At Large #20

At Large Issue No. 20
Fall Winter 2023

Editor’s letter:

Slavoj Zizek appears at the Occupy Wall Street tent city in downtown Manhattan. It’s 2008, the aftermath of the financial crash. He makes a speech. You’ve heard his speeches. Left alone, they’re funny. He’s a funny guy-part Karl Marx, part Groucho Marx-and it’s his humor that makes his political commentary so sticky and digestible.
Up front in this Occupy diatribe, Zizek tells a joke from his days living under Communist rule:

“A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says: Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.”

Why bring it up now?

Politics and economics aside, the current state of our media- from the national press to our social channels-has become circuit-blowingly complex, a constant torrent of intoxicating information that I’m not sure anyone is prepared to sift through and analyze and make determinations about what’s true daily, let alone seek and settle upon capital t Truth and rest their weary soul. What’s noise? Where’s the signal? It’s exhausting.

Since the founding of At Large in 2014, the editors have relied on a less explicit but well-established code with our contributors.
That within the dispatches from their soul-searching, we might find a little warmth on the cold front of our personal Siberia. At the least, we hope this issue gives you a break from the daily torrent dialogue with this radical, austere architecture.

— Erik Rasmussen