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New Mindmapping Forms
There is a story about a meatball which comes out of nowhere, hitting some people’s heads and changing their lives forever. There is a mouse that gets caught while trying to find a cheesy snack. There has been a 100% increase in the cost of rent in Berlin in the past 10 years and no increase in my wages. A bag full of basmati rice. A teacher stuck at work waiting for students stuck at work. There is the price one pays to purchase organic underwear so that their intimate parts are not stifled from nine hours in the office chair. There are 10 missed calls from my mother. There are places to which one cannot return and cities where it is impossible to live. There are fertility treatments that send fish oil straight into the veins two days before and two days after ovulation. The feeling of a needle in the middle of the uterus, which could be due to pregnancy, or due to fear. There is a Master’s thesis which is no Master’s thesis. There is a book that was not intended to be published, that was not intended to be read.
Eva Ďurovec works as a software tester 40 hours per week and studies art at the same time. There are not enough hours in the day to complete everything, to comply with everything. And then there is also her desire to have children. The question: how can all of this be reconciled within the profession of artist? Ďurovec investigates the possibilities that arise from different class formats, and asks what we produce and reproduce—with our bodies, through our routines, trapped between the recurring desires and cruelties of daily life. She writes about forgotten dreams, social orders, and fantasizes about what kinds of new models for living together might be conceivable.
With an epilogue by Alice Creischer: For me, it is not a diary, as Eva calls it, but an almanac […] that describes the counter- forces that prevent us from suffocating in the face of power. They are the desires and projections that, in this fragile life, tenaciously resist a pull that can be called normalisation. […] All labour relations, whether on the assembly line or in front of the PC, are only part of an exploitation that affects the whole of life and obliterates all projections. The almanac reports on this totality and how it becomes concrete in the everyday life of looking for a flat, wanting children, chronic illnesses and their treatment, relationships and friends. It also reports on the deep need for a spiritual asylum on the run from totality. The asylum lies in the knowledge of a historical continuity of thought and action that is always superior to exploitation. It exposes — often seemingly with ease and as if in a game or joke — the power of exploitation as incapable of creating meaning, as a machine.
Eva Ďurovec works as a software tester 40 hours per week and studies art at the same time. There are not enough hours in the day to complete everything, to comply with everything. And then there is also her desire to have children. The question: how can all of this be reconciled within the profession of artist? Ďurovec investigates the possibilities that arise from different class formats, and asks what we produce and reproduce—with our bodies, through our routines, trapped between the recurring desires and cruelties of daily life. She writes about forgotten dreams, social orders, and fantasizes about what kinds of new models for living together might be conceivable.
With an epilogue by Alice Creischer: For me, it is not a diary, as Eva calls it, but an almanac […] that describes the counter- forces that prevent us from suffocating in the face of power. They are the desires and projections that, in this fragile life, tenaciously resist a pull that can be called normalisation. […] All labour relations, whether on the assembly line or in front of the PC, are only part of an exploitation that affects the whole of life and obliterates all projections. The almanac reports on this totality and how it becomes concrete in the everyday life of looking for a flat, wanting children, chronic illnesses and their treatment, relationships and friends. It also reports on the deep need for a spiritual asylum on the run from totality. The asylum lies in the knowledge of a historical continuity of thought and action that is always superior to exploitation. It exposes — often seemingly with ease and as if in a game or joke — the power of exploitation as incapable of creating meaning, as a machine.
288 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 2022
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83 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 1, 2023
This is a clever debut by Eva Ďurovec that stretches the bounds of what fiction is and can be. The book is presented as a journal, written by the Berlin-based author who is stuck in an uninspiring job as a software tester, suffering under the thumb of our capitalist enterprise. When I say presented as a journal, I mean that quite literally: the text appears as handwriting, color-coded by topic, and squeezed onto the page at odd angles amidst doodles and other jottings. The typography lost its charm for me around page 2 - readability was a major issue - but the content itself is provocative and challenging in all the right ways. We see the author balance work, health, and other life obligations, often unsuccessfully, but always with a keen diagnosis of the crux of the issues. We are awash these days with so many books that critique our economic and social structure. It's refreshing when someone comes along and does it in a new and vibrant way.
