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

(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