Friends of ORAL.pub were invited to send 5-10 recs of things they experienced in 2024.
Order is randomized onLoad and onClick.
Tilsa Otta is a Peruvian poet and multimedia artist.
- The first episode of the series "Entre ruinas" from the Caixa Fórum platform
- Especially relevant for those of us who have been thinking about the relevance of artists in the current crises.
- Libro de historia de los animales, by Jaime Tzompantzi
- Juan Malasuerte Editorial (Mexico). Bubbly poems from one of the most tender examples of the unicorn poetry scene in Mexico City.
- Cartoons, by Kit Schluter
- City lights. The satisfaction of realizing that your talented friend is crazier than you thought.
- The poetry of Selva Casal
- A Uruguayan lady who emanates enigmatic truths with simple words.
- The short film Asparagus by Suzan Pitt
- The hit of psychedelia that saves lives. Along with Radu Jude's cinema, the best thing I saw in 2024 in the field of audiovisual imagination.
- The performances and friendship of Lucía Hinojosa
- A bewitched girl connected to the music of the stones.
- The art of Putu Wirantawan.
- Difficult to explain. After seeing his exhibition I wrote to him, moved, and he responded with much affection.
- Camila Cabello's album C XOXO
- Favorite songs: Dream-girls, Godspeed, He knows.
John Henry Thompson: I want to make it easy for people to use the computer as an expressive instrument, and to inspire.
Terrence Arjoon: I'm a poet, editor, and bookseller.
Sofia Samatar, Opacities
- I've bought and given this book so many times this year. Samatar's short essays reaffirm the distinction between writing and the large publishing apparatus, writing and silence, community and solitude.
- Alice Rohrwacher- La Chimera
- I would give anything to be a tombaroli.
- Maurice Blanchot- The Writing of the Disaster
- When I read Blanchot I feel like anything can happen, everything can be unwritten.
- David Bowie's ★ (Blackstar)
- Blackstar feels like a message from after everything, beyond history. Something happened on the day he died/Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside/ Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried/(I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar).
- Michael Bernanos, The Other Side of the Mountain
- A weird novella by the son of George Bernanos. Like the shipwrecked pirate version of Mount Analogue.
Gabriel Oladipo: I'm a writer and tennis fan based in Chicago.
- Abed and Bara in Gaza
- I found their GoFundMe through a friend (artist SA Chavarría @devendra_ai) posting often about them and I’m so glad it happened. After months of what seemed to be increasingly pointless actions (protest marches leading nowhere and appeals to representatives that were getting blatantly ignored) it ’s been beautiful to have a real, material way to support people, and it was a big bright spot in a long year. If you’re able to give to them or share this with your friends I’d highly recommend it, especially as they try to rebuild their lives.
- Serial Experiments Lain
- I don’t know why I thought I might not like this because it immediately became one of my favorite anime (feel like if too many anime fans think something is really smart I get suspicious of it lol). Slow, strange, and continually gripping. So many good images and scenes in this, and I love how Lain feels both nondescript and iconic at once.
- The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
- The friend mentioned earlier recommended this book and they now have recommending privileges for life because I loved this :) It took me months to finish because I legitimately savored every moment, and the amount of stuff he did that I made note of (the endless stories and voices and details, how many things unfold in legitimately surprising ways) made the reading feel like a taking masterclass as well as enjoying a great book.
- Hunter x Hunter (ch. 401-410) by Yoshihiro Togashi
- This manga is one of my favorites of all time, but it’s regularly on hiatus due to the health of its creator Yoshihiro Togashi. In 2024 he dropped ten new chapters (continuing the manga’s current arc involving a war for royal succession taking place on a giant boat) and it was easily some of the best work I read this year. He’s apparently working on a bunch of chapters now and I guarantee the next batch shows up on my 2025 list.
- SZA
- No clue why I was just passing on her music before but I’ll say now that that time was wasted. She’s easily one of the best songwriters out there right now and I love the way her songs feel (I picture them just being conjured from air or water). It feels like she’s bending the modern moment to her vision instead of the other way around (and ‘Lana’ will def be on the 2025 list).
- The Descent
- Love the way the actors feel like a set unit to me rather than a collection of individual actors, loved watching something that felt elemental (feel like I usually watch a lot of slasher movies), loved the images this movie had, and love the title :)
- Ana Mendieta: Fuego De Tierra
- I’d heard of Ana before but this documentary was my first extended look at her practice and it was incredibly invigorating. Love her work that I’ve seen (esp. the Silueta Series, which consistently leaves me breathless) and really want to dive into more things about her work and practice this year.
- Kim Gordon’s solo albums (‘No Home Record’ + ‘The Collective’)
- Didn’t listen to much Sonic Youth and wasn’t planning to listen to these but decided to give ‘The Collective’ a chance while washing dishes and these records ended up being my favorite I encountered this year (with the amazing beats and the abstracted lyrics).
- Angelina Jolie action movies
- The same friend who recommended the GoFundMe and ‘The Savage Detectives’ was behind this too (she was stunned I’d never seen a Jolie film before). I watched ‘Wanted’, ‘Salt’, and ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ over a few days and can confirm it was a deeply soul-healing way to spend some winter evenings after work. Wasn’t expecting just how badass she is, though that feels very dumb to say now that I know more about her.
- Jujutsu Kaisen by Gege Akutami
- Had to get the last spot since this manga ended in 2024 and was an amazing ride throughout. I came late to the series after seeing how it would trend on Twitter every week towards the end and it consistently had some of the hypest moments I read (feel like I could give a lecture just on Gojo vs Sukuna). Will definitely revisit it (probably with the anime once season 3 comes out) and may Gege Akutami’s 2025 be full of rest and relaxation.
Lisha Nie: I am an artist who practices to figure out a zone that’s open, vague, and probably spiritual.
- book: Dancing on My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy by Simon Wu
- exhibition: Álvaro Urbano: TABLEAU VIVANT in Sculpture Center
- movie: The World by Jia Zhangke
- documentary: Black Box Diaries by Shiori Itō
- movie: Copie conforme by Abbas Kiarostami
- documentary: Ryuichi Sakamoto's Last Days by Takeo Ohmori, Sakizaki
- furnitures by Minjae Kim
- paintings by Brook Hsu
- paintings by Issy Wood
Fletcher Bach: This user is a sometimes artist, sometimes engineer using computers and art to learn and unlearn.
mina amiri kalvøy: i'm an artist and writer, i teach, i like reading, watching films, walking
- Khtobtogone – Sara Sadik (short film)
- Foragers – Jumana Manna (film)
- What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov? – Faraz Fesharaki (film)
- Little Women (2019) – Greta Gerwig (film)
- Septology – Jon Fosse (book)
- Incubation: a Space for Monsters – Bhanu Kapil (book)
- Our Share of Night – Mariana Enriquez (book)
- the mountains of west of norway, swimming, family, learning the harmonica
Kira M I'm a social scientist who works primarily in human geography and transportation policy.