February 1, 2023
Longlisted for the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, UK & Ireland
Eva Ďurovec's New Mindmapping Forms is a unique and brilliant novel from Montez Press whose mission statement reads:
And this works very much fits the bill, particularly in a work that takes risks and surprises, and which questions established systems, here that of work in late-capitalist society.
[The novel is, it should be noted, less in the 'queer and intersectional feminist' sector, with one loose narrative thread in the novel concerning the narrator/author's difficulties in conceiving a child with her boyfriend].
The narrator is in her mid 30s, now living in Berlin by way of her hometown of Snina, in Slovakia close to the Ukranian border, then Bratislava and Prague. She is studying art at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee, but also working full time as a software developer.
The book is in the form of a diary / journal / almanac with daily entries, from 19.10.2017 to 21.2.2018, each written on two sides of A5. And "written" is key, the book was written in different coloured felt-tip pens, according to a colour code, and reproduced in the stunning physical book.
For part of the book - the colour scheme changes during the book's course - the key is:
Yellow: Highlighter
Orange: Notes to writing itself
Red: Quotes - like a blood with nutrients
Purple: Dreams - color of flesh
Light blue: Expenses - like circulation
Dark blue: Incomes - like circulation
Green: Projects
Brown: Poems, songs, conversations - ground
Black:Reality - What I see and what I want to talk about
Copies of the pages can be seen at the publisher's website and I reproduce three below (including one showing the key):
This makes for a fascinating, but pleasurable, reading experience, one that I found slowed me down and made me focus on the words.
And there is much to focus on. Interspersed, literally on the page, with the minutae of life - such as daily expenditure records, details of dreams, daily accounts of days at work and seminars, and the various fertility treatments undergone - are more political thoughts on the organisation of society.
As noted, the red pen is for quotes, and the novel quotes frequently from various sources, which are acknowledged in a Notes section (again handwritten in red felt-tip) at the end. That perhaps the most commonly quoted sourceS are Guy Debord and the work of the The Invisible Committee as published by Semiotext(e) gives a good idea of the work's flavour.
For example on 17.12.2017, this, quoting from John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, speaks to one of the book's key messages:
It is much more likely that the revulsion or dissonance is consciously or unconsciously suppressed, either in the interests of a quiet life or, much more simply, because pretending not to see or feel the horrors of the world carries direct material benefits. In order to protect our jobs, our visas, our profits, our chances of receiving good grades, our sanity, we pretend not to see, we sanitise our own perception, filtering out the pain, pretending that it is not here but out there, far away..
It is much more likely that the revulsion or dissonance is consciously or unconsciously suppressed, either in the interest of a quiet life or, much more simply, because pretending not to see or fee they horrors of the world carries direct material benefits.
Although I was particularly delighted to see, in the entry from 17.12.2017, a quote from Oehler in Thomas Bernhard's Gehen.
Mainly the entries were written contemporaneously although Ďurovec does say that some were completed after the event:
I have to confess that parts of diary were written ex-post, especially those around Christmas. However the idea of diary never abandoned me and I was making notes toward day and associations I wanted to write about. I still think that two pages of A5 are sufficient for one day record, and often very problematic when one works 8 hours somewhere. Today is 23.09.2018 so all in all it tooks me one year to finish all gaps in diary.
The novel comes with an illuminating afterword by Alice Creischer, who together with Andres Sickmann, taught a Spatial Strategies course at the university which Eva intended, Alice and Andres's classes featuring heavily in the pages of the novel. The two lecturers had hoped to run a course which dispensed with compulsory projects and course credits and instead we hoped that students would voluntarily come to the seminars just to think and find their way together with their fellow students. They were to be disappointed in the students' response to this freedom and Eva was one of those who rarely showed up and then when she did threw her work - it seemed to me - at my feet like a pile of enigmatic instruments. Creischer's understanding of what Eva was doing was to be completely upended when she submitted her master's thesis - for me, it is not a diary, as Eva calls it, but an almanac", the book we are reading.
