Bordernotes
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Picasso’s Guernica, Walter Benjamin, war and peace
For Picasso, the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica in April 1937 marked a new terrifying industrial and anonymous warfare, a warfare of the modern period.
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A Moral Place in the World
Incredulous, exhausted by disbelief I, among others, find myself speechless in this time when the necessity for speech is urgent. - Meeka Walsh
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Nostalgia for the Present, Max Blecher
“Staring at a fixed point on the wall, I occasionally have the feeling that I no longer know who or where I am. At such times, I experience the loss of my identity from a distance: I feel for a moment that I have become a complete stranger, this abstract personage and my real self vying for authenticity with equal strength.” —Max Blecher
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing About Art
What I responded to in Berger—because the manner of his writing and its meaning or subject were a coherent piece—was his disavowal, his disengagement with power, and here I include using language as an instrument of power…
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House of Illusion
Meeka Walsh’s introductory essay to Art + Architecture
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Robert Walser: looking at pictures and the soft, cold, lethargic sun
Engaged with art writing as I am, it is with some nervous reluctance that I ask myself, what is it? What is it that art criticism, art writing is supposed to do?
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Vagaries, Quirks and a Cracked Kettle: The Way of Translation
“I am not frightened of the truth. I am not afraid to tell a secret. But until now, words have been frailer and more cunning than I would have liked.”
–from Meeka Walsh’s introductory essay to Issue 136: Son et Lumière.
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Life is Puzzling
Édouard Levé wrote Autoportrait in 2005. It was followed by his book Suicide in 2007, and then by death at his own hand so shortly after. The English edition appeared in 2012, seamlessly translated by Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, if you can say about a book of apparent fragments that it is seamless…
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Kim Gordon: Star Turns
Meeka Walsh’s introductory essay to Issue 134, the all women issue.
Kim Gordon has just published her memoir, Girl In A Band (William Morrow, Dey Street, 2015) and the opening chapter is called “The End.” After 30 years Sonic Youth, the band she co-founded with Thurston Moore, whom she married three years later, was playing its final concert in a small town outside São Paulo, Brazil, in the rain. Their marriage of 27 years had just ended. The South American tour was a final commitment, the last one to be met as Sonic Youth…
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Trust Accounts
Meeka Walsh’s introductory essay to Issue 133: we are monsters.
Growing up in Canada, I was quietly startled by the intake of breath when I would say the word “evil” to describe someone I knew. I didn’t use the term often, I assigned it carefully but I recognized its application was something that just wasn’t done and I kept the descriptive designation to myself. It’s different now. The term is broadly used to describe countless actions and the designation is received without accompanying questions…
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Dangerous Persuasions
Meeka Walsh’s introductory essay to Issue 134, the all women issue.
Paper covers rock, scissors cuts paper, rock smashes scissors, paper covers rock. A letter is just paper, and so very much more.
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The Woman Who Ate Money: A Parable for Our Times
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