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 second issue, themed ‘suburb’:
An original fiction by Wayne Koestenbaum; special projects on the Charles Atlas film Staten Island Sex Cult and the late South African photographer Thabiso Sekgala; a portfolio of posters for queer skate collective Unityselected by Ian Giles; and contributions from writers, artists, photographers and educators from Iceland, North America, Pakistan, South Africa, and the UK, in which…
Ayesha Malik documents an American suburb in Saudi Arabia
Baneen Mirza walks the Lahore sprawl
Brian W. Ferry locates the suburban in Brooklyn
Bryony Quinn researches a divisive wall in Oxfordshire
Colter Jacobsen doesn’t remember
Daniel P Callanan explores wild places in south-east London
Donal Mosher recalls the dogwood trees of North Carolina
Jack Self goes back to the beginning
Jacques Bellavance photographs Europe-inspired developments around Shanghai
Jenny Lin spends an evening in those same Shanghainese suburbs
Jeremy Atherton Lin follows the searchlights of the Silicon Valley
Josh Cheon digs up his teenage mixtapes
Justinien Tribillon undertakes an etymological adventure
Karen Tongson soundtracks her youth in the Inland Empire
KT Browne finds herself in a remote Icelandic town
Matt Wolf hangs out in Boca Raton’s retirement communities
Nina Power contemplates the supra-rural
Olivia Laing has a phenomenological moment
Peter Nencini makes public art in Croydon
Sabelo Mlangeni ventures into a wealthy Johannesburg suburb
Tara Sinn moves to a cul-de-sac
Publisher & Editor: Jamie Atherton
Associate Editor: Jeremy Atherton Lin
Art direction: Sandy McInnes
Published May 2018 in London
ISSN 2515-5997
