Berfrois

July 2018

Clarice Lispector’s Persona

Clarice Lispector’s Persona

At a reading I gave in Seattle two years ago, a man with white hair told me he had once lived in Brazil and had named his daughter after Clarice Lispector..

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How ‘conscientious objectors’ threaten women’s newly-won abortion rights in Latin America

How ‘conscientious objectors’ threaten women’s newly-won abortion rights in Latin America

Women’s rights to legal abortion have increased in Latin America – but so have campaigns and policies for medical staff to be able to ‘conscientiously object’ and refuse to participate in these procedures.

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Jeremy Fernando on (In)die Art

Jeremy Fernando on (In)die Art

To begin to speak of indie art, one must first address the question: what is art? A question haunted by another question, a dependent question: is art, art, without the frame?

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Harold Abramowitz & Janice Lee: Motion and Resistance

Harold Abramowitz & Janice Lee: Motion and Resistance

Last night I crossed a river in my dream and so today I translate the journey into thinking for tomorrow.

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Jessica Sequeira: Julio Barrenechea in India

Jessica Sequeira: Julio Barrenechea in India

Sun of India, Barrenechea’s book of poems, was published in New Delhi while he was living there. At first read, it may seem a simple take on the traditions of the country as filtered through the sensibility of the poet...

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Keith Doubt on Srebrenica

Keith Doubt on Srebrenica

It is difficult to understand the organized, systematic genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian military and civil authorities from the Republic of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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“Sell poetry as a hit, the way you sell coffee or chilli”

“Sell poetry as a hit, the way you sell coffee or chilli”

Even after escaping school, Moran’s late teens were miserable. “I was trying to figure out what the hell to do. I didn’t have any qualifications and I was pretty desperate.

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Vogue Displaced Borussia

Vogue Displaced Borussia

March 2018 saw the publication of the first Polish issue of the monthly magazine Vogue. There would have been nothing remarkable about this, except for the fact that it coincided with the appearance of the sixtieth – and final – issue of Borussia.

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Scholarly publishing is a $25 billion a year industry…

Scholarly publishing is a $25 billion a year industry…

The world of scholarly communication is broken. Giant, corporate publishers with racketeering business practices and profit margins that exceed Apple’s treat life-saving research as a private commodity to be sold at exorbitant profits.

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‘As billions more come online’

‘As billions more come online’

Berners-Lee, who never directly profited off his invention, has also spent most of his life trying to guard it. While Silicon Valley started ride-share apps and social-media networks without profoundly considering the consequences, Berners-Lee has spent the past three decades thinking about little else.

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The Earthly Policeman

The Earthly Policeman

One of Prigov’s iconic creations, present in his poetry and performances, was the image of an ideal policeman, a just and ultimate authority that Pussy Riot’s statement dubbed the Heavenly Policeman.

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McBuddy

McBuddy

After spending a few days at Elsewhere, a museum set in a former thrift store in Greensboro, North Carolina, I was asked to select a single object from the teeming mountains of stuff.

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Joel Gn on Laurie Stone

Joel Gn on Laurie Stone

Most of Stone’s writings touch on the transformations from loves lost and found. In particular, the narrator’s relationship with her mother, whom she affectionately refers to as ‘Toby’ is at times strained...

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Ed Simon on the Number Three

Ed Simon on the Number Three

Behold, the first odd prime, designator of our three dimensions, that which was the number of times Peter denied Christ, the number of times Satan tempted him, and the number of days he spent in the grave...

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Eric D. Lehman: To Filter and Fibre Your Blood

Eric D. Lehman: To Filter and Fibre Your Blood

The night Anthony Bourdain’s suicide was announced, my wife and I opened a bottle of 2010 Haut-Medoc, grilled some Brussels sprouts and hot dogs, which we ate with homemade pickled onions and relish. I read out loud from Moby Dick.

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Subjugations of the Gay Mainstream by Roderick Ferguson

Subjugations of the Gay Mainstream by Roderick Ferguson

Though I am queer and live in the world created by what I know to be a single-issue hijacking of queer struggles, my interest in this topic is motivated less by identity and more by a long-standing interest in what Louis Althusser identified in For Marx as the possibilities...

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