, a semi-public cultural space in the heart of Athens. She is professor of performance at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Georgia Sagri – Stage of Recovery

THE SCREENPLAY FOR A HORROR FILM THAT NEVER WAS “Read The Otherwise and shed a tear for one of cinema’s great, long-lost screenplays.”   Ben Wheatley In 2015, Mark E. Smith of legendary post-punk group The Fall and screenwriter Graham Duff co-wrote the script for a horror feature film entitled The Otherwise.  The Fall are recording an EP in an isolated recording studio on Pendle Hill. The surrounding Lancashire landscape is at the mercy of a Satanic biker gang, and haunted by Scottish clansmen who have slipped through time from the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.  Every film production company they showed it to said it was “too weird” to ever be made. Yes, The Otherwise is weird. It’s also witty, shocking, and genuinely scary. Now the screenplay is published for the first time, alongside handwritten notes and previously unpublished photographs by Jim Moir and Smith’s widow and Fall keyboardist Elena Poulou.  Also within are essays by Duff and Poulou, and transcripts of conversations between Smith and Duff, in which they discuss creativity, dreams, musical loves (from Can to acid house) and favourite films (from Britannia Hospital to White Heat).  With Manchester’s visionary frontman Mark E. Smith as their one constant, The Fall were the most individual and influential group of their era. From post punk angularity to mutant rockabilly and machine-driven garage rock, via slanted Northern pop, The Fall were one of Britain’s last great singles bands.   As well as their own unmistakable songs, The Fall’s single discography also takes in a panoramic range of cover versions, including the psychedelia of The Move, the northern soul of R. Dean Taylor, the country rock of George Jones, the quintessential Englishness of The Kinks and William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’.    Covering a diverse and thrilling run of over 50 releases between 1978 and 2016, Graham Duff has interviewed key members of The Fall, including Marc Riley, Elena Poulou, Simon Wolstencroft, Keiron Melling, Una Baines, Tim Presley and Paul Hanley.

Mark E. Smith and Graham Duff – The Otherwise

36 pagesprinted and manufactured in Englandstaple bound14cm x 20cm I often think back and thank my lucky stars that I just happened to arrive in Manchester in 1988. I’d enrolled on a Photography Course at Manchester Polytechnic and while still only 22, I was ready for a new chapter in my life after leaving behind my past in Birmingham. I had no idea that I was about to walk into the global phenomenon that the media called “MADCHESTER”. The Years of 1989–91 in Manchester saw an incredible explosion of creativity across many art forms and it certainly wasn’t just the music scene that benefitted. If you’re thinking Madchester only meant Happy Mondays & the Stone Roses then think again. There was also the poets, comedians, designers, entrepreneurs, journalists, DJs, photographers, — artists of all descriptions, as well as all round chancers that helped give the city an incredible buzz and ensuring the rest of the world was looking on with envy. As a Photographer I was perfectly set up to cover what was developing. I’d set up my Photo studio and darkroom where I was living, which at the time was a squat in one of the four big crescents which dominated the district of Hulme. Squatting in Hulme was really convenient, not only did it mean all my money could go on photography but also meant I was walking distance to the centre of Manchester, where all the fun was. I couldn’t help but get caught up in all the general mayhem, momentum and energy that these years provided. I became determined as much as possible to document what was going on around me.

