The Descent of Man

A fascinating project involving art, history, and literature. Pedagogical Poem is an interdisciplinary research program and exhibition conceived by Arseny Zhilyaev and Ilya Budraitskis and organized by the V-A-C Foundation. This unique project bridges history, contemporary art, and pedagogy. It originated from a series of over 100 lectures and seminars conducted by Russian and international artists, historians, and cultural theorists at the Presnya Historical Memorial Museum, Moscow, from March to November 2012. The project culminated in the exhibition The Archive of the Future Museum of History devised by a group of participants at the Pedagogical Poem series and presented at the museum as the outcome of the educational program and independent archival research work carried out there.

Although originally published separately, Patrick Modiano's three novellas form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Modiano draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of others, to present a dreamlike autobiography that is also the biography of a place. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers-each appears in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists. In this superb English-language translation of Afterimage, Suspended Sentences, and Flowers of Ruin, Mark Polizzotti captures not only Modiano's distinctive narrative voice but also the matchless grace and spare beauty of his prose. Shadowed by the dark period of the Nazi Occupation, these novellas reveal Modiano's fascination with the lost, obscure, or mysterious: a young person's confusion over adult behavior; the repercussions of a chance encounter; the search for a missing father; the aftershock of a fatal affair. To read Modiano's trilogy is to enter his world of uncertainties and the almost accidental way in which people find their fates.

Celebrate what it means to be young and filled with possibility and passion. From Jordan Matter, author of Dancers Among Us with more than 100,000 copies in print and a social media star with over 800,000 followers, comes his most irrepressible project yet, Born to Dance. Using his special gift for photographing dancers in the midst of daily life and focusing it on kids between the ages of 4 and 17, Matter captures a sense of exuberance and joy - what it must feel like to be a young dancer and perform the amazing, gravity-defying things that your body can do. Every girl and boy in the book feels that they were born to dance, and they imbue every common action - hanging at the playground, walking on the beach, eating in the cafeteria, waiting in line at the movies, playing a game with friends - with beauty, humour, and surprise. They twirl, they bounce, they stand on point, and they flip. They bend backward at an impossible angle, leap so high it makes you gasp, and jump in a way that it seems they're levitating. The result, through Jordan Matter's incredible ability to capture the exact right moment, is a visual appreciation of childlike joy and sadness, resilience and energy. Chapters are introduced with Matter's charming personal stories and include "When I Grow Up," "Do They Like Me?" and "I Can Do It." Photos are accompanied by inspiring quotes from the dancers, making it a perfect gift for every dance fan and the parents, teachers, friends, and family who support them. Telling a story that makes people gasp and smile through photography is Jordan Matter's mission. Born To Dance does this by conveying memorable, unique, extraordinary moments and rites of childhood through amazing, often gravity-defying dance positions. Dancers from 4-17 enact sleepovers, first crushes, the joy of an ice cream cone, feeling left out, having a best friend, going swimming and many more joys and trials of childhood.

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures.

On a train journey, Pozdnyshev tells his story to a stranger: how his relationship with his wife gradually deteriorated from one of love and passion to jealousy and resentfulness, culminating in a mad act of desperation while she practised Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with her violin teacher. An uncompromising examination of lust, suspicion and infidelity which was once forbidden by censors in Russia and banned in the US due to its shocking content, Tolstoy’s controversial novella – here presented in a new translation, along with ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus’, ‘Master and Man’ and ‘After the Ball’ – is now considered one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy’s late period. Contains: ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, ‘After the Ball’, ‘Master and Man’, ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus’.