ARCHITECTURE; RUIN PORN; SICILY; PHOTOGRAPHY; SICILIAN BAROQUE; LATIFUNDIA; EMPTINESS; DE CHIRICO; NECROPOLIS; IN COUNTRY; ITALIAN FASCIST ARCHITECTURE; PROSTITUTION; ECOLOGY; SPONTANEOUS GENERATION; SYMMETRY/ASYMMETRY; ARGONAUT; BEYOND THE FRAGILE GEOMETRY OF SPACE AND CRIME
My withdrawal from this place of administration was a performance and a penitence. In my living vestment of bees I drifted glacial as time back through the corridor, my arm painful in its frozen salute, and then out of the building’s front entrance, where I found myself at the top of a double external staircase. I looked ahead at an overgrown meadow full of wildflowers, with copses of oak and pine a short distance away, and with no further hesitation I turned left, and with meticulous care climbed down that side of the staircase. With each step more bees flew or fell from my body, my muscles relaxed and my ordinary movements returned, and when I arrived on terra firma I was confident enough to brush the remaining insects from myself and then remove my clothes one piece at a time before taking great deep euphoric breaths as I stretched and preened myself in the tall grass and then began to smile and laugh out loud.
“New Juche writes with the sun-blasted madness of D.H. Lawrence living his final days in Mexico, or as haunted amanuensis transcribing the ravaged dreams of Ezra Pound in his spotlit prison cell tucked away in the night hills of Pisa. Heat Death 2 bears the hallmarks of prophecy, and behind the scarred architecture of a man casting himself adrift lies the clarity of a warrior monk’s keenest vision. No-one is writing like this today. They simply fucking can’t. Read it!“
Philip Best (Amphetamine Sulphate)
“There is no Maslow's Demon in New Juche's hermetically-sealed Word Universe. The entropic march toward a complete disassembly proceeds with or without his endorsement. He's not here to cast a judgement, but simply to record the dissolve as he's torn apart at the seams himself. Borgo Lapsus is the next step on that pathway toward entropic equilibrium; toward a wiping clean; toward our Heat Death. Read his work, it’s brilliant.”
New Juche is the nom de guerre of a writer and photographer who lives and works in Southeast Asia. He is also the author of Wasteland, The Mollusc and Gymnasium.
More sumptuous prose, intriguing thoughts on architecture and politics, and gorgeous photographs as we follow the author on a trip to Sicily. Obviously a rather different experience from Issue 1's COVID-depopulated Phuket, but still sparsely inhabited and infused with a quiet tension. There are uneasy encounters, small moments of surprising beauty and joy, and brief sexual interludes. More B&W photos in this issue, the bright whites of the intense sunlight almost void-like, doorways and windows like black holes, and weathered textured crumbling walls like abstract paintings.