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Nicole Flattery

Nicole Flattery's criticism has appeared in the GuardianThe Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time was published in 2019. Her favourite Chantal Akeman film is News From Home.



Articles Available Online


Chantal Akerman’s ‘My Mother Laughs’

Book Review

October 2019

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

October 2019

There’s a scene in the documentary I Don’t Belong Anywhere, about the Belgian filmmaker’s Chantal Akerman’s life and work, where she discusses her only...

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore's ‘See What Can Be Done’

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore writes in her introduction to See What Can Be Done that, at the start of her career,...

How imagination remembers is twofold, an enfolded act of greed and ingenuity I believe these impulses to be linked in a narrative sense Imagination is always greedy, never sated, or full, with the present Imagination informs the imagineer: I need more! Just as the belly of the compulsive eater must be filled, so imagination can never be stuffed Memory feeds famished imagination, but memory is a faulty mechanism: a selfish, subjective substance also requiring constant nourishment itself in order to function in any low state   Memory cannot be entrusted with conservation Conservation is a contrary motion moving backwards and forwards, pushing and pulling; forever the desire to move forwards, yet looking forever backwards to ensure it is going the right way, doing the right thing   What conservation requires is proof Conservation needs proof in order to be able to proceed with sureness   This proof is not easy to come by   Detailed systems of discovery and exposure need to be set in place in order to pinpoint such proof Proof is, of course, always contextual and may only be seen as certain if it may be compared with other, very similar things, or processes The definition of verisimilitude depends of course on what sort of proof is it you’re after   The proof of Palácio Pombal is evidenced in what is left behind I’m looking at the proof this was a palácio, not that it still is one I accept I’ve come here to experience closely, to try for clarity And what is called into question, rather what arises as a question from my observations is: How can I be sure?   I’ve carefully read the information I was sent about the Palácio I read it because I felt I should I’m trying to forget what I read I’m trying to forget history, in order to overwrite the fragmented, chronological proofs, kindly translated and supplied upon my request This request to Mariana emerged from my doubt rather than my curiosity We human creatures must find our match in scale   *** Naturally, Palácio Pombal

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery’s criticism has appeared in the Guardian, The Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good...

Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Her Body and Other Parties’

Book Review

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

January 2018

I’m reluctant to admit this but it’s often easier for me to write about a book I hated rather than a book I loved....

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Interview

Issue No. 3

Interview with Elmgreen & Dragset

Ben Hunter

Nicholas Shorvon

Interview

Issue No. 3

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are among the most innovative, subversive and wickedly funny contemporary artists at work, or...

Art

March 2013

Beyond the Mainstream and into the Digital

Vid Simoniti

Art

March 2013

Claire Bishop. Everywhere I go, some curator or artist wants to be rid of this turbulent critic.   In 2006...

fiction

November 2013

Special School

Iphgenia Baal

fiction

November 2013

 

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