H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker: Reviewed

Shortlisted for this year’s Goldsmiths prize, Nicola Barker’s striking contender H(A)PPY  is a daringly artful exploration of censorship, Semiotics and typographic trickery.  

Perhaps characterised as the novel that no-one quite knows how to pronounce correctly (“happy with parenthesis?”) Nicola Barker’s H(A)PPY  is a flourish of narrative self-surveillance moulded in a universe where one’s thoughts are moderated by Sensors for the collective pursuit of perfection. Barker’s world of Graphs, Oracular Devices and Information Streams feels simultaneously other-worldly and familiar in this age of infinite data, and draws on the rich traditions of Sci-Fi and Dystopian fictions.

H(A)PPY charts Mira A’s systematic demystification with the omnipotent System and the work’s title alludes to this fragmentation of truths and emotional modulations. Mira’s thoughts imperfectly oscillate between conformity and creativity, ultimately descending into unregulated language; “DECLARING WAR ON THE SYSTEM”. Barker’s novelistic experimentation with form operates on two levels; first challenging traditional methods of reading by baiting the eye with a smattering of colour to skim before reading the page. Secondly, the reader can’t help but speculate the reasoning behind the coloured grouping of these words, and as the frequency of colouring increases with the rising number of flagged words, our Mira A. becomes increasingly fraught, restricting her thought-patterns. The act is reminiscent of word-processing and technological monitoring of human expression, contributing to a fitting sense of dystopian suffocation.

The novel is thoughtfully prefaced by the Author’s suggestion that “Although by no means essential, this novel is best enjoyed in conjunction with Agustin Barrios: The Complete Historical Guitar Recordings 1913-1942.” and as such, music is a key thematic preoccupation which allows Barker to navigate the extent to which creativity is moderated under repressive regimes.

Barker’s critique of language domination is seen through the attention to the political history of Paraguay and the subversive use of Guarani. The symbolic use of Guarani (or rather, English marked in Green to indicate its use) is employed as a means of covertly communicating- reminding us of the potency of words. “I told her to be careful,' The Stranger said, 'not to be seduced by language. It can often be beguiling - seductive - beautiful, yet it is also unpredictable, dangerous, even lethal.”

Conceptual notions such as ‘the Past’ and ‘the Young’ are capitalised, marking these ideas as fixed, intangible models. Words are also marked with coloured fonts- reds, purples and blues, in a seemingly indecipherable code. Language takes centre stage and the attempt to polish and hone a perfect language is in tandem with the brutal attempt to homogenise the human condition- the ruling class of ‘the Young’ aspiring for neutrality and “smoothed” genitals, as well as removing their capacity to feel pain. The novel is a feat of typographic design, testing the eye and modes of reading as Barker delights in a breakdown of the language and methods of story-telling narratives, championing the incomplete, imperfect and illogical.  

Words by Elinor Potts for [smiths] magazine

credit: Twitter

Westward Hold (a poem)

Hold, Held, Holden
My Westward, Wayward Home.
Bestward, Backward,

Atlantic line
Peppered with grockels and neoprene
Seasonal swells deposit throngs of lazy bodies
Saunter on the boulevard
Thick wet chips
Stones the size of babies
(You feel like an insect)

Hikers, Bikers and afternoon doggers
a school of Hasidic Jews
I spy them from my viewing point
Kipling's Tor, Beckett is spitting.