Nick Fagan: psychology grad student
- Three Drums – Four Tet
- captures the excitement of visiting people you love and haven’t seen in a while; slow burning, openly beautiful; I played this a lot on take offs, traveling a bunch after a fairly sedentary few years.
- Cover Me With Roses – Jackson C. Clark
- on repeat for a solitary moment in November, wandering a part of Brooklyn that felt, after a few months’ acclimation, arbitrary: not mine, and unremarkably so. not sad to be here – more the sound of leaving another place.
- Flesh and Blood – Cindy Lee
- makes me miss summer, essential driving music. shreds. they chose to release it first on geocities, and the site features an incredible moodboard that complements the record well – a unique and kind of broken webpage, it wouldn’t fit on spotify, where you also can’t hear the record.
- Dancing Queen – ABBA
- I tried on a lot of old favorites this year after moving, able to listen with a bit of distance and joyful interest. I played a lot of ABBA. I love how freaking corny ABBA are – the music video shows this; everyone’s dancing awkwardly and unabashedly, so happily. A perfect song. The piano slide at the start is enough.
- Bachata – Deborah Pacini Hernandez (plus playlist)
- this book traces the evolution of bachata in the DR from the ~40s - 80s. super interesting exploration of how the urbanization of the DR influenced the genre’s outgrowth from antecedent forms (especially bolero) – the breakdown of traditional gender roles and the family unit, the limited recording technology and distribution afforded to the genre, and Trujillo’s tight regulation of the music industry kept it an outsider, underclass, and instrumentally simple music even as it was secretly popular across class lines. I liked this contextualized way of engaging with a new genre, and it also produced a great playlist of artists and records
- Fuego Ardiente – Carmen Francisco
- the majority of bachateros were men and recorded by one person, Radhames Aracena. this artist is an exception; it’s an incredibly bittersweet record, and also immediate. I couldn’t find much information about her unfortunately, and Hernandez’s book only makes a few passing references, but the record stands on its own.
- Counternarratives – John Keene
- I come back to this book often, and did again this summer, before moving. the center piece is a novella that charts a fraught relationship between two women: Carmel (deep feeling, mute, though able to communicate with and through her ancestors) and Evangeline (bitter, contemptuous and also tormented), and to whom Carmel is enslaved. the two are stuck in a convent in Kentucky and have to negotiate the confinement of that place, each-other, as well as the era’s conservatism. it’s such a compelling story, and the prose is so pretty and literary (almost flowery, but somehow in a good way) – you strongly feel the awful weight of the kentucky summer and the desire to escape that ill place. definitely a story to live in / with.
Jo Suk writes, organizes, studies, and makes art.
- Special Books for Special Kids
- YouTube channel that interviews people of all ages with various disabilities. I’ve found these interviews humanizing, challenging, and deeply affirming for my own experience of disability.
- Peacock Tail by Boards of Canada (song)
- Not much to say; just enjoy the phenomenology of it.
- Make way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth
by Alexandra Kollontai
- On the bourgeois origins of love-based marriages.
- The Undying by Anne Boyer
- About the author’s experience of breast cancer, medical bureaucracy, and the social spectacle of illness. Incisively written.
- For an imperfect cinema by Julio García Espinosa
- On the materialist roots of elitism in cinema, the false democratic nature of media, and the imperatives of true revolutionary art.
sam heckle: + bi-coastal + educator + seeker + consumer + lover + hater + freak + critic + noob +
L Fahn-Lai (they/them): recovering scientist and reluctant tech worker, likes interesting shapes
- Rebecca Makkai— I Have Some Questions For You
- (fun, smart, tough…what if Serial, but at boarding school?)
- Charging my phone across the room
- Soda and bitters
- (for when I want to hang out at a bar and do some work but need every available brain cell)
- Freezing pre-chopped onions/scallions/shallots/garlic/basil/parsley
- (not quite as good as fresh but this saves me a ton of time when I’m too hangry to think)
- Fight Health Insurance
- (insurers use AI to automatically deny claims, this tool uses AI to generate appeals and guides you through the process)
- Awesome lists
- (meta-rec, giant list to discover tools and resources across the internet now that every search engine is falling apart. Tech-heavy but there’s some good stuff in other domains under Misc)
- Open Source Society University
- (collection of free curriculums in CS, math, data science, and bioinformatics for that special someone in your life with infinite spare time)
- Tailscale
- (free private VPN that routes your internet traffic through someone else’s device, so you can make Netflix think you live with whoever pays for your family account. You can pay for an add-on that gives you access to Mullvad VPN servers so you can route through datacenters as well like a regular VPN)
- Hyperkey
- (free, makes your Mac’s caps lock do something more useful by sending control+option+command+shift ⌃⌥⌘⇧ instead, which makes complicated keyboard shortcuts easier to execute. I found this so useful I ended up paying for the upgraded version [Superkey](https://superkey.app), which additionally lets you search through all the text that’s visible on your screen and click buttons, links, and menu items without leaving the keyboard)
- Raycast
- (freemium Mac application launcher, started life as a replacement for Spotlight on ⌘+space but has a bunch of extensions and integrations that basically let you do anything you can think of from your keyboard. Includes a pretty good clipboard manager, a lightweight markdown text editor that I’m writing this list in, and a tool for searching through all the menu items in the active application ← incredibly useful if you spend a lot of time in Adobe where everything useful is three menus deep. Also lets you bind custom systemwide keyboard shortcuts to particular applications, websites, or automations, which is really powerful alongside Hyperkey. I currently have email bound to caps + E messages bound to caps + M, google search bound to caps + spacebar, and email bound to caps + E. Caps + enter brings up the text editor, and caps + / activates the menu item search. This more than anything has really transformed how I use my computer, I can’t recommend it enough)
- ProNotes
- (freemium, makes the Apple Notes app much more useful by giving you a floating formatting bar, markdown support, backlinks like Obsidian, template support, and a system-wide search function)
- HazeOver
- ($9.99, for all the other ADHD girlies out there—dims every window on your Mac screen except for the one you’re working in. Amazing for when you need to focus on just one thing, but still want to be able to see notifications come in or refer to another file occasionally)
Joseph Buckley: Sculptor.
