[en] The Zabriskie Rewind 2024: The favourite books of authors, artists, publishers, editors, musicians, booksellers – from the sphere of the Zabriskie Bookstore. Texts are in english or german.
[de] Das Zabriskie Rewind 2024: Die Lieblingsbücher von Autor*innen, Künstler*innen, Verleger*innen, Herausgeber*innen, Musiker*innen, Buchhändler*innen – aus dem Dunstkreis des Zabriskie-Buchladens. Texte sind auf englisch oder deutsch.
With contributions by / Mit Beiträgen von:
Matthew Collin (Dream Machines)
Alejandra Cardenas / Ale Hop (Switched On)
Marjolein van der Loo (Three Becomes a Tree)
Leonie Brandner (Three Becomes a Tree)
Jesse Muller & Natasha Rijkhoff (Three Becomes a Tree)
Viv Corringham (Listening & Sounding)
Monja Simon (Digesting Feminism)
Ira Hadžić (The Listening Project)
Francisco Petrucci (The Listening Project)
Mona Steinwidder (Museum of No Art)
Aimée Lara (Objects and Sounds)
Jacob Lindgren (Inga Books)
Elizabeth Gallón Droste & Pablo Torres Gómez (~pes / Útica)
Klara Hobza (On Slaughter)
Lorena Carràs Ferrer (Zabriskie)
Jean-Marie Dhur (Zabriskie).
△ Matthew Collin △
author of Dream Machines, Rave On and Altered State
matthew._collin
The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955-1979), by Jon Savage
Faber & Faber, 2024
I’ve adored Jon Savage’s writing for decades, from his scene-shaping journalism for the UK music press to his inspirational account of punk history, ‘England’s Dreaming’ and beyond. His latest book is a big, important story about the crucial roles that queer musicians played in pop culture’s history. Essential reading.
Raving, by McKenzie Wark
Duke University Press, 2023
zabriskie.de/raving
Raving ’89, by Neville & Gavin Watson
DJHistory.com, 2009
Two completely different takes on rave culture, from different time periods around three decades apart, and from different places and cultures (queer New York in the late 2010s; working class suburban England in the late 1980s) - but both are equally heartfelt, passionate, and full of the joys of their time.
Acid House As It Happened, by Dave Swindells
IDEA, 2022; new edition, 2024
This unique pictorial record of the acid house ‘summer of love’, shot by British photographer Dave Swindells as Ecstasy hit London in 1988, captures the innocence, enthusiasm and sheer ecstatic energy of that special moment in time.
Tresor: True Stories, edited by Harry Glass, Paul Reachi and Sven von Thülen
Tresor Publications, 2022
zabriskie.de/tresor-true-stories
Spiralled, by Seana Gavin
Mikrofisch Verlag, 2022 + IDEA, 2024
Like Dave Swindells’ acid house book, ‘Tresor: True Stories’ focuses on a scene in its raw, anarchic early period, when it was still inventing itself. It’s a fanzine-like document of early 1990s Berlin techno culture, with flyers and press clippings as well as photographs adding to the DIY collage feel. Another great visual book I got this year is Seana Gavin’s ‘Spiralled’, a photographic document of the years she spent travelling with free-party sound systems like Spiral Tribe on the anarchic fringes of European techno culture – it’s funny and emotional as well as hardcore.
Out of Space, by Jim Ottewill
Velocity Press, 2024
Let the Music Play, by Steven Voss
Velocity Press, 2024
Ears to the Ground, by Ben Murphy
Velocity Press, 2024
zabriskie.de/ears-to-the-ground
British imprint Velocity Press has established itself as a fine publisher of books about electronic music subcultures. These three fascinating paperbacks – Jim Ottewill’s exposition of the interplay between rave scenes and the cities that nurture them, Steven Voss’s tribute to the power and glory of electronic soul music, and Ben Murphy’s overview of the importance of field recordings – all offer deeper insights into sonic spheres that deserve greater attention.
△ Alejandra Cárdenas (Ale Hop) △
musician / co-editor of Switched On
alehophop.com
Adrenalin, by Ghayath Almadhoun
Action Books, 2017
I heard Ghayath Almadhoun, a Syrian-born Palestinian poet now based in the EU, recite at a Gaza fundraiser and solidarity event in Berlin, where I also performed music. He read three poignant poems, simultaneously translated into English by a woman, which deeply moved me and compelled me to seek an English translation of his writing. That led me to "Adrenalin," a poetry collection that addresses the brutality of war in the Middle East, along with themes of grief, resilience, and refugee displacement. Almadhoun's poems are soulful and beautiful, infused with sharp irony that tackles right into the senselessness of violence and geopolitics.
Gaia and Philosophy, by Lynn Margulis und Dorion Sagan
Ignota Books, 2023; new edition by Silver Press, 2024
zabriskie.de/gaia-and-philosophy
I first encountered Lynn Margulis through her theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges Darwin's emphasis on competition as the driving force of evolution. Instead, Margulis showed that cooperation—and not just competition—forms the foundation of the networks between living beings that sustain the continuity of life. In Gaia and Philosophy, co-written with her son Dorion Sagan, a charming book that can be read in two metro rides, I got into her Gaia theory, which envisions the planet as a single body—a complex system of living and nonliving components that regulate themselves to support life. This concept of "unintelligent" communities of organisms exerting cybernetic control over Earth disrupts the notion of the uniqueness of human intelligent consciousness.
Who's Afraid of Gender?, By Judith Butler
Allen Lane, 2024
Both accessible and engaging, Judith Butler's book explores how "gender" has become a catch-all term reflecting fears and anxieties unrelated to gender. She examines how right-wing, nationalist, authoritarian, and religious groups exploit these fears to undermine minority rights. She also highlights how neoliberals also play a role in perpetuating these issues through imperialist and interventionist policies, such as the EU imposing neoliberal policies in poorer countries that create more precarious social systems (and more susceptible to authoritarian forces) while simultaneously demanding (blackmailing) countries into recognizing women's and LGBTQ+ rights, which points out how the attachment of gender to economic interventionist (colonial) policies further creates space for right-wing exploitation.