by Elinor Potts

Chris Kraus: After Kathy Acker, 25/09/17 London Review Bookshop

A sold-out affair at Bloomsbury’s prestigious London Review bookshop, Kraus’ ode to the late, great Acker was welcomed to the shelf by Juliet Jacques (author of Trans: a memoir) and the novel’s author Chris Kraus (author also of I Love Dick, Aliens and Anorexia). The atmosphere was cosy, punters nursing obligatory wine glasses in a sea of literary spectacles and polished brogues. After Kathy Acker is what Kraus champions as a “career biography” written posthumously from a limited narrator as woman who moved in similar artistic circles during New York’s wild 70s/80s. Kraus marks Acker’s death as “radicalising” and speaks of her access to Acker’s diaries shortly after her death and the question of when and whether to write the biography. “If you wait 20 years it’s all very elegiac” she asserts, striving for a “revisionist history of 80s New York”. Their stories and circles are undoubtedly similar; sleeping with the same people (Sylvère Lotringer), going to the same parties, breathing the same air. Whilst Kraus marks the scene as “snobby” and “air-clad”, Acker’s work is also tinged with this sentiment of claustrophobia and Kraus reads a short extract from her “Politics”; exploring Acker’s relationship with writing, pornographic work, sexual politics and familial estrangement. She speaks also of Acker’s “self-serving white lies” which she employed throughout her career to “give her the legitimacy that she deserved”. This invites a discussion of writing and the self (“a biography is a hologram composed of fragments”) as well as Kraus admitting that contrary to critical knowledge, she had not been personally acquainted with Acker. Kraus speaks reverently of Great Expectations and the short story’s artful meshing of grieving and the writing process though is keen to mark the gendered assumptions of women who write about women that “anything short of hating or liking will be seen as envy”. Further to this, Jacques draws attention to Acker’s experiments with CD-ROMs as a result of being ex-communicated from literary circles after falling out of critical fashion in the mid-80s and the conversation touches on Acker’s foray into theatre with plays such as Desire. Both Kraus and Acker’s New York is filthy, sexually liberated and self-masturbatory and the evening’s discussion siphons into the ouroboros-y of the art scene and spoken word nights in which Acker (“the chamber writer of Downtown New York”) would rattle off the names and shames of former flames to an audience of friends; “feeding the scene back into itself”. Kraus’ immortalisation of Acker is humbly motivated and driven by the desire to write the true Acker back into the subject space, rather than purely an object of scandal and sex, untimely taken. I purchased myself a copy, quietly squirming at the price, quietly asking Chris Kraus to sign it then promptly faded away, rosy-cheeked, on the 171 in a cloud of free wine and biblio-bliss.

Words by Elinor Potts
Written for [smiths] magazine

An open letter to irresponsible journalism

To the journalist who dragged his name through the dirt for the sake of small-town politics. Did you have a good weekend? Are those a new pair of shoes? Did you lie awake knowing that the individual you outed for "deviance"  spent his morning looking between an angry mob and a blade's edge?
I love my family thoroughly and unconditionally. I'm exhausted from a string of unpaid work experiences and weekends working night shifts at festivals to fund an English degree. How was that for you? It's my Mother's 53rd birthday today and it is today that I was invited to witness the full extent of deceptive, nonchalant and singleminded reportage.
At 9 AM this morning he promised me not to talk about politics, balancing a tray of croissants and niceties as we walked in to greet my mother. It was whilst gripping the steering wheel on the road to the station that he finally erupted, spitting a torrent of classified truths, bracketed by confidentiality. NON-DISCLOSURE. NON-DISCLOSURE. NON-DISCLOSURE.
Did you know that the man you mis-quoted for the sake of a marginal political monopoly has been unemployed for months? That scandal peppers his google search? A mis-quote that has flown far further than the shire, sneering at us across the Atlantic from behind a paywall. Did you momentarily consider the repercussions on a family? On an individual's will to live? How was your holiday in the Maldives? I know the tropes that you're clumsily fashioning, designing your victim, selling your salacious poison to city-slicking gossip-mongers.
Trading counterfeit news-bites is hardly enough to keep the bailiffs away from a crumbling publication. My initials are laced with fire and I'll write for the right to an honest press.

[smiths] magazine: Slavoj Žižek ‘The Courage of Hopelessness’ at AK Wien Bildungszentrum, Vienna. 20/05/17

The annual climax of the Viennese cultural calendar can only be Festwochen; the Austrian capital’s culture festival held this year between 12^th May-18^th June. Established in the 1950s, Wiener Festwochen remarks on its website, ‘[it was/is] necessary to reconnect with the world, to integrate the city and the country into the international discourse of art and culture, to promote life, openness, and the idea of a future’. Events span theatre, dance, art-installations, music and lectures; celebrating individuals at the forefront of socio-political activism, avant-garde artistry and intellectual thinking. The festival is heavily subsidised by the Austrian government and though many of the events are ticketed roughly between €10- €65, a reasonable amount of the events that take place over Festwochen were free- including those by postcolonial celebrity Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Hegelian-Marxist and movie-pundit Slavoj Žižek and Fannie Sosa’s sex-positive Feminist ‘twerkshop’. A premium cultural smorgasbord.

