Originally posted Jan 30, 2025 on Substack (boo!)
The idea of this newsletter is to put out any updates that people might want to know about. I don’t envisage myself writing any essays here, so this newsletter will be very infrequent. Currently:
1 I’ll be presenting at CAA in New York in February. I’m part of the “Re-Opening the ’85 New Wave Movement” panel, Saturday 15 February, 11am to 12:30pm, New York Hilton Midtown - 2nd Floor - Gramercy East.
My paper is entitled “From Primeval Chaos to the New History Group: a ‘minor’ history of the ‘85 New Wave.”
I’m also co-chairing (with Yizhuo Li) a panel called “Art as Shifting Knowledge?: Histories of Science, Medicine, and Sinophone Art”, Thursday 13 February, 4:30pm to 6pm, New York Hilton Midtown - 2nd Floor - Nassau West.
Image: Disinfection by the New History Group, 1992, image provided by Ren Jian.
2 My girlfriend Alison is still doing gel nails to raise funds for the survival needs of Hossam and Mahmoud in Gaza, Palestine. They’re doing in-person nail appointments in Oxford, UK, as well as press-ons shipping internationally! Whether you’re masc or fem, whether you like it simple or maximalist, whether it’s your first set of nails or you’re a seasoned manicure-getter, you’re bound to love Alison’s incredible work. Find out more on their Instagram: @greenmossloveisreal1998iloveu.
3 My Fellow Showcase with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA will be on 21 February 2025. I don’t really know what time it will start or what it will involve, but I’m told I have 30 minutes to read my work. I will probably read Sequence from a Dream and I might print some more riso pamphlets of it, so let me know if you didn’t get a copy last time and want one now. The minimum donation remains £10 GBP or $10 USD and the proceeds will continue to go to Hossam and Mahmoud!
4 Sine Theta Magazine is currently holding our Patreon drive, which is when we entice you to subscribe to our Patreon for as low as £1 / $1 per month in order to help sustain this completely DIY, independent print publication made by and for the Sino diaspora. Please consider supporting our work!
One of the many perks of being a Patreon subscriber is getting access to Co-sine, our fortnightly email newsletter featuring cultural commentary and essay-writing from staff and guest writers. I edit Co-sine and it’s incredibly fun and eclectic. Here’s an example, some musings on DIY game-making and zines from dear friend Dri.
5 None of the books I’ve read lately have been mind-blowingly good, so I have nothing to report on this front. But I’ve been enjoying getting to read my friends’ poems and stories—how precious it is to receive these texts, in different stages of formation, to be trusted with them.
Melissa and I have started a new book together for our book club—Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh, translated by Trevor LeGassick and Elizabeth Fernea—which I’m enjoying so far. It’s intense with gorgeous prose. A lot of Palestine narratives open with the interrogation at the border by the Israelis, which makes sense. Being from 1976, this novel will be interesting to juxtapose with Jean Genet’s fragmented non-fiction, Prisoner of Love (Un captif amoureux in French), which I was reading all Xmas break and from which I’ve temporarily taken a pause.
Also slowly making my way through: Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (I bought this on the Workshops4Gaza bookstore), How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, Dawn by Octavia Butler (book club with Chi), and I’m looking forward to the arrival of The Black Insider by Dambudzo Marechera (recommended by Vita).
6 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about care, vulnerability, and solidarity. Always astounded by the kindness, courage, and heart of my friends. Struck, also, by how physical my emotions are, these enormous feelings of mine that can take over my entire body in an instant, that make me shake, that make me paralysed, that make me feel crazy, and that I never know what to do with. And my capacity, as it turns out, for anger. I never used to feel angry, growing up. Now I realise that I’m made of it.
Are comments a thing on Substack? Or do people just reply to the email and I receive it? Either way, thanks for reading. An article about me will be coming out in the Provincetown Independent soon (all Fellows get one) so I’ll post again then. Bye!