△ Marjolein van der Loo △
Curator, Editor, Educator
Editor of A Tree
marjoleinvanderloo.com
onomatopee.net
Watchmen, by Alan Moore
DC Comics, 2014 (originally published in 1987)
It had been years since I’d picked up a comic book, and Watchmen was unlike anything I’d ever encountered. Gifted to me because of research into science fiction, cephalopods, superheroes, and the fight against fascism, this graphic novel slowly but surely seeped into my thoughts. Its layered storytelling, morally complex characters, and dystopian tone resonate deeply with my explorations of speculative worlds and their parallels to contemporary anxieties. The themes linger, resurfacing unexpectedly, influencing how I think about narrative and resistance.
Kindred, by Octavia Butler
Headline, 2018 (originally published in 1979)
zabriskie.de/kindred-english
zabriskie.de/kindred-deutsch
As I dove deeper into science fiction and time travel this year, Butler’s Kindred became one of the standout reads. Remarkably, the novel employs minimal technology while delivering a powerful science fiction narrative about slavery, power, and identity. Like Watchmen, it has been at the periphery of my research but profoundly shaped my fascination with dystopian and speculative fiction. Both works center dark and unsettling worlds, challenging how we think about history, oppression, and survival in alternate realities.
Wo sind die Vögel nachts? Ein lauschendes Heft, by Ulrike Steinke and Cord Riechelmann
Maro Verlag, 2024
zabriskie.de/wo-sind-die-voegel-nachts
This book masterfully weaves together image and story to explore the mysteries of birds. Its poetic reflections on avian life and nocturnal wanderings feel like a quiet invitation to observe the world more closely. Its structure and content align with my artistic practice, where the intersection of narrative and visual art is central. It reminded me how powerful storytelling can be when paired with evocative images.
These Birds of Temptation - Intercalations 6, edited by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin
K. Verlag, 2021
zabriskie.de/these-birds-of-temptation
When I picked up These Birds of Temptation, it felt like stepping into a dream: the book I’d wished to create on birds already existed. This kaleidoscopic collection offers a “murmuration” of minor ornithologies, with contributions on feathers, flight, song, loss, and escape, as well as poetic reflections and short stories. Its interdisciplinary and layered approach deeply resonates with my own aspirations as I work on a book about birds. It’s a source of both inspiration and aspiration, reminding me of the endless creative possibilities in storytelling.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
Fitzcarraldo, 2018 (originally published in 2009)
zabriskie.de/drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead
zabriskie.de/gesang-der-fledermaeuse
This novel was an unforgettable experience—rich, weird, a wonderfully smooth read, with a spectacular plot twist. Its dark humor, ecological themes, and eccentric protagonist captivated me completely. Beyond its literary brilliance, it spoke to some of my fascinations: the mysteries of nature, the strange connections between humans and other critters, and the allure of the unconventional. Tokarczuk’s story stayed with me, pulling me into its peculiar, enchanting world long after I’d finished the final page.
△ Leonie Brandner △
Artist
Author of Three Becomes Two Becomes One Becomes None
leoniebrandner.com
In the Eye of the Wild, by Nastassia Martin
New York Review Books, 2021
zabriskie.de/in-the-eye-of-the-wild
zabriskie.de/an-das-wilde-glauben
A friend recommended this book to me describing it as ‘once read, you will never forget it’. She is totally right! Nastassia Martin’s account of her encounter with a bear in the deep Kamtchatka Peninsula is mesmerisingly complex. What she describes as an encounter, could be worded as a near fatal attack by a fully grown bear resulting in the loss of parts of her jaw. The book - In the Eye of the Wild - is her personal reckoning wit the experience. It is her physical and spiritual transformation after or maybe with the injury, her journey and changing perspective and mostly of her realisation that you are never outside of but always part of everything around you.
Blutbuch, by Kim de l’Horizon
Dumont Verlag, 2022
I received this book as a Christmas gift of my brother last Christmas. I have heard of it, it had won too many prices to have escaped my attention and I was certainly intrigued. Normally, I find it tricky to get stuck into books that start with disjointed paragraphs of text, often they feel to me like a lot of effort to read, only that Kim de l’Horizon makes them absolutely effortless to read. The book is completely genius and deserves every prize it won! It is fantastic bending of fiction and memoir, of personal reckoning, research and fantastical fabulation, woven into each other so seamlessly it creates a mind bending experience. Being a Swiss German native speaker the many references to my mother tongue furthermore hit my nostalgia bone.
Landlines, by Raynor Winn
Penguin, 2023
I have had Raynor Winn’s books on the radar for a while, always wanted to read them but never got round to it until my aunt gifted me Landlines. It is a book about walking, healing, landscapes, belonging - it is a love story. It is a book about journey on foot as much as one in the heart, tracking Raynor and her husband Moth from the far tip of Scotland all the way down to the South coast of England. I started the series of books in the wrong order, starting with the last (Landlines), then reading the first and the second and rereading the last once morel. I don’t read many books twice, this one I did and it didn’t loose any of its charm the second time around. It is so calming and fresh like a breeze of air in the early morning and it is comforting like a warm blanket in the dark winter months - it is a truly wonderful book.
△ Jesse Muller & Natasha Rijkhoff △
Editors and publishers
Operators of Onomatopee
onomatopee.net
Natasha's choices:
Space Crone, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Silver Press, 2023
zabriskie.de/space-crone
I received Space Crone as a birthday gift more than a year ago, but never opened it. Suddenly, as I was leaving for a trip to an island, it called out that it wanted to come too. So it came. I had no idea what to expect of this book of essays, lectures and short stories arranged in chronological order, but as I was led deeper and deeper into Le Guin’s thought world and language structures, I found something I forcefully recognized, yet kept surprising me.
