A witless mess of nylon, Nikes, and hair gel dangles from the crane angled at an uncomfortable 60 degrees. With one shoe missing, the stuntman has wrapped his figure around the triangulated tip of the crane, pressing his sweaty belly into the cables and beams for dear life. The director glances up again for the millionth time, and for the millionth time, quickly averts his gaze and pretends that he has bigger things to think about. He has a vision, he does. He averts his gaze and tries to concentrate on his vision, which he ought to have known from the outset would be compromised by casting his brother-in-law’s cousin as the lead urban ninja assailant.

The 48 stories collected here were written collaboratively with Serena Lee between 2012 and 2015 using a aleatory or chance-based system that allows vocabulary to flow from one text into another. This unfolding linguistic environment generated a strange, precarious world, peopled by desperate, delirious and flawed individuals.

Scenes play out in various collapsing scenarios such as unravelling film shoots, the wake of go-cart teams gone rogue, art schools during civil war, suicide attacks by senior citizens and purgatorial festive retail situations. Embattled against these manifold crises, characters and readers continually face the moral, emotional and philosophical challenges of negotiating misfortune and disaster. 

212 pages riso printed in London by Hato Press.

This Massive Power originated in a workshop led by Chris Evans at the Piet Zwart Institute.

£8 including post and packaging worldwide.