It was as part of ‘The Academy of Unlearning’ lecture series that Slavoj Žižek’s lecture on ‘The Courage of Hopelessness’ was positioned; a collection of lectures touching on Western democracy, social dislocation and the European migrant crisis- encouraging participants to tap into a system of re-education and critique individual boundaries of understanding. 

As an intellectual who is perhaps both admired and lambasted in equal measures by contemporary medias, Slavoj Žižek has an unshakable cult status amongst memes junkies and uni-educated white Corbynites alike. The Ed Sheeran of the hard-Left if you will; Žižek fronts a shy-boy scruffy exterior that downplays ‘intellectual genius’, idolised by his adoring disciples.  Žižek’s writings on Ideology, Psychoanalysis and Film Theory- famously popularised for the mass-market in films The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) cemented him as the poster-boy for Hegelian-Marxism, prescribing a transcendental celebrity glow to his characteristic idiosyncrasies and habitual mannerisms.

Following the publication of ‘The Final Countdown: Europe, Refugees and the Left’, Žižek’s essay and lecture title derives from the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben claim that “thought is the courage of hopelessness”. Speaking in the present tense, Žižek underscores the bleakness of European politics with destructive language, ‘The true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlight of another train approaching us from the opposite direction’. Exploring this prophetic collision, he goes on to mark this oncoming threat as the ‘flow of refugees’ or ‘the problem of refugees’ that will certainly ‘explode again’. His central claim here is (perhaps unsurprisingly) radical, calling for a ‘move away from the humanitarian’.

‘This fascination with refugees suffering is the ultimate fetish because it changes a mega serious political problem into a humanitarian concern, and sentimental liberals always like this, to change again and avoid critical political analysis and begin to talk this rubbish of “are our hearts open enough”? [...] We don’t need open hearts we need precise political action to break this cycle of global geopolitics’

Interrogating the difficulty of multiculturalism, Žižek points the finger at the ‘the burden of a specific way of life’ and the ambiguities that surround this ‘way’ as a point of conflict and uncertainty. Using the Lacanian  notion of ‘jouissance’, Žižek consolidates the notion of a ‘way of life’ as ‘not direct pleasure but the enjoyment of organising pleasure’ culturally organised in such a way that it ignores cultural attitudes to sexual customs and hierarchy as values that exist ‘at the very core of a way of life’. Žižek presents the idea of arranged marriages as a key component to a way of life, citing cultural conflicts within his native Slovenia, as well as looking at the model of the Indian caste system as a way of life that was used to the benefit of British imperialism, stating that ‘authentic imperialism has always been multicultural’.

The discourse is dense and pessimistic, focus turning to the recent French election and the futility of neoliberal politics, ‘Macron embodies politics that produced Le Pen’ and Žižek asserts despondently; ‘a vote for Macron is a vote for Le Pen in four years time’.

At one point, Žižek confesses to having streamed the recent adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale on piratebay (‘I caught myself enjoying it very much, I was horrified’). Broadening into a Lacanian discussion on the sources of pleasure, Žižek digresses into an account of rape of which the perpetrator denied being motivated by carnal desires and was thus considered innocent by the Mexican authorities. Here, Žižek revisits his trope that ‘of course, feminists explode’, marking the Left’s obsessive preoccupation with safe-spaces and a general emotional excess with his argumentation teetering towards the Right. The attention to detail in describing the account as well as the depiction of graphic violence in the screened video clip underscores Žižek’s inability to censor or shelter. This extends to his provocative brand of apathetic humour, and on a theoretical level in the assertions of his lecture argumentation that calls for a move away from humanitarianism. Who needs trigger warnings, right?

The proceeding Q&A followed in a very Žižekian manner, scrutinising the mediation of pre-meditated questions through a host and reminding the audience to save their clapping for when they are directed, signposting the conventions of a conference.  The initial question: ‘How did you sleep yesterday?’ is met with frostiness that exposes Žižek’s personal brand of radical humour through juvenile hyperbole ‘What is the point of this question? If you put it the way you have put it, it would be like I have raped five children.’

As he tries to engage in a direct Q&A with audience members Žižek confesses ‘I feel bad. The best thing would be to- this is deepest anti-feminist manipulation- have a lady ask the questions so that we can say that ladies were also- you know.’ Though Žižek does undoubtedly recognise the extremes of his humour as an alienating factor, what is posed as a noble intervention for the sake of inclusion is dashed as soon as the audience member is chosen- an older Austrian man- over the energetically waving arm of a female audience member. In doing this, Žižek reduces a demonstrative act to a futile pledge to compensate for his poor taste in humour, further isolating the voices of Left-wing women within a panel and audience largely made-up of men. Žižekers hang off their demi-god’s every word, praying for the next available moment to laugh heartily and declare their commonality.