Bright Dead Things, by Ada Limon
Corsair, 2019
I’m never quite sure what to say about poetry that doesn’t sound overdone. Bright Dead Things feels hotly alive to me, breathing. I keep it next to the bed and read it back to front or front to back or opening at a random page to see what it has to say. That seems to be the only way to read poetry, starting somewhere in the middle.
Jesse's choices:
Alphabetical Diaries, by Sheila Heti
Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2024
I will almost always pick up a newly published book by Sheila Heti. Her latest book Alphabetical Diaries easily allowed for reading bits and pieces as she collected words and sentences from a decade of her diaries and sorted those alphabetically in a spreadsheet. Alphabetical Diaries is the result of another decade of editing. Starting at the alphabet’s beginning, with chapter A: “A book about how difficult it is to change, why we don’t want to, and what is going on in our brain”.
Nocturnalities: Bargaining Beyond Rest, edited by Agata Bar, Andrea Knezović
Onomatopee, 2024
I’m adding to this list a book by Onomatopee, as I’ve read the contributed texts in the recently published Nocturnalities; Bargaining Beyond Rest in different shapes and forms in 2024 while Natasha and I were working on Nocturnalities, initiated and edited by Andrea Knezović and Agata Bar. Many working freelancers experience precarity and lack of rest caused by work/life imbalance, and the contents of this book reflect on that more specifically within the cultural field and art institutions. I’m very impressed by the scope of Andrea and Agata’s research that deals with such urgent subject matters and expands beyond this publication, most recently with The REST Archive, an online exhibition that has just been published: https://www.nocturnalities.com/
This past year my reading habits have been somewhat fragmented and left me with a stack of unfinished novels by my bed and sofa. My finished readings were mostly in the shape of short stories and essays, amongst others read from: No Love Lost by Rachel Ingalls, The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin, Worlding Ecologies published by Valiz and MsHeresies 6 - A Manager, published on the cusp of 2025. Now in the last week of the year I am almost finished reading Mysterious Letters: Language, Science, and the Voynich Manuscript and the beautifully haunting Piranesi by Susannah Clarke.
△ Viv Corringham △
Singer, sound artist, and Deep Listening facilitator
vivcorringham.org
The Listening Biennial Reader - Vol. 1: Waves of Listening, edited by Brandon LaBelle
Errant Bodies, 2023
zabriskie.de/the-listening-biennial-reader-vol-1
This book on listening as a creative and critical force was so absorbing that I had to ration my reading to one chapter per day. In this way I could keep the ideas I had encountered fresh until the next day’s article stimulated new thoughts. Topics include co-listening with others to counter our usual individual consumption of sounds, how walking and listening can soften boundaries between self and environment, the singular view imposed by colonisation, and listening as a powerful tool to create forms of care and peace. Deep listener Pauline Oliveros once noted that listening is easy but remembering to listen can be hard. This inspiring book reminds me of the pleasure and importance of opening myself to sound, listening inclusively and noticing whenever I forget to listen.
Orbital, by Samantha Harvey
Grove Press, 2024
zabriskie.de/orbital
zabriskie.de/umlaufbahnen
Twenty four hours pass and nothing remarkable happens. Yet everything is remarkable in this deeply affecting work. On a spacecraft, 250 miles above earth, 6 astronauts tend to all the practicalities of living in a weightless, cramped environment. While they do so, they look out as the craft orbits the earth 16 times each day. Harvey’s descriptions of our beautiful blue planet startle and delight, while also reflecting her concerns for the earth. The astronauts consider our treatment of the planet and they fear for its future, feeling the need to protect “this thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness.” They wonder if humans can ever find peace with each other and with the earth, what action they can take and if words have any use. Astronauts are “humans with a godly view and that’s the blessing and also the curse.”
A Year of Deep Listening, by The Center for Deep Listening
Terra Nova Press, 2024
zabriskie.de/a-year-of-deep-listening
Composers, musicians and other listeners were invited to contribute a score to this wonderful collection, which is a celebration of the legacy of composer, musician and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros. (Full disclosure: I have 2 scores in the book.)
The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer published one score per day - online and across social media platforms - beginning on what would have been Oliveros’s 90th birthday: May 30, 2022. The 365 scores range from playful to poetic to profound and often contain all three elements. They follow the recipe-like form developed by Oliveros in her “Sonic Meditations” in order to enable anyone, with or without musical training, to participate in her work.
Here is an example from Day 6 by bbob drake:
Environmental Dream (Osmosis)- For any number of participants
Stand in a comfortable, relaxed, alert stance. Breathe naturally.
Closing your eyes, listen to the environment around you as if it were a dream, without interpretation or expectation of logical sense.
Listen with all your senses. Allow the boundary between waking and dreaming to become porous. Allow your physical and imaginal sensations to coexist. Linger in this space.
When the time feels right, open your eyes, and offer a single sound and a single gesture to your physical/dream environment - avoid, as much as possible, thinking about or planning the gesture/sound, but instead allow them to happen. The piece is complete when all offerings have been made - this could take a long time.
Variation: this piece could also be done with participants sitting, or lying down.
△ Monja Simon △
Social Designer, community architect
Author of Sauerkraut
monjasimon.de
All Fours, by Miranda July,
Riverhead Books, 2024
zabriskie.de/all-fours
zabriskie.de/auf-allen-vieren
„A surprisingly sexy, tender, hilarious novel about a woman upending her life." That tagline on the beautifully designed cover immediately caught my attention. After hearing so many women recommend this book over the summer, I decided to pick it up for my vacation reading. I was captivated by the bold and fearless main character, who constantly pushed boundaries, not just her own, but mine as a reader too. The story follows her journey as she reinvents her sexual, romantic, and domestic life. Miranda July takes the familiar images and ideas we carry in our heads and transforms them into thrilling, unexpected adventures, showing what it truly feels like to be alive. Most of my reading took place on train rides between Sweden and Berlin, where I found myself fully immersed in the story, leaving my own narrative behind. The protagonist’s new and daring experiences felt so vivid and relatable that it was like I was right there with her, joining the road trip. This novel is perfect for relaxing, laughing wholeheartedly, and imagining the life struggles but even more triumphs of a 45-year-old female artist. It’s an inspiring and entertaining read that I highly recommend.
