The Inaugural Monthly Link Dump: October 2024

This is my inaugural monthly link dump, the first of a hopefully regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird.

I’ve done four random link dump posts over the past ten years, and spent a lot more time than that moaning about discoverability on the small/indie/personal/open (or substitute your own preferred adjective) web.

It seemed like the best thing to do was to actually help other small sites be discovered by posting links to interesting things they’ve posted. It’s not an original idea by any stretch (see the bonus meta link-dump of link-dumps at the bottom of this post), but it’s better than me complaining about this site’s discoverability while not actually doing anything to help others.

So with that said, here we go:

From S. Elizabeth at Unquiet Things about the artwork of Iris Compiet: Beyond The Threshold of Sight: Iris Compiet’s Wild Magic

Compiet’s creatures inhabit a corner of my mind that feels as ancient and familiar as childhood memories, as if they’ve been whispering their secrets to me all my life.

From Richard Smith's non-medical blogs on four artists he discovered at the British Art Fair: A show where we discover four artists doing original and arresting work

On Saturday we went to the British Art Fair, which was huge, filled with wonders and horrors, and extremely crowded. At first I thought we wouldn’t be able to move or see anything, but the crowds thinned as we progressed. About 70 galleries were exhibiting, most of them multiple works, so you could emerge from the scrum overwhelmed and remembering nothing. But I did see things that excited me, and I’ve retrieved four of them.

From Simon Reynolds at Retromania about the intersection of hauntology and comedy: haunty ha-ha, haunty peculiar

But, as anyone who really knows the area knows - and who has a wider sense of what it is - hauntology is actually riddled and addled with whimsy and macabre humour. When you listen to and look at the graphic presentation of what I consider to be the canonic core - Ghost Box, Mordant Music / eMMplekz, Moon Wiring Club, Position Normal - comedy runs through the whole thing.

From Oli at taCity on the normalisation of toxic masculinity in 1990s “lads’ mags”: 90s Lads’ Mags and the toxic masculinity we can’t escape

The persistence of this cultural legacy is not merely a vestige of the past but in a hauntological, Fisherian motif, a reflection of how the neoliberal apotheosis that the 1990s ushered in, still has a pervasive grip on the contemporary culture of the 2020s.

From Kenny at The Urban Prehistorian about an encounter with Bronze Age/early Iron Age cup marks in a caravan park in Oslo: Lot 172

In other words these symbols, at least in sub-Alpine Norway, tend to be found in places that have, historically, been used as summer grazing zones in the landscape, an association that might reasonably be pushed back into prehistory, in a landscape that has always been challenging to farm. This interpretation is by no means definitive, but these simple symbols speak of people who had time on their hands, and with a desire to leave their mark on the land.

From Gavin Burrows at Lucid Frenzy Junior anti-capitalist politics: Everybody’s happy nowadays

The main way most of us survive is by selling our labour. The majority of our waking hours are stolen from us by soulless jobs, doing things which for the most part we have no interest in, in conditions we have no control over. Where bigger and bigger slices are taken from our slender recompense by raised rent or mortgages, or by price-gouging utility bills. Smug, patronising politicians seem barely able to hide their derision about us as the rich grow ever-richer at our expense.

From Paul Gorman at Into the Gyre on his formative childhood books about ghosts: First Frights: Ghosts, ghosts, and ghosts

In previous First Frights I’ve looked at the formative TV shows and films that filled me with a delicious, addictive sense of dread and awe. But what were the first books that stirred and fed on those feelings? I can identify two plausible candidates, one of which may be well-known to visitors to the Gyre.

From Joe Crawford at ArtLung 40 years of the Cyberpunk genre: Cyberpunk at 40

It was a total accident that I acquired a paperback copy of Neuromancer. I wrote a bit about it back in 2005. Cyberpunk Guy, 1988. I liked more anodyne and even innocent SF at that point in my life. Neuromancer had street gangs, curse words, killings and sex. I devoured it. The ubiquity of computers and the net was full of promise.

From John V Willshire at Smithery on why craft and hard work stands out over Generative AI: The Unbelievable Age

In a world where people could do anything, deciding to do something harder, which took more time, craft, and resources stood out.

From Diva Harris at Caught by the River on a poetic exploration and an esoteric mystery tour of Hastings’ occult layers: Magick Hastings

Michael Smith and Maxy Bianco’s upcoming film Magick Hastings explores these mysteries, attempting to shed some light on the shadows.

From Tracey Durnell at Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden on how financial reforms are necessary to reduce the effects of climate change: Fighting climate change with financial reform

Capitalism’s demands for ever greater efficiency conflict with society’s need for essential goods. Baby formula during the pandemic, now IV fluid following Hurricane Helene… consolidation is antithetical to resilience. How much is it that supply chains are broken versus supply itself?

From W. David Marx at Culture: An Owner’s Manual on why it's really difficult to understand whether we're at an optimal rate of cultural change: Why It's Hard to Argue about “Cultural Stasis”

Since Simon Reynolds published Retromania in 2010, there has been a debate about whether the 21st century is facing a cultural stagnation crisis. There is a general consensus that there were fewer drastic stylistic changes in the Aughts and Teens than in previous decades.

From James at James' Coffee Blog on …well, coffee: Morning Coffee

You remember slight chill on your cheek that came from the autumn breeze. You also remember the feeling of looking up and seeing vastness beyond comprehension, interspersed with twinkling stars. You could have spent all night thinking about the stars, but your eyes started to feel tired.

From Zakiya McKenzie at Caught by the River on the language of defiance, taunts and dares in Scots, Jamaican patois and Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’: ‘Seh Feh’ Nan Shepherd and the Cairngorms

In The Living Mountain, Shepherd introduces the reader to the Scots term fey, ‘to be a little mad’. Feyness. It reminds me of another time when the sound might be uttered (by a different people, albeit) to identify when one is above his or herself, overconfident, ‘a little mad’.

From Ailish Sinclair on the 18^th century Duff House Mausoleum: Duff House Woods and Mausoleum

When I was a child, the house was in quite a rough state. Furniture was covered in sheets, paint was peeling off the walls, and spooky music floated up from the lower levels.

Inaugural bonus: a meta link-dump of link-dumps:

John Coulthart at { feuilleton } has posted a Weekend Links post every Saturday since time immemorial - here’s the latest one.

Undine at Strange Company also posts a Weekend Link Dump - here’s a timeline of them.

The Daily Grail posts a similar News Briefs post several times a week - here’s a timeline of them.