The Improbable, No. 2: Time Is ElasticEditor’s Note by Lisa Pearson & Table of Contents
the improbable, 09/25/22
Originally published on the occasion of Siglio’s pop-up at the Museum of Modern Art store, November 2020. All rights reserved. © 2020 Siglio Press. More about The Improbable.
Dear Reader,
This is the second issue of The Improbable. As with the first issue, the invitations I extended to the writers, critics, and scholars were wholly open, and yet again, there is much serendipity among the marvelous works here. This issue seems to be a collection of summonings—our ghosts, ancestors, totems, touchstones, familiars. Many of these writings are also reckonings with—or, better, the embrace of—what cannot be known or seen, or fully ascertained. Rachel Valinsky, in “News from Home,” writes that Hanne Darboven’s inscrutable but highly disciplined writing/inscription “stages an ongoing affirmation of self, or of the capacity of the self to write, through and despite.” Through and despite are things we have all endeavored this last year in the face of this unrelenting, months-long uncertainty—as the coronavirus pandemic still rages and the clear results of an election are undermined by the outrageous mendacity of a sitting president. This little newsletter, I hope, offers some possibilities: “Exits exist,” writes Barbara Stauffenbacher Solomon.
—Lisa Pearson, publisher, Siglio Press
in this issue
(Anti)(Auto)Biography (on Niki de Saint Phalle)
NICOLE RUDICK
Eureka: Notes on Nicolas Moufarrege and a Friendship
SHIV KOTECHA
Frequencies
DOUGLAS KEARNEY
On the Violence of Archives
J. MAE BARIZO
Communication After Refusal
(an excerpt from Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture)
ANAÏS DUPLAN
Barbara Stauffenbacher Solomon, Hidden in Plain Sight
AMARANTH BORSUK
Last Night in Peckham, 29th January, 2020
CLIVE PHILLPOT
News from Home
RACHEL VALINSKY
see also
✼ natalie’s upstate weather report:
May 27, 2024—Eggs, books, etc.: The first book in siglio’s new habitat is just about laid. Our local snapping turtle George perambulated the house in driving rain, determined and curious, then laid her eggs at our doorstep. Do snapping turtles and publishers share common traits? Oh, so very, very slow. Reportedly testy but actually timid. A group of them might be a bale, nest, turn, dole, or creep—though ours seems solitary. Only 10% of her eggs will survive as hatchlings. Make of it what you will. Sophie Calle’s The Sleepers goes on press very soon. One sleeper said to Calle: “I’ve often dreamt of an egg that was enormous ovoid transgression. The original sin of Adam & Eve is a hard-boiled egg.” Meanwhile, many sightings of goslings, kits, poults, and one fawn too: how easily the others propagate, alas.
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