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Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage). Her previous book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (Chatto/FSG) was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her essays have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Frieze, among others. Her next book, Art Monsters, will be out in July 2023 (Chatto/FSG). She lives in London.

Articles Available Online


Maria Gainza’s ‘Optic Nerve’

Book Review

May 2019

Lauren Elkin

Book Review

May 2019

In his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus, on the pleasures of philosophy, and of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in particular, Brian Massumi writes:  ...

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Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

Day 1 in the Season before Chaos   These were the days before the glitch The weather was acutely neurotic, four seasons compressed into one week, then a week of endless rain, then another four seasons compressed into the following week, then the sweltering days that promised summer in November and the carpet of snow that covered the early daffodils The future bionic woman didn’t have a chip incrusted on her cranium yet She had no idea chance was about to randomise her existence She had no idea what the future had in store for her She didn’t know she was going to become a cyborg She didn’t know a quantum leap was about to snatch her up She knew nothing There were no signs foretelling a prolonged holiday from her usual self, just the habitual vicissitudes of climate change and the average sweet and sour twang of global city life   She had made a few adjustments to her life, though   She was ready to start a new phase   On the 28th November 02, she had highlighted the word ‘orgasmic’ from a book about dreams It wasn’t a word she necessarily related to sex or to the feel the advertising industry attaches to the surface of its products It was a word she associated with discovering ecstatic pleasure in unsuspected things, jouissance She had printed the word in Adventure Subtitles N Bold lower-case size font 16, cut out the A4 paper into a third and placed the big note on the wall above her PC:     orgasmic     She wanted to tune into the orgasmic side of life Choose her own parameters Dodge life’s drudgery or at least minimize its impact It would require constant effort and vigilance, it was a juggling act that wouldn’t always be easy Daily mortifications were always around the corner But she now had a new project She had decided to seek out beauty in everyday life In a way, she thought about it as modern life’s heroism, or should we say ‘postmodern’ life’s heroism Deleting urban jungle fallout in one stroke, postponing it, isolating it, absconding from the A to Z   Not

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK...

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

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Issue No. 2

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed and there was a surly-looking...

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Art

February 2014

Starting with a Bang: Hannah Höch and The First International Dada Fair

Daniel F. Herrmann

Art

February 2014

A spectre haunted the Lützow-Ufer – the spectre of Dadaism. It hung from the ceiling and peered down from the...

Art

July 2015

Michaël Borremans

Ben Eastham

Art

July 2015

Michaël Borremans is among the most important painters at work in the world today. His practice combines a lifetime’s...

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January 2011

Futures Past: Monumental Memorials of Modern Berlin

Leila Peacock

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January 2011

Cities display a worship of history in the monuments and memorials that they choose to erect, through which the...

 

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