Dear Shaded Viewers,
Thanks to Djeason Valerio I discovered the work of Ian F. Svenonius by way of his film The Lost Record directed by Ian and Alexandra Cabral which was screened at ASVOFF14 at 35/37 in Paris. Last night there was a book launch. I had a chance to do a short interview with him about his latest book Against the Written Word and his 12 Steps. Ian F. Svenonius is the author of the underground best seller The Psychic Soviet . He was also the host of VBS.tv’s Soft Focus, a different breed of chat show, where he interviewed Mark E. Smith, Genesis P. Orridge, Chan Marshall, Ian MacKaye, and others. As a musician he has created eighteen albums and countless singles in various rock ‘n’ roll combos (Chain & the Gang, Weird War, The Make-Up, The Nation of Ulysses, etc.). I have to go back to the book store at 35/37 and pick up the book but till I get that together it is hard to top his press release:
If the Gutenberg Bible is the alpha, Against the Written Word is the omega
Against the Written Word is the most important, most revolutionary book produced since the advent of the printing press; the book that will liberate readers from reading, writers from writing, and booksellers from peddling their despicable wares. This book ushers in a new era of freedom from reading and all its attendant bedfellows such as Enlightenment thinking and the mass alienation wrought by the phonetic alphabet. Against the Written Word will be a tremendous best seller and simultaneously the last book that anyone will read.
With nineteen essays ripping, shredding, tearing apart all the bugaboos that haunt humanity nowadays, Against the Written Word is a must-read for any aspiring radical or would-be gnostic who has a penchant for words, thought, clothes, intoxicants, music, art, expression, etc. The work is presented in a range of writing: essays, screenplays, lectures, sci-fi stories, and manifestos, with topics that include “the rise of incorporated man,” “tourism as the neoliberal mode of military occupation,” a workshop on songwriting for the purpose of suggestion and mind control, and many more.
This handsome, illustrated book will correct the paucity of thought that characterizes the modern bookstore, and will practically sell itself. It will call out from the shelf to ingratiate itself to the unsuspecting everyday book browser, who will be hooked and then hungrily consume it. Infected with a wild-eyed evangelism, they will then proliferate it amongst their friends and acquaintances. These new readers will disseminate it, and so on; soon this slim, innocuous volume will define an epoch and steer thought from here on out.
The bookseller will be surprised and pleased to find that it will be the only book they need to stock. Against the Written Word will be dominant in a manner the market has not seen since the Bible tore up best-seller lists in the Middle Ages or Mao’s Little Red Book wowed the critics in Red China.
The book is currently available at The Book Store at 35/37 in Paris. www.3537.org.
Later,
Diane
photos by Marco De Rivera