In the Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life
Daunt Books, London , 2020
This book is a collection of 13 essays by 13 writers, each reflecting on their experiences in the kitchen and beyond. Exploring how cooking and eating shape our lives, it’s a must-read for anyone curious about food or the art of cooking. My friend Toni gifted me this book, knowing how it connects to my own writing and my love of stories about food and the emotions tied to it. As I read these essays on food and relationships, I found myself deeply resonating with the authors' efforts to capture the moods and memories tied to the kitchen. It is moving how certain foods are inevitabely linked to moments in our lives. How do the cookbooks we read influence us? These essays present cooking as more than a practical activity, it’s a tool for forging connections, both within the kitchen and far beyond it. As someone who can talk endlessly about food and recipes, I found huge comfort in imagining what it might be like to sit with these writers, cooking and sharing a meal together. The book left me inspired to reflect on my own food culture, recipes, stories, and my ever-evolving relationship with food. It’s a heartfelt exploration of the ways the kitchen is not just a physical space but an emotional and cultural one as well.
Lieben, von Emilia Roig
Hanser Verlag, 2024
Als ich Emilia Roigs erstes Buch Why We Matter gelesen habe, verbrachte ich den Sommer 2021 in Berlin, es war ein Pandemiesommer. Meine Freundin Inga und ich besuchten eine Lesung von Emilia Roig im Freien. Schon damals war ich begeistert und fasziniert von den Themen und von der unerschrockenen Art, wie Roig sich selbst und ihre Geschichten vermittelt. Lieben ist ein Plädoyer für mehr Gerechtigkeit, denn Liebe sollte für alle da sein. Es ist eine Einladung zu mehr Solidarität, Empathie und Mut, nicht nur gegenüber uns selbst, unseren Freund*innen und Familien, sondern auch gegenüber allen Menschen, der Natur und dem Kosmos. In kleinen, gut verdaulichen Kapiteln ermöglicht Roig den Lesenden, sich diesem intimen Thema der Liebe behutsam zu nähern. Dabei wurden bei mir manchmal alte Narben aufgerissen, was das Lesen umso eindringlicher macht. Besonders berührend fand ich die Passagen über die Liebe zu Pflanzen und die Aufmerksamkeit, die Roig ihnen schenkt, sie wirkten auf mich sehr heilend. Im Kapitel „Rücksicht“ fragt sie zum Beispiel: Warum ist unsere Beziehung zur Umwelt derart verkümmert? Sind wir als Spezies wirklich nicht zu mehr Rücksicht in der Lage? Dieses Buch ist nicht nur ein Aufruf, die Liebe in all ihren Facetten neu zu denken, sondern auch eine Chance, unsere Verbindungen zu uns selbst, zur Welt und zum Leben zu vertiefen.
Eingeweide, Pillen, Feminismus, von E.A. Wilson
EPF Essays No.2, Peter Schneider, 2023
Es brauchte jedoch einen zweiten Anlauf und wie ich finde, die brillante Übersetzung ins Deutsche, um richtig in diese intensive Auseinandersetzung mit Depressionspolitik, Queer-Theorie und neurowissenschaftlich geprägten Geisteswissenschaften eintauchen zu können. Das Buch geht tief in den menschlichen Körper hinein und ist definitiv keine leichte Kost. Viele Passagen musste ich mehrmals lesen, um sie vollständig zu verdauen. Im Kern geht es um das menschliche, organische Innenleben und darum, wie unser Inneres, etwa der Bauch und die Eingeweide, von dem geprägt wird, was wir in uns aufnehmen. Eingeweide, Pillen, Feminismus stellt die feministische Theoriebildung auf den Prüfstand, indem Wilson fordert, dass sie wirksamer sein könnte, wenn sie sich mehr mit biologischen Daten auseinandersetzen, sowie ihr eigenes aggressives Potenzial anerkennen würde. Dieses Buch ist eine persönliche Empfehlung für alle, die sich schon immer gefragt haben, wie die Sprache unserer Organe mit der Welt der Gefühle zusammenhängt.
△ Ira Hadžić △
Writer, sound artist and cultural anthropologist
Deep Listening facilitator
irahadzic.com
Schattenvolk, by Can Xue
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024
I was really lucky to have discovered Can Xue's body of work already in 2014 while visiting Indonesia and unexpectedly stopping by a reading that just so happened to be hers. She shared details about her extraordinary writing process, stating that she never has a predetermined idea about the story to be written. The plot instead develops and writes itself day by day when she, Can Xue, revisits the narrative at her desk for no more than three hours and jots down whatever comes to mind at that moment. She called this method: channeling. "Schattenvolk" is a compilation of sixteen mysterious short stories hat have been channeled between 1996 and 2018 - a fascinating combination of passageways giving shape to a unique cosmos.
Quantum Listening, by Pauline Oliveros
Ignota, 2022; Silver Press 2024
zabriskie.de/quantum-listening
We are dissatisfied with the world we live in? We want to transform this world? If so, we ought to start by changing the way we live: In her manifesto „Quantum Listening“ Pauline Oliveros reveals how the practice of Deep Listening can serve as the foundation for a radically reimagined society.
The Position of Spoons, by Deborah Levy
Penguin, 2024
„The Position of Spoons“ is composed of short essays, collected over the last twenty-five years, in which Deborah Levy reflects on life, literature and art. I found this paragraph to be particularly intriguing: „And it is true that when we write we are only as interesting as how we think and where we are looking or how we are looking or what it is we are feeling and how that feeling is connected to history (the personal and political past), or how we are breathing when we explained how we slammed a door. The human mind can go anywhere. This is a good thing in art. In life this is not always a good thing.“
△ Mona Steinwidder / Museum Of No Art △
Musician and Composer
museumofnoart.com
Quantum Listening, von Pauline Oliveros
Ignota, 2022; Silver Press, 2024
zabriskie.de/quantum-listening
Als ich gesehen habe, dass Quantum Listening erscheint, hab ich es mir sofort vorbestellt. Ich bin großer Fan von Pauline Oliveros Philosophie und ihrem Lebenswerk! Ich mag Manifeste und sehe das Büchlein auch ein wenig als Objekt, welches mich daran erinnert innezuhalten.