In sum, I’m a sucker for free culture. Festwochen’s scintillating selection of scholars, exhibitions, installations and performances had me from the word go, and the accessibility of free entry is a credit to the Austrian government and Arts funding.

Hey, maybe I am a misguided, hysterical ‘exploding feminist’ but declaring progress to be a move away from empathy is certainly heavy handed.

written for [smiths] magazine: http://www.smithsmagazine.co.uk/2017/09/04/vienna-festwochen-slavoj-zizek-the-courage-of-hopelessness-at-ak-wien-bildungszentrum-vienna-200517/ 

Elinor Potts

Hinds Band Review for Cool Brother zine

Hinds are a fully-charged female four-piece hailing from Madrid, favoured by the likes of Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie. Comprised of Ade, Amber and front-girls, Carlotta and Ana, we’ve seen them escalade in size, strength and following.

It all began two years ago, when 2014 saw Ana and Carlotta release their debut EP, Bamboo. Charming, fun and totally badass, Bamboo is a pared back lo-fi rock ‘n’ roll ditty with a shoe-scuffing call and response to playground pining. They’ve hardly been sitting pretty since. That year, we watched Hinds battle intimate venues like Corsica Studios, while remaining deers in the headlights when it came to interacting with the crowd. Incessantly giggling, dewy-faced and doe-eyed, they were still getting to grips with the English language. In 2015, we were treated to a wealth of gigs, from Hong Kong to Hoxton, and 16 performances at SXSW. Now, they’re headlining Koko, they’re playing Glastonbury two years in a row and they’ve performed along side the likes of The Libertines, The Black Lips and The Strokes.

Yet, despite being on the road more than Kerouac, they still found the time to write and record debut album, Leave Me Alone. Suitably evocative of teenage rebellion, it goes hand-in-hand with their nonchalant attitude. Stand-out tracks include Garden and the toe-tapping Warts; a cautionary tale of a psycho witch, delivered with a playful lure; ‘She acts too crazy/Absurdly wild/Always ready for a winky/She always burns her warts’.

They’ve achieved a lot in two years. Promising an electric and thoroughly vivacious live performance, Hinds are definitely ones to circle in your festival programmes this summer.

Notes from Vienna

The Erasmus student is a dying breed, and as one of the last years of Goldsmiths exports (NB: they’ve pledged to continue the scheme for the next two years) I shall hereby present to you an account of the first month of life in Vienna which has taken form in roughly 5 non-chronological chapters:

1)      Sprechen Sie Englisch?

Upon receiving confirmation last August that I would be studying in Vienna for my second semester I swiftly downloaded Duolingo and smugly assumed that I was already part-way to learning fluent German. A few weeks of sporadic testing and I could confidently declare that ‘the beetles drink milk’ which made me strongly evaluate the relevance of vocabulary available on Duolingo and so I consequently stopped trying entirely. As a result I now have a purely beetle-based understanding of the German language and am thus finding it somewhat troublesome navigating social situations. Despite being anxious to avoid the stereotype of the Brit abroad as overly reliant on the assumption their host will speak English, I have in no way deviated from this stereotype, thus finding myself in a constant state of self-deprecation, idealistically guessing my way through the entire language with my knowledge of English, Swedish and smiles (the universal tongue).

2           2)      Transition

Comparatively, rent in Vienna is an absolute pinch and close to half of what I had been paying in Deptford so I really shouldn’t be complaining. Unfortunately this has come at the cost of my beloved student-living disarray that seemingly does not extend to Austrian student digs owing to a non-exhaustive list of house rules that I am penalised for failing to abide by.

If I were to describe the lavish architecture of Vienna to a South East Londonder I would liken it to Deptford Town Hall x100. It’s objectively jaw-dropping and a perpetual delight. From the University building itself to parliament, the museum quarter, grandiose theatres and opera houses, strolling around the city is a constant thrill. For those who feel culturally unfulfilled in spite of the intimidating rich cultural backdrop of Vienna, there is an opera themed public toilet in Karlsplatz station that charges you 50 cent to piss to Strauss; an exercise easily achieved in the comfort of your own home for the price of a Spotify premium account.