Brilliantly produced and fascinating. Recommended.
Eva Ďurovec's New Mindmapping Forms is a unique and brilliant novel from Montez Press whose mission statement reads:
Envisaged as the third iteration of the spirit of Lola Montez (Lola, Maria, Mario), Montez Press was formed in 2012. We have since commissioned and published experimental work by artists, writers and thinkers with a focus on queer and intersectional feminist practices through the lens of artists’ writing. We are committed to curiosity, questioning established methods and systems, and engaging in open conversation and dialogue. Our methods are deeply collaborative. We seek to support unexpected creators, including those who may not receive institutional support due to social and economic systemic prejudices. We commit to a rigorous editorial process in our effort to produce work that takes risks and surprises and challenges the reader.
And this works very much fits the bill, particularly in a work that takes risks and surprises, and which questions established systems, here that of work in late-capitalist society.
[The novel is, it should be noted, less in the 'queer and intersectional feminist' sector, with one loose narrative thread in the novel concerning the narrator/author's difficulties in conceiving a child with her boyfriend].
The narrator is in her mid 30s, now living in Berlin by way of her hometown of Snina, in Slovakia close to the Ukranian border, then Bratislava and Prague. She is studying art at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee, but also working full time as a software developer.
The book is in the form of a diary / journal / almanac with daily entries, from 19.10.2017 to 21.2.2018, each written on two sides of A5. And "written" is key, the book was written in different coloured felt-tip pens, according to a colour code, and reproduced in the stunning physical book.
For part of the book - the colour scheme changes during the book's course - the key is:
Yellow: Highlighter
Orange: Notes to writing itself
Red: Quotes - like a blood with nutrients
Purple: Dreams - color of flesh
Light blue: Expenses - like circulation
Dark blue: Incomes - like circulation
Green: Projects
Brown: Poems, songs, conversations - ground
Black:
Copies of the pages can be seen at the publisher's website and I reproduce three below (including one showing the key):
This makes for a fascinating, but pleasurable, reading experience, one that I found slowed me down and made me focus on the words.
And there is much to focus on. Interspersed, literally on the page, with the minutae of life - such as daily expenditure records, details of dreams, daily accounts of days at work and seminars, and the various fertility treatments undergone - are more political thoughts on the organisation of society.
As noted, the red pen is for quotes, and the novel quotes frequently from various sources, which are acknowledged in a Notes section (again handwritten in red felt-tip) at the end. That perhaps the most commonly quoted sourceS are Guy Debord and the work of the The Invisible Committee as published by Semiotext(e) gives a good idea of the work's flavour.
For example on 17.12.2017, this, quoting from John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, speaks to one of the book's key messages:
It is much more likely that the revulsion or dissonance is consciously or unconsciously suppressed, either in the interests of a quiet life or, much more simply, because pretending not to see or feel the horrors of the world carries direct material benefits. In order to protect our jobs, our visas, our profits, our chances of receiving good grades, our sanity, we pretend not to see, we sanitise our own perception, filtering out the pain, pretending that it is not here but out there, far away..
It is much more likely that the revulsion or dissonance is consciously or unconsciously suppressed, either in the interest of a quiet life or, much more simply, because pretending not to see or fee they horrors of the world carries direct material benefits.
Although I was particularly delighted to see, in the entry from 17.12.2017, a quote from Oehler in Thomas Bernhard's Gehen.
Mainly the entries were written contemporaneously although Ďurovec does say that some were completed after the event:
I have to confess that parts of diary were written ex-post, especially those around Christmas. However the idea of diary never abandoned me and I was making notes toward day and associations I wanted to write about. I still think that two pages of A5 are sufficient for one day record, and often very problematic when one works 8 hours somewhere. Today is 23.09.2018 so all in all it tooks me one year to finish all gaps in diary.
