Animal Shelter, no. 2

Edited by Hedi El Kholti
Cover: Matt Fishbeck

Fleeting, ephemeral, non-digital and non-hierarchical, Animal Shelter is, as Alex Gartenfeld wrote in Interview, “a loose collection of texts, sequenced like a mixtape” and dedicated to visions of real freedom in the present. Gathered around a long conversation with philosopher Paul Virilio on “The Littoral as Final Frontier,” conducted on the first day of the “flash crack” collapse of the European markets, Issue 2 features fiction, art work, poetry, conversations and essays by Dodie Bellamy, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Moyra Davey, Robert Dewhurst, Ben Ehrenreich, Matt Fishbeck, Veronica Gonzalez, Bruce Hainley, Chris Kraus, Rachel Kushner, Sylvere Lotringer, Alistair McCartney, Slava Mogutin, Eileen Myles, Jed Ochmanek, George Porcari, Michael Rashkow, Shlomo Sand, Margie Schnibbe, Sarah Wang and others.

“… At the Liberation … I discovered a coast that had been off limits during the entire war. For a child, the discovery of that seascape was an extraordinary moment, the end f the world, the finisterre; the discovery of freedom as well as an endless, negative horizon where there is nothing but the horizon, nothing but fluid dynamics.” — Paul Virilio, “The Littoral as Final Frontier”

Debuting in 2008, Animal Shelter 1 summoned the underground press sex culture of the 1970s as an intellectual conduit. The new issue evokes the suspended atmosphere of a world drifting in limbo; analysis laced with an undertow of oblivion.

Desublimation, digression, negative monument, catastrophe, shadows, horror and sexiness, Gay Sunshine, blue line …