4 Basic Kinds of Lines & Colour

Companion reader for Under Current, an exhibition and film by Alice dos Reis. With 'Blue Carbon' by Holly Childs, 'Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water' by Astrida Neimanis, 'King Tide' by Sophia Al-Maria, 'Notes on a Dotted Red Wave' by Danea Io, 'Smart Oceans, Alien Times: Octopi Engineering' by Bogna M. Konior, 'To a Current's Ear' by Alice dos Reis and more. Bilingual edition (Spanish-English).

Who is the Oriental Cyborg? asks Aditi Kini in this collection of notes, jokes, and queries into the provenance of a creature designed for labor, 3-D printed in the technoscientific post-colonies, modeled on old automata. Race is a technology, that we know, and technology can be raced — so why inquire into this at all? Perhaps this, the Oriental Cyborg, is a fantasy more than a memory, or an echo more than a form — or just an essayist’s extraction of personal anguish and humor from globalist decay.

Taking on the form of historical analysis / lyrical essay / documentary poem / experimental buzzword / positionality statement, this chapbook and its titular character might still be an elusive mystery even after reading.

“’What is a ghost but a person removed from corporeality?’ This is one among layers of questions Aditi Kini poses in Oriental Cyborg, a lyrical excavation into survival in the era of techno racial capitalism, and its “deleting touch” that so easily voids—reduces to faceless services—the exploited individuals performing various acts of techno-labor. A grieved searching drives this hybrid essay, which feels urgent and necessary as threats from AI grab headlines. This work compels us to see our culture’s love affair with technological progress as a means for continued colonization and domination. It also reminds us, and celebrates, that those erased don’t stay silent forever. We privileged may not be able to hear them yet, but those who are listening know. They roar.” — Allison Cobb

“In the mirror of Aditi Kini’s Oriental Cyborg, I become the monster—a hopeless automaton, an intelligence stripped of roar. With titanium-threaded theory, Kini radiantly stitches together the ideal Asian working machine. Get your own Oriental cyborg today: super dazzling and sexy, historically embroidered, an oracular truth who never tires, never complains, forever mute, what perfection!” — Lily Hoàng

Aditi Kini is an undisciplined writer. They’ve done both NYC and the MFA (at UC San Diego). They were a finalist/alternate for the 2020-22 Jerome Award for Literature. They edit Lumpenpockets, “a nonquarterly sick rag.” Read their words in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, The New York Times, and elsewhere. They’re at work on multiple projects, all at once. They are blessed with two dogs, Lucy the Happy and Charly Kong, who make life worth living.

The reading score for the presentation at rile*books on Sunday June 23, an A to Z of Indexing / Organising / Cataloguing BFTK for Two Voices.

Studio Visit collects two decades of work by Brooklyn-based artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty (born 1978), known for her material transformation of photographs and her use of comedy as an artistic strategy. Organized by material sensibilities around paper, plastic, glass, metal, fabric scraps, and "garbage," Studio Visit rethinks the monograph format, revealing Sara Greenberger Rafferty’s practice through intimate studio documentation, sketches, notes, and other ephemera, punctuated by full-color case studies of major works. 

With image descriptions by art historian Kate Nesin and new writing by Kristan Kennedy and Oscar Bedford, as well as reprinted texts by poet Lisa Robertson and media scholar Shannon Mattern, among others, Studio Visitsurveys Sara Greenberger Rafferty's cultural commentary through dynamic and conceptually rigorous art. 

Through more than 500 images by 95 photographers, the Musée de Grenoble's collection of photographs from Antoine de Galbert's collection and his foundation offers an impressive panorama of our times and the decisive role played by photography in shaping our perceptions and contemporary mythologies.

Works by Aalam, Bani Abidi, Antoine d'Agata, Lucien Aigner, Pilar Albarracín, Yolanda Andrade, Sammy Baloji, Ion Bîrlădeanu, Eric Baudelaire, Philippe Bazin, Guillaume Binet, Alain Bizos, Antoni Campana, Mario Carnicelli, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, Chieh-Jen Chen, Roman Cieslewicz, Christian Courrèges, David Damoison, Philippe De Gobert, Luc Delahaye, Bernard Descamps, Jean-Marie Donat, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Sandra Eleta, Fouad Elkoury, Charles Fréger, Alberto García-Alix, Laurence Geai, Agnes Geoffray, Julien Gester, Stephan Gladieu, David Goldblatt, Hengameh Golestan, Cosmin Gradinaru, Guillaume Herbaut, Chester Higgins, Kati Horna, John Isaacs, Olivier Jobard, Alain Keler, Yevgeny Khaldeï, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Oleg Kulik, Olivier Laban-Mattei, Stéphane Lagoutte, Dorothea Lange, Le Tiers Visible, Arthur Leipzig, Alexandre Lewkowicz, Pascal Maître, Yuri Mechitov, Davood Maeili, Edouard Méhomé, Georges Melet, Lívia Melzi, Boris Mikhaïlov, Lisette Model, Etienne Montes, Yan Morvan, Genevieve Naylor, Vladimir Nikitin, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Mathieu Pernot, Gilles Raynaldy, Marc Riboud, Sophie Ristelhueber, Hugo Schmölz & Karl Hugo Schmölz, Chantal Stoman, Paul Strand, Mikhael Subotzky, Barthélémy Toguo, Tomasz Tomaszewski, James-Iroha Uchechukwu, Alex Van Gelder, Erwan Venn, Weegee, Where dogs run, Sue Williamson, Wiktoria Wojciechowska, Pavel Wolberg, Tom Wood, Patrick Zachmann, Miron Zownir.

Texts by Antoine de Galbert, Guy Tosatto, Noëlig Le Roux, Antoine Champenois, Joséphine Givodan.

Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the musée de Grenoble from December 2023 to March 2024.