whipstitch - by the recessive thread
“Whipstitch” is a niche slang term meaning an instant. In the South, it constitutes an idiom meaning in short intervals— the birds, they come to feed there every whipstitch— and it is mainly a term used in sewing and embroidery, to sew with stitches passing over an edge, in joining, finishing, or gathering. Whipstitching is also a very cute book-binding method. This is my attempt to write more in the moment— allow some glimpse of what is currently being fed through this finicky, slow machine.
whipstitch is delivered to both paid and free subscribers. It features four books, films, art shows, or other events I’ve been thinking about, as well as three articles or substacks I’ve read and ~ten miscellaneous recommendations. It concludes with a “desire of the week” and a short reflection, featuring illustrations by my friend Anna Lustberg throughout.
Spotlights thus far include:
Annie Ernaux’s The Years, Lauren Elkin’s No. 91/92, Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition at MoMA, Sue (1998), Bernadette Mayer’s Milkweed Smithereens, Lisa Jarnot’s reading at Molasses Books, Tár (2022), the TikTok trend CoreCore, Marguerite Duras’s The Easy Life, Eugene Ostashevksy’s The Feeling Sonnets, Three Colors: Blue (1993), The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window at BAM, Kate Zambreno’s Drifts, Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Leah Ke Yi Zeng at David Lewis, Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020), Kevin McNamee-Tweed: Pilcrow at Sonia Dutton, Clare Sestanovich’s Objects of Desire, Camilo Angeles’ solo performance at Sisters, Certain Women (2016), Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Jane b. par Agnès v. (1988), Andre Breton’s Nadja, and Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid at the Met.
⌿ (006) AUGUST 8
a classic on 19th-century materialism, a collaborative self-portrait, ambiguous images, painted vanities, and more
⌿ (005) JUNE 8
an exhibition of fragments within fragments, stories of peeling, songs like a crushed windpipe, western triptychs, and more
⌿ (004) MAY 6
engines of time, the infraordinary, problems with dailiness, losing interest in buses, when the world addresses you by name
⌿ (003) MARCH 6
the easy life by the sea, facing the music in blue, wordplay about feelings, plays with feeling-words, patience in lulls
⌿ (002) FEBRUARY 6
a poetry book and a poetry reading, generational fallacies in tár, the raw nonsense of #nichetok, drought season
⌿ (001) DECEMBER 11
two frenchie books, a buried gem of a movie, an exhibition of exquisite objects
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