WHAT IF we become cyborgs right before the world ends, and because we are cyborgs we can no longer fear the apocalypse? Does the glowing sky on fire become, in our minds, an Instagram filter?
Read MoreEvent: Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy (Thursday Nov. 12)
Join us on Thursday, November 12 (18:30 GMT, 1:30pm EST, 12:30pm CST, 10:30am PST) for a Locust Review panel discussion at this year’s (virtual) Historical Materialism conference. Our panel, focusing on “Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy” will feature Locust editorial collective members Alexander Billet on “The Case for Critical Irrealism,” Holly Lewis on “How Collective Dreams Can End the Sleep of Reason,” Adam Turl on “Their Weird and Ours: Socialist Irrealism vs. Fascist Occultism,” and Anupam Roy on “Representational Impossibility: A Propagandist’s Urgencies and Crisis.” More information follows below.
Read MoreLabor Under An Alien Sky
We found the corpse of Capitalist Realism. Rona-riddled, the initials “ACAB” carved in its forehead. It was discovered in the burnt shell of a Minneapolis police station. On discovery it opened its eyes and stood up and told us to go back to work. We refused. It reached for us, moaning a voracious hunger of unholy sadism, unquenchable violence, an unknowable cosmic horror, stinking of gout and fresh teargas.
Read MoreSUBMIT (art, poems, stories, gestures) to Locust #3
Now here we are. A global pandemic. We are stuck at home, that voice asking “what about the rent?” or “what happens if you lose your job?” or can’t get unemployment getting louder and louder. Or we are saddled with that ignominious label of “essential worker,” unprotected, likely underpaid, always exhausted, always at risk.
Read MoreAnnouncing Issue #2 of Locust Review!
You cannot stop us. We are legion. We are Locust. Our second issue will be coming back from the printers soon, and it contains a new passel of the bizarre and bombastic, the cosmically communist. You know you want to read. You know you want to subscribe. A copy of Locust Review issue two will give you art from Adam Ray Adkins, Leslie Lea, Anupam Roy, James Walsh, Sambaran Das, John McVay, plus a continuation of Tish Markley and Adam Turl’s Born Again Labor Museum. There will be poetry and fiction from Alexander Billet, Tish Markley, Adam Marks, Frank Fucile, Lane Powell, Mike Linaweaver, Adam Turl, Evan Edwards and many others.
Read MoreWe Demand An End to Capitalist Realism
TEN YEARS ago, as the Great Recession ripped through people’s lives, the left-wing cultural critic Mark Fisher penned his book Capitalist Realism. The book diagnosed a cultural logic of late-late-capitalism in which the Thatcherite idea of “There Is No Alternative” had been diffused through every politico-economic institution, every cultural manifestation, how we regard work and education, consumption and self-expression.
Read MoreLocust Review at London HM
Two editors from Locust Review, Alexander Billet and Adam Turl, will be speaking on art related topics in London at the annual Historical Materialism (HM) conference (November 7 - 10, 2019), sponsored by the Historical Materialism journal and book series. Turl has organized a panel with fellow artists Anupam Roy and David Mabb (more information below). Other LR editors will also be speaking on matters not directly related to art and aesthetics (but still awesome) and attending the conference as well. Holly Lewis will be speaking on two panels, presenting on “Queer Liberation and Marx’s Ecology” and acting as a discussant for the book launch of Ashley Bohrer’s Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism (2019). In addition, Adam Turl’s fellow editor at Red Wedge Magazine, Jordy Cummings, will be presenting on “Bruno Bauer, Class Reductionist: A Strategic reading of On the Jewish Question in 2019.” The theme of this year’s HM is “Claps of Thunder: Disaster Communism, Extinction Capitalism, and How to Survive Tomorrow.” See below for more information on the art and aesthetics presentations (basically we copied and pasted the “abstracts.”) The exact schedule for the conference is forthcoming.
Read MoreAnnouncing Locust Review
We are pleased to announce the first issue of Locust Review — forthcoming in late October 2019. Locust Review is a socialist journal of the radical weird. Printed four times a year in relatively affordable and anachronistic black and white newsprint, as well as online, we will be offering up art, fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction, and whatever else we think may directly fuel the imagination and hunger for a different future in our drab end times.
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