3           3)      Nose-diving into a life of meat- my passionate affair with a Käsekrainer

Away from the judgements of South-East vegans, I have developed a deeply spiritual connection with the Austrian witching-hour delicacy known as the Käsekrainer or ‘Carniolan sausage’ over the course of this month. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this work of Austro-Hungarian genius, the Carniolan sausage is a dish of true perfection; a pork (?) sausage internally laced with hot cheese between a waistcoat of baguette. But beware: this ambrosial masterpiece is served with a side order of risk, as the visitor’s guide to Vienna advises; ‘if you’re not careful, a sufficiently-distressed Käsekrainer can propel hot fat huge distances, necessitating the wearing of protective goggles.’[1]. For those of you hankering for a sample, there are various restaurants around London that serve the dish, though in much more formal setting. This is a dish best served Wasted.

Asides from national specialities, the discovery of the pay-as-you-wish restaurant Der Wiener Deewan has entrenched meat-eating habits with a delicious selection of all-you-can-eat set curries for whatever price you feel is most fair. This frankly blew the collective minds of me and my culinary companion, opting for a medium sized mains portion and dessert for €6.50 each. My newfound meat-based lifestyle is delicious and I am never turning back.

4          4)      Rebirth/ Running around/Foreign territory

As a response to chapter 3 and with all this abundant spare time that I used to fill with socialising and evenings at the Marquis of Granby I decided to invest my time and physical energy in the preconception of the Erasmus student as self-interested. The transition to healthy-Goth (a reworking of the notion of Health Goth with a diminished emphasis on the aesthetic) has been a tale of two halves; thwarted somewhat by the devilish presence of cheap European cigarettes and bottles of Prosecco at €3 a pop. In the first week I donned my optimistic gym wear and triumphantly announced to my new housemates I was going on a run in a (rehearsed) nonchalant tone, hereby marking my new persona as part-time runner. Leaving the flat I found myself blindly ‘running’ around the local neighbourhood block-by-block, polishing off this athletic venture with a stroll around the local Austrian equivalent of Waitrose, and window shopping for food in sports-gear. I cheerfully imagined the telephone conversations of my flatmates, ‘Our new flatmate’s great, she’s only been here two days and she’s always out running!’. Such painfully unsustainable lies. 

5         5)      Brexit Repentance (BrePentance?)

The legacy of June 23^rd is still hot on the tongues of many Austrians when you confess British nationality. Furthermore, having opted for more Cultural Theory based modules at the University of Vienna I am given daily reminders of the brutal history of British colonial imperialism and am plagued by a cloud of generally perpetual guilt. All in all, it’s not a great time to be a Brit abroad and as a some-time bar-dwelling exchange student, you’ll constantly find yourself haplessly apologising on behalf of your country’s idiocy. I’ve taken to wearing my ‘Don’t blame me I voted Remain’ badge regularly to avoid confusion.

I recently attended an event hosted by the university welcoming incoming exchange students that fell on the day that the UK formally began the process of leaving the EU. Speaker Heinz Fassmann (Vice-Rector of International Affairs) asked for a show of hands of UK students and later approached me after the speeches (regrettably directly after I had launched myself at the most handsome buffet I have ever witnessed) asking me- essentially on behalf of all Erasmus departments in the UK, what was going to happen to the scheme moving forward, as 50% of students of the University of Vienna seek an exchange to the UK. What then ensued was a furious rant delivered between mouthfuls of smoked salmon and red wine about the monumental confusion of Brexit and lack of understanding surrounding EU-funded schemes and free movement going forward.  The lethal mixture of Brexit-talk and a free bar left me thoroughly red in the face.

This has been life thus far; a whirlwind few weeks of flustering around in a holiday-mode daze that I’m reluctantly emerging from. Am I integrating? Maybe. I’ve invested in some red slippers emblazoned with ‘Austria: Vienna’ in white stitching so I guess I am part there. Unfortunately I didn’t inspect said slippers thoroughly enough and it turned out that I’d purchased two left shoes. Hopefully this isn’t some horrible metaphor for bumbling through life.

Words by Ellie Potts. 

Written for publication in [smiths] magazine, all rights reserved.

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[1] http://www.visitingvienna.com/eatingdrinking/food/kasekrainer/