Our Books

Aesthetic Literacy Vol. I (published January 2023)

Aesthetic Literacy Vol. II (published January 2023)

Aesthetic Literacy Vol. III (published November 2023)

Philosophy of Final Words (out now!)

Nietzsche on the Horse (submissions are open)

Artists & Philosophers as Criminals (submissions are open)

Aesthetic Literacy Volumes I-III

mongrel matter delivers an eclectic collection in aesthetic education 

aesthetic literacy is an experiment in philosophy of culture, a book-exercise which has taken three years to realise, turning into a maze wandering through three volumes, free-styled by one hundred and fifty authors           

the ample cultural potential of aesthetics is inchoate, as things stand, while the sizable body of aesthetic studies enjoys sparse influence on school, tertiary, street, ecological, domestic and other areas of critical education

one is likely to learn about aesthetics at college or university, in a closed room, and not thanks to their parents, siblings, friends and lovers

mindful of such barriers and hierarchies, we offer to everyone this demonstrous book of searches for meaning in the most natural, river-like dimension of experience, carrying you away to familiar and unknown shallows and depths

aesthetic literacy recognises no writing style as superior to another, be it a dialogue beside a comic, or a rhyme by a mural: why would anyone discriminate against an aphorism next to an essay, if the meanings and feelings they shape are like figments of gold? 

our book is authored by professors, near acclaimed and aspiring writers, journalists and storytellers, artists and aliases, and those who will not write and create again

aesthetic education is your right, reader, you shall be guided across the everyday domains of arts and politics, city and home, bodies in cosmos, through monolithic, gone-by and oppressed cultures, to learn that aesthetics is a part and parcel of our lives and future!