- Cult of the Spiral Dawn by Peter Feheravi
- A sumptuously depressing romp. So bleak and pathetic. The story of slaves, conscripts, deserters, liars, mutants, and spies. I think Warhammer 40,000 is most interestingly and generatively viewed as a kind of psychedelic post-colonial freak out… to that end, few capture the rot, despair, and inherent insanity of Imperial dysfunction better than Peter Feheravi. Nor does anyone else capture the incipient, terrifying mundanity of that particular universes dynamics of metaphysical evil. The foul eldritch gods of the sea of emotion are spiritually lethal, yes, but there are many, many paths to genuine damnation.
- In a Year With 13 Moons by RW Fassbinder
- Gorgeous, beautiful, my favourite film maybe… Desire, lust, need, and betrayal dressed up as a fated dance. What does it mean to love (and to attempt to), truly and bravely, when you have been grievously wronged? How does one exist, holding true to an idea of love, when the whole world has betrayed you? Our main character remains one of the most beautiful, dignified, and tragic heroines ever put to the screen. Against a backdrop of tawdry betrayal, of systems of embedded generational abuse, in spite of the inadequacies of others, she dies of a type of nobility that I fear can only exist in stories.
- The Angel of History by Ernst Fuchs
- Had a real Fuchs deep dive last year. Luv it.
- Akhenaten by Philip Glass
- I didn’t ‘get’ this as a younger man… I was too caught up in the glittering candied arpeggios of Einstein at the Beach. But I returned to it, by accident, and fell into a deep trance with it, listening to it on repeat in the studio as I worked for days on end (not an exaggeration). Threaded through with competing overarching structures: the opera is simultaneously one long funeral procession, a biography, and an archaeological study. For me, the emotional peak of the opera is in ‘Window of Appearances’ where Akhenaten is revealed for the first time and sings a duet with his lover.
- r/ufo, r/aliens, etc. Reddit
- For the record, I am agnostic on the ‘causes’ of UFOs. Aliens, hyper-advanced human technology, or ‘simply’ massive and profound delusion, all these truths would be equally fascinating.
I have loved the internet since I was first able to get on it by myself twenty years ago.
Like people on a sinking ship, or a front of climate change pushing animals into ever more cramped peninsulas, reddit feels like it has had some kind of ‘Final September’ vibe to it, as social media sites, forums, etc close down or are overrun by unsheathed frothing fascists. When things get unavoidably bad. When solidarity is rendered illegal, and when the working classes have the option of socialism illegalized, banished, or elsehow snatched from them, Fascism is the option that remains. I’m sure we can all kind of agree that this is the broad shape of the way that things go and yet, there’s something quite beautiful and unexpected I find, about the alternative options people are choosing for themselves in the few murky and hidden corners left to them (ignorant, presumably, of the fact that Reddit is as hyper-surveilled as anywhere else - look into Reddit's relationship to Eglin Air Force Base for more information on this).
It’s been very fun, as the world slides ever deeper into a more undeniable shape of horror, to see people flock to these boards and create a sort of religion from first principles. To see people unable to articulate a political theory for why the world is as it is, answer the questions that haunt them by developing and feeding into a burgeoning contemporary body of myth that is about denying earthly power. Our governments own the monopoly on violence and thusly a monopoly on technology. The members of these communities yearn and LONG for power from the stars to undo their earthly tyrants.
Chariot Wish: Poet, Small Press Editor, Freelance Subversive
- Night Philosophy by Fanny Howe
- if only for the essay on Marilyn Buck, however as a friend put it, the lyrical essay is a revelation
- Out Of The Blue (dir. Dennis Hopper)
- some of the most stunning acting i've ever witnessed. also one of the best teen transmasculine representations in any film. for lovers of violence and punk rock, not for the faint of heart
- The Declared Enemy - Essays and Interviews of Jean Genet
- incredible late life meditations on empire, the broken american psyche, his time in palestine and with the black panthers. proving once and for all that he was a diamond of a mind and pure of heart, and not JUST a criminal pervert
- In A Minor Groove - Dorothy Ashby
- instant nervous system soothing jazz harp, maybe obvious but every year it works
- The Gay Center In Chelsea (NYC)
- great place if you have to pee or need to sit and charge your phone. incredible that they made a place for gay people to hang out, honorable mention goes to the martin wong mural in the back stairwell
Benjamin Krusling: I read and write and make videos and do some work with sound sometimes.
- Ganger, Veeze (2023)
- "popping painkillers but my heart still ain't healing;" "brick of gray through the mail/let's address the elephant;" "threw the deuce sign when I blew through/7 mile dog in the car with no roof, roof;" "I'm glad I'm out the game cuz the snitches livin/I put her on a wave like I live in a river/gettin paid for all the shit I been through/Pourin champagne on the ground, tellin bro I miss him." Kaleidoscopic, understated, addictive, drugged out but cut with asphalt wisdom, thick feeling, mind-stretching figuration, favorite album of last two years, at least.
- Chevengur, 1928 novel by Andrei Platonov, trans. Elizabeth and Robert Chandler
- Soviet engineer Andrei Platonov wrote his whole heart out in this beautiful, cosmic, and ultimately devastating novel, banned until 1988, of a young Red who goes out into the country on a mission to find real existing Communism. I really wept, thinking about him, about Palestine, Myanmar, Haiti, the U.S., everywhere people have taken themselves to the limits of their humanity to fight for a better world and have been crushed by difficulty, reaction, history. But the novel is its own argument for keeping the spark alive.
- Being Reflected Upon, Alice Notley (2024)
- Notley was never really for me, until I read this perfect book of poems. Loose, verbose, wet, cutting, wtf. "I live in that room too I'm standing there I've/always been there // But I have to be here to write the poems/I have to go through all this--why?"
- Hard Truths (dir. Mike Leigh, 2024)
- "Colony Junior," (2024) Hannah Black
- "We all learn eventually: we have to die. But this necessity is not the appearance of Evil, and should not be augmented by the sadistic ruin of worlds."
- Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral (1973)
- Theory to praxis pipeline.
- Woodcutters, Thomas Bernhard (1984)
- Transcendent (anti-)Austrian hate.
- Frederic Jameson. "Towards Dialectical Criticism" (1971).
- Banned from Broadcast: The Movie -- Saiko! The Large Family (dir. Toshikazu Nagae, 2009)
- Watched in a tiny studio apartment in Tokyo, never seen anything like it.
Sabrina Santiago: I'm sabrina I make pictures and am still on the hunt for the best Indian food in new york.
- no cell phone until 1 hour after waking up
- Cafe Himalaya's momos
- At Land by Maya Deren
- High Polyphenol Olive Oil
- ...your view on olive oil will never be the same after
- heating pad on your feet before bed
Shelby Shaw: Shelby Shaw is a writer-artist in NY working between the film industry and teaching writing at SVA.
