Failed States Issue No. 4: South
Failed States
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Failed States Issue No. 4: South
Failed States
$22.00
Sold Out
Failed States is a publishing project that collates and investigates ideas around place, or more specifically: indeterminate geographies. As a continually evolving mode of research — in its oblique approach to geography, openness to possibility and curiosity as to what discrete responses might collectively reveal — Failed States is endeavouring to imagine, occupy and furnish another kind of space.

Each themed issue of the journal is an assemblage of innovative text and image by emerging and established writers, artists, filmmakers, photographers and academics. Rather than cultivate a house style, we strive to publish content that varies widely in intent, tone and realisation.

South is relative — a place we simultaneously travel to and from. In the fourth issue of Failed States, a journal of art and writing on place, we journey from Cork to Cairo to Chile; Margate to Morocco to the Mississippi Delta; Mount Taranaki to the Rio Grande; to South Dakota, the Sandwich Islands and a South London street called Rainbow. Stories include:

- Altiplano, in which artist Malena Szlam and volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer explore the Atacama Desert.
- Austral Index, in which Pete Segall catalogues a number of souths from SoHo to Yunnan.
- Borderlands, in which Joanna Pocock travels along what would be The Wall on the Mexico-United States border.
- Double False Position, in which Moad Musbahi tells a story of a scholarly Sufi saint braving the waters off the shores of Cape Beddouza.
- Four car ramps, in which Paolo Patelli documents the building of unsanctioned motorway ramps in Ard El Lewa, Cairo.
- Land Remains, in which Jake Silby delves into the mythology, Maori origin stories and colonial history of Mount Taranaki.
- Milton of Vivos, in which Jenny Perlin encounters a man preparing for the apocalypse in a bunker in South Dakota.
- Night Wind Remembers, in which Donal Mosher returns to North Carolina for his father’s surgery, confronting illness, aging and celluloid fantasies.
- Portrait of the Artist as a Capitalist Goat, in which Simon EvansTM chronicle life heading south in Brooklyn during lockdown.
- Rollercoasting, in which Frank Watson traverses the littoral landscape of post-Brexit Kent.
- Slide Lecture, in which Carlos Kong chances upon European portrayals of the Global South in a box of antique magic lantern slides.
- South is a Bright Blocked Place, in which Nina Schack Kock has a religious experience when unable to find a monastery in Greece.
- South is the state of sacrifice, in which Imani Jacqueline Brown surveys the coastal wetlands of Louisiana, bearing witness to the consequences of extractivism.
- South x South, in which Ibrahim Ahmed makes bricks in Ard El Lewa, Cairo from fabric scraps originating in the textile mills of the Global South.- Sundowners, in which Jeremy Atherton Lin reflects on late nights out — in South London, Margate and Bath — while finishing his book Gay Bar.
- The Land Question: Where the fuck am I supposed to have sex? (extract), in which Eimear Walshe gives an account of two nuns cohabiting in Cork while confronting the complexities of land contestation.
- This is Happening, in which Andrea Mason details her South East London neighbourhood over two years.
- Women Hold Up Half The Sky, in which Jasleen Kaur reimagines an archival image of Sikh soldiers performing a gymnastics routine in Waziristan.
- Plus our recurring Etymology feature, in which Bryony Quinn gets to the roots of the issue’s theme.

Editor(s): Jamie Atherton, Jeremy Atherton Lin
Year: 2020
Pages: 186
Dimensions: 27.5 x 21 cm
Cover: Softcover
ISSN: 2515-5997
Language: English