Aesthetic Literacy Volume I

  • Preface

    An Adage by Arnold Berleant

    I. 1 A Philosophical Walk During COVID Times by Thomas Leddy

    I. 2 Never Without A Perception by Clive Cazeaux

    I. 3 Aesthetic Dimension: Dynamic Sensibility by Mónica Uribe -Flores

    I. 4 Z-K: A Dialogue on Aesthetics by Katya Mandoki and Eddy M. Zemach

    I. 5 Scale and Proportion: Guiding Beauty by Lars Straehler-Pohl

    I. 6 How to Say “Beauty” in Ancient Greek by David Konstan

    I. 7 A Gloss of the Dictum ‘Beauty is Nothing but a Promise of Happiness’ by Ken-ichi Sasaki

    I. 8 What Is Art? Or When Is Art? by Curtis L. Carter

    I. 9 Fourteen Aphorisms About Art by Theodore Gracyk

    I. 10 Traces and Testimonies by Ryan Wittingslow

    I. 11 Seeing a Face in Some Patches of Paint by Edward Winters

    I. 12 A Trip to the Zoo by Michel-Antoine Xhignesse

    I. 13 Animal-Made ‘Art’? by Anita Lunić

    I. 14 The Lie That Makes Us Realise – Facts and Truth in the Work of Art by Frederik-Emil Friis Jakobsen

    I. 15 In Medias Res: Aesthetic Literacy and Everyday Media Communication by Bálint Veres

    I. 16 Responding to Breaking Bad by Richard Eldridge

    I. 17 At the Crossroads Between Art and Morality by Gemma Argüello Manresa

    I. 18 Once More, With Art: The Aesthetics of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by James and Mona Rocha

    I. 19 Art, Value, Form by Jessica X. Daboin

    I. 20 Money is the Worst Invention by INO

    I. 21 What Nick Cave Taught Me About Aesthetic Experience by Sarah Woodland

    I. 22 Behavioural Aesthetics by Jale Nejdet Erzen

    I. 23 Notes on Participatory Performance in the Time of COVID by Gareth White

    I. 24 Adversus Empathicos! Almost a Dialogue in Three Scenes by Fabrizio Desideri

    I. 25 The Playfulness of Aesthetic Experience by Emily Hodges

    I. 26 Seeing Again, for the First Time by Dimitris Apostolopoulos

    I. 27 The iPhone is the Poet by Matthew Kruger

    I. 28 A Poetic Pilgrimage by Stefan Valdemar Snævarr

    I. 29 Nietzsche’s “Aesthetic Science” by Babette Babich

    I. 30 The Man of Taste or How to Lose Interest in Art by Iria Grammenou

    I. 31 Is Taste “Just a Matter of Taste”? by Timothy M. Costelloe

    I. 32 Kitsch by Max Ryynänen

    I. 33 The Conquest of Time: The Forgotten Power of Art by Derek Allan

    I. 34 Japanese Art and Aesthetics by Jesse Prinz

    I. 35 At the Museum with Mr. B by Gene Fendt

    I. 36 Picture-body–Body-picture by Béla Bacsó

    I. 37 Disarming Disaster Porn: The Use and Abuse of Aesthetics by Rob Marks

    I. 38 What is this Feeling We Call ‘Sublime’? by Sandra Shapshay

    I. 39 From Aesthetics Education to Zines: A Primer for Arts Educators by Courtney Lee Weida

    I. 40 Decolonial aestheSis: Colonial Wounds / Decolonial Healings by Walter Mignolo and Rolando Vazquez

    I. 41. The Emperor’s New Clothes by Majid Heidari

    I. 42. Autonomy (and Why We Should Move On From It) by Ruth Sonderegger

    I. 43. Aesthetics of Modern Decay by Niklas Arnold

    I. 44 Medusa, Perseus and Pegasus in the Realm of (Crooked) Mirrors by Martin Boszorád and Peter Brezňan

    I. 45 Paradox by Tom Cochrane

    I. 46 Aphorisms on Art and the Nature of Being by Richard D. Hickman

    I. 47 Aesthetics Gets a Joke by Doris Sommer

    I. 48 Socrates, Inc. Part I by Lycinus Secundus

    I. 49 Why Do I Like It by Alexander Kremer

Aesthetic Literacy Volume II

  • II. 1 Socrates, Inc. (Part 2) by Lycinus Secundus

    II. 2 Aesthetics is Everywhere by Yuriko Saito

    II. 3 A Defence of the Tag by Philip Ivanov

    II. 4 Aesthetic Practices by Pauline von Bonsdorff

    II. 5 A Trip to the Zoo (cont.) by Michel-Antoine Xhignesse

    II. 6 Sonnet for Sport Aesthetics by Jason Holt

    II. 7 The Aesthetics of Coffee by Elisabetta Di Stefano

    II. 8 Umbrella Philosophy by Lilli Förster

    II. 9 Synapsing Hegel’s Philosophy of Art through the Brainbody by Rowan Bailey

    II. 10 Shimmer: The Aesthetics of Aboriginal Art and Animals by Darren Jorgensen

