Episode 40 is a chat with artists, writers and curators Adam Turl and Tish Turl, organisers of the Born Again Labor Museum, and editors of the experimental journal and art collective Locust Review.
I worked on Adam’s book for Revol Press, which we talk about a little towards the end of the episode. In Gothic Capitalism: Art Evicted From Heaven and Earth, Adam argues that we live among the ‘gothic’ ruins of 20th century, post-imperial culture, and explores the consequences of this for artists, writers and activists.
Over the course of about 90 minutes, we discuss their efforts in organising and activism in their home town of Carbondale, Illinois; the ethics of time travel; the challenges of writing poetry, fiction and theory in dark times; and the dangers of living under the political instability and increasing authoritarianism of the Trump regime.
This episode is audio only, but skip to the bottom of this post for an embed of the video version on YouTube. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date with future video episodes.
Reading recommendations from the Turls
We start by talking about Locust Review, an experimental online and print journal specialising in left-wing and radical fiction, poetry, prose and visual art. Adam and Tish were co-founders, along with a few others — you can read about the other editors, artists and writers involved in publishing the journal here.
Adam and Tish mention Alexander Billet (author of Shake The City: Experiments in Space and Time, Music and Crisis), Adam Marks, Alice MacIntyre and a few others as early members of the editorial team. They also mention Holly Lewis, who is interviewed here for Spectre magazine, as another early figure in the journal’s development. Adam mentions Holly’s 2016 book The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection, available from Bloomsbury.
We also talk about artist and activist Anupam Roy, an early contributor and current co-editor — there’s a great interview between Adam and Anupam in Red Wedge Magazine (a forerunner of Locust Review). It serves as an introduction to Roy’s art, his activist work, and its themes.
We digress a little into discussing the importance of a few key science fiction editors from the 1950s and onwards, including Frederik Pohl and Judith Merril, who both played a huge part in transforming science fiction from a pulp, fringe genre to a respected literary canon in its own right — as Adam says, both were influenced by left-wing ideas.
Discussing small presses and experimental fiction, we briefly mention Walter Benjamin, a central figure in the Frankfurt School of political philosophers, which also included Max Horkeheimer, Theodor Adorno and others. Benjamin’s book The Arcades Project talks about ‘flaneurism’, which Adam also mentions later on, along with some of the other key points in Benjamin’s theories about art.
As we go on to discuss the Born Again Labor Museum (find out more about it here), Adam mentions the influence of Alain Badiou’s Rhapsody for the Theatre and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’, which you can learn a little bit about here and here. These theories and approaches informed how Adam and Tish initially approached the thinking behind the opening of BALM, and how it would interact with the artists and groups who used the space.
They describe BALM as both a ‘social practice art’ space, and a theatrical space. Examples they offer around the uses of the space so far include action groups looking at reproductive rights, advocacy for the provision of healthcare for transgender people, and the forming of unions at companies like Starbucks.
As mentioned above, Adam published a book this year with Revol Press, Gothic Capitalism: Art Evicted From Heaven and Earth. We discuss some themes from the book at the end of the episode, but if you’d like to find out more, check out this Q&A with Adam from Revol’s Substack, an interview with Socialist News And Views, plus their recent appearance on the excellent Varn Vlog podcast, and their conversation with Jason Myles on This Is Revolution.
We also discussed Adam’s essay on the ‘lone gunman’ and ‘ghosts’, which is up now on the Revol blog. It’s a cracking essay, looking at American military power, political violence, and how this relates to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
Discussing Tish’s writing, we talk about a few short stories, poems and ongoing works, including the poem ‘Hospitality Engine’ (in Locust Review), and a short story about the ‘Immortality Beaver’, also featured in their artwork, which can be found around Carbondale in various locations.
Tish’s ongoing works include the Stink Ape Resurrection Primer — read Part 1 and Part 2, also at Locust Review — and the serialised novel Sound — Parts 1-3 are available here, along with future chapters. Tish came to writing through fanfiction, as both an author and editor — we discuss our mutual love of Supernatural — a show about Sam and Dean Winchester, two underwear models who solve spooky crimes. Please forgive me for linking to this archived post about the best of the fanfic subgenre known as ‘wincest’.
Adam briefly mentions the ‘Horatio Alger myth’ — an example of the ‘rise to respectability’ narrative, both much imitated and widely derided in American fiction. We get on to talking about time travel, a recurring theme in Tish’s work. They mention the short story ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury, which ties into the excellent signs they produced to advocate for the ‘legalisation’ of time travel, for use as a revolutionary tool. Bradbury’s original story deals with time travellers ‘on holiday’ in the past, and is a classic of the genre (according to Tish, it’s often taught in American schools). Adam also mentions the Russian cosmist Nikolai Fyodorov — there’s a good article in e-flux about his life and work.
We discuss a few more key contributors to Locust Review, including R. Faze, whose stories ‘I Live An Hour From My Body’ and ‘My Body’s Claims, Verified’ have some strong messages about bodily autonomy, dissociation, and the alienation of workers under capitalism. We also briefly discussed The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trostky — an early influence on Tish, along with the classic Sidney Lumet film Network (1976), starring Peter Finch as newsreader Howard Beale.
Thanks to Adam and Tish for a giant-sized, fascinating conversation which also took in the history of American expansion, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the particular challenges around organising protest and resistance in Trump’s America, their work with the Democratic Socialists of America, and more of their theoretical and aesthetic influences. I enjoyed this one a great deal — I hope you do too.
Video episodes
I’ve been watching the numbers on recent video posts and listening to some feedback from subscribers (thank you!), and I’m trying something a bit different with the video for future episodes.
All the content on Substack will be audio only, but if you prefer to watch the interviews, they’ll now be uploaded for free on the Strange Exiles channel on YouTube. Head over there and subscribe if you’d like to see them in your feed. Here’s the chat with Adam and Tish.
Next up…
The next episode will be a conversation with essayist and fellow Substacker Robert Shepherd, whose recent essays include reflections on Wittgenstein, Doctor Who and evolution, among other topics. In particular we’ll be discussing his essay on the ‘singularity’ (part of his ‘Our Ghost’ series) and what it means for the development of artificial intelligence in the years to come. We recorded this a few months ago, so look out for it very soon.
Thanks for supporting Strange Exiles! I have new projects to announce soon, exclusively for subscribers — stay tuned.
-Bram, Glasgow, August 2025
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