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Kevin Brazil
Kevin Brazil is a writer and critic who lives in London. His writing has appeared in Granta, The White Review, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, Art Review, art-agenda, Studio International, and elsewhere. He is writing a book about queer happiness.

Articles Available Online


Alvaro Barrington, Garvey: Sex Love Nurturing Famalay

Art Review

October 2019

Kevin Brazil

Art Review

October 2019

The unofficial anthem of this year’s London Carnival was ‘Famalay’, a bouyon-influenced soca song that won the Road March in Trinidad & Tobago’s Carnival...

Essay

October 2018

The Uses of Queer Art

Kevin Brazil

Essay

October 2018

In June 2018 a crowd assembled in Tate Britain to ask: ‘What does a queer museum look like?’ Surrounded...

How imagination remembers is twofold, an enfolded act of greed and ingenuity I believe these impulses to be linked in a narrative sense Imagination is always greedy, never sated, or full, with the present Imagination informs the imagineer: I need more! Just as the belly of the compulsive eater must be filled, so imagination can never be stuffed Memory feeds famished imagination, but memory is a faulty mechanism: a selfish, subjective substance also requiring constant nourishment itself in order to function in any low state   Memory cannot be entrusted with conservation Conservation is a contrary motion moving backwards and forwards, pushing and pulling; forever the desire to move forwards, yet looking forever backwards to ensure it is going the right way, doing the right thing   What conservation requires is proof Conservation needs proof in order to be able to proceed with sureness   This proof is not easy to come by   Detailed systems of discovery and exposure need to be set in place in order to pinpoint such proof Proof is, of course, always contextual and may only be seen as certain if it may be compared with other, very similar things, or processes The definition of verisimilitude depends of course on what sort of proof is it you’re after   The proof of Palácio Pombal is evidenced in what is left behind I’m looking at the proof this was a palácio, not that it still is one I accept I’ve come here to experience closely, to try for clarity And what is called into question, rather what arises as a question from my observations is: How can I be sure?   I’ve carefully read the information I was sent about the Palácio I read it because I felt I should I’m trying to forget what I read I’m trying to forget history, in order to overwrite the fragmented, chronological proofs, kindly translated and supplied upon my request This request to Mariana emerged from my doubt rather than my curiosity We human creatures must find our match in scale   *** Naturally, Palácio Pombal

Contributor

July 2018

Kevin Brazil

Contributor

July 2018

Kevin Brazil is a writer and critic who lives in London. His writing has appeared in Granta, The White Review, the London...

Nora Ikstena's ‘Soviet Milk’

Book Review

August 2018

Kevin Brazil

Book Review

August 2018

Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena opens with two women who cannot remember. ‘I don’t remember 15 October 1969,’ says the first. ‘I don’t remember...

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Interview

February 2015

Interview with Eddie Peake

Lily Le Brun

Interview

February 2015

Like many people, I had seen Eddie Peake’s penis long before I met the artist himself. For several years...

feature

December 2013

The Horror of Philosophy

Houman Harouni

feature

December 2013

An article published in this same venue opens with a grievance: ‘We lack the philosophers that we require for...

fiction

November 2014

The Lighted Way

Jeremy Chambers

fiction

November 2014

Dad used to believe that the souls of the dead rise up into the air and become one with...

 

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