Die Glasglocke, von Sylvia Plath
Heinemann, 1963; Suhrkamp 2022
Ich hatte es nie geschafft den einzigen Roman von Sylvia Plath zu lesen, obwohl mich ihr Gedichtband Ariel schon seit bestimmt zehn Jahren begleitet. Ich war überrascht wie sehr sich der Roman von ihren lyrischen Texten unterscheidet . Und ich muss sagen, ich war hin und weg von der Wucht und Kraft ihrer Erzählung! Unglaublich wie modern und zeitlos dieses Buch ist. Obwohl es erst 1963 erschienen ist, nur wenige Monate bevor Sylvia Plath sich das Leben nahm. Ein wirklich einzigartiges und lesenswertes Buch!
Die leeren Schränke, von Annie Ernaux
Gallimard, 1974; Suhrkamp, 2023
Habe ich mir letztes Jahr kurz vor Weihnachten in Wien gekauft und dann als erstes Buch im Jahr 2024 gelesen. Ich war berührt und fasziniert von den schonungslosen und tiergehenden Erinnerungen der Protagonistin Denise Lesur anhand derer Annie Ernaux ihre eigenen Erfahrungen als Kind von einfachen Leuten beschreibt und ihren Drang das eigene Milieu zu verlassen und abzustossen und trotzdem unausweichlich für immer damit verbunden zu sein.
Kudos, von Rachel Cusk
Faber, 2018; Suhrkamp, 2020
Rachel Cusks Kudos fand ich so bemerkenswert , weil es so scharfzeichnend und verstörend und mit einem feinen Sinn für Humor die Absurdität des menschlichen Daseins und die Abgründe des Alltäglichen beschreibt.
wir kommen, von Liquid Center
Dumont, 2024
Dieses Buch habe ich von einer wunderbaren Freundin weitergegeben bekommen. Ich konnte dem Konzept des mehrstimmigen Romans und des Kollektivs sehr viel abgewinnen. Es finden sich darin so viele Richtungen, Perspektiven und Erfahrungen und es fühlt sich befreiend, ermutigend und verbindend an darin zu lesen.
Blutbuch, von Kim de l´Horizon
Dumont, 2022
Ich habe es 2024 das zweite mal gelesen, weil ich es so aussergewöhnlich, merkwürdig und herausragend toll beim ersten mal fand! Tatsächlich hab ich es in den letzten 2 Jahren ca 10 mal an Freunde verschenkt und es würde in meiner allgemeinen Lieblingsbücher Liste einen der ersten Plätze besetzen. Die Entwicklung des Romans ist so besonders und das Buch transformiert sich von Seite zu Seite immer wieder neu und ist dabei so organisch, radikal, sensibel und tiergehend. Ich werde es auch bestimmt noch ein drittes mal lesen.
△ Aimée Lara △
Co-operator of Objects & Sounds
objectsandsounds.com
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Milkweed Editions, 2013; Penguin 2020
zabriskie.de/braiding-sweetgrass
zabriskie.de/geflochtenes-suessgras
I loved how Robin Wall Kimmerer wove Indigenous wisdom and scientific insight together in a way that feels both simple and profound at the same time. Even if the stories are deeply personal to her experience, there is something universal about her reflections on gratitude and care. I felt reverence for the sweetness of maple trees, grateful for the generosity of pecan trees, and humbled by the reciprocity of sweetgrass.
World of Wonders, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Milkweed Editions, 2020; Profile Books, 2022
zabriskie.de/world-of-wonders
zabriskie.de/welt-der-wunder
Reading her stories felt calming and comforting, like sitting with a long-time friend who shares her thoughts so candidly—the mundane details, the interesting facts she's learned, the thoughtful observations, and even the difficult experiences she has faced. Her writing opened up moments for me to experience as if they were my own.
A Book of Noises, by Caspar Henderson
Granta, 2023; Paperback, 2024
zabriskie.de/a-book-of-noises
An absorbing and playful dive into the sounds that shape our lives, from the mundane to the mysterious. It dives deep into the stories behind the noises we often overlook, changing how we notice the world around us. A beautiful reminder that listening is an act of presence and a gesture of care.
△ Klara Hobza △
Artist
Author of On Slaughter
soycapitan.de/klara-hobza
In the Eye of the Wild, by Nastassia Martin
dt: An das Wilde glauben
NYRB, 2021
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2021
zabriskie.de/in-the-eye-of-the-wild
zabriskie.de/an-das-wilde-glauben
I sank into an anthropologist's fever dream – it starts with a bear attacking Nastassja Martin, tearing half of her jaw off, leaving her face shapeless and her soul merging into the myths that she had set out to study, once, in her old life. She fought back, became predator, survived, became miedka. Miedka is the word the Evens people use for a human who has gotten marked by a bear. We learn of Martin's visit with the Evens and her long, arduous journey of physical and mental healing, first in the post Soviet health system, then in the French one. She pulls together any strength and resource in her, including her academic knowledge, her ambitions as a writer, and the result is this book, to me the finest writing of anthropology I have ever encountered. I am very grateful to Jean recommending this author while we were preparing our On Slaughter event, discussing self reliant forms of living in and off of nature, also along with Nastassja Martin's Im Osten der Träume (translated from French: À L’Est des rêves: réponses Even aux crises systémiques). Again set in the very remote, very far Eastern Siberian region called Kamchatka, Martin this time surprised me with a very clean, crystal like form of writing.
