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Volume 2 (2009) Faux Histories
In assembling this “faux histories” issue, we call up the Renaissance Wunderkammer, or wonder cabinet. Unlike the curiosity cabinets and the museums that followed, Wunderkammern were the idiosyncratic collections of aristocracy—in which “natural” and artificial objects lay next to each other, rejecting easy taxonomic distinctions. Acknowledging the obvious colonizing impulse behind such collections, we nevertheless hope that these pieces allow for an uneasy coexistence between the campy, the sentimental, the political, and the repulsive—a mobile archive of committed fakeries in print and digital form. We would like to thank Sharon Carrier, Ed Cohen, and Laurie Joyner for their ongoing support of specs. Particular thanks go to Karen Slater for kindly accommodating us in our daily operations. —Vidhu AggarwalArticles
Table of Contents
specs editors
ADULTERY—HUDSON, NY
Patricia Smith
A Story Reconstructed by Witnesses
Don Zirilli
The Etymology of an Embrace
Don Zirilli
Cooking for an Orgy
Tamara Shores
The History of Costume
Courtney Druz
Schizophrene
Bhanu Kapil and Rohini Kapil
HC SVNT DRACONES
Jack Miller
Simple Post Hoc Architecture
Jorgen Nicholas Trygved
At the New York State Museum
Erin Elizabeth Smith
instructions for imaginary videogames
Erik Meyer
Demo_Noir [manifesto.1]
Tristan Newcomb
Renaissance Willows
David St. John
The General and Josephine
Lindsay Marianna Walker
Mystery Ghazal
Lindsay Marianna Walker
Coup de Grâce
Lindsay Marianna Walker
Josephine’s Divorce
Lindsay Marianna Walker
Time Signatures
Lindsay Marianna Walker
The Forming
Barb Bondy
So Boring It Must Be True: Faux History and the Generation of Wonder at the Museum of Jurassic Technology
Spencer Downing
Re-enactment Casualties
Philip Ewe
Who Among Us?
Jesse Patrick Ferguson
The Natural History of Binary Code
Jesse Patrick Ferguson
Excel Poem
Martin Elwell
The Ersatz History of Glitter
Nabil Arnaoot and Ted Prodromou
Attentional Landscapes Klompching Gallery
Odette England
The Museum of Obsolescence
Evan J. Peterson
All Your Gorgeous Garbage
Evan J. Peterson
Now Will the Real Monsieur Please Stand Up?
Brian Willems
The Abbreviated Life of Whitney Bascombe
Pedro Ponce
Autobiography, First Draft
Patricia Smith
10-year-old shot three times, but she’s fine
Patricia Smith
Wiping Up The Dance Floor in Alphabet City
Patricia Smith
Graphic Score
Jesse Glass
Lexical Sand
Jesse Glass
The Mean Time: A History
Dan Brady
Since The Death of Faust
William Doreski
SHOP WINDOW TRUMPS
Cheryl Rogers Resetarits
Fake Identity, Real Work: Authenticity, Autofiction, and Outsider Art
M. Kjellman-Chapin
Six Choices from Sonnets from the Brazilian
Rosanne Wasserman
8-Bit Classics
Heather Gordon
An Excerpt from Kamikaze Death Poetry
Jodiann Stevenson
The Last Known Corona Fissure
Janis Butler Holm
Contributors
SPECS Journal
Editors
- EDITOR - IN - CHIEF
- Vidhu Aggarwal
- MANAGING EDITOR
- Stephanie Rizzo
- PRODUCTION MANAGER
- Jeanne Genis
- WEB/PRINT DESIGN EDITOR
- Leslie Capobianco
- ASSOCIATE EDITORS
- Julian Chambliss, Paul D. Reich, Emily Russell
- ASSISTANT EDITORS
- Leslie Capobianco, Scott Chisholm, Stephanie Rizzo, Kristen Stone, Stephen Walsh
- EDITORIAL BOARD
- Jennifer Ailles, Elizabeth Binggeli, Denise Cummings, Mario D’Amato, Creston Davis, Philip F. Deaver, John Elias, Connie May Fowler, Carol Frost, Dana Hargrove, James Penner, Dawn Roe, Anne Zimmermann, Slavoj Žižek