Category Archives: Publications

UNKNOWN OBLIVION

More Stolen Poetry

All lyrics and titles from Unknown Pleasures copied and typeset in Oblivion 24. Printed and bound at work, 24pp, 105x210mm.

Aleister Crowley

KONX OM PAX

Konx Om Pax: Essays in Light is a publication by British occultist Aleister Crowley, first published in 1907.

Asemic Writing

Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic /eɪˈsiːmɪk/ means “having no specific semantic content”, or “without the smallest unit of meaning”. With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art. Where asemic writing distinguishes itself among traditions of abstract art is in the asemic author’s use of gestural constraint, and the retention of physical characteristics of writing such as lines and symbols. Asemic writing is a hybrid art form that fuses text and image into a unity, and then sets it free to arbitrary subjective interpretations. It may be compared to free writing or writing for its own sake, instead of writing to produce verbal context. The open nature of asemic works allows for meaning to occur across linguistic understanding; an asemic text may be “read” in a similar fashion regardless of the reader’s natural language. Multiple meanings for the same symbolism are another possibility for an asemic work, that is, asemic writing can be polysemantic or have zero meaning, infinite meanings, or its meaning can evolve over time. Asemic works leave for the reader to decide how to translate and explore an asemic text; in this sense, the reader becomes co-creator of the asemic work.

Vortex Basildon

Publication and commemorative T-Towel

“LONG LIVE THE GREAT VORTEX SPRUNG UP IN THE CENTRE OF THIS TOWN“

Blasting and Bombadiering

Here’s Michael Bracewell on Mark E Smith…

Already, Smith’s campaign bore marked similarities to the BLAST phase of Wyndham Lewis and the vorticist assault on inter-war Bloomsbury. Lewis was a Renaissance man without a culture vital enough to support the fulfilment of his talents. Similarly, Smith is locked in a position of trench warfare, blasting and bombardiering against a fashion-driven society which is indurate to all attitudes save its own conservative ‘non-conformity’. Thus, Smith is cast (again like Lewis) as a cat amongst pigeons, stalking the effete by saying the unspeakable. 

https://www.frieze.com/article/mark-e-smith

Jessica Dismorr

Always a nod towards Dismorr’s illustrations for Blast.