Jacob Henry Leveton
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jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Jacob Henry Leveton
@jacobhleveton.bsky.social
530 followers 460 following 400 posts
Scholar of visual culture, sound, political aesthetics.
Philosophy of literature, Post-Romantic media.
Anti-obscurantist.

Editor, the Non-Standard 📰
a weekly paper for experimentation in the materialisms of the present
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jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Still vibing on Monday's conversation students from Art & Visual Culture had as part of the semester's virtual artist visit with the recording artist Theodore.

Turns out: "Breathe into Me" from his new album FIRE is less about romantic ❤️ than an invocation of the 9 Muses.

#VisualCulture #Pedagogy
A red monochrome image fills the slide. Centered near the bottom, a blurred figure bends forward in motion, one hand touching the floor and one leg extended, as if caught mid-movement or transformation. The background glows in deep crimson, evoking heat, passion, and creation. Above the image, black and white text reads: “FIRE — A Study in Vision, Form, & Catharsis” and “Theodore Artist Visit.” The lower text identifies the course, FNAR 199: Art & Visual Culture · Loyola University Chicago, and the album artwork credit: “Theodore, FIRE. Album cover (detail). Athens: United We Fly, 2025.” A cream-colored slide with red and black text. The header reads: “BREATHE INTO ME — Pneuma, Prophecy, and the Invocation of the Muses.” The text recounts musician Theodore’s reflection on his song “Breathe Into Me,” describing it as an invocation of the twelve Muses and a modern reimagining of Hesiod’s poetics. The body of text explores breath as a creative and divine force—human and more-than-human—rising from exhaustion toward illumination, and concludes with the image of waiting for inspiration as the cycle of breath giving life to song, and song to breath. A nighttime image of a neoclassical building, the Hermoupolis Town Hall on the Greek island of Syros, bathed in bright linear lights and rising smoke. Musicians perform on its steps under beams of white light forming geometric patterns on the façade. The text above reads “Light, Place, & The Sacred Trace,” with reflections on Theodore’s discussion of performance in Greek public spaces. The text below explains how his lighting design honors the sacred lineage of Greek architecture, treating each performance as an act of memory and renewal. A classroom photo shows a projected Zoom image of musician Theodore speaking from a softly lit studio. The slide background is a muted gold, with black and red text. The title reads: “Reckoner — Influence, Originality, & the Sound of Return.” The text below explains that the class listened to Radiohead’s “Reckoner” from In Rainbows and discussed artistic influence. Theodore reminded students that influence is never repetition, but the discovery of one’s own voice within another’s horizon—translating inspiration into new forms.
October 15, 2025 at 3:27 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
the non-standard, issue 5 includes engagements with Palestine, opposing war, and resisting AI-driven audiovisual content.

Pieces by Rebecca Gross, David Clark and Orrin Wang, and Hannah Markley
A full-page layout of the non-standard, Vol. 1, No. 5 (August 31, 2025), a weekly paper for experimentation in the materialisms of the present. The masthead displays the paper’s title in bold black and red lowercase letters, with “non-” offset, followed by the tagline: “a weekly paper for experimentation in the materialisms of the present.” Three essays fill the page, set in clean serif type across distinct columns: “Given (What Academics Text)” by David L. Clark and Orrin N.C. Wang: A serialized text exchange interweaving Dead & Co., Kant, Wollstonecraft, and Derrida with reflections on the ethics of teaching in catastrophic times. Includes meditations on grief, protest, silence, and the impossibility—and necessity—of teaching when classrooms are shattered by violence. “Grief’s Asymmetries” by Rebecca Gross: An intervention on Zionism, diaspora, and dispossession in the wake of Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. Engages Franz Fanon, Gabriel Winant, and Lital Levy while insisting on the asymmetry of grief as a political force. “And Just Like That” by Hannah Markley: A cultural critique of television’s endless reboots, from Sex and the City to Game of Thrones spinoffs, read as symptomatic of the recursive logic of AI and streaming media. Argues that deadened repetition and “mid-TV” mirror the self-absorbed artificiality of our technological moment. The layout is minimalist, emphasizing textual density and intellectual urgency. Footnotes appear beneath the final essay, citing Franz Fanon, Gabriel Winant, Lital Levy, and Ahmad Qabaha and Abdel Karim Daraghmeh. Author bios close the issue, noting institutional affiliations and forthcoming works.
September 1, 2025 at 3:02 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
The Non-Standard issue 2, my new Sunday digital newspaper.