- [TV] Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004, director: Richard Ayoade)
- This British mini-series from over two decades ago is a mere six episodes long, but I would watch a new episode every day of my life if there was one. Ayoade and co-writer Matthew Holness have created a critical spoof of the pulpy 1980s science fiction genre, including misogynistic views on women who only think about make-up, doctors who need no credentials, and ridiculous scenarios neatly tidied up always in the nick of time. The show's dissection of tropes of a genre by highlighting everything bad about it is genius and I now own it on VHS.
- [Book] Wellness (2023, Nathan Hill)
- This massive epic set in modern-day Chicago tackles the not-yet-worn subjects of marriage, parenting alongside progressive competitive other parents, keeping the flame alive from your twenties into middle age, and breaking away from the family you were born into. Hill takes his characters, Jack and Elizabeth, through chapters that move away from the present where they're buying a luxury condo and raising a son, to sections detailing each of their very different upbringings and lineages, including an excellent treatise on photography (which Jack teaches adjunct). I was hooked and surprised and thoughtfully provoked throughout.
- [Album] brat (2024, Charli xcx)
- I had never listened to Charli xcx before this summer, knew nothing about her, don't listen to her music, but then my friend said I had to give it a try, and I did, and that was it, I was brat. I listened to the album on repeat for 10.5 hours driving from NY to Columbus at one point. Charli and I are almost the exact same age, and to hear someone singing a club song about whether or not to have a baby before it's too late is pretty wild and empowering and exciting; the album as a whole singular piece changed my life in a positive way.
- [Film] Saturday Night (2024, Jason Reitman)
- People might hate this one, but I absolutely loved seeing this film in theaters with its obscene humor about the hours leading up to airing the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. It's shown in a way that's meant to feel ""in real time"" so the energy is hectic and non-stop from the beginning, anxious but exciting. I found the film inspiring, considering how many obstacles a group of unknown twenty-somethings persevered through to start a project nobody believed in at first.
- [Comic] Transmetropolitan (1997-2002, Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson)
- Another game-changer for me: this 60-issue comic about a wildcard journalist, Spider Jerusalem, hellbent on telling the truth about his corrupt fictional city and country is timely (sadly) but also just gorgeously rendered and colored. I collected the complete 60 individual issues and have an action figure of Spider sitting on my desk under my computer monitor, grimacing at me to keep doing my work and stop at nothing.
- [Photography] Portra 400 35mm Film
- I've been shooting with my Olympus film camera (the same one used in Wim Wenders' film Perfect Days!) and getting my prints developed regularly. It's been really nice to be surprised, to get high quality scans, and to have physical mementos of dates, sexy morning-after nudes of myself, friends I enjoyed seeing, and knowing who took which photo when and where.
- [Music] Fontaines D.C.
- This Irish rock band in their late-twenties (D.C. = Dublin City) started as poets and moved into putting their poetics to loud, energetic rhythms across several albums, which progressively are tonally very different with each release. After having two wonderful dates (including one in which we watched Saturday Night together, listed above), I was so on high with my life that on a whim I bought a general ticket to see Fontaines that night in Philadelphia and drove out there to watch the show then drove back to NY that same night and it was excellent.
- [Movies] MUBI
- My most-used streaming service for 2024, MUBI has been around for awhile in support of experimental and independent, arthouse and artist films (they've long sponsored the avant-garde section of NYFF where I worked from 2015-2023). They have curated series and rotate titles from around the world, and I always find shorts and features that I'm happy to watch for the first time.
- [Movies] Kanopy
- This streaming service is free through most local libraries, and constantly has an amazing library of current releases and classic films and shows, with an easy app or in-browser player. Pro tip: lots of uncensored NC-17 content, and lots of international gems. This was my second-most used streaming service in 2024.
- [Food] Neuhaus Chocolate
- I received a sampler box of these Belgian chocolates as a gift, and as someone who doesn't eat sugar, I've decided to experiment with a chocolate a day. Now I'm hooked on their dark chocolates because I've never actually had high quality dark chocolate before and I bet you have not either. They're pricey, but entirely worth it, and if you find a retail location near you they'll let you have a free sample (which will wholly convince you to buy a box to take home).
Shindy Johnson: Care about injustice, vilification of the poor, children & youth, gardening & food, my love & my dog.
- Youtube reactions to the Drake and Kendrick beef
- I am still reveling in Kendrick's win for the culture and I'm endlessly entertained and delighted by online reactors to his diss tracks. I am also grateful to the youtube reactors because they helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the music as a new fan of this era of hip hop. My favorite reactors are Scru Face Jean https://www.youtube.com/@ScruFaceJeanOfficial , No Life Shaq https://www.youtube.com/@NoLifeShaq , and Knox Hill https://www.youtube.com/@KnoxHill , but I also love the compilations of reactions.
- Kendrick's new album GNX
- TV Off is my new workout track and Luther with SZA is so sexy-romantic to me. I love the entire album.
- Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday 2 World Tour
- I loved the Pink Friday 2 album and the fact that it made me discover all of her older albums and fall in love with her music even more than before. I also loved putting pink braids in my hair and attending my first ever celebrity concert in the US and screaming all the songs at the top of my lungs with tens of thousands of other fans.
- Artist/activist Ekene Ijeoma
- His project titled Black Forest: A Living Monument and Archive for Black Lives dedicated to planting trees for Black lives. This started as a project to memorialize the disproportionate loss of black lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Black Forest has planted over 500 trees nationwide and is expanding to Brazil and Africa. I participated in a tree planting ceremony in The Bronx and planted and dedicated a tree to two relatives from The Bronx
- The Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic Orchestra's two concerts in which my son - a freshman violist in the CMU College of Fine Arts - played.
- The first concert featured works by African American composers as well as a piece by a contemporary female composer who is a faculty member at CMU
- The second concert
- The Christmas concert featured Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite interspersed with Duke Ellington's and Billy Strayhdorn's jazz interpretations of the Nutcracker Suite.
- The Free Portrait Project
- Artist Rusty Zimmerman created 200 oil portraits of south Brooklyn residents accompanied by their oral histories. I got my portrait painted and it was one of the most moving, surprising and unique experiences of my life. Rusty is a force: determined and unstoppable.
- The Iwokrama River Lodge in the rainforest in Guyana - my home country
- I visited this nature reserve with my daughter and had some experiences I'd never had before although I was born and raised in Guyana. The tours were exceptional especially hiking up Turtle Mountain and camping overnight under pitch black skies in open cabins with the sounds of wild animals in the night.