Richard Davis — The Madchester Years 1989–91

Sounding Fragilities enacts a polyphony of writing on contemporary composition, music and performing arts in relation to music theatre. Co-edited by a theatre and performance scholar and by a composer and artistic researcher, this anthology considers its field of investigation through the lens of positionalities. Irene Lehmann and Pia Palme invite readers into intimate encounters with an artist’s practice, feminist and queer perspectives, and personal explorations into aspects of musicology, theatre studies, technology and ecology. By presenting female* composers who write with/through/about their own practice, Sounding Fragilities is a remarkable contribution to an interdisciplinary debate around the agency of artistic research. With this synthesis, the editors evaluate how moving beyond the binary of art and science reveals the rich yet fragile territories of artistic knowledge-production and literacy in music theatre. Sounding Fragilities. An Anthology brings together essays, discussions and interventions on contemporary music, dance and music theatre to offer a polyphony of new approaches to listening, watching, composing and performing. Artistic and academic researchers present reflections and insights into the fragilities of artistic materials, collaborations and the communities that build around live performances. Challenging the idea of isolated composers, choreographers, audience members and academic researchers, they stress instead the interconnectedness of these positions as indispensable elements of thriving performance and research. This feature of all live performance is envisaged by several of the book’s contributors as linked to political, democratic thought and ecological or feminist thinking. Sounding out the relationality, brittleness, fragility, transitoriness, and beauty of live performance, this anthology stresses the urgency of coming together and interacting as a foundation for human and political relations; an urgency intensified by the current overlapping crises in politics, health and ecology.

Sounding Fragilities

One of the most original, amazing stories I've ever read' - Mary GaitskillFrom iconoclastic writer and musician Adele Bertei comes a wholly original hero's journey that wages war on the cliché of the “misery memoir.” Set in a 1960s and ’70s American neighborhood rife with poverty and violence, fatherless Irish mothers and Italian mobsters, and women crucified into madness by misogyny, Bertei speaks through her electrically alive avatar Maddie Twist to flip the victim script. Through her unshakable belief in imagination, poetry, music, and community, she transforms trauma into survival. The immediacy of Maddie’s voice is a revelation, providing insight into long-enduring systemic problems without the scrim of adult analysis. In an age of lies and obfuscation, Twist is a sharp yet tender arrow to the heart of naked truth.Bertei reveals what it's like to be a queer teen at a time when discovery could be fatal. Maddie peers deeply into the American psyche, refusing to consent to the systems of harm. Along the way we encounter an unforgettable schizophrenic mother, Catholic saints, West Side Story and Oliver!, poet killers, the abyss of rape, girl-gangsters and faux-pimps, teenage lesbian sex, racial tensions and misconceived divides, a drag family known as the Holy Maudlins, Vietnam vets in dark and light, cabaret, true family, rock and roll. And the ultimate saving grace: love.A compelling personal history of queer culture from a working-class view and a glimpse into worlds yet unseen, Twist is good medicine: for readers who've experienced similar traumas, for teens caught in the foster care system, for the formerly incarcerated looking for hope, for writers grappling with how to tell their own stories. Most of all, it’s for everyone seeking transportive experiences in art and on the page.

Adele Bertei – Twist: An American Girl

The book arrives as signed and numbered 24 page staple bound booklet, printed in black and white on Keaykolour 100% recycled paper. Printed by Aldgate Press. Thanks to Max Bondi for his advice. Written during a bout of illness that prevented Foster from playing and performing music, Kneel to Heal is the first illustrated chapbook from musician Josephine Foster and a grateful offering to the restorative power of nature. Across 24 pages, Foster muses upon the simple joys of just being in the world, her figures traversing a landscape of words and imagery that is both playful and deeply felt. There is an uncluttered simplicity to Foster's art, at once charming and profound; a sense of calm and openness reflective of her feeling during its making "of being drawn profoundly into and toward silence" Conjuring the easy fluidity of Shel Silverstein, or the dreamlike, transportive scenes of Marc Chagal, Foster's brushwork digs deep into the soil whilst looking up to the stars. There are no weighty proclamations, no authoritative conclusions, just a shared wonder and a sense of time unfurling alongside the book's creation that offers solace both in its giving and its receiving. The joys of the natural world may be fleeting but Foster seems to suggest that there is no cause for despondency in this, merely an acceptance that this is how reality is. Nevertheless, "what emerges from the mystery.. and that real reality.. will heal".

Kneel to Heal – Josephine Foster