Thinking with grace grace grace, Mira Pertillo, and myself about rainbows, word inflation and AI, and Laruelle.

#CriticalTheory #ExperimentalHumanities
Full-page layout of The Non-Standard, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 10, 2025), a weekly paper for experimentation in the materialisms of the present. The masthead features a black lowercase “the” and “standard,” with “non-” in bold red and black letters and an offset orange “a.” Three columns of text follow: 1. “Difference’s Rainbow” by grace grace grace — Reflecting on Alfred North Whitehead, the bifurcation of nature, and the plural perception of rainbows as a refusal of the fiction that the world is finished. Emphasizes values, feelings, and the political inheritance of wonder. 2. “What Survives AI Talk?” by Mira Petrillo — Drawing on Vilém Flusser, explores word inflation, the noise of accelerated speech, and the fragility of language’s capacity to move, connect, and shape the world. Considers how grace and human relation persist amid AI-mediated communication. 3. “On Non-Journalism” by Jacob Henry Leveton — Introducing François Laruelle’s city–nature–cosmos triad and the concept of determination-in-the-last-instance. Defines non-journalism as inhabiting the weave of the Real, tracing events where shared reasoning meets ecological relations, and tending the ever-living fire toward collective futures. Serif headlines, justified text blocks, and footnotes throughout. The aesthetic is minimalist, emphasizing clarity and typographic precision.
August 10, 2025 at 5:03 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Final text-only slide. The author writes: “I averted my eyes, anyway.” 
This is followed by a poetic closing paragraph about logistics, Romanticism, and the phrase, attributable to a bird of hope in the spirit of romanticism’s political history: “enjoy your terror, in all appropriate measure.” Below is a bio for Kate Singer, including her position at Mount Holyoke and book title.
Footnotes cite Maggie Kearnan’s play and Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology. 
At the bottom is a correction note clarifying that the stylized title How *Not* to Save the World with Mr. Bezos should underline the word Not, to emphasize its ironic structure and focus on Bezos.
August 5, 2025 at 10:33 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Text-only slide continuing the essay. A performance mode is described: a Fact Checker honks at dialogue errors, makes cultural commentary, and leads singalongs. 
A stylized block quote from Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology reads: They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they don’t know. 
This is attributed to Žižek. The author’s dog, Norman, is invoked humorously as adding:
and are enjoying it, anyway. 
The final paragraph describes the author’s discomfort watching Bezos—played by Noah Tuleja—humiliated and “trussed and bled like a pig.”
August 5, 2025 at 10:32 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Paragraphs describe Kearnan’s world as a “Marxist fever dream,” with a central statute: No one may possess more than $999 million—not a penny more. 
This quote is bolded and centered in sans-serif. The essay goes on to describe how excess wealth is criminalized and mocked, and how Bezos is subjected to theatrical justice by vigilante performers.
August 5, 2025 at 10:31 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Text on slide—During a recent run of How *Not* to Save the World with Mr. Bezos, the audience—divided in the black box like products on a warehouse shelf—was asked: Center: Photograph of the stage performance. One performer sits at a table under a glowing ring light, another stands before a screen that says “MR. BEZOS.” The set evokes trial by a dystopian tribunal. 
Caption: How Not to Save the World with Mr. Bezos, by Maggie Kearnan, dir. Clay Hopper, 2025. Great Barrington Public Theatre.
 Bottom: In orange italics, the quote from the play—“who here subscribes to Amazon Prime?”
August 5, 2025 at 10:31 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
A slide with a stylized grayscale portrait of Kate Singer, looking directly at the viewer, framed by a window and hanging lamp. Title text reads: “Kate Singer, “Bezos on Trial.” A vertical sidebar says: from the non-standard, vol. 1 no. 1 • August 3, 2025. At the bottom: “Carousel with Article in Full” and a right-facing arrow.
August 5, 2025 at 10:30 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
the non-standard

vol. 1, no. 1 • Aug. 3, 2025

🎭 Kate Singer on Late-Captialism and Jeff Bezos in Maggie Kearnan’s play in the Berkshires

