Helen Clarke & Sharon Kivland (eds)
THE LOST DIAGRAMS OF WALTER BENJAMIN, 2017



In A Berlin Chronicle Walter Benjamin describes his autobiography as a space to be walked (indeed, it is a labyrinth, with entrances he calls primal acquaintances). The contributors to The Lost Diagrams respond to the invitation to accompany Benjamin in reproducing the web of connections of his diagram, which, once lost (he was inconsolable), was never fully redrawn. They translate his words into maps, trees, lists, and constellations. Their diagrams, after Benjamin, are fragments, scribbles, indexes, bed covers, and body parts. Subjectivities sharpen and blur, merge and redefine, scatter and recollect. Benjamin writes: ‘Whatever cross connections are finally established between these systems also depends on the inter-twinements of our path through life’.


Essays by Helen Clarke, Sam Dolbear, & Christian A. Wollin
Contributors: Cos Ahmet, Alberto Alessi, Sam Ayres, Patrizia Bach, Martin Beutler,Riccardo Boglione,Vibe Bredahl, Pavel Buchler & Nina Chua, Emma Cheatle, cris cheek, Kirsten Cooke, Anne-Marie Creamer, Amy Cutler, Vincent Dachy, Matthew Dowell, Joanna Leah Geldard, Theresa Goessmann, Michael Hampton, Ronny Hardliz, Miranda Iossifidis, Joe Jefford, Dean Kenning, Tracy Mackenna, Bevis Martin & Charlie Youle, John McDowall, Katharine Meynell, Paul O’Kane, Hephzibah Rendle-Short, Mark Riley, Katya Robin, Hattie Salisbury, Isabella Streffen, Stefan Szczelkun, George Themistokleous, Monique Ulrich, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, Matthew Wang, Julie Warburton, Alexander White, Lada Wilson, Louise K. Wilson, Mark Wingrave, Mary Yacoob

The capacity of Walter Benjamin’s work to inspire others is extraordinary, and this small book of ‘lost diagrams’ is a splendid example. […] This archive of maps by readers of Benjamin suggests an unexpected form of solidarity.’
->Susan Buck-Morss

‘The diagrams in this book trial the possible clusters of a life curtailed, one tailored to small means, but immense in imagination: Walter Benjamin’s.’
->Esther Leslie


 

120 pages
205 mm x 140 mm
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-36-6  
Second edition
£15.00



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