Berfrois

December 2017

China and Its Nether Zones by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

China and Its Nether Zones by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

In the Twilight Zone episode “The Eye of the Beholder”, a patient, whom viewers have been led to believe is horrendously disfigured, sits surrounded by medical staff.

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Turn On, Log In, Tune Out

Turn On, Log In, Tune Out

In 1970, Americans were on edge over terrorist activities, a bellicose president railed against his enemies and an energized left argued among its factions.

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A New Diski Fan

A New Diski Fan

What is meant when a person is deemed ahead of her time? It sounds like a fantastic compliment, yet the circumstances under which people hear it, in reference to themselves, are not always so positive.

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Anti-Corporate (B)urge(rs)

Anti-Corporate (B)urge(rs)

Readers with a historical knowledge of 1980s punk will have little difficulty seeing the value of Dave Dictor’s memoir, MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption

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Bennett’s 2017

Bennett’s 2017

12 January. At seven to the National Gallery for Beyond Caravaggio, now in its last week. It’s a mixed bag, with far and away the best picture The Taking of Christ on loan from Dublin...

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Perfect, Fancy, Choice

Perfect, Fancy, Choice

My first summer job was trimming Christmas trees in July. It was a shitty job, like most summer employment, badly paid and of dubious purpose.

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NOW

Thank You!

Thank You!

Thank you so much to our 185 tremendous funders who generously supported our 2017 public funding drive!

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Ed Simon: Final Twelve Observations about Goodness

Ed Simon: Final Twelve Observations about Goodness

Who would have expected the origin to have been with a castration? A consummately violent act. Hacking away at flesh, and the discarding of that bit of intrinsic manhood.

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Illegal Literature

Illegal Literature

It was by happy coincidence that my review copy of David S. Roh’s Illegal Literature arrived in my mailbox the day I started sending out permission requests for reuse of material for a forthcoming manuscript.

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Michael J. Seidlinger: An Incomplete List

Michael J. Seidlinger: An Incomplete List

The walking, always the walking, worse when with the wonderful people that opened their lives to me for the day, day and a half, before I returned to the road...

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Enigmas will remain to challenge our remote descendants…

Enigmas will remain to challenge our remote descendants…

Albert Einstein said that the ‘most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible’. He was right to be astonished.

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Another social group who are persecuted in Chechnya…

Another social group who are persecuted in Chechnya…

Life isn’t easy for representatives of Russia’s LGBT community who don’t hide their sexual orientation. A 2013 law on “gay propaganda” has, in effect, legalised LGBT discrimination.

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Up to Heaven All Alone

Up to Heaven All Alone

It was 1995, the year Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” was released, the end of my eighth-grade year, in rural Kentucky where homophobia was—and continues to be—rampant. My secret boyfriend and I—the one I had kissed in darkened classrooms

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Laboratories and Workshops

Laboratories and Workshops

Yhy it is that the oppressors can be seen as the liberators? You are going to ask about Trump, you are going to ask about Erdogan, you are going to ask about others...

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Once you flip to the urchin barren state…

Once you flip to the urchin barren state…

In eastern Tasmania, sea surface temperatures have increased at four times the average global rate, according to Johnson, who along with colleague Scott Ling has closely studied the region’s kelp forest losses.

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