iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Found the notes from my first encounter with critical theory as an undergrad in 1999... I still haven't finished that reading list.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've been looking at auctions for astrolabes a lot recently... Forget this humanistic clock/GPS orientation in time and space... I want to know my cosmological position, that is, my place in both the cosmos and the logos.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I'm sorry, but this world really is intolerable. What wretched awful creatures we humans are.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I made some edits to emphasise the contrast and to give it more of an Andreas Gursky vibe... It still does not quite capture the feeling of the desolate expanse of the hillside rising up towards the sky as you come out from the forest.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The greyness of a recently logged hillside against the greyness of impending rain... Welcome to Sweden in autumn.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Finally received a copy of Konrad Muller's 'My Heart at Evening', hand-delivered by my father all the way from Tasmania. It recounts a fictionalised event in the life of one Jorgen Jorgenson, where he is sent to investigate the historically factual suicide of the surveyor Henry Hellyer in 1834.

The book 'My Heart at Evening' by Konrad Muller, resting on a tote bag from The Hobart Book Shop.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Next weekend I will be participating in the exhibition Ö/ver/leva [Survive] at YellowBox Arts on Öland, curated by Helle Kvamme and Ed Whittaker. The possibility of some life beyond life (över leva – sur vivre) led me back to Walter Benjamin and his distinction between mere life and the living.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Thanks to @manymanyplies.bsky.social for drawing my attention to this fantastic piece of 17th-century marginalia: Is cheese rational? In answering this question we can turn to an event from Manfred Kuehn's biography of Immanuel Kant, that great and 'all-crushing' critic of reason.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

There are some authors/books that I love but can only handle in small doses, maybe only one book a year or so. The examples that come to mind off the top of my head are Gerald Murnane, Elfriede Jelinek , and Thomas Bernhard...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Do you think that Adorno's 'Rien faire comme une betê, lying on water and looking peacefully at the sky' (Minima Moralia #100) can be connected to Aristotle's 'kind of serenity [euemeria, beautiful day] and a natural sweetness. (Politics, 1278b) as Agamben discusses it in Homo Sacer?

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

You live your entire life without ever coming across the word 'quondam' and then suddenly read two books in a row that use it... Curiously both were Australian: My Heart at Evening by Konrad Muller (pictured) and My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

In the Cisternerne, Copenhagen.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I went to the Sidney Nolan Trust, but was more taken with the slate roofs than any of the art... Amazing old buildings.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

A few days up in Stockholm resulted in a pretty good haul. Thanks to August Antikvariat, @ronnellsantivaria.bsky.social and Söderbokhandeln.

Five books lying on black floorboards:
Watt by Samuel Beckett
Eye of the Monkey by Krisztina Tóth
Efterlämnat by Lars Norén
The Left-handed Woman by Peter Handle
Walker Benjamin The Story of a Friendship by Gershom Scholem

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Checked back into Grand Hotel Abyss again for the summer...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Slowly repairing the concrete of our front steps before the ice returns... A shame, as I quite like the decoration of this winding fissure.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

A quick trip to Uppsala to visit the Cathedral, eat some good food (not pictured), and find a copy of Queen by Birgitta Trotzig (translated by Saskia Vogel).

An ornate door and tympanum of Uppsala Cathedral

The book Queen by Birgitta Trotzig (translated by Saskia Vogel).

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

This is because the word used for 'unravel' or 'loosen' is ἀλλύεσκεν, a form of the verb ἀναλύω from which we get the English word analyse. Now when I hear the word analyse, I always see Penelope at night surrounded by torches, working at unweaving her earlier work on the funeral shroud of Laertes.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Since it is topical, my favorite lines from The Odyssey are Book 2, lines 103–5: 'So she spoke, and our proud hearts consented. Then day by day she would weave at the great web, but by night would unravel it, having had torches placed beside her.'

