Emmalea Russo - Böcker

"One of the year’s most impressive debuts.”—David Gutowski, LargeheartedBoy.com“A skin-crawling drama about three generations of women and their relationships to one another. . . a satirical comedy that is at its core a book of poetry, or literary art.”—ArtnetDid Vivienne Volker Kill Wilma Lang?This question has dogged Vivienne ever since Wilma jumped from a window to her death shortly after Volker stole her lover, the visionary artist Hans Bellmer, in the 1970s. Once a famous artist and fashion icon, Volker is now in her eighties and spends her days in religious contemplation in rural Pennsylvania alongside her daughter Velour Bellmer, her granddaughter Vesta Furio, her much younger boyfriend—a garbageman named Lou—and Franz, the family dog. Their quiet lives are disrupted when Vivienne’s work is selected for inclusion in a high-profile retrospective called "Forgotten Women Surrealists" at the prestigious NAT Museum. However, when rumors of her past misdeeds begin to circulate and she is dropped from the show, a gallery curator enters the picture hoping to capitalize on the buzz generated by the controversy, sending the family's tensions, hopes, and dreams to a dizzying peak.Set over the course of a fateful week, Vivienne deftly weaves surreal prose with a Greek chorus of internet comments and text messages, to ask the questions: what is the cost of vision, what is the price of art? What connects creation and procreation, a life and an afterlife?

A controversial arts collective is rolling out their most audacious project to date: a second moon, set to launch from the Mojave Desert and into the Earth’s atmosphere at the summer’s end. The problem? No one seems to understand how “Moon2” actually works, or how it may alter the mind of every creature on the planet.The project is classified, but a malcontent member of the collective, Dean Konig, threatens their privacy with his secret long-distance relationship with an East Coast artist, Vesta Furio. Their constant video calls allow him to escape the confines of this isolated desert compound, while giving Vesta an escape from her failing marriage to an aging art gallerist who is spiraling down a rabbit hole of conspiracies surrounding Moon2.The Moon Papers tracks an intricately linked collection of characters between the East Coast and the Mojave Desert in the deliriously hot summer months leading up to the divisive launch event. A raucous, psychedelic, and humorous meditation on artistic and mystical vision, surveillance, conspiracy, and what makes us human.