    II. 11 Gypsy Aesthetics by Daniel Baker

    II. 12 It’s Fiesta Season! (In the Philippines) by Christine Carmela R. Ramos

    II. 13 Aesthetic, Jamaican Popular Music, and the City by Lisa Tomlinson

    II. 14 Puzzling Out the Popped out Puzzle of Pop by Juraj Malíček and Martin Boszorád

    II. 1 5 The Aesthetics of Pop-Rock Music by Stefano Marino

    II. 16 Punk by Jesse Prinz

    II. 17 Musical Experiments in an Ethics of Listening by Iain Campbell

    II. 18 The Discourse of Jazz: An Unstable Dialectic by Robert Kraut

    II. 19 What’s the Deal with Standup Comedy and Philosophy? by Alan Daboin

    II. 20 Bob Dylan and R. G. Collingwood: Remarks on Suspicions of Authorship by David Goldblatt

    II. 21 Aesthetics, Ontology, and a Museum Acquisition by Ivan Gaskell

    II. 22 Banksy at Sotheby’s: Art as Commerce and Performance by Alison Young

    II. 23 A Few of Them Have Perception by INO

    II. 24 The Contradictory Aesthetics of Sexual Literacy by Paul Reynolds

    II. 25 Falling in Love by John M. Carvalho

    II. 26 Philosophy and Dance: Can We Really Think Without a Body? by Paola Crespi

    II. 27 Dance, Answerability and Understanding by Graham McFee

    II. 28 Dancing to Art by Keith Lehrer

    II. 29 Aesthetic Experience as Becoming: Two Perspectives by Nicholas Davey and Linda Boļšakova

    II. 30 Implicit Aesthetics by Randall Auxier

    II. 31 Explorations in the OPEN by Sarah Cheang and Shehnaz Suterwalla

    II. 32 What a Desirable Aesthetic Education Looks Like by Stephen Davies

    II. 33 Art and Evolution by Richard D. Hickman

    II. 34 The Aesthetics of Green Art and Green Skills by Yrjö Sepänmaa

    II. 35 Ecological Aesthetics by Cheng Xiangzhan

    II. 36 Aesthetics and the Environmental Crisis by Emily Brady

    II. 37 Create Dangerously by Albert Camus

    II. 38 Aesthetic and Domestic Skins: In Lock-down with Samuel Beckett by Trish McTighe

    II. 39 Movies as Environments by Matthew Crippen and Farida Youseff

    II. 40 (From) Memoirs by Robert-Houdin

    II. 41 Imagination’s Potential by Lior Levy

    II. 42 Intention in Photography by Ryan Wittingslow

    II. 43 Thinking Through Pictures by Edward Winters

    II. 44 Art, Architecture and Racism by Tom Spector

    II. 45 The Aesthetics of Poverty and the Logic of Racial Capitalism by Julia McClure

    Changes by 빅토르 최 & Makaveli

  • III. 1 Confederate Red: Preface to a Prophetic Aesthetic by Paul C. Taylor

    III. 2 Japanese Photographs: Responding to Suffering, Without Figuration by Alan Tansman

    III. 3 Metaphoric Expressions of “Head” by Three Young Iranian Female Artists by Majid Heidari

    III. 4 Vocal Somaesthetics by Anne Tarvainen

    III. 5 The Panopticon Ear and Antiracist Listening by Nina Sun Eidsheim

    III. 6 Our Earth Does Not Forget by Soretti Bulbula Kadir

    III. 7 Finding Beauty in Death and Grief by Lorraine Hedtke

    III. 8 Drawing the Mind: Graphic Medicine, Aesthetics and Mental Disorders by Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Anu Mary Peter

    III. 9 Art Against War by Krystyna Wilkoszewska

    III. 10 Images that Speak by Mieke Bal

    III. 11 Trespass and Violence: A Confession as told to DX

    III. 12 The Look from Violence by Mahmood Fazal & The Inmate

    III. 13 The Game Will Never Change by INO

    III. 14 Who Can Breathe? – Artaud’s Existential-Aesthetic Theatre of Life by Jones Irwin

    III. 15 Site-specific Dance and Speaking / Walk(ing) through Rancière' Catherine F. Botha

    III. 16 The Aesthetics of Destabilisation in the Dance Choreographies of Pál Frenák by Nóra Horváth

    III. 17 Noir Aesthetics / Philosophy, Flickering by Gray Kochhar-Lindgren

    III. 18 I Was Born, but by Jon Roffe

    III. 19 Make-Believe by Bessie Goldberg

    III. 20 Aesthetics of Aging: The Story of Grand Auntie Eight by Eva Kit Wah Man

    III. 21 Reconnecting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Understanding Psychedelic Aesthetics by Ido Hartogshon