⚠️ Sam Weber on Benjamin, Adorno, and resisting murderous states and algorithmic repression

⬛️ Myself on François Laruelle and non-journalism
At the top of the week’s paper, the Non-Standard’s logo with red circle and hyphen, alt-mondialisation first right triangle in place of an “A” and then earth-toned left triangle in place of second “A.”

Beneath is the paper’s tagline: a weekly experiment in the materialism’s of the present, and then issue dated:

August 3, 2025 · vol. 1, no. 1 

Editor’s Note by Jacob Henry Leveton (left column):
A manifesto explaining that the paper is not a platform or launch but a site for non-aligned political thought. The note references Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Sergei Tretyakov, and Joan Didion, calling for a turn to “non-journalism” that resists platform logic and embraces pluralism and resistance. A footnote references Marx and François Laruelle. “Bezos on Trial” by Kate Singer (center column):
A satire of Amazon logistics and billionaire accumulation, set during a performance of Maggie Kearnan’s play titled How Not to Save the World with Mr. Bezos. The audience is likened to products on warehouse shelves. In the playwright’s imagined reality, no billionaire may own more than $999 million. The piece explores Kearnan’s world as a “Marxist fever dream” and burlesque trial. Žižek is quoted. Singer’s dog Norman adds to the enjoyment and commentary against extreme wealth inequality. “Neither Amazement Nor Normalcy” by Samuel Weber (right column):
A philosophical meditation on post-Benjaminian theory, anti-fascism, and political aesthetics. The piece begins with a Benjamin quote that opposes “amazement” as dominant political ideology that underpinned fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, and is ascendant, today. Weber critiques state power, late-fascist governance, and the friend–enemy logic to Carl Schmitt.

Aligned to the left column is a detail of Zachary Cahill’s 2019 artwork: The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, from the artist’s USSA Postal Service. The banner features a woman standing before a post office featuring a multiplicity of doric columns
August 3, 2025 at 6:40 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Just 2 dudes watching Curb Your Enthusiasm 🐶🙋‍♂️
Golden retriever and Jake watching Curb Your Enthusiasm on a tv in a living room together.
July 29, 2025 at 12:18 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
I love my navy blue murphy desk so very much.
Murphy Desk with laptop on it and chair
July 24, 2025 at 8:44 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Here's the book, in case you're interested.

#ContemporaryArt #SpeculativeFiction #Paris
Book image of Unicorn Death Moon: Paris Guidebook by Zachary Cahill. Features text in a matrix dividing Unicorn Death Moon from Paris Guidebook and the author's name. The cover image is a skeleton representing death next to a Unicorn appearing right with a gold and purple maine, swirling in a vortex around the moon.
July 24, 2025 at 2:45 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Continuing to reflect on the convo w/ Zachary Cahill on his Paris Guidebook @ the Arts Club of Chicago.

A book iridescent of an 'imagetext' dwelling in wonder:

Fantasy & death through Catacombs, Notre-Dame, Moreau's studio, & the Seine.

The next full moon is Aug. 9. Take a nighttime walk.
Two men sit on a couch in conversation during a public event. On the left, one speaks into a microphone, gesturing expressively with his free hand. On the right, the other listens attentively, wearing a black t-shirt with a unicorn graphic, pink shorts, colorful socks, and turquoise sneakers, holding a book. Behind them, abstract grayscale drawings hang in a grid across the white wall. A large window to the right reveals trees and a modern building, suggesting an urban setting.


