Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, No. 1-54 (1974-2011)

JUMP CUT: A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA is run on a nonprofit basis by its staff and is not affiliated with or supported by any institution. Begun in 1974 as a film publication, JUMP CUT now publishes material on film, television, video, new media, and related media and cultural analysis. As a print publication till 2001, JUMP CUT circulated 4000 copies per issue in North America and internationally to a wide range of readers including students, academics, media professionals, political activists, radicals interested in culture, film and video makers, and others interested in the radical analysis of mass culture and opposition media. Now, with free online access, the readership is much larger and more international.

Editors: John Hess, Chuck Kleinhans, Julia Lesage
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

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Reza Negarestani: Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (2008)

“Cyclonopedia is theoretical-fiction novel by Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negarestani. Hailed by novelists, philosophers and cinematographers, Negarestani’s work is the first horror and science fiction book coming from and written on the Middle East.

‘The Middle East is a sentient entity—it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archaeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ‘lubricant’ of historical and political narratives.

A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along.

Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil …

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archaeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.”

Publisher Re.Press, Melbourne, August 2008
Anomaly series
ISBN 0980544009, 9780980544008
268 pages

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OPEN Cahier on Art and the Public Domain: Emergency Issue. The New Politics of Culture (2011) [Dutch]

“The Dutch government’s new cultural plan and the cutbacks have intruded on our comfort zone and roughly awoken us from our reflective and theorising positions as critical observers.

This ’emergency issue’ of Open. Cahier on Art and the Public Domain is a special edition that accompanies De Groene Amsterdammer on September 23, 2011. It not only addresses the austerity measures, but also pays special attention to the overarching ideology and the right-populist government policy from which these arise.

Similarly, the publication does not merely defend the position of the arts, but is a record of public opposition to what many believe is a malicious policy that is adversely affecting or excluding growing numbers of groups (the sickly, immigrants, refugees, children, the elderly, artists, ‘ordinary’ people) and issues (relating to culture, knowledge, the environment, education, health care, multiculturalism).”

With contributions by Willem de Rooij, Jorinde Seijdel, Joke Robaard, Merijn Oudenampsen, Sven Lütticken, Willem Schinkel, Steven ten Thije, Dirk van Weelden, Bik Van der Pol, Can Altay, Jeremiah Day, Charles Esche, Zihni Özdil, Pascal Gielen, Robin Brouwer, Arnoud Holleman, Gert Jan Kocken, Florian Cramer, Josephine Bosma, Eric Kluitenberg, Grahame Lock, Marc Schuilenburg, Luuk Boelens, Hugo Priemus, Margreet Fogteloo, Samuel Vriezen, Jonas Staal, Chris Keulemans, Lotte Haagsma, Matthijs de Bruijne, Actie Schone kunsten, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Foundland, Lidwien van de Ven, Liesbeth Melis, Thomas Buxó

Publisher: SKOR / NAi Uitgevers, September 2011
68 pages

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