Martha Daghlian is an artist interested in people and their lives and the fact that we all die.
- Teshima art museum, Teshima, Japan
- My partner Ním and I went to Japan in September and took an overnight trip to Teshima island, where we visited Rei Naito’s piece in the Teshima Art Museum. The building was designed by Ryue Nishizawa specifically for the installation, and it’s an artwork in itself. But Naito’s work, which involves glassy beads of water that appear and crawl around as if by magic, was actually truly transcendent. It was alien and earthly at the same time, and made me forget about being a human.
- Site of Reversible Destiny, Yoro Park, Japan
- Another favorite stop in Japan was the Site of Reversible Destiny in Yoro Park, Gifu, which was recommended by a good friend, Stephanie Simek (https://www.stephaniesimek.com/). This place was such a trip—originally designed in the 90s by artist duo Arakawa and Gins, it looks like a videogame landscape and is super disorienting. The artists designed it to provoke “changes in bodily perception would lead to changes in consciousness,” and I don’t think you could ever get away with making an artwork this physically hazardous in the US.
- Nosferatu the Vampyre, Werner Herzog
- For my birthday, we built a blanket fort, ate mushrooms, and watched Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: The Vampyre from 1979. It was like watching a living painting, and of course it’s got Klaus Kinski as Count Orlock. Maybe I’m a big snob, but I think the new Nosferatu can’t come close to comparing with this one.
- Last Things, Deborah Stratman
- Another fantastic watch from 2024 was Deborah Stratman’s documentary Last Things. It presents “evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks and various future others” in a poetic style that I thought was really profound. I guess this fits in my “trippy stuff that makes you question your own human perception” theme so far.
- Borne, by Jeff Vandermeer
- I really loved Jeff Vandermeer’s 2014 novel Annihilation (if you have only seen the movie, it’s totally different! Read the book too!), but I wasn't quite as into the sequels in that series, so I took a while getting around to reading Borne, even though it came out in 2017. But I really enjoyed it! It’s about a dystopian future full of genetically modified monstrosities including a giant flying bear named Mord and a tiny mysterious creature that gets adopted by a Mad Max-type couple who scavenge the land for scraps and fight mutant child gangs. Crazy stuff!
- Low: Notes on Art and Trash, by Jaydra Johnson
- I’m still making my way through Jaydra Johnson’s incredible new book of essays, Low, which just came out on Fonograf Editions in November. I met Jaydra at an art show I organized over the summer, and pretty quickly after that invited her to put up her own artwork, collages of grotesque guardian angels on ceramic tiles and hanging mobiles. Some of those collages are in her book, as visual complements to her writing, which blends art-critical modes with memoir and poetry and has been making me reflect really hard on my own experiences and understandings of class and aesthetics throughout my life.
- Mycelial Without Meaning To, by Kaya Noteboom
- Another brilliant writer friend, Kaya Noteboom, published this low-key yet razor-sharp essay on the Canadian site Public Parking, examining the recent trendiness of fungal analogies. I love Kaya’s writing on art—they have this incredible ability to put complicated ideas and visual material into the most beautiful language that is somehow also direct and almost intimate in a way, if that makes sense? I don’t know how to write about writing, I’m just a fan!
- Epistemics for Artists by Bean Gilsdorf
- At various points in 2024 I found myself experiencing a bit of burnout on the whole “professional practice” side of being an artist, just feeling like it was a lot of grind and maybe it was just grinding a big hole underneath me that I was going to be trapped in forever. Bean Gilsdorf’s performance-lecture “Epistemics for Artists” lifted my gloom by identifying the things that make being an artist so exhausting and painting towards potential ways to improve our collective prospects. The performance is not viewable online but I heard she will be presenting it again this year in Portland, so if you’re around these parts do not miss it!!
- Forking Paths Issue #1, Guidebook to the Viridian Maw, by Nathan Harrison
- (Ním’s recommendation) The first in a series of self-published zines meant to stoke the imaginations of tabletop role players, Forking Paths #1: Guidebook to the Viridian Maw has given me and my friends literally hundreds of hours of engaged, high-fantasy imagination time. The Viridian Maw is “an overgrown meteor crater, mutated and reshaped by fungal influence,” and the illustrations are great. A treasured object.
Mariana Roa Oliva: I write and teach writing, I like dancing and hanging out with animals and learning about them.
- Counternarratives, book by John Keene
- Brilliant short stories/novellas. Memorable, complex characters. Incredible work with voice.
- Weyes, álbum by Luisa Almaguer
- I love her so much. She’s amazing love. Song “una perra” makes me cry.
- Trans utopías, podcast by Siobhan Guerrero
- Philosopher of science on gender, current affairs, book/film reviews. Super interesting, nuanced, funny.
- Metazoa, book by Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Philosophy of mind on the animal mind. Will make you want to scuba dive. Great stories about individual animals of different species. Incredible sentences that only happen when reading biology.
- Anna’s Archive.
Kevin Cadena: I care about narratives of resistance and reconnection and that ask us to see the world differently.
- Pais De Canela by William Ospina (Book)
- Voyager by Nona Fernandez (Book)
- Koko by Karen Nyame KG (Song)
- BBE by Snotty Nose Rez Kids (Song)
- Arco by PANIC (Game)
Maggot Mushh: writer, artist, synanthrope <3
- The Dawn of Everything // David Graeber and David Wengrow
- What if an anarchist anthropologist and an anarchist archeologist were best buds and wrote a book together? What if the “european” “enlightenment” was not instigated by five or six french super-geniuses but was instead a defensive response to decades of scathing indigenous critique? This book is such a fizzy antidote to the myth-of-progress-pilled ‘easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’ mindset – though, full disclosure, I have not finished it yet because it is a slab.
- aparatocifi.press // Canek Zapata
- I spent way too long this year trying to piece together a basic timeline of mexican sci-fi before discovering this site – a Canek Zapata project from 2018. Seems like recently Canek has been pulled into the AI art vortex, but aparato.cifi is the kind of thing I find enduringly cool and useful. Texts go from 1692 to 1947 (in Spanish, natch).
- Rancho de Orfeu // Luiz Bonfá com Norma Suely
- (track 9) Something about the balance of sweetness and shadow in this song makes it so fucking addictive to me. It’s soothing and uncanny; it feels like it’s trying to hypnotize. I know a lot of things are named after Orpheus but I think Orpheus would be legitimately into this one.
- Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death // James Tiptree Jr.
