With Tom McCarthy and Simon Critchley
7:00 p.m.177 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY
free admission
Image courtesy of the International Necronautical Society
Presented with Cabinet
Who and what are the Necronauts? Triple Canopy has been haunted by this question for the better part of three years, since hosting a presentation of the INS's aerial-reconnaissance work in February of 2008. Recently, in Berlin, editors briefed local cultural producers on the INS's covert recruitment efforts—part of its putative effort to "map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit" the space of death—and warned of the uncanny resemblances between the group's doctrine and the target demographic's aestheticizing impulses, which have had the effect of "turning each of us into a medium of transmission, doomed to convey no other message than that quality of our being." (Read the draft copy of their internal report.) On the eve of the publication of General Secretary Tom McCarthy's novel C, Triple Canopy and Cabinet convene a panel of experts to probe the corpus of the INS. McCarthy will be joined by INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley. Interrogators will include editors of Triple Canopy and Cabinet, Joshua Cohen, and Christian Lorentzen; members of the audience are encouraged to prepare their own questions and accusations.
Who and what are the Necronauts? Triple Canopy has been haunted by this question for the better part of three years, since hosting a presentation of the INS's aerial-reconnaissance work in February of 2008. Recently, in Berlin, editors briefed local cultural producers on the INS's covert recruitment efforts—part of its putative effort to "map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit" the space of death—and warned of the uncanny resemblances between the group's doctrine and the target demographic's aestheticizing impulses, which have had the effect of "turning each of us into a medium of transmission, doomed to convey no other message than that quality of our being." (Read the draft copy of their internal report.) On the eve of the publication of General Secretary Tom McCarthy's novel C, Triple Canopy and Cabinet convene a panel of experts to probe the corpus of the INS. McCarthy will be joined by INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley. Interrogators will include editors of Triple Canopy and Cabinet, Joshua Cohen, and Christian Lorentzen; members of the audience are encouraged to prepare their own questions and accusations.
Participants
- Tom McCarthy is the author of three novels, including Remainder and C, and one nonfiction title, Tintin and the Secret of Literature. He is also founder and General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network of writers, philosophers, and artists whose work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Tate Britain, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
- Simon Critchley is chair of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, and part-time professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, How to Stop Living and Start Worrying and Faith of the Faithless.
- Joshua Cohen was born in New Jersey in 1980. He is the author of seven books, including Book of Numbers: A Novel, forthcoming in June.
- Christian Lorentzen is an editor of the London Review of Books.
- Alexander Provan is the editor of Triple Canopy and a contributing editor of Bidoun. He is the recipient of a 2015 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and was a 2013–15 fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. His writing has appeared in the Nation, n+1, Art in America, Artforum, Frieze, and in several exhibition catalogues. His work has been presented at the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Museum Tinguely (Basel), 12th Bienal de Cuenca (Ecuador), New Museum (New York), Kunsthall Oslo, and Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York), among other venues. Measuring Device with Organs was recently published by Triple Canopy as an LP.
- Sam Frank is a contributing editor of Triple Canopy.
- Sarah Resnick has published in n+1, Bookforum, Art in America, BOMB, and Triple Canopy, where she was previously an editor. Her writing was selected for 2017’s Best American Essays and for the 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York.