Sunday Reads
Some books try to explain the world. Others just document it mid-glitch. These sit somewhere in between: theory that reads like sci-fi, camera rolls turned into scripture, painting that looks like it remembers dreams better than you do and magazines trying (heroically) to keep up with whatever now is. Consider this a small operating system update.
This is theory written like it’s already overheated. Published by Becoming Press in 2025, Exocapitalism argues that capital has effectively slipped the leash — no longer a human system, but something self-governing, software-like, and increasingly indifferent to us. It’s the best new theory to come out this year, and I must read if you want to get your mind blown and get a seriously fresh take on what this late stage capitalism that we all try to survive actually us. Poliks (philosophy of technology, deep learning) and Trillo (media theorist/artist working across AI and sound) treat finance like infrastructure and infrastructure like a living thing. The book is structured in five “movements” — Scale, Fold, Lift, Drag, The Last Mile — which already tells you it’s not interested in behaving like a normal economics text. There’s a lot in here about arbitrage, software, platforms, and the idea that value now comes from volatility and latency rather than labor. It reads less like critique and more like a field guide written from inside the machine. Slightly unwell, but in a productive way.
256GB is Yung Lean’s first book: 574 images pulled from a decade of iPhone storage (2014–2024), reorganised into a 596-page object that looks like a bible. The images are grouped into colour-coded chapters — red, blue, black, etc. — turning the randomness of the phone archive into something closer to a system. Lean’s whole thing — early internet melancholy, vaporwave sincerity, outsider mythmaking — is here: “Me and Mum,” “Dead Fish,” “Travis.” Welcome to this hyper-personal content collection produced with Italian bookbinding techniques, rooted in 500-year-old bible-making.
Born in 1976 and based in Yokohama, Iyoda works across pencil, watercolor, oil painting, engraving — basically anything that lets him build dense, symbolic worlds. His imagery moves between botanical studies, mythological figures, tarot systems, and invented creatures, all rendered with academic precision. The collected works volume reads like a cabinet of curiosities: tarot decks next to zodiac diagrams next to something that looks like it belongs in a medieval bestiary. He’s also done book covers, textiles, and collaborations with Yohji Yamamoto, which tracks — the work has that same controlled weirdness.
Gruppe is the Berlin-based, artist-led, magazine, zine, or collaborative archive – whatever you want it to be. Issue 7 pulls in a hot mix: Tom Burr, Rick Castro, Takashi Homma, Gregor Schneider, John Waters, among others. I think you need to get into this one to get into what Berlin has to say no aways. Have fun.
Spike doing what Spike does best: diagnosing the present while slightly enjoying the symptoms. Issue 87 (Spring 2026) takes the obvious premise — everything is online, even when it isn’t — and runs with it. The framing is blunt: there’s no longer a meaningful distinction between “real life” and digital life, so art has to come up with new aesthetics, fables, and protocols. Inside: NFTs as lore, AI as everyday infrastructure, memes as afterlives, internet cinema, Shenzhen as a model city, plus Poliks & Trillo again on exocapitalism (cross-pollination moment). There’s also a new section called “LIFEMAXXING.” If you’re a cynic critic but not allergic to pleasure, get invested.