- I was talking about James Jr. with Tilghman the other day and we concluded that there is no way she could have written the stories that she wrote had she not been, briefly, part of the CIA. Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death is a doomed romance between two kinky nasty giant singing bugs which left me legitimately devastated on the blue line (a good companion piece to Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild maybe?). All of the stories in the collection linked (Warm Worlds & Otherwise) are hog wild, insanely stylish and chaotically bisexual.
- http://messybeast.com/colour-charts.htm // Sarah Hartwell
- This obsessively comprehensive hand-made index of cat colours and markings is the kind of website I miss on today’s internet. I love picturing the author painstakingly filling in the outline of each cat variation with her mouse. I love reading lines like: “First the melanoblasts migrate evenly across the skin surface. Then the expanding skin surface “cracks” during early embryo growth. Cracks break up the coloured surface into islands.
Jorge Alejandro Rodriguez Solorzano: I am a PhD candidate in anthropology, writer, and translator conducting field research in Oaxaca.
- Juan Pablo Villalobos's novels
- I was first introduced to Villalobos's novels by my partner Carol, who lent me her copy of ""El pasado anda detrás de nosotros,"" after which I read three of his other novels. My favorite must be ""Si viviéramos en un lugar normal,"" about hyper-inflation, single party dictatorship, and alien abductions in San Juan de los Lagos, in my natal state Jalisco. His sense of humor needs to be read in Spanish.
- Tommy Orange's novel ""There, There.""
- When Columbia graduate students went on strike in 2021, Tommy Orange generously agreed to give us the space before his book talk at Columbia to give a forum to our demands. In 2024, I finally read Orange's first novel. It is a beautifully rendered portrayal of urban Native American life, the hardships and desires one experiences after being torn from your roots, and the relentless hustle.
- A painting of the now abandoned Texcoco Lake Airport by Aureliano Alvarado Faesler
- I randomly found this at the Material art fair in February. I love Alvarado Faesler's representations of landscapes around Mexico City. They currently have some paintings up at the Museo Tamayo with weird perspectival effects.
- An exhibition I saw in Mexico City in November that features hundreds of nativity scenes from all over Mexico.
- They are made from clay, stone, aluminum, and a bunch of other materials. It is an artistic genre that reminds me of my great grandmother's house, where she and I used to arrange biblical figures, moss and a clay volcano representing the Paricutín volcano we made together.
- Jan Brueghel the Elder
- Paintings of snow-covered villages in the Netherlands that make me want to cozy up. Love the winter vibes it gives.
Tiri Kananuruk & Sebastian Morales [MORAKANA]: We work with hardware, software and nature.
- Project Hail Mary / Novel by Andy Weir
- Nerd mystery adventure full of physics and biology.
- The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth / Zoë Schlange
- Not your regular salad plants.
- Scavengers Reign / Creators: Joseph Bennett & Charles Huettner / TV series
- Perfect to sit and enjoy or bring a notebook a do serious research.
- Fungal by Raphaël Bastide
- Jean Teresa Clinch told me about this cool website!
- Bi Lamban Song by Ballaké Sissoko and Toumani Diabaté
- Char Stiles recommended me and I keep it on repeat! They use an instrument called “Kora”. Very beautiful sounds
Lee Tusman: I'm an artist, educator and organizer working in DIY community on art, code, biking, music and more.
- Michael DeForge - Familiar Face
- (comic/graphic novel) - Drawn and Quarterly, 2020. The narrator lives in a world where while one sleeps the apartment, roommates, partner, the streets around them, even their own body could all be ""updated"" into confusing changes. Themes of love, alienation, confusion, contingent employment, and an ongoing protest. Great story.
- Jesse Stommel - Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop
- Hybrid Pedagogy 2023. I read this with a cohort of other faculty at my school, and we've met twice now to discuss the book. It's a game-changer for me, with both insightful and detailed critique, as well as practical advice and systems to follow, and that can be tailored to fit my own approach.
- Marin Kosut - Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York
- Columbia University Press, 2024. She describes alternative spaces, being a poor artist in New York, weird exhibition spaces (her 'pay fauxn' gallery) and the people she meets. She's witty, writes well, and while it's very sobering (since everyone is poor, only capitalism wins), it was a fun read, though depressing at times.
- Cape Hideous - Jake Clover
- Weird Fucking Games - available on Steam for Windows (I tested it working in Proton/Wine on Linux/Mac). It's only 45 minutes but an incredible hand drawn simple and gorgeous visual novel unfolding about an anarchist pirate ship with the player as trippy seawoman sorceress. Game is only 35 minutes or so. Perfect.
- Lee's Flow Music
- A hidden part of my website that contains only links to ambient and similar music for writing, cranking out code, meditating, etc. This is not LoFi Beats.
- Izzzzi.net
- New favorite ""social media"" - You can only update once a day. It shows a daily ""newspaper page"" of friends' photos or writing.
- Hive board game
- A 2 player Chess-like game that is much faster and requires no board - An evergreen recommendation as I've played and loved this game for years. A modern fit for the Chess, Go, Mancala, Backgammon pantheon.
theadora walsh: I am a writer and sometimes, a curator.
- The song "Just As You Are" by Robert Wyatt
- Non-Natural Wines
- An angry man from Portugal exasperatedly groaned when I tried to impress a waiter in LA by asking, ""what are your favorite natural wines on the menu?"" After I ordered something that tasted a lot like grass and soap my neighbor smugly said: ""Wine is supposed to be about a place not science."" I think he was right and haven't had natural wine since. We need to stop pretending natural wine is okay.
- Mussels steamed in butter and garlic
- It's really easy to make and it impresses your friends.
- Civil War the movie on IMAX at the Emeryville mall
- I genuinely do not know if I like this movie or not. I can't stop thinking about Kirsten Dunst teaching her young accolade how to take photographs of a crashed helicopter in a strip mall while an imaginary war, to which she seems apathetic, rages. I think it's so funny this movie turned out to be about photography instead of politics. I think it's important to watch.
- Malina the novel by Ingeborg Bachmann
- Malina the movie by Werner Schroeter
- "Be My Eyes" app
- This is a social device that connects those with impaired vision or blindness to strangers who can look through their video screen, or at a photo, and share information. Most of the internet seems to siphon us, reinforce bias, and foster an eerie sense of constant absence, but, this is a very sweet and incidental way to use my phone.
Nicodemus Nicoludis: I'm a poet, teacher, and editor in Ridgewood.
- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
- Possibly the greatest modernist poem ever created. Pick it up, turn to a page, see what happens.
- The Ferry
- There’s a kind of romanticism of seeing Manhattan from a boat.
- Geology
- The history of rocks tells us something about the history of imagination and the scales of time.
