Library / Essays
The size of longing
Jacob Israël de Haan’s Palestine, Arnold Zweig’s novel of post‑Zionist disillusionment, and « Israel’s first political murder ».
« We are the winners of Eurovision »
Lithuania has lost the Eurovision Song Contest thirty times.
« Mes esame Eurovizijos nugalėtojai »
Lietuva pralaimėjo Euroviziją trisdešimt kartų.
Photographer, refugee, king
A family’s travelogue from Phnom Penh to Paris and back
Photographe, réfugié, roi
Carnet de voyage d’une famille entre Phnom Penh et Paris et le retour
« Ça ira! There will be fire and enthusiasm in you »
In search of Anthon van Rappard, Vincent van Gogh’s forgotten friend.
Moscow on the Med
Two winters in Istanbul. If you are a holder of a Russian passport, there are few places in the Western hemisphere that you can go without a visa.
The anarcho-astrologer
Javier Milei, literarily considered
And I stripped naked and became a man
The remarkable diary of third-century martyr Perpetua — a young mother sentenced to death — shows a soft, milky mother-body resisting a military-industrial empire.
The case of the missing elephant
On animal charisma and animal vengeance. What happens when an elephant goes missing a year after her death.
Pigeon Water
Online, pigeon water is what we swim in and slather on ourselves.
Visit the extractocene!
The Eisenthür silver mine is real; the village below is entirely fictive.
Corrupted, yet intact
On the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Europe of European integration. An excerpt from The Origins of European Integration: The Pre-history of Today’s European Union, 1937–1951.
Schwarzeneggerology
On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
An archeology of the air
On Havelok the Dane, medieval air & the world’s largest wind farm
An axe to grind should make you sharper
Forensic Architecture charts state-organized crimes, genocide and other disasters in three dimensions. «Flat maps can’t convey the politics of water and shit.»
The inborn germ
Why death? Who or what dies? Philosophers tend not to explain, but to justify. When do such questions become biological questions? Does it help?
The art of losing
On artificial intelligence, murderous elephants & Elizabeth Bishop
Beamer, Dressman, Bodybag
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch. « My own language, made camp. »
« My ghost, we do no batshit »
On the untranslatability of Ukrainian jokes