Nowt anthology 01

Here is the first Nowt Press anthology. It collects and updates some older editions from this site, but also some of the material from the Nowt Press pre-history as a pamphleteer. It is a one hundred page ebook entitled ‘Beginning again in the middle’.

We have recently become interested in ebooks and their possibilities, and this is our first, pdf-only, editioned anthology. We are looking for partners to collaborate with us on the further dissemination – in terms of both print and digital editions – of Nowt Press writers and artists, and here we are privileged to present Robert Galeta, Simon Ford, Steve Hanson, Lee Hassall, J.D. Taylor and Lawrence Upton.

Publishers: Please get in touch, we need infrastructural support.

The need for an anthology began to rise as the little Nowt editions accumulated on this site, and it became clear that they were ‘all of their time’ – by which I mean of now – despite contributions across generations, from writers in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, genealogies going back to Bob Cobbing, Jeff Nuttall and Ian Hinchliffe, then forward again to British psychogeography and over the smashed fragments of Marxism… So I have split the book into Diagnoses (where we are now), Practices (what to do about it), and Augurs (pure speculations about what might happen from here on).

So this is a kind of manifesto by example, which is responding in its own way to the various crises of now. Because what Nowt Press did when it revived itself was simply what everyone does all of the time, we begin again, as Deleuze described it, in the middle, never at the start. So here we present a set of notes which describe the current situation of that inevitable starting-over, for artists, writers, and agitators, and try to suggest a loose set of practices via which we might go about that starting-over.

You may notice that when the transition occurs, from Diagnoses to Practices, there is a marked shift towards something like hope. This is inevitable, because the diagnosis is necessarily, historically, very bad, and the practitioners here – also for historical reasons – are very good, by which I mean they practice their art. This is about re-emerging in the middle, but in a very particular time and way, as I tried to lay out – tangentially and critically – with Guy Begbie, in the pamphlet Dock, we’re back in the river…

Nowt 10 – Obedience

Here is Nowt 10, another piece by Lawrence Upton, entitled Obedience.

Nowt 09 – Setting out, along the radial, warped spokes of time

Nowt 09 began as a catalogue essay by Steve Hanson for the Dromology exhibition at South Square gallery, Bradford. It then became a Nowt edition. This piece will re-appear shortly in the first Nowt Press anthology, but the availability period for the first edition has now ended.

Nowt 08 – autumn, or Further Eradications

Here is Nowt 08, by Lawrence Upton.

Nowt 07 – The Saga of Go-bert, Goberta and Gobertina

Nowt 07 is a revival of the tragic genre in the age of the abject. This has been initiated as a proposal by Hhassall, Llavery and Rraves. The latter also inhabits the text – to a greater or lesser degree – and in this he shadows the compositional strategies, as both author, trope, and collection of rain-soaked, compounded receipts in the gutter, by the iron drain covering.

Nowt 06 – I mistrust my understanding

Nowt 06, I mistrust my understanding, is another text from Lawrence Upton. Upton’s lack of interest in ponderous abstraction – although it is also always very far from simplistic or naïve proposal-wise – is an indication of both confidence and veracity.

Nowt 05 – A brief history of sacrifice in digitised economies: thirteen assertions

Nowt o5 was a sustained, potent set of meditations on the twenty-first century by J.D. Taylor. His book Negative Capitalism – Cynicism in the Neoliberal Era is due to be published shortly by Zero Books. This piece will re-appear shortly in the first Nowt Press anthology, but the availability period for the first edition has now ended.