    II. 22 A Trip to the Zoo (cont.) by Michel-Antoine Xhignesse

    III. 23 Michelangelo’s “Prisoners” and Aesthetic Perception by Garry L. Hagberg

    III. 24 Diotima: An Apocryphal Dialogue by Katya Mandoki

    III. 25 'ntiquity in A. Losev’s Cosmic Somaesthetics by Zvezda Alesha

    III. 26 Nietzsche and Aztec Aesthetics by Thomas Leddy

    III. 27 Notes Towards a Future Philology by Rebecca Gould

    III. 28 Dear Future: Dear Muse by Jacqueline Moulton

    III. 29 7 Haiku by Justin Clemens

    III. 30 Neither Blink nor Sway: Aesthetics in a Time of Coronavirus by Richard Deming

    III. 31 Poetry and Equanimity by Gene Flenady

    III. 32 The Sense and Experience of Language in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable by Jacob Lund

    III. 33 Sweat by Inger Wold Lund

    III. 34 Positional Sense by Mat Wilkinson

    III. 35 Parts of Our Selves by Brittany Gentry

    III. 36 Des Pouces / Of Thumbs by Michel de Montaigne (trans. Jack Keenan & James Davies, Australia)

    III. 37 Cruises on Clichés by Lars Aagaard-Mogensen

    III. 38 A Canine Perspective on Aesthetics by Richard D. Hickman

    III. 39 Art Experience as a School of Plurality' Wolfgang Welsch

    III. 40 The Science of Birds and the Bees, Beauty and Art by Bernd Heinrich

    III. 41 Aesthetic Contemplation: Between the Swallows and the Shrine by Peter Cheyne

    III. 42 Àṣẹ Aesthetics by Nkiru Nzegwu

    III. 43 Radical Love & the Healing of Our World by Vishwam Gurudas Heckert

    III. 44 The Philosophic Mind of Indian Aesthetics Symbolised by the Dance of Shiva by Vinod Balakrishnan

    III. 45 (Trans)Formative Aesthetics in Taxonomic Practices by Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette

    III. 46 Time and Sense in Mathematical Diagrams by Nathalie Sinclair & Nicholas Jackiw

    III. 47 Art and Entropy by Joel White

    III. 48 Quantum Aesthetics by Marrigje Paijmans & Georgios Tsagdis

    III. 49 As Above, So Below: Leonora Carrington’s Litany of the Philosophers by Zdeňka Kalnická

    III. 50 Clown Aesthetics by Susanne C. Ylönen & Marianna Keisalo

    III. 51 An Approximate Series of Reflections by Seth Horvitz/Rrose

    Brickworks by Kate Fim

Aesthetic Literacy Volume III

in partnership with philosophers and poets, artists and journalists, and uncategorisable subjects, mongrel matter delivers a new open text, philosophy of final words, featuring twenty five genre-bending contributions

bidding an honest, last farewell calls for great courage and, arguably, a singular sense of clarity

it’s a heuristic message worthy of our careful attention, particularly, if we consider authors and artists who created their own worldviews

for us, facing death head-on

during this ordeal, there’s nothing to lose or hide – over here, every thing matters

  • Gratitude from Beyond Death 1

    Kōkichi Tsuburaya’s Testament

    by Ken-ichi Sasaki

    Death is Not the End

    Negative Mysticism in Jon Fosse’s Morning and Evening

    by Torgeir Fjeld

    Death-Bed Visions (excerpts)

    by William Barrett

    Death Is Not The End: An Existential Philosophy of Bio-Philia

    Beyond Irony and Hyper-Reflexivity in Specific Texts of David Foster Wallace Thanatologist

    by Jones Irwin

    Dying Beyond Death’s Means

    Oscar Wilde’s Last Dying Words

    by Philippe Roepstorff-Robiano

    Oh that Beautiful Boy!

    Emerson’s Last Words and the Question of Philosophy

    by Matthew Kruger

    From the Melancholy Dane

    by Joshua M. Hall

    Writing Dialectically, Speaking Philosophically

    On Hegel's Last Words

    by Kola Heyward-Rotimi & Pat LeGates

    Last Thoughts of Diogenes The Dog

    by Rahenna Markova

    Eulogy

    The Dogs’ Death or a Dog’s Life

    by Giuseppe Vicinanza

    Always Look on the Bright Side of Death

    Graham Chapman’s Memorial Service

    On Life Practice, (Pop)-Experience and “the Eschatalogical Echo"

    by Martin Boszorád

    Tadanori Yokoo’s Pictorial Requiems for Setsuko Hara

    by Jessica X. Daboin

    Dying Sounds

    Some Operatic Final Thoughts

    by Lars Straehler-Pohl

    Reflections About Spirituality in Death

    by Christine Carmela R. Ramos

    Yoga and the Liberation of the Eternal Self

    by Alan Daboin

    “The Best Thing to Do”

    Virginia Woolf’s Suicide Notes and the Construction of a Taboo

    by Rob Marks

    Aphorisms on Suicide

    by Fraser Logan

    We Must Bleed

    by DX

    Sold!

    by Yanka Diaguileva

    D-7 (trans.)

    Shadows

    by Jon Roffe

    Signatures Alike

    by Jamie Davies

    Dying with Ḥallāj

    Love for the One is Isolation of one

    by Zahra Rashid

    Heart of the Matter

    By Kalenga Leon Kalumba

    Their Epitaph

    by Justin Clemens