Join a.p. and isolarii next Friday, October 15th at 7:00PM to celebrate the publication of isolarii's 5th issue, Modern Animal, by Yevgenia Belorusets. The author will present a dual-language Russian/English reading of 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘈𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘭 alongside isolarii editor Sebastian Clark, in addition to screening a video inspired by the text. Afterwards, stick around for wine and refreshments.
Modern Animal rearranges the relationships of humans and animals, retelling interviews, folktales, memories, and visions of the people—bourgeois, urban, rural, Roma, working class—that Belorusets encountered on a multiyear journey through Ukraine. The result is not a collection of short stories, but a string with various knots. It is a revolutionary approach to anthropology, what it means to study, become, and behave like something else.
Working between Berlin and Kyiv, Ukrainian and Russian, Belorusets defies typical definition and strict political boundaries. Her writing, grounded in years as a photo-journalist, is exuberant rather than premeditated. It brings together the stories of many to form its identity and, in doing so, is the antithesis of—and what comes after—autofiction and its attendant narcissism.
Inspired by a Venetian Renaissance printing tradition, isolarii (meaning island books) publishes pocket-sized volumes by writers, artists, filmmakers and architects—colored by inquiries devised to “help us navigate the world anew.” To date they have published books with Turner Prize-nominated artist duo Cooking Sections, Chinese avant-garde fiction writer Can Xue, American underground cartoonist Art Spiegelman, and more.