Arrows of Desire

A new anthology of uncollected writings by Peter Wollen, cultural critic, avant-garde filmmaker and curator of paradigm-shifting exhibitions.

Arrows of Desire indexes numerous intellectual, political, and artistic histories of the twentieth century. The book presents Wollen’s engagement with anti-imperialist politics and counter-cinema, gathering essays, lectures, and proposals that contest the dominant geographies of the avant-garde. At once playful, theoretically rigorous, and historically precise, Wollen’s writing reinvented criticism as a formally experimental practice that extends into poetry and sci-fi.

This collection brings together unpublished and inaccessible writings on Eisenstein and Godard with texts that champion developments in independent moving image after the 1970s. It tracks the political energies running through Wollen’s filmmaking and writing on political crises in Iran and Indonesia published under his pseudonym Lucien Rey, his introduction to Michel Khleifi’s film Wedding in Galilee, and an interview concerning his visionary film Friendship’s Death.

Wollen’s extensive engagement with revolutionary Mexican art is revealed in the paradigm-shifting exhibitions he conceived and curated, culminating in The Continent, an ambitious, unrealised project that brought together Mexican muralism, Native American abstraction, and US abstract expressionism for the first time. Arrows of Desire reveals, in its breadth and detail, the restless imagination, iconoclastic approach, and lucid style of Peter Wollen.

The first of three books of uncollected essays by Peter Wollen, to be published consecutively.The place from which we fire our arrows… – Kodwo Eshun

Part 1. Counter-cinema and Beyond
Introduction to Two Mayakovsky Scenarios
Jean-Luc Godard: Le Gai Savoir
Jean-Luc Godard: British Sounds
Jean-Luc Godard: Wind from the East
Jean-Luc Godard: Counter-cinema
Landscape, Meteorology and Chris Welsby
The Avant-Gardes: Europe and America
- Reply to Sitney
- Passion 1
- L’Eternel Retour
- Arrows of Desire
- Interview on ‘Arrows of Desire’, ICA Biennial of Film and Video
- Diagram on the History of Experimental Film - Perhaps…
- Knight’s Moves

Part 2. Anti-Imperialisms
He That Shall Come
The Revolution in Zanzibar
Aden
The Crisis in Sterling
Iran Today – and Tomorrow?
Guilt by Association
Dossier of the Indonesian Drama
Was Christ a Collaborator?
Contradiction
Friendship’s Death diagrams
Two Weeks on Another Planet
Introduction to Wedding in Galilee
Iraq
John Wesley

Part 3. The Continent: Renarrating ‘American’ Art
Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (with Laura Mulvey)
Eisenstein in Mexico
Introduction to J.G. Posada, Messenger of Mortality
The Continent – Letter to David Ross
The Continent – Sketch for an Exhibition
The Continent – Notes to a Sketch for an Exhibition
Masculinity: Siqueiros and Pollock
Global Conceptualism: North America – Exhibition Notes

A Trialogue on Arrows of Desire – Kodwo Eshun, Oliver Fuke and Nicolas Helm-GrovasPeter Wollen (1938-2019) was a cultural critic, film theorist, curator and avant-garde filmmaker. His books include Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, Raiding the Icebox, Readings and Writings, and Singin’ in the Rain. He co-wrote the screenplay for Antonioni’s The Passenger, and subsequently made six films in collaboration with Laura Mulvey, including Riddles of the Sphinx. His final film was a solo project, Friendship’s Death, starring Tilda Swinton.