Lenz, by Georg Büchner
First published in 1839
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Of Walking in Ice, by Werner Herzog
dt: Vom Gehen im Eis
Vintage Books, 2014
Fischer Verlag, 2009
zabriskie.de/of-walking-in-ice
zabriskie.de/products/vom-gehen-im-eis-neue-ausgabe
Lenz is based on Jean Frederic Obelin's diary. I read it while re-reading – for about the 10th time – Werner Herzog's diary-based Of Walking in Ice (translated from German: Vom Gehen im Eis). I cannot think one without the other. Lenz's painful process of losing his mind becomes one with the forms and character of the landscape he escapes to. Lenz like Herzog walk into and through the wild, communicate through it, and their words become their last resorts to assure themselves of their own humanness.
Life Ceremony, by Sayaka Murata
dt: Zeremonie des Lebens
Granta Books, 2023
Aufbau Verlag, 2022
This is a collection of short stories by Sayaka Murata. In this book, the uncompromising wilderness is taking place in the author's thinking. Murata begins by introducing familiar every day life stories, a couple preparing a wedding for example. Her tone is innocent and with the same innocence we are led into trains of thoughts around the customs of these ceremonies. Hold on, how did I seamlessly accept activities of cannibalism being woven into the proceeding? I would place Life Ceremony among the horror genre, except the confrontations aren't thrown at us with any aggression or shock effect, all is calm, neat, a carefully woven seduction. I found it perfectly plausible that the bride's veil would be lovingly stitched from the material of her deceased father in law's skin. I was touched by its symbolism and agreed that his stretched skin's intimate, preciously processed quality is perfectly appropriate for such a warm and caring welcome into the bride's new family.
△ Jacob Lindgren △
Graphic designer and artist
Co-operator of Inga Books
jacoblindgren.com
i-n-g-a.com
Geologic Listening, by Sukhdev Sandhu and Deborah Stratman
Union Docs, 2024
“To touch stone is to encounter alien duration,” says Stratman. I read this book while watching work by Deborah Stratman, especially Last Things (2023)—“evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks and various future others”—and The Illinois Parables (2016)—“histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism and resistance, all occurring somewhere in the state of Illinois.” It’s dense and layered, but also flows poetically, a geological survey of Stratman’s filmmaking around the politics of landscape, proposing it as terrain, or a possible medium, for displacing the anthropocentric point of view. With an intertextual weaving of natural, prehistoric and speculative material—such as Roger Caillois’ writing on stones, Robert Hazen's theory of "Mineral Evolution," Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star, the symbiosis theory of Lynn Margulis, multi-species scenarios of Donna Haraway, Hazel Barton’s research on cave microbes and Marcia Bjørnerud’s thoughts on time literacy—Stratman’s latest film, Last Things, offers a lithic proposal for displacing humankind and human agency when storytelling nonhuman histories. In this case, imagining prehistory is inseparable from envisioning the future.
The New York War Crimes Vol. II . . . No. 14 (The Messengers Edition)
The New York War Crimes Company, 2024
I picked up some of these in New York City, where Writers Against the War on Gaza publishes and distributes them (and beyond), as “one part movement paper & one part critique of the deified rag that is the New York Times.” In this issue, journalists write from the frontlines: Abubaker Abed describes being forced to document a genocide at age 20; Moath Amarneh tells the story of his nine-month detainment in a Zionist prison; and Roqayah Chamseddine reports from undefeated Dahye. The issue also includes a reprint of an interview with filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, surrounding living through the siege of Beirut in 1982. The group caught my attention when they organized protestors to blockade the NY Times’ printing plant, in an aim to disrupt the distribution of the physical paper. I applaud their repurposing/spoofing of the format, down to the coining of a more appropriate version of the paper’s slogan “All the Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture” (from “All the News That's Fit to Print”). The direct action reminded me of Ihre Zeitungen (Their Newspapers) (1968) from Harun Farocki, a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung, who claimed the latter were manipulating public opinion. The students laid siege to the publisher's offices, and at one point a fire occurred at one of the distribution points where trucks were loaded with the papers. Some of the dialogue near the end of the film includes: “The stone keeps the paper in place.” “To abolish the existing manipulative apparat, you have to design a new one.” “The difference between readers and writers must be removed.”
Film Undone: Elements of a Latent Cinema, edited by Philip Widmann
Archive Books, 2024
I started this last year, and it’s carried me into the new year. The book presents contributions introducing unmade and unfinished film projects, film ideas realized in non-filmic media, as well as films that remained unseen in their intended form and at their intended time. It’s an offshoot of a symposium which gathered artists, filmmakers, curators, researchers, and archivists, taking place in Berlin in 2023, with a few satellite iterations. The book’s contributions—across “melting the iceberg,” between “illusion and revolution,” and gestures of resistance—provide tentative and careful probes dedicated to singular projects reflecting the importance of primary materials before and beyond the film. Together, the contributions open a space to consider cases from various political geographies and historical moments in relation, to think differently about what has remained invisible in cinema through deficit-centred categories such as failure, loss, or incompletion. It marks a sustained potentiality for things to change their condition, to affect us and set us in motion.
△ Elizabeth Gallón Droste △
artist and researcher
elizabethgallondroste.net
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△ Pablo Torres Gómez △
sound artist and researcher
pablotorresgomez.net
Switched On – The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women, edited by Luis Alvarado and Alejandra Cárdenas
Contingent Sounds, 2024
zabriskie.de/switched-on
In our navigation of resonances and sound, Switched On – The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women has become a guide that challenges and flips the patriarchal tech history. This book foregrounds the radical contributions of Latin American women, reimagining the electronic music narrative with for years veiled voices and perspectives. Blending theory and practice, it reclaims and reshapes overlooked histories. The texts unfold like a sonic map, exploring migration, memory, identity, and technological experimentation. This book doesn’t just retell—it amplifies what’s always been present, highlighting innovation, collaboration, and intersections of technology and culture. The live sound activation at Zabriskie this summer during the book presentation brought the research to reverberate, revealing deep connections between these women’s work and today’s political, sonic currents. It’s a vital intervention in the conversation on gender, technology, and music’s cultural power.