- Anthony Braxton
- Inventive, fun, imaginative, his work from the 1970s is always worth taking time to listen to.
- Rank and file unionism
- Being in struggle with others makes a new world seem possible.
Tanika Williams: Mom/Wife/Professor by day. Eco-feminist experimental filmmaker and performance artist some nights.
Emma Ramadan: I'm an educator and literary translator who wants to start making much more time for life and art.
- All of Us Strangers
- (movie, can stream on Hulu): one of the most beautiful and haunting movies I've seen in many years
- Bad Sisters
- (TV show, stream on Apple TV): wonderful dark comedy that is ultimately about smart women in the face of bad men
- Mojave Ghost by Forrest Gander
- (poetry): incredibly moving poetry about nature and loss
- Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen by Suzanne Scanlon
- (nonfiction): on madness and womanhood and their overlaps, in real life and in literature
- Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabelle Hammad
- (nonfiction): a new angle on an ongoing horror; well worth the read for an examination of how narratives are formed and maintained
- Wavelength
- (game): Just a good game. I suggest the board game version but I guess you can also play on your phone?
- Saunas
- You'd be surprised at how many cheap gyms have solid saunas. Good for your health and your skin and for being alone with your thoughts.
- Blue Raspberry Sour Patch Kids
- they're really good, much better than anything bright blue really should be
- "Let's Do it Again" and "On Hold" by Jamie xx
- (songs): for when you want to feel good in a rowdy way
- "Lose My Mind" by Jamie Jones
- (song): for when you want to feel good in a chill way
Jody Zellen: Artist, writer, runner living in Santa Monica, CA.
- Watching the sunrise
- Watching the sunset
- Looking at stars in the night sky
- Looking at the expansive vistas in the desert
- Listening to the crashing waves
Kelly Clare is a writer and artist in wmass and an editor at Ghost Proposal
- <3 Cleveland Review of Books <3
- Consistently putting out the hot cool weird poetry stuff I love
- <3 Eve Fowler <3
- Her neon, incredible Gertrude Stein quote prints / posters / broadsides bring me joy
- <3 Wiby.me <3
- Click the “surprise me” button to experience the “old school” corners of the internet. How my partner and I have been spending our winter.
- <3 The Clock by Christian Marclay <3
- Up at MoMA through mid-February, The Clock is a 24-hour film featuring snippets from films where a clock is present, perfectly aligned with the actual time. You are both inside and outside of the fictive dream of time. I could live there all day.
- <3 forming a reading / critique / workshop group with your friends <3
- One of the few things keeping me grounded and sane. We meet once every month or two, virtually.
Derek Baron: I am a writer, musician, and teacher. I live in New York.
dre jácome is an andean artist, narrative strategist, and herbalist based in lenapehoking.
Benjamin Bennett
- [Movie] Radu Jude: Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
- [Movie] Chris Smith: DEVO
- [Book] Jaques Ranciere: Dissensus
- [Book] Susan Sontag: Acts of Radical Will and Against Interpretation
- [Book] John M. Bennett: Leg Mist
- [Artist Monogram] Rachel Harrison: Life Hack
- [Music] Kieran Daly: The Sylvester Arias
- [Field recording album] Jean C. Roché: Le Monde des Singes, vol 1 (Sittelle 1994)
- [Field recording album] Catherine Bouchain, Jean-Pierre Gautier: Le Monde Des Singes - 2 (Sittelle 1995)
- [Field recording album] Cornell Laboratory Of Ornithology: The Diversity of Animal Sounds (1999)
Liyan Ibrahim: Palestinian artist and NYU grad student working with personal narratives and political activism.
- Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani
- A really good book on the palestinian experience and struggle for a better life. Also, Ghassan Kanafani is an incredible author and his life story and writing on his palestinian-ness is something I can’t get out of my head
- Passport: Poem by Mahmoud Darwish
- In the Presence of Absence
- Collection of Mahmoud Darwish’s poems - anything really by Mahmoud Darwish is incredibly good and inspiring and has shaped me and many people around me’s experience as people born into exile/war
- Passport - but this time the song
- Lebanese song writer Marcel Khalife sings Mahmoud Darwish’s poems so beautifully
- The Trial of the Chicago 7: Movie!
- Really interesting and cool movie about a group of anti–Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy. Also it’s now on Netflix
- Anything by Walid Raad
Bailey Goldsborough: i’m a taurus i’m a substitute teacher i like drawing and music and skateboarding
- william melvin kelley bibliography
- best altogether like jd salinger glass family saga but if i hd to recommend 1 book it’s ‘dem’
- negrophobia by darius james
- groove, bang,&jive around by steve cannon
- allan holdsworth live performances on youtube
- derrick may/mayday
- archibald motley
- william edmondson
- marsden hartley
- levi’s 569
- peace
- love
- unity
- respect
Pablo Somonte Ruano: How can software support collective processes of self-determination and relational autonomy?
In no particular order, and risking missing something crucial, for better or worse these are the things that immediately came to my mind for this tumultuous year. A mix of my friend's amazing music, podcasts, videos and activist resources.
Tess Brown-Lavoie: I write, organize, teach, and live in Brooklyn.
- "Exile Is So Strong Within Me I May Bring It To The Land" (1996) Interview with Mahmoud Darwish
- poignant, sharp, and useful dialogue on writing, poetry, exile, and paradise, particularly in conditions of dispossession. i come back to this interview over and over and find evergreen wisdom that fortifies me and my practice of poetry.
- My Lesbian Novel (2024) Renee Gladman
- i love all her books essays and this is just the latest.
- The Years (2008) Annie Ernaux
- sorry i just got here. incredible witness to the prism of a life as it filters time and witnesses collective(s) living / world changing.
- Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry (2024) ed. Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone
- feels like this collection was published specifically for me. so many writers in my private canon assembling their "influence packets" to make evident the musculature of a lineage that feels legible and obvious as an enthusiast / inheritor but also yea maybe untold.
- King Lear_Shakespeare
- a real ripper, especially if your dad is crazy or dead (or both). also more generally recommend reading plays aloud with friends.
- Sylvia Federici at Triple Canopy Symposium, 2024
- i keep thinking about 2 points from this talk i went to in november. Federici notes both that community organizing needs to address/improve the material conditions of people's lives in order to have staying power; and also that one has to be ready to change and be changed by collaborations, rather than abiding in fragility inside of inevitable disagreement. I'm guided by this instruction in organizing with my colleagues, in my cooperative grocery store, and even in my relationships and community more generally.
- Radio Alhara
- frequent listening while grading, cooking, etc.