The novel comes with an illuminating afterword by Alice Creischer, who together with Andres Sickmann, taught a Spatial Strategies course at the university which Eva intended, Alice and Andres's classes featuring heavily in the pages of the novel. The two lecturers had hoped to run a course which dispensed with compulsory projects and course credits and instead we hoped that students would voluntarily come to the seminars just to think and find their way together with their fellow students. They were to be disappointed in the students' response to this freedom and Eva was one of those who rarely showed up and then when she did threw her work - it seemed to me - at my feet like a pile of enigmatic instruments. Creischer's understanding of what Eva was doing was to be completely upended when she submitted her master's thesis - for me, it is not a diary, as Eva calls it, but an almanac", the book we are reading.
Brilliantly produced and fascinating. Recommended.
February 3, 2023
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is journalling as a novel, which is interesting for me as I use journalling to record my novel reading.
Journalling is of course very much an in-thing currently – mainly for the ability it gives to move away from typing on phones and screens to a more old fashioned recording of information which can be simultaneously more thoughtful (due to the time it takes to write) and more immediate (due to the inability to cut/paste/edit).
The journal itself is often a lined (or my preference - dotted) A5 pad, with a soft black leather type cover (or my preference - hard and coloured cover), a marker ribbon (and also my preference an elastic band fastener) – I would particularly recommend the Leuchtturm1917, but it seems the author went with the opposite choices.
The writing implements are normally some form of multi-coloured felt tips. I prefer the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner range – the author’s rather lower budget option does not assist in the ease of reading of the journal despite the author’s sensible use of BLOCK CAPITALS for her handwriting.
The different colours are used for different aspects.
For me (for example)
Black – Net Galley ARCs
Navy Blue – Republic of Consciousness Prize
Dark Green – Women’s Prize
Magenta – Desmond Elliott Prize
Cyan – Orwell Prize
Brown – Booker Prize
Lime Green – Goldsmith’s Prize
For the author (for example)
Red: Quotes
Purple: Dreams
Light blue: Expenses
Dark blue: Income
Green: Projects
Brown: Poems, songs, conversations
Black: Reality – What I see and want to talk about
In terms of content I have to say that the opening part of the Blurb of this book undervalues its seriousness: the references to meatballs, stuck mice and cheesy snacks, basmati rice and organic underwear imply this is to journalling as Patricia Lockwood is to Twitter. All those ephemeral and entertaining references do occur, but they are scattered instances among text which is actually far more concerned with much more complex/weighty topics.
These include for example “infamous transformation of the school system under the Bologna Process”; the author's own artistic studies and work; Marxist like sociological reflections on late-capitalism and particularly the way in which society is structured around work and about preserving power structures (this is the main part of the book and a little too involved for me but it does cover the role of the kefala system for migrant workers in the Middle East and has a pretty accurate prediction – 5 years before now as the journal covers October 2017-February 2018 – of some of the performative hypocrisy that would accompany Western liberal reaction to the 2022 World Cup); the German and Czech rental and housing systems; and (perhaps the most interesting part for me) her struggles with what she has called “the deafening ringing of the myth of biological clock “ (and the various fertility treatments and appointments she and her boyfriend Marek attend).
All of this though most noticeably is produced by a literal rendering of the pages of her journal – as is best seen on the author’s own website (https://www.evadurovec.info/2017/12/2...) – in what is a fascinating piece of publishing experimentation but it has to be said unfortunately difficult to read. There is perhaps it may be worth reflecting a reason why for several centuries while manuscripts were written by hand, books have been published typeset. The author herself has said the journal was not originally designed for mass publishing.
I would also say that my own lack of engagement with the rather heavy content meant that the considerable efforts needed to engage with the form in which they were rendered felt not always rewarded.
Adding to this my final comment on journalling is that like dreams, other people’s journals are in my view really not that interesting – having recently joined Instagram I do not intend to start posting my colourful Books Read pages there as like dreams they are for personal reflection. Other people’s journals which describe their dreams run the risk of being doubly uninteresting.
But this is a bold and literally vibrant publication and I would say check out the link above and see if it is one that may appeal to you.
