Berfrois

Your Local Internet

Your Local Internet

Technology, which at first promised global reach, could assist the local resurgence of abundant microcultures...

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Kunkel’s Five Point Plan

Kunkel’s Five Point Plan

Detail of L’Oiseau bleu, Jean Metzinger, 1912-1913 From N+1: Social media can either be profitable or it can be social. In the end, it can’t be both. The IPOs of Facebook and Twitter should therefore be reversed, through the socialization of both companies and other social-media services that attain...

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Anarcho-Populism (not intended in a pejorative sense)

Anarcho-Populism (not intended in a pejorative sense)

Photograph by Paolo Gerbaudo by Paolo Gerbaudo In current protest culture the estranged ideologies of anarchism and progressive populism are coming together around a critique of the neoliberal “corporate state” and a new imaginary of mass insurgency. “GTFO: Get the Fuck Out!” This request directed at the hated political...

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Cabinets

Cabinets

I’m waiting in line, embarrassed to be here by myself. I’ll be turning forty later this month, and here I am at the natural history museum, childless. The ticket lady is going to look at me funny. There is some kid behind me, four years old or so, speaking...

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There was nothing remotely tame about Mallarmé’s approach to publishing…

There was nothing remotely tame about Mallarmé’s approach to publishing…

Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé, Édouard Manet, 1876 From Humanities: French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé lived in culturally unsettled times. Bicycle riding had become fashionable, newspaper reading was up, and the book trade was undergoing a crisis of identity. But all this was logs to the fire for Mallarmé, who...

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Melissa Broder’s Universe

Melissa Broder’s Universe

sexting the abyss it may not be the coolest depression but it's mine the void got me turnt chromed out humanity w the cosmic loneliness interior

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‘40-‘47

‘40-‘47

Victor Serge From The New Left Review: 31 March 1941. People on the Ship. In search of a comfortable corner, the ‘economic emigrants’ have installed themselves between the central deck and the boiler room. Jews with money. Rent the crew’s cabins, stuff themselves, do deals with the personnel, keep...

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Here’s Us With the News

Here’s Us With the News

Another One Bites The Dust, Cory Arcangel, 2007 Thanking You Thanks to our incredibly generous 132 funders, Berfrois will continue publication. We have even raised enough to spruce things up around here. Cheers! Introducing Our New Editorial Team Our new senior editors are: Daniel Bosch Nicholas Rombes Legacy Russell...

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In Bed with Chesterton

In Bed with Chesterton

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with...

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Jenny Diski has her eyes wide open

Jenny Diski has her eyes wide open

Last week while reading Samuel Beckett’s Company, I came across the phrase ‘a block hat’. Beckett describes his solitary protagonist lying on his back in the dark remembering the times when he walked in the countryside or the coast, with his father, as a child, and as an adult,...

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