Elvia Wilk

"In the near future, Berlin's real estate is being flipped in the name of "sustainability," only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants; and the weather is acting strange. In search of affordable housing, young couple Anja and Louis move into a community on an artificial mountain, The Berg--yet another "eco-friendly" initiative run by a corporation called Finster. They're offered a home rent-free in exchange for keeping quiet about the seriously malfunctioning infrastructure of the experimental house. But when Louis returns home from his mother's funeral in America, Anja is convinced he has changed. He seems to be in denial of his grief and newly idealistic, consumed by a secret project at the NGO where he works as an artist-consultant. Anja is horrified when she discovers what Louis has invented: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user's brain to be more generous. Louis is convinced that if he can introduce the drug into the Berlin club scene, he can finally remedy the income disparity that has made Berlin so unlivable. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold"--

Oval

From the acclaimed author of the novel Oval comes a book of “fan nonfiction” about living and writing in the age of extinction In this constellation of essays, Elvia Wilk asks what kinds of narratives will help us rethink our human perspective toward Earth. The book begins as an exploration of the role of fiction today and becomes a deep interrogation of the writing process and the self. Wilk examines creative works across time and genre in order to break down binaries between dystopia and utopia, real and imagined, self and world. She makes connections between works by such wide-ranging writers as Mark Fisher, Karen Russell, Han Kang, Doris Lessing, Anne Carson, Octavia E. Butler, Michelle Tea, Helen Phillips, Kathe Koja, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Hildegard von Bingen. What happens when research becomes personal, when the observer breaks through the glass? Through the eye of the fan, this collection delves into literal and literary world-building projects—medieval monasteries, solarpunk futures, vampire role plays, environments devoid of humans—bridging the micro and the macro and revealing how our relationship to narrative shapes our relationships to the natural world and to one another.

Death by Landscape

Ryan Bishop

Winchester School of Art

Kristoffer Gansing

Jussi Parikka

Moving from analog to digital technology in media art and theory has created changes we have yet to completely understand and absorb. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the transmediale festival in Berlin, Across & Beyond reflects on this rapidly changing landscape. Divided into three sections, Imaginaries, Interventions, and Ecologies, the reader includes new contributions from internationally recognized theorists, artists and designers on media activism, media archaeology, critical media processes and (post-) anthropocentric perspectives from past festival participants. Contributors include Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke, Jamie Allen and David Gauthier, Clemens Apprich and Ned Rossiter, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Benjamin Bratton, Florian Cramer, Dieter Daniels, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Daphne Dragona, Keller Easterling, Olga Goriunova, Louis Henderson, Geraldine Juarez, Olia Lialina, Alessandro Ludovico, Rosa Menkman, Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, Erica Scourti, Cornelia Sollfrank, Telekommunisten, Tiziana Terranova and YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji). With over 300 pages this transmediale reader is a welcome tool in understanding and staying current with our digital world.

A Transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions

Across & Beyond

Quali narrazioni ci aiuteranno a ripensare la prospettiva umana, in un mondo così diverso da quello in cui sono nate quelle che chiamiamo storie? Ricordandoci come il nostro rapporto con il narrare modelli le nostre relazioni con il mondo, Elvia Wilk ci porta attraverso il tempo e i generi, cercando di abbattere i confini tra distopia e utopia, reale e immaginato, sé e mondo. Muovendosi tra monasteri medievali, futuri solarpunk, giochi di ruolo, vampiri e ambienti privi di umani, Narrazioni dell’estinzione delinea un syllabus per una nuova narrativa speculativa e femminista adatta al nostro tempo, chiamando a sé una coralità di voci del passato e del presente, da Margaret Atwood, evocata nel racconto da cui parte il libro, a Mark Fisher, Han Kang, Doris Lessing, Anne Carson, Octavia E. Butler, Jeff e Ann VanderMeer.

Elvia Wilk

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