IS IT A NORM THAT WE HAVE TO WRITE EVERYTHING DIGITALLY ANOTHER PROBLEM I HAVE, I DON’T WANT THAT THIS MASTERARBEIT WILL COME OUT FROM THIS COMPUTER. WRITING SOMETHING INTO THE COMPUTER IS SOMETHING ELSE THAN WRITING IT ON PAPER. IT COULD BE TWO DIFFERENT WORKS. I THINK DIFFERENTLY WHEN WRITING WITH PEN, WHEN I NEED TO FORM IDEA, WHOLE PAGE FIRST. POSSIBILITY TO DELETE SOMETHING WILL LEAVE TRACES. I CANNOT MOVE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS HERE AND THERE. MY EYES SEES PAPER, TABLE, PENCILS, CORRECTOR, BOOKS, WALL, VIEW FROM WINDOW, MAREK. I AM USING FIBER MARKER PEN FROM LIDL, THEY ARE FOR 1.49 EUR FOR SET WITH 10 COLORS.
This book is journalling as a novel, which is interesting for me as I use journalling to record my novel reading.
Journalling is of course very much an in-thing currently – mainly for the ability it gives to move away from typing on phones and screens to a more old fashioned recording of information which can be simultaneously more thoughtful (due to the time it takes to write) and more immediate (due to the inability to cut/paste/edit).
The journal itself is often a lined (or my preference - dotted) A5 pad, with a soft black leather type cover (or my preference - hard and coloured cover), a marker ribbon (and also my preference an elastic band fastener) – I would particularly recommend the Leuchtturm1917, but it seems the author went with the opposite choices.
The writing implements are normally some form of multi-coloured felt tips. I prefer the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner range – the author’s rather lower budget option does not assist in the ease of reading of the journal despite the author’s sensible use of BLOCK CAPITALS for her handwriting.
The different colours are used for different aspects.
For me (for example)
Black – Net Galley ARCs
Navy Blue – Republic of Consciousness Prize
Dark Green – Women’s Prize
Magenta – Desmond Elliott Prize
Cyan – Orwell Prize
Brown – Booker Prize
Lime Green – Goldsmith’s Prize
For the author (for example)
Red: Quotes
Purple: Dreams
Light blue: Expenses
Dark blue: Income
Green: Projects
Brown: Poems, songs, conversations
Black: Reality – What I see and want to talk about
In terms of content I have to say that the opening part of the Blurb of this book undervalues its seriousness: the references to meatballs, stuck mice and cheesy snacks, basmati rice and organic underwear imply this is to journalling as Patricia Lockwood is to Twitter. All those ephemeral and entertaining references do occur, but they are scattered instances among text which is actually far more concerned with much more complex/weighty topics.
These include for example “infamous transformation of the school system under the Bologna Process”; the author's own artistic studies and work; Marxist like sociological reflections on late-capitalism and particularly the way in which society is structured around work and about preserving power structures (this is the main part of the book and a little too involved for me but it does cover the role of the kefala system for migrant workers in the Middle East and has a pretty accurate prediction – 5 years before now as the journal covers October 2017-February 2018 – of some of the performative hypocrisy that would accompany Western liberal reaction to the 2022 World Cup); the German and Czech rental and housing systems; and (perhaps the most interesting part for me) her struggles with what she has called “the deafening ringing of the myth of biological clock “ (and the various fertility treatments and appointments she and her boyfriend Marek attend).
All of this though most noticeably is produced by a literal rendering of the pages of her journal – as is best seen on the author’s own website (https://www.evadurovec.info/2017/12/2...) – in what is a fascinating piece of publishing experimentation but it has to be said unfortunately difficult to read. There is perhaps it may be worth reflecting a reason why for several centuries while manuscripts were written by hand, books have been published typeset. The author herself has said the journal was not originally designed for mass publishing.
I would also say that my own lack of engagement with the rather heavy content meant that the considerable efforts needed to engage with the form in which they were rendered felt not always rewarded.
Adding to this my final comment on journalling is that like dreams, other people’s journals are in my view really not that interesting – having recently joined Instagram I do not intend to start posting my colourful Books Read pages there as like dreams they are for personal reflection. Other people’s journals which describe their dreams run the risk of being doubly uninteresting.
But this is a bold and literally vibrant publication and I would say check out the link above and see if it is one that may appeal to you.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews