Ark Audio

Completing a run of three years, this month the Ark Audio Book Club crew have read "Torpor" by Chris Kraus, the final part of the "I Love Dick" Trilogy. Set in 1991, three years before the events of I Love Dick, Torpor follows Sylvie and Jarome, characters with names borrowed from Georges Perec’s Things: A Story of the 60s, which cannot be read as anything but pseudonyms for Chris and Sylvère, on an ill-fated journey to Romania in the vain hope that they can somehow adopt a baby, despite the fact that post-revolution, Romania has banned all adoption. The journey actually takes them to the heart of the compromises and traumas upon which their relationship is built, leaving them with no hope of a simple happily-ever-after together but maybe a stronger sense of how to go on living.

Featuring Macon Holt, Sarah Ommannney, Neus Casanova Vico and Giovanna Alesandro.

You can read Macon's review here http://arkbooks.dk/book-review-torpor-by-chris-kraus/

ark books is proud to present a conversation on sensing, listening and sound, based on the new book from, University of Copenhagen professor of musicology and sound studies, Holger Schulze, The Sonic Persona: An Anthropology of Sound.

In The Sonic Persona, Holger Schulze undertakes a critical study of some of the most influential studies in sound since the 19th century in the natural sciences, the engineering sciences, and in media theory, confronting them with contemporary artistic practices, with experimental critique, and with disturbing sonic experiences.

From Hermann von Helmholtz to Miley Cyrus, from FLUXUS to the Arab Spring, from Wavefield Synthesis to otoacoustic emissions, from premillennial clubculture to postdemocratic authoritarianism, from signal processing to human echolocation: This book presents a fundamental critique concerning recent sound theories and their anthropological concepts – and proposes an alternate, a more plastic, a visceral framework for research in the field of a cultural anthropology of sounding and listening.

This anthropology of sound takes its readers and listeners on a research expedition to the multitude of alien humanoids and their surprising sonic personae: in dynamic and generative tension between predetermined auditory dispositives, miniscule and not seldomly ignored sound practices, and idiosyncratic sensory corpuses: a critique of the senses.

Holger Schulze (*1970) is full professor in musicology at the University of Copenhagen and principal investigator at the Sound Studies Lab. He serves as curator for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin and as founding editor of the book series Sound Studies. He is the author of a Theorie der Werkgenese, a generative theory of artefacts in three volumes: Das aleatorische Spiel (2000) − Heuristik (2005) − Intimität und Medialität (2012). He is associated investigator at the cluster of excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung: an interdisciplinary laboratory at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and founding member of the European Sound Studies Association. Since 2011 he is co-editor of the international journal for historical anthropology Paragrana, in 2008 he founded the international research network Sound in Media Culture, 2000-2009 he was a co-founder and the first head of department of the new MA-programme in Sound Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He was invited visiting professor at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo, at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, at the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg as well as lecturer at the Leopold-Franzens-Universität in Innsbruck. He writes for Texte zur Kunst, Seismograf, Merkur, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Positionen, Deutschlandradio Kultur, der freitag.

The Sonic Persona is his first monograph in English.

This month on the Ark Audio Review, the team talk to Simon Fern about pigeons, Ebba talks about the new documentary "Dreaming Murakami", and Neus Casanova Vico talks about the new Ark Review column "Translation Tuesday", in which she and Sheri Helberg translate new Nordic literature into Spanish and English.

This month on the Ark Audio Review, the team talk to Simon Fern about pigeons, Ebba talks about the new documentary "Dreaming Murakami", and Neus Casanova Vico talks about the new Ark Review column "Translation Tuesday", in which she and Sheri Helberg translate new Nordic literature into Spanish and English.

Inherent Vice (2009) is a shaggy dog story about a hippy private investigator, Lawrence “Doc” Sportello, living in L.A. at the tail end of the 1960s (which I think could really mean up until 1974ish). One night, his “ex-old-lady”, Shasta Fay Hepworth, comes around looking for help to stop the kidnapping of the billionaire land developer she’s been having an affair with, Mickey Wolfmann. This sends Doc into a world of drug-fuelled conspiracies involving a cartel/dental syndicate/schooner called “The Golden Fang”, FBI and police corruption, Neo-Nazis and reactionary anti-hippy conservatives, junkies, prostitutes, mystics and an undead saxophonist. By the end of the novel, we are still left wondering what has transpired. Some characters are a little better off, others are worse… or worse. And we are uncomfortably left to ponder the remark of one character that “in the end, nothing really ends”.

Featuring Franek Korbanski, Emilie Bang- Jensen, Sheri Helberg and hosted and produced by Macon Holt.

Macon's "review" http://arkbooks.dk/the-libidinal-economy-of-inherent-vice/

Xenofeminism in Copenhagen thanks to the team from kbh læser. Also a big thanks to all our collaborators, Diann Bauer, Martin Hauberg-Lund, Rebecca W. B. Lund, Eksistensfilosofisk Akademi, Passive/Aggressive, Sorte Firkant for the venue and for the financial support from Nørrebro Lokaludvalg.

For more info on XF and the video Diann plays in her presentation click this http://arkbooks.dk/what-is-xenofeminism/

In this bonus episode of the Ark Audio Review, Macon Holt interviews literary scholar Mikkel Frantzen about his thesis, "Going nowhere, slow­‐ scenes of depression in contemporary literature and culture".

This was recroded back in December.

The Ark Audio Review returns with a brand new team, Nina Band, Anne Kristin Kristiansen and Ebba Wester. This month we are looking at the theme of this year's KBH Læser festival, Manifesto. With guests Simon Fern, Franek Korbanski, Macon Holt and Sheikha Gross.

If you think you are disqualified from listening to this tape, you are. Such is the nature of suspicion. You are judged by your words, and your words are themselves judged. Turn on, tune in and drop dead as Senyora Psicosi and her two callers (is she hearing double?) play a game that Jonathan Franzen is not invited to join.

Sheila Heti's intentionally "ugly" novel of creative anxiety and ethical quandary, "How Should a Person Be?" If this wets your whistle, you can hear more about the book tomorrow on the Ark Audio Book Club podcast, or just swing by the store and pick up a copy.