Ela Kotkowska

Some fabric in J-L David’s paintings (Louvre)

19th c card catalogue at the Bibliothèque de l’Ecole de médecine in Paris

Seems like a good moment to post Brion Gysin’s photo spread of Centre Pompidou being built. ‘77.

You will be missed, Michèle Audin!
In addition to being a mathematician, she was an amazing writer who traced the fates of individuals lost in the interstices of history - from her own father in Une vie brève and Cent et vingt et un jours to Parisians under the Commune in Comme une rivière bleue.

Want a novel on the challenging side with an independent voice? Caleb Klaces, Mr. Outside (Prototype Press) or Rebecca Grandsen, Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group (Tangerine Press). Mr. Outside comes with photos. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/r...

@sarahkendzior

She’s among my go-to commentators on the current state of madness… I was expecting to see her suspended from X… but @bsky.app ? C’mon! We migrated here for honest expression, uncluttered by clickbait and hate mongers. If you read her, @support.bsky.team you’ll realize she’s neither

@pfrazee.com why was Sarah Kendzior suspended?

PLAY IT BY TRUST aka WHITE CHESS SET (1966)
www.imaginepeace.com/archives/24764
Play it for as long as you can remember
who is your opponent and
who is your own self.
y.o. 1966

Normal Times in Dire Times Fascism does not break normal life, it feeds on it.

"History has already shown us how this story unfolds. Fascism is not built only in the camps and cells. It is built in the shrug, the silence, the insistence that life can go on as if nothing has changed"
Frederick Joseph"A Thought on Normalcy in Fascism" frederickjoseph.substack.com/p/normal-tim...

I missed it at a film festival - it was sold out! Darn, now I'll have to renew my HBO subscription 🤭 The trailer alone was beautiful.

They were already living in one of Chicago’s worst apartment buildings. Then came the ICE raid. In what appears to have been a warrantless operation, the federal government will not say how many people were detained, who remains in custody and what happened to the children.

They were already living in one of Chicago's worst apartment buildings. Then came the ICE raid.

Fotoplastikon, or Kaiserpanorama in Poznań: stereoscopic images of turn-of-the-century Paris

Magda Szabo, Staroswiecka historia [An Old-fashioned Story], PWN 1989 and Olga Ravn, The Wax Child, New Directions, 2025. Similar cover aesthetic—plain glossy black dust jackets with a simple image on the cover

The new Olga Ravn book from New Directions reminds me of a 1980s/90s series of books in translation by the Polish publishing house PWN.

From The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan, excerpted in The Serpent and the Fire, ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada

Books: Michèle Audin, La Maison Hantée & Laurent Mauvignier, La Maison Vide. Éditions Minuit 2025.

Read in March (M.A.) and currently reading (L.M.): two books from Éd. Minuit. The titles could almost be interchangeable: two houses haunted by the past, disappearances, the war(s), and buried secrets. Two beautiful writers taking the scraps of history and constructing a moving narrative.

skyward, Hampstead Heath

This is so important…

Sharon has been tracking license plates on cars driven by ICE agents, and she’s finding they don’t match the vehicles.

In other words, ICE is using secret, illegal tactics—just like we suspected.

REMINDER: the DMV is not a federal agency.
@governor.ca.gov
🧵

Have you seen this petition yet? 🚨🚨🚨 EPSTEIN SCANDAL // REMOVE TRUMP FROM POWER 🚨🚨🚨

And let's not forget this crook got 8.1 billion dollar richer since grabbing power.
chng.it/FPdJR4WFc2

Giuseppe Penone at the Serpentine Gallery, London

This opus has been on my reading list for years. And I "wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare? ..."

When public media disappears, so do the stories that bring us together.

With federal funding eliminated, millions may lose their last trusted source of news and connection.

If that matters to you, now’s the time to act. Donate: n.pr/458sOhq

Rage Against The Regime in Orlando ✊

I am halfway through vol. ii of Solvej Balle’s Calculation of Volume. The book has an uncanny way of drawing the reader into its labyrinth. I went to @blackwells.bsky.social to see when vols. iii & iv were coming out. Of course, the only day possible: November 18.

Yesterday, July 31 -- Faculty & staff protested the firing of four @brooklyncollege.bsky.social faculty members in violation of their academic freedom & as retaliation for protected first amendment speech. #BCFired4 📸 by @paulfrangipane.bsky.social

Read more here: psc-cuny.org/news-events/...

Melitopol journalist Iryna Levchenko abducted in 2023 ‘found’ imprisoned in Russian-occupied Donetsk Although there is now talk of a ‘trial’, there is nothing to suggest that the Russian FSB have even formally charged the journalist despite having held her prisoner since May 2023

Melitopol journalist Iryna Levchenko abducted in 2023 ‘found’ imprisoned in russian-occupied Donetsk

Although there is now talk of a ‘trial’, there is nothing to suggest that the russian FSB have even formally charged the #journalist despite having held her prisoner since May 2023

Steve McQueen and Hans Ulrich Obrist

Steve McQueen in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist at Marian Goodman Gallery

www.mariangoodman.com/mgg-presents...

French pbks often appear on the market bearing a bandeau rouge: a red band with the author's name or a phrase meant to advertise the book. This red band has evolved: changing colors (e.g. blue for Minuit), and growing wider to accommodate an image, thus becoming in fact a demi-dust jacket.

In French publishing, cover art is something that began with éditions poche (pocketbook ed.). Under mainly anglophone influence some publishers, including Gallimard for Coll. Blanche, have introduced dust jackets.

Except Collection Blanche & ed. Minuit go back to early 20th c. The French pbk was originally designed with minimal cover because a lot of times people would have the books bound. The "cover" would thus turn into the title page. The present design harks back to that tradition.

One million starved children and no shortage of food

this is one of the worst crimes in human history and the entire global north and all of us in it share the responsibility