The Mattering of Matter: Documents from the Archive of the International Necronautical Society

by Tom McCarthy, Simon Critchley

On August 7, 1999, Tom McCarthy founded the International Necronautical Society (INS) with a public presentation of the "Founding Manifesto," a touchstone that would inform the organization's proceedings for years to come. Composed of official committee members and illicit “agents,” the INS harks back to early twentieth-century avant-gardes, producing declarations, reports, public hearings, broadcasts, and research documents, as well as orchestrating more covert media infiltrations, all governed by the objective, set out in the "Founding Manifesto," of mapping, entering, and occupying the space of death through literature, philosophy, culture, and technology. The Mattering of Matter is a collection of INS documents produced between 1999 and 2010. This edited selection of texts reflects the INS's development, through both internal bureaucratic changes and its ever-growing repertoire of references, all of which work towards their ultimate goal of constructing a necronautical “craft” with which to propound and escalate the overall INS project.

276 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

Tom McCarthy — “English fiction’s new laureate of disappointment” (Time Out, September 2007) — is a writer and artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in a tower-block in London. Tom grew up in Greenwich, south London, and studied English at New College, Oxford. After a couple of years in Prague in the early 1990s, he lived in Amsterdam as literary editor of the local Time Out, and later worked in British television as well as co-editing Mute magazine.

His debut novel Remainder was first published in November 2005 by Paris-based art press Metronome. After becoming a cult hit championed first by British webzines (it was 3:AM Magazine’s Book of the Year for 2005) and then by the literary press, Remainder was republished by Alma Books in the UK (2006) and Vintage in the US (2007). A French version is to be followed by editions in Japanese, Korean, Greek, Spanish and Croatian.

A work of literary criticism, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, was released by Granta Books in June 2006. It also came out in France and an American edition is in the offing.

Tom’s second novel, Men in Space came out in 2007.

He has published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and Contemporary Magazine, as well as in anthologies such as London from Punk to Blair (Reaktion Books), Theology and the Political (Duke University Press) and The Milgram Experiment (Jan van Eyck Press). His story, “Kool Thing, Or Why I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst” appeared in The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired By Sonic Youth (Serpent’s Tail) in 2008.

His ongoing project the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network that surfaces through publications, proclamations, denunciations and live events, has been described by Untitled Magazine as ‘the most comprehensive total art work we have seen in years’ and by Art Monthly as ‘a platform for fantastically mobile thinking’. In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source-code. The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the ICA from which more than forty ‘agents’ generated non-stop poem-codes which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.

Tom has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths College and Southern California Institute of Architecture. He recently taught a course on ‘Catastrophe’ with Marko Daniel at the London Consortium.

Reviews

[Stuart Dummit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is art pretending to be art theory, or art theory masquerading as art, or neither or both. Yeah, it's that kind of book. It is an artistically presented collection of modern documents, interviews, ideas and postulates, that have more to do with illuminating a particular approach to art than anything else. Do not read if you're looking for Art History, a story, or anything conclusive. Read it if you want your neurons buffeted around and your knowledge of philosophy, natural history and contemporary business practices challenged.

[Garrett Peace · Rating 3 out of 5]

One for the heads, as a friend of mine would say. Not much here that you couldn’t get—and in a more engaging form—from McCarthy’s essays in Typewriters, Bombs, & Jellyfish.

I did like how McCarthy lays out in the second “general report” many of the sources and inspirations for C though. Helpful.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some startling gems, but a lot of mining sludge and dross too.

[Sienna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking, relentlessly/joyfully allusive and connective, and riotously funny.

[Marissa]

CALLING ALL AGENTS