The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin, by Kirsty Bell
Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022
zabriskie.de/the-undercurrents
zabriskie.de/gezeiten-der-stadt
Berlin’s waters —both literal and metaphorical— hold the memories of its complex past, stories that have been silenced, yet scream through their leakages. Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin is a crucial navigation of the hidden, often overlooked histories that pulse beneath the surface of Berlin. As we engaged with the book in shaping the Streams of Permeation in a Thickening Swamp workshop (2024), the relevance of Bell’s submersion in these undercurrents invites readers to listen closely to the city’s unspoken histories, revealing the political and social dimensions of water. Like relating to Berlin as a swamp, as we attuned to in our workshop, Berlin’s waters carry deep, urgent narratives of struggle, access, and resistance, challenging us to acknowledge and engage with the hidden flows that still shape the city’s present.
Going Out – Walking, Listening, Soundmaking, edited by Elena Biserna
Umland Editions, 2023
zabriskie.de/going-out
Going Out has been sneaking into many of our workshops and sound walks with its array of insights coming from so many beautiful places, people, practices, and ideas —it’s like a sort of toolkit made up of essays, manifestos, scores, reflections, and many inspiring intersections sound and walking can have. What we appreciated most is how approachable the book is, turning a simple practice like walking into something deeply political and relational. This really clicked with us while working on our project, Mimetic Acts of Reciprocity. The idea of listening to spaces —and, in turn, being listened to by them— as navigated throughout the book gave us valuable insights into opening up our sound practices to within everyday contexts and reciprocal exchanges. The book also brings together a wide range of voices, making it feel truly polyphonic, if you will. It’s practical, thought-provoking, and, as we like to say, surprisingly "ears to the earth.”
Lost Rocks 05: Basalt, by Ross Gibson
A Published Event, 2017
zabriskie.de/basalt
Reading Basalt by Ross Gibson feels like the words themselves are lava that’s cooled and hardened, a remembrance full of the grain of the volcano’s voice. As part of a family of texts Gibson’s text is layered, like the land processes it navigates, with a repetitive, almost tactile quality that mirrors geological transformations. Reading it feels like listening to the earth—fragments, shifts, and geological time unfolding in language. This book has shaped how we listen to the volcanic landscapes we’re working with in the Aeolian islands, guiding our sonic compositions and deepening our engagement with the subtle, often unnoticed hums of the earth. It has been a grounding force for I Build My Language with Rocks ~ Ash Rain.
Robert Zhao Renhui: Seeing Forest, edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin
K Verlag, 2024
Seeing Forest is the kind of book you can return to, feeling that with each revisit the forest has morphed –like an object, a word, or even a plant in the forest, whose relationships transform. The book is a constellation in itself, made up of photos, essays, and archival texts, but also part of a larger network of exhibitions, collaborations, and ideas that extend far beyond its pages –something we love about K. Verlag worlds. What stands out is how the book sidesteps static and romanticized notions of nature. It delves into the improvisational and layered histories of spaces like Singapore’s woodlands, showing how urban ecologies are shaped by entangled temporalities and dynamic relationships. Seeing Forest feels like a space for a constant and provocative rethinking and recontextualizing of ideas through constellations of thought, practice, and place.
△ Jean-Marie Dhur △
Co-operator of Zabriskie Buchladen
Forest of Noise, by Mosab Abu Toha
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024
From the real experience of an unfolding genocide, the young Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha creates images in which memories of bygone beauty, of the scent of oranges and of childhood dreams stand alongside mortal fear during air raids, rubble of bombed-out houses and the loss of loved ones. It is a remarkable achievement how he could endure the experience of unspeakable horror and transform it into something beautiful (and horrible at the same time).
Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta
Text Publishing, 2019
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2021
zabriskie.de/sand-talk
zabriskie.de/sand-talk-deutsch
Based on patterns drawn in the sand, the aboriginal author and scholar Tyson Yunkaporta weaves stories and songs that are connected to earth in many levels (first of all by the physical act of actually scratching them into the soil), and that bear witness to the multifaceted entanglements in the world. The humans as custodians of the land have an important role in this entanglement (although not more important than the porcupines - and all the other beings). The traditional aboriginal form of storytelling is called yarning, and creates a diverse choir of voices which sing about the relationships, bonds and interconnectednesses of life. Yarning is a complex conversation with life itself, with all its light and dark aspects - and it hepls us to keep our orientation in the territory. The fact that the author has a great sense of humor makes his books even more appealing.(His new one "Right Story, Wrong Story" continues the yarn where it was paused at the end of "Sand Talk".)
Ways of Being Alive, by Baptiste Morizot
dt. Arten des Lebendigseins
Polity Press, 2022
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024
zabriskie.de/ways-of-being-alive
zabriskie.de/arten-des-lebendigseins
For me, 2024 was a year in which the topic of connectedness took center stage. This was particularly the case during my training as a wilderness educator. One author who was repeatedly mentioned by the mentor during this learning journey is the French philosopher, tracker and wolf ambassador Baptiste Morizot (whose "On the Animal Trail" was a favourite of mine some years ago). Ways of Being Alive is a continuation of his ideas and observations from “Sur La Piste des Animaux”, an ode to the beauty and complexity of wild life, and a guide to how we can come to a different relationship with our non-human relatives, a relationship based on appreciation rather than exploitation, and one in which diplomatic interactions occur again and again. Morizot once more pays particular attention to his darlings, the wolves.
Animal Tracking Basics, by Jon Young and Tiffany Morgan
Stackpole Books, 2007
After reading about tracking in Morizot and others, it was a real epiphany to be able to have an actual sensory experience in the art of tracking in my wilderness training. As is the case in Tyson Yunkaporta's carved yarns, the animal tracks in the landscape tell mysterious stories about the creatures that live in our immediate neighborhood but are often invisible to us. Jon Young is one of the important figures of wilderness pedagogy (aka coyote mentoring), and has written several books about connecting with the wild world.
