Jeff Nuttall: Bomb Culture (1968/1970)

9 February 2014, dusan

“Jeff Nuttall’s book, Bomb Culture, an idiosyncratic and semi-auto-biographical account of the build-up to 1968, was written in 1967 and first published just before May 1968. It remains a key primary source for the emergence of international counter-culture in the 1960s. Nuttall played a key role in the London underground scene and coordinated a network of connections with European and American avant-gardes through correspondence and the instigation of a number of small journals and pamphlets, publishing William Burroughs, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Carl Weissner and Michael McLure in his My Own Mag between 1964-67. Through a diverse body of practices, Nuttall – a performance artist and poet – advocated the insurrectionary power of spontaneity and persistently articulated a connection between the power of the imagination and collective revolutionary political consciousness.” (Gillian Whiteley, 2008)

First published by MacGibbon & Kee, 1968
Publisher Paladin, London, 1970; 1972 reprint
252 pages
via filboid

Interview with the author (John May, 1984)
Wikipedia

PDF (no OCR)

Arkzin (1991–1998) [Croatian, English]

7 February 2014, dusan

Arkzin was a periodical published in Zagreb, Croatia, from 1991 to 1998. It began as a political fanzine and later on the editorial board widened the scope and included international members and topics. Arkzin gradually changed to a hybrid magazine in which politics, culture, theory and art met, crossed and overlapped.

In total, 106 issues appeared, including eight in English (between April 1993 and January 1994). Five issues of the periodical for critical writing Bastard were published as a supplement to the magazine.

The editors-in-chief of Arkzin were Vesna Janković (I/1-3, II/1-90), Miroslav Ambruš Kiš, Zoran Oštrić (I/1-3), Vladimir Desnica (I/5-6), and Dejan Kršić (II/91-93, III).

PDFs (Monoskop wiki, via MaMa & Human Rights Archive)
See also Prospects of Arkzin catalogue (48 pp, 2013)

Metahaven: Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design and Politics (2013)

28 January 2014, dusan

“These are serious times, or so our governments keep telling us. Strangling economies with their austerity policies, they assure us that they have no choice. In a world where “there is no alternative”, how do you dissent? Once upon a time, graphic designers would have made political posters and typeset manifestos. Today, protest has new strategies. Enter the internet meme. With its Darwinian survival skills and its viral potential, the meme is a way of scaling up protest. Hackers and activists have learned to unleash the destructive force of a Rick Astley video. They have let slip the Lolcats of war. Pranks have become a resistance strategy. As the rise of Beppe Grillo in Italy testifies, this may be the hour to fight nonsense with nonsense. Jokes are an open-source weapon of politics, and it is time to tap their power.”

Publisher Strelka Press, 2013
ISBN 9785906264077

Review (Shumi Bose, Blueprint)

Publisher
Authors (in an interview with Aaron Peters)

EPUB