- Cutt Press
- new to me, print media project from Erin Honeycutt with rare depth grace and integrity
- CHANGING:: Zhouyi: Heart of the Yijing (2nd Edition) Liu Ming
- durational oracular companion
Molly Schaeffer: I'm a poet, teacher, and visual artist living in the Pacific Northwest.
- Fantasmas, Julio Torres' new show (HBO and/or Hulu to watch)
- I consider myself to be one of Julio Torres' biggest fans and collaborating with him would be my creative dream. Fantasmas is incredibly weird and hard to describe. What you need to know is that, if you're anything like me, you will pause due to disbelief and laughter so many times that it will take you an hour to watch a 20-minute episode. Every object, color, and bureaucratic system imaginable is given its deserved spotlight, whether to celebrate it or point out its obvious absurdity. It's perfect.
- Coccoina glue sticks
- Italian glue sticks that smell like marzipan (and also work great). No reason not to!s
- Sumo oranges
- Easiest to peel, easiest to segment, most enjoyable to eat, you really feel like you're Jo March in Little Women savoring your orange while wearing a spirited hat to go with your nightgown in the attic at midnight.
- (A few) of the movies that made me cry in the last year
- "Janet Planet," "Little Women" (1994 AND 2019 versions), "I Used to Be Funny."
- All music by Lomelda
- When I listen to Hannah Read's music I want to be in a sunny car and I also want to be reading in my room at night and generally always sort of choked up (what I call "crying inside my face") and there's a Super-8 reel unwinding and a nice breeze. They're touring this winter/spring, just saying!
- Bernadette Mayer's "Midwinter Day."
- Life and art converge in a pot of spaghetti, it's all everything. There are some moments I now skip over in my reading aloud because they haven't aged well, but something about hearing a friend read aloud the line "don’t forget to include us In all the gay anthologies as a family” collapsed time for me this year.
- Any recording/text by JJJJJerome Ellis
- Here's a great one called "The Name of That Silence is These Grasses in This Wind". Ellis uses silence, stutters, speech dysfluency, slippages in time space relationship, in such amazing and beautiful ways. I don't find their work funny, but I do find a link with Julio Torres' work (mentioned above) because I think they are both experts in studying the overlooked nouns and verbs and gaps we often think is the space in-between to get to the actual thing--they make you pause and realize the THING is right there.
Laurel Atwell: I have a rubric that I’m deconstructing to achieve beyond what I can fathom with ample wisdom.
- Writing out a self-contract and signing it
- We live inside of capitalism and capitalism has its own iterations of spell casting. Want to make something happen? Write out a contract between you and yourself, establish parameters, sign it, date it.
- Creating a system of symbols so you can talk to the universe
- What does it mean when you see a cardinal, etc. Doesn't have to be a lot, but can become a system of encouragement.
- Intuition Practice
- Daily Movement Practice
- Even 20 minutes! there are lots of yoga/pilates/qi gong classes on Youtube. I also have qi gong video recordings if you're curious <3
- Seriously pursue YOUR pleasure
- It will make you more generous.
Theo Ellin Ballew is from the U.S. desert; they write poetry and code; they built and curated this webpage.
- Can Xue's Love [...]
- So good. The title is awful and, according to some Chinese-speaking friends, gets the tone of the original all wrong. Ignore it!
- Nalo Hopkinson's Sister Mine
- Reminded of NH's work constantly, always remembering new parts. This one is on the nature of superpower and/or prosthesis, the bounds of humanity, the bounds of singular human, etc. Midnight Robber still my favorite but this one also rocks.
- Adania Shibli's Minor Detail
- For anyone who notices any inner lapse of rage against Israel. Also some of the best prose I've ever read. Slim. Barest sight of utmost human brutality.
- Black Bedouin by Mohammed Zenia and Tenaya Nasser
- So much love for these two in person and in pen.
- God/shabbos
- Some higher being that allows a release from self-blame & permission to trust in gut/chance and gives the space/calm/rest/health/strength necessary to act/fight/give. Brought up atheist so this is brand new idea for me!... & I've been avoiding "work" between Fri sunset and Sat sunset since I was 23, but I'm now (also in interpretation of ancient tradition) focusing on "study" during that time; always also consider what "work" and what "study" mean to me that week
- Zotero
- Fucking obsessed with this; if there were a #1 on this list, it'd be Zotero; thanks to Allison Parrish for introducing me; amazing way to organize all your thought-related materials (links, books, etc.).
- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun's Programmed Visions
- Poetry-theory about software as metaphor and maybe also God.
- "By Your Side" by Sade
- Everyone knows this is one of the greatest songs of all time but this year is the first time I let it teach me anything and I cried to it very intensely while doing dishes on two very different and very important occasions.
- Sylvia Legris's Nerve Squall
- Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia
- Started this one in last days of 2024 and haven't finished but obviously I love it and should have listened to the 1000 people who told me to read it over the years.
fields harrington: I like taking pictures of my kid and flowers. I teach. Sometimes I get to make art.
Sarah Cribbs is a glitchy cyborg making sparks fly w/ stage electrics in WNC.
- See You At The Maypole, Half Waif (album)
- It came out days after Hurricane Helene hit my town in western NC. I've been a long time lover of Half Waif (Nandi)'s work and this album was a powerhouse of production, sound, songwriting, and grief. Favorite songs were "Sunset Hunting", "Ephemeral Being", and "The Museum". An album that covers the ups and downs of personal and ecological grief that was an essential companion this year.
- Criterion Channel (app/streaming)
- Already highly curated, Criterion then publishes a handful of collections to its streaming service each month. Additionally, they have Criterion 24/7, a live stream of films currently streaming that you can tune into. I've seen a lot more films that I would have never gone for or that I've certainly made the excuse of "I'm not in the mood for that right now".
- Minor Feelings, Cathy Park Hong (book - essays)
- A comprehensive collection of essays that will be a great companion to your hope and rage. I assigned "Portrait of an Artist" to my students in the spring, and I'd recommend that specific essay to everyone. It hits hard especially with folks who are in the arts, and is one that I feel haunted by as someone who makes and writes about art.
- Local library (place)
- This year I've been knitting a lot more, at social gatherings, at the movie theater, at work... It requires patience and a surrender to failure that is constant. It also connects you to a community of crafters.
- Knitting (hobby)
- There's so much to love about your local library! The best thing I did at my library this year was attend a mending workshop. I learned how to mend different types of clothing and got a ton of resources to keep learning new techniques. I also met new people who live in my town, and that's amazing given there's not a lot of opportunities where I am to do that. But especially when Helene hit I had familiar faces that I was able to see and connect with when going into town to find information, food, water, etc while we waited for power and phone service to be reestablished again.