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Sunday: Seeded sourdough and pita bread baked. Mangetout and beans blanched and frozen. Cucumbers picked and pickled with dill crowns.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

It is just over halfway through the exhibition Paradis in Årstads mycket tillfälliga konsthall. There is some information about my work there (in English) up on the website. arstadskonsthall.se/konstn%C3%A4...

arstadskonsthall.se

Liam Sprod

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

While scrubbing moss off paving stones this afternoon, I listened to two episodes of In Our Time. One on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and one on Dylan Thomas. What did I learn? 1. Many of the scrolls concern the apocalypse. 2. Thomas was part of a group of poets called The New Apocalyptics....

Beautiful, clean paving stones standing on their ends drying, no moss in sight anywhere...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

This Saturday, @lindapersson.bsky.social and I will be part of the summer exhibition programme at Årstads Mycket Tillfälliga Konsthall. The overall title of the programme is Paradise, and our installation, referencing Benjamin, is titled 'But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise'. arstadskonsthall.se

A selection of rather abstract photographs laid out on black floorboards.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

You can read about this rubbish heap, the disenchantment of the world it represents, the snowy landscape within which it sits, and the novel it inspired in this interview I did with the fantastic @minorliteratures.bsky.social Many thanks to @monalisavitti.bsky.social and @tobiasvryan.bsky.social

A pile of rubbish, mainly pallets, covered in snow, sitting at the edge of a forest.
'For those who looked deeper saw the scene of their existence as a rubbish heap of partial, inauthentic actions. Life itself protested against this.'
– Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

'The anti-realistic moment in the modern novel, its metaphysical dimension, is called forth by its true subject matter, a society in which human beings have been torn from one another and from themselves. What is reflected in aesthetic transcendence is the disenchantment of the world.'

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

An excerpt from my novel Dead Ice is available to read over on @minorliteratures.bsky.social We in Europe are in the middle of heatwave, so this cold wintry reading might feel rather incongruous... but maybe cool thoughts are necessary. And we are past the solstice and heading back into the dark.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

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minor literature[s] @minorliteratures.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

and coming up this week ... — an interview with @liamsprod.bsky.social , alongside an extract from his novel DEAD ICE — fiction from Stephen Orr

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Printing up some of my photographs for an upcoming exhibition with @lindapersson.bsky.social at Årstads Mycket Tillfälliga Konsthall in Falkenberg in July.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I've been spending a bit of time with Melancolia recently, specifically Dürer's Melancolia I (1514), along with Benjamin's taxonomy of melancholy in the Trauerspiel book, Warburg's account of pagan renewal in Reformation Germany, and Saxl and Panofsky of course...

The engraving Melancolia I (1514) by Albrecht Dürer.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Yesterday was 'Sweden's National Day' supposedly after the election of Gustav Vasa as King of Sweden in 1523, but only a tradition since 1916. Today we went to Viserum to honour the freedom fighter Nils Dacke, a Småland peasant who led a popular revolt against Vasa and his Reformation.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

When I worked in a bookshop, parents often asked me if books were appropriate for their child (usually YA titles). My most common answer was that most things are appropriate with the correct contextualization, which often outraged people.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

As I'm waiting for a part for my car, and there is no public transport on a Saturday where I live, I thought I would try to hitchhike to the railways station (~15km) to get to a vernissage this afternoon. No luck, so I gave up after a couple of hours. I'm not surprised, but slightly disappointed.

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Okay, a list of a hundred books I've read and think are quite good. Only one book per author, no particular order. It reveals the peculiarities and prejudices of my taste, certainly... But I tried to be honest with what I've read and recall. I might make some annotations below...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

So many amazing things to read, so little time, so much lack of language skills (can there be a lot of a lack?)...

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Liam Sprod @liamsprod.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

You go into the Scuola di San Rocco and see the most amazing Tintorettos and then the exit leads you straight into an alleyway where the walls are covered in pigeon shit -- From the sublime to the profane in one go...