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James Reath

@jamesreath.bsky.social

350 followers 500 following 82 posts

Writer + Researcher /// C20 Culture /// Wellcome Early-Career Research Fellow //// University of Exeter /// modernism + post-modernism; human + more-than-human health ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE (EUP: 2025) WIP: MOLECULAR DREAMWORLDS

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jun 26

My first book ANEXACT FORM & MODERNIST CULTURE is published July 2025! I'm very excited for this to be out in the world + feeling grateful to everyone at Edinburgh University Press - especially series editors Georgina Colby & Eric White!!

🎉 ꩜ 🫟

@edinburghup.bsky.social /// tinyurl.com/3sf7yj8d

Book cover displaying a "doodle-painting" by abstract artist Jonathan Lasker. Red, blue, orange, yellow, green, pink, and purple squiggles parade a canvas, with many looping black gestures contained in a grid structure. Above the grid is a tangle of thick Play-Doh-like ooze that spoils the flatness.

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · 4h

recent art photo dump w/ Paul Thek, Mike Kelley, Lee Seung Jio, Sophie Calle

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · 1d

Some close ups of Ambera Wellmann’s Death Masks Eternity (2025)

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · 9d

"one of those giant shopping malls surrounded by a wall that you bounced off like a rubber ball—unless you had a credit card on you" -- PKD, A Scanner Darkly (1977)

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · 11d

Hopefully there is already one in the works but Rosalyn Drexler's novel To Smithereens (1972) needs a UK publisher

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · 27d

strange days in Transnistria

“Transnistria is not a real country […] It is basically a big business corporation owned and run by two local oligarchs who’ve made their fortunes on free supplies of Russian gas”

on.ft.com/4gg2bew The secretive corporate empire that captured a breakaway state

The secretive corporate empire that captured a breakaway state

Sheriff dominates the economy of Transnistria and its pro-Russian government, but the war in Ukraine has thrown its future into doubt

on.ft.com

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Sep 3

“bones fuss about in your hand
like spandex in a donut.”
-- Keston Sutherland, Neocosis (2005)

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 18

“I gradually lost all fear of distortion. I perhaps oozed, rather than thought. What united and separated things? An imperceptible membrane, stretchy, spangled, gauzelike, of total vitality, which included laziness. A crystalline gel. An alphabet.”
- Lisa Robertson's novel The Baudelaire Fractal

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 15

thank you! that’d be great!

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 15

ah, thank you ☺️ I’ll email you the PDF! I really enjoyed your essay in Post45 on spirals and Art Spiegelman - so good!

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 15

Thank you for this Marina - and thank you for all of your brilliant help editing!

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 15

I wrote about doodles, democracy, & everyday aesthetics for @aeon.co.

The essay is a spin-off from a chapter in my book Anexact Form & Modernist Culture!

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · Aug 14

’The aesthetic experience of the doodle is never fixed, never singular.’ Why is doodling celebrated by modernists in the 20th century as a democratic and non-hierarchical art form?

Doodles are the freewheeling emanations of our pixillated minds | Aeon Essays

Doodles are the emanations of our pixillated minds, freewheeling into dissociation, graphology, and radical openness

buff.ly

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 14

Leigh Bowery at home in his London council flat (c 1980s) w/ Star Trek wallpaper, latex glue pour hair, kitsch Elvis Presley toy, psychedelic Dreamachine-style lamp, polyfoam shoulders, flowers, tele, etc.

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 8

Brilliant review by Eugenie Brinkema on Deleuze’s seminar On Painting...

“Philosophy doesn’t work as TL;DR.”

University of Minnesota Press @uminnpress.bsky.social · Aug 8

"Chaotic and utterly magnificent": Art in America reviews Deleuze's On Painting (new translation out next week!): www.artnews.com/art-in-ameri...

Deleuze’s Newly Translated Seminars on Painting Are Chaotic and Magnificent

A newly translated edition of seminars on painting by Gilles Deleuze are chaotic and magnificent.

www.artnews.com

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 4

“Leap over silent forms”
- “Snow Line” (c 1928-1935) from Chika Sagawa’s Collected Poems

Reposted by James Reath

Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society @carsoncenter.bsky.social · Aug 4

We are looking for multidisciplinary panels to be presented at our upcoming conference "Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds," which takes place in July next year.

The full call can be found in the news section on our website: www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/news/news_ev... (1/?)

The graphic shows cultivated lands bordering on a river/wetland and collections of trees (credit: AXIO-IMAGES from Getty Images) in the background of text bubbles. The text summarizes key details of the conference. Please read the description and the full call on the RCC website for this information.

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 2

strange cloud

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Aug 1

“Oil is sentient babbling underfoot / AI break my face”

new dark age "techno poetry" by Karina Bush ("I Wear My Tinfoil Hat as a Crown" from FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION SLUT)

youtu.be/r4K5jF7U41A?...

DeepSNAKES Techno Poetry Mixtape

YouTube video by DeepSNAKES

www.youtube.com

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jul 31

Publication day for my first book! Thank you @edinburghup.bsky.social & everyone that has helped over the years.

The book cover image is 'The Metaphysics of Mr Lucky' by the wonderful Jonathan Lasker.

Please consider reviewing and/or ordering for your university libraries! (link: bit.ly/4lp8yxj)

copy of book Anexact Form & Modernist Culture, on table

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jul 28

"Kafka’s animals, crossbreeds, and uncanny nonhumans emerge at a precise point. They are the spokescreatures of a precarious borderland where the human-ness of the human being comes undone. They speak from and embody a crisis in the human self-image" (Aaron Schuster)

www.e-flux.com/notes/675817...

How to Research Like a Dog - Notes - e-flux

Aaron Schuster on Kafka’s short story “Investigations of a Dog.”

www.e-flux.com

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jul 19

Kids in smalltown 1950s MA were given perks for joining “Science Club”: baseball tickets, Mickey Mouse watches, free breakfasts

Only, the cereal was laced w/ radioactive iron + the milk radioactive calcium - part of a secret experiment by the Atomic Energy Commission, MIT scientists, + Quaker Oats

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jul 18

It seems Federer, Sampras, Djokovic all hit the ball with polyester laced with cow intestines.

It takes about two cows to string a pro tennis racket & often "natural gut" strings are mixed with polyester. There are also nylon filament "synthetic gut" strings that mimic the spring of cow intestines.

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jul 16

“to be made pure mucous membrane” (Sartre)

James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jun 26

It’s an “academic” book, published by Edinburgh University Press

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jun 26

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James Reath @jamesreath.bsky.social · Jun 23

“drawings clean, clear but crazy like machines” Eva Hesse to Sol Le Witt (from Abstract Erotic at the Courtauld)