Description
Failed States is an occasional publication that aims to collate and investigate ideas around place, or more specifically: “indeterminate geographies”. Each themed issue is a trove of innovative text and image by emerging and established writers, artists, filmmakers, photographers and academics. The open-ended nature of the invitation extended to our contributors allows the journal to become a space for the exploration of new ways of working, potentially diverging from established practices. Rather than cultivate a house style, we strive to publish content that varies widely in intent, tone and realisation. This — together with the characteristic pithiness of the texts — engenders a journal both unique among art and literary publications and a radical departure from traditional geographic research.
In the third issue, themed ‘refuge’:
Photographs by Moath Alofi documenting remote, abandoned and makeshift mosques in Saudi Arabia
An essay in words, photographs and ephemera by Felix Bazalgette on disparate lives in a village near Heathrow
An erotic prose poem by Alex Bennett
Paul Clinton considering the problem of queer ethics
Gareth Evans on the Armenian genocide, diaspora and absence
Britt Hill on the squats providing sanctuary for refugees in Athens
Every Ocean Hughes on changing her name
Stills from the Jasleen Kaur video installation I Keep Telling Them These Stories
A short story by William Kherbek from the graveyard shift at ILoveItCafe
A speculative tale by Joanne McNeil
A selection from the Sabelo Mlangeni series Country Girls depicting queer life in rural South Africa
New work by Prem Sahib documenting a derelict sauna prior to its demolition
New work from a project by Sam Williams made at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
A selection of drawings by Lucy Atherton, Todd Bura, Colter Jacobsen and Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings
A very personal archive from the editors, recounting life in the early 2000s in San Francisco, a ‘city of refuge’, comprising photographic work by Jamie Atherton and an essay by Jeremy Atherton Lin originally published in Index magazine in 2003
The debut of our first regular column, in which Bryony Quinn examines the etymology of the issue’s theme
Publisher & Editor: Jamie Atherton
Associate Editor: Jeremy Atherton Lin
Art direction: Sandy McInnes
Published March 2019 in London
ISSN 2515-5997
