Books

• Sandro Veronesi, Quiet Chaos, translated by Michael F. Moore
• Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard, trans. Archibald Colquhoun
• Rain Chudori, Imaginary City: A Guide Book

I’ve been reading a fair amount of contemporary southeast Asian literature – this Indonesian novel picked up at random at the Ubud literary festival – and I’m not sure what to make of a lot of it, other than I can’t find a way in. This one is more formally interesting than most I’ve read: one lover takes another through her personal version of Jakarta, starting from the form of a travel guide, with photographs and full-page pullquotes. There’s a pull-out map detailing the locations described. With this, as with a lot of regional contemporary art and writing, there’s a twee quality that I can’t really do anything with: everything is attractive, but with no edge at all. The lovers sigh about the necessary end of their romance, but there’s no visible conflict. The end effect is something like a spread in Kinfolk: perhaps attractive, certainly with high production values, but not art in any way that I can understand.

• Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone, trans. Susan Bernofsky
• Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
• Hwang Jungeun, One Hundred Shadows, trans. Jung Yewon
• Roland Schimmelpfennig, One Clear, Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century, trans. Jamie Bulloch

Films

• Sons of the Desert, directed by William A. Seiter
• Way Out West, dir. James W. Horne
• The Big Noise, dir. Mal St.Clair
• The Nutty Professor, dir. Jerry Lewis
• The Flying Deuces, dir. ‎A. Edward Sutherland 

Exhibits

• Museum Pasifika, Nusa Dua, Indonesia
• Art Bali 2018, Nusa Dua, Indonesia
• Neka Museum, Ubud, Indonesia