In the Eye of the Wild, by Nastassja Martin
dt: An das Wilde glauben
New York Review Books, 2021
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2021
zabriskie.de/in-the-eye-of-the-wild
zabriskie.de/an-das-wilde-glauben
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Im Osten der Träume, von Nastassja Martin
(not yet translated into english)
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024
zabriskie.de/im-osten-der-traeume
The French anthropologist's account of her near-fatal eye-to-eye encounter with a brown bear in Kamchatka, and the subsequent period of healing, dreaming and putting this experience into perspective, is an attempt to view an archaic, violent and unexpected encounter between two animal species from a neo-animistic point of view. Even before her wounds have fully healed, she sets off again to Katschatka to process the experience with the help of the indigenous Evens - with whom she was living at the time of the event in order to learn about their habits and worldviews. For the Evens, Martin is now a hybrid being, half human, half bear. The second book, In the East of Dreams, deals with Martin's anthropological observations of the Evens and the Gwich'in - before and after the bear meeting.
Elixir, by Kapka Kassabova
Penguin, 2024
zabriskie.de/elixir
An alchemical journey into the Bulgarian heart of the Balkans, into a mystical region between the Pirin and Rhodope Mountains - where there are still guardians of ancient knowledge about the magical powers of plants, animals and stones. A still enchanted world that is slowly being displaced by the advent of consumerism, fast cars and luxury hotels. The author visits various women and men who live in small villages with mythical names, who use traditional healing methods and who maintain an intimate relationship with the surrounding landscape.
Modern Nature, by Derek Jarman
Vintage, 2018
zabriskie.de/modern-nature
A very personal and intimate journal by one of the most exciting and uncompromising artists and filmmakers of the 20th century. An adventurous and poetic concoction, mixed together from colorful observations of landscape and nature, unmasking thoughts on society and art, painful notes from the hospital bed, fearful and angry observations of the queer-hostile mood in the country and the irreality of AIDS hysteria, the loving gatherings with friends and companions. The other main protagonists, apart from Derek Jarman himself, are his garden and his cottage on the beach at Dungeness in south-east England, right next to the now shut-down nuclear power station.
Two-Headed Doctor - Listening for Ghosts in Dr. John Gris-gris, by David Toop
Strange Attractor Press, 2024
zabriskie.de/two-headed-doctor
David Toop's idea to dedicate an entire book to a single record came from an article he was asked to write for the Epiphanies page in Wire magazine. The record, “Gris-gris” by Malcolm Rebennack aka Dr. John, serves as a gateway into a much broader and more complex world: the genesis of blues and jazz; the horrors of the slave trade and colonization; the spiritual ways of the Afro-diaspora to reclaim agency and freedom (like vodun/voodoo); African-American literature from Ishmael Reed to Zora Neale Hurston; the exploitative mechanisms of the music industry; and, of course, the problem of cultural appropriation: Malcolm Rebennack was a white musician who looked to various Afro-diasporic musical idioms and cultural traditions for inspiration for this psychedelic-jazzy-bluesy masterpiece that refused to fit into any pigeonhole. A big part of the album's appeal is due, for example, to the creativity of Harold Battiste - a teacher, saxophonist, pianist, composer, songwriter and arranger - who did not get the attention he deserved. A multi-layered, exciting book!
△ Lorena Carràs △
Co-operator of Zabriskie Buchladen
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
Granta, 2022
zabriskie.de/our-share-of-night
This is the first book I read by Mariana Enriquez, finally! And I can say so much that I absolutely love her prose. The story is fascinating and captivating. And, by the way, the spanish Anagrama edition has 666 pages! Enriquez received the Herralde prize for Spanish narrative for this book. It is a supernatural / horror book in the Stephen King style but with Borgesian undertones, and which is not only interesting for genre fans. Additionaly, it is a very tender story of a father-son relationship with all possible complications. This family horror story is set in the historical period of late 70s/ early 80s dictatorship era Argentina, when there were in fact powerful families who abused poor people, and dissident people disappeared and were murdered. Also with the current situation in the country, this novel hits the nail.
Chamanes eléctricos en la fiesta del sol, by Mónica Ojeda
Random House Libros, 2024
Monica Ojeda, an Ecuadorian writer, born in Guayaquil, won an award with her previous novel called Mandíbula. "Chamanes ..." is a multi-sensory novel that fits very well into the fantasy or magical realism genre, and additionally Ojeda has a special gift for writing in a poetic way. Some categorize Ojeda's work as “Andean gothic” - in the frame of which the author explores the theme of fear through territorial, environmental, political and social lenses. The story is told from different angles and through different characters and beings. One layer of the book is a critique of the exploitative "shamanism" business and hippie escapism. Another one is the juxtaposition of the more peaceful country life versus the violent city life. And a third one is about ancestral, traditional knowledge, family relations and self discovery. Throughout the book, Mythology and Nature play their important roles, and what especially stayed in my mind were the passages which included impressive natural sounds, as the rumble of volcanoes, thundering of storms, or rushing of floods.
Other Books I loved:
Silencio! Manifiesto contra el ruido la inquietud y la prisa
by Pedro Bravo
Debate, 2024
A philosophical and political manifesto against noise, restlessness, haste and everything that is supposed to make us more productive and modern. A bold and provocative essay in defence of silence, pause, introversion and nature.
Ways of Being Alive, by Baptiste Morizot
dt. Arten des Lebendigseins
Polity Press, 2022
Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024
zabriskie.de/ways-of-being-alive
zabriskie.de/arten-des-lebendigseins
On The Animal Trail, by Baptiste Morizot
dt. Philosophie der Wildnis
Polity Press, 2021
https://zabriskie.de/products/on-the-animal-trail
Reclam, 2022
https://zabriskie.de/products/philosophie-der-wildnis-taschenbuch
