Vol. 1 / Issue 1
Une revue littéraire et culturelle bilingue
Vol. 2 / Issue 1
“I think of my work as being about queer community and chosen family. I’m not trying to represent any broader “queer community” – just my specific queer community of friends.”
While the planet perishes from the nihilism of greed, pollution,and violence targeting vulnerable populations,
How Capitalism Did End
by
Ben Miller
an anonymous citizen—in an act of urgent archivism—
transcribes portions of the Internet by hand to create a hard-copy that cannot be erased when the Cloud goes down.
Recorded here are craven products and absurd services designed both to distract from the disaster’s gravity
and to squeeze final fat profits
out of faltering societies.
"The words bend into visual art, the art bends back into words.
Pages that are a voice raised against systems that oppress and funnel expression into more convenient modes than it might otherwise take."
But is the antic catalog less anthropological artifact than intimate evidence of how barrages of marketing polyphony distend (or mutilate) emotions and sensory perceptions in epic fashion?
Among antecedents to this montage form of ethical exploration are Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain, Cane by Jean Toomer, The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, Wacky Packages stickers (circa 1970s) and the unstoppable blues of Abbey Lincoln, dissolver of notes to make melodies sing of harrowing things.
Ben Miller is an essayist, fiction writer, and the creator of hybrid works that combine visuals and text. After attending Cornell College (Mount Vernon, Iowa) he received an M.A. from New York University, studying under John A. Williams, E.L. Doctorow, Wesley Brown, and Luisa Valenzuela. "How Capitalism Did End" is Ben's fifth completed full-length image and text project. With back matter, it runs 190 pages.