July 24, 2025 at 2:42 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
A dark navy slide with light serif and sans-serif text. At the top, the heading reads: In Lacan’s framing,
love names the moment when
lack is not avoided
but deferred, disclosed,
and—most importantly—
learned. (“learned” is italicized for emphasis) Beneath this, a paragraph-style reflection unfolds in fine sans-serif: This occurs by way of seeing—visually, yes, but only ever cognitively. The deep truth of an image that is imageless: in the mind. Thought: known, but always fictive, and never actualizable. The Lover becomes a student of their own incompletion. But also of a Future selfhood glimpsed through Love as one predominant medium of becoming.
July 22, 2025 at 10:28 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
A minimal slide with black serif text on a white background. At the top, the text reads: To study love is to study lack.
Lacan knew this: Beneath is an oversized opening quotation mark, followed by an extended passage in a mix of italic and bold styles: A still more formidable situation,
if we think precisely that by the
very nature of transference
‘what he is lacking’ is going to be
learned by [them] as a lover. At the bottom of the slide, a smaller citation reads: from the Transference seminars: November 16, 1960.
July 22, 2025 at 10:28 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
More thoughts on the academic study of love as a domain of inquiry for #visualculture.

One thread that Zach Cahill and I surfaced at the Arts Club dialogue last week was how academics trivialize it.

Interested in what others might think about this.
A slide with white serif text on a dark blue background. At the top, in centered, bold lettering: Love is a Problematic in the Visual Field.
Love is a Critical Aporia in Visual Culture. Below is an oil painting by Anselm Feuerbach titled Plato’s Symposium (1869), depicting a classical scene of robed figures gathered in discussion or contemplation, framed by Ionic columns and wall paintings. A caption beneath the image reads: Anselm Feuerbach (German, 1829–1880), Plato’s Symposium, 1869.
Oil on canvas, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Beneath the artwork, two centered blocks of italicized and regular text read: A turn in my work this summer has been
to take love seriously as a ground
of meaning germane to the visual; And: And salient to the study of the image across
visuality in terms of poetics, materialities,
& sound.
July 22, 2025 at 10:27 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Thinking through love as an intellectual problem of visuality and neural mirroring at the Arts Club of Chicago, this week.
Man in glasses in a black polo shirt and navy blue trousers with cuffs rolled up to the calf speaking into a microphone on a leather couch, with book to his left.
July 19, 2025 at 8:09 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Doing a #Hozier discourse, today; Talking with my hands, like always.
Podium situated to the left. Man in blue glasses with short hair, wearing a blazer and glittery dress shirt gesticulating ridiculously, with jeans rolled up to the ankle, and patterned dress shoes. On the projector screen is an image of the musical artist Hozier performing on the Unreal Unearth Tour. At the top of the slide is the headline “Sound and Love In-Sight: Hozier’s Visuality.” Below is the lecture anchor: “How do we become who we are through the complexity of mirroring an/other.” Hozier’s lyrics from De Shelby (Part 2) appear to the right of the slide: “Let all time slow, / let all light go / I don’t need to know where we begin and end / I’d still know you, / not being shown you.”
July 16, 2025 at 10:45 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
t N·S logo drop.

First, only, one-page weekly newspaper designed just for Instagram.

First issue arrives late this month.
Writers needed. Visuals welcome.
DMs open.

#thenonstandard #newjournalism #experimentalhumanities
Logo for the non·standard (t n·s). A minimalist design features a lowercase “t” above a bold “n·s” in RGB 30-30-30 typeface, with a red dot centered between the n and s. The text is framed by a thin red circle on a softly crumpled, warm-gray paper background.
July 14, 2025 at 12:55 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
The political horizon of Tohe's opera and its dissenting orientation towards the second Bush administration.

In short, if you haven't yet listened to Enemy Slayer, and even if you don't ordinarily listen to opera—do it.

It's well worth your while and a beyond extraordinary work.
Slide titled “Why Enemy Slayer emerged, when it did, in the wake of the US-led Invasion of Iraq”.
Image shows flag-draped coffins of U.S. war casualties lined up inside a military cargo plane at Dover Air Force Base, with soldiers standing in rows on either side. Caption reads:
“Flag-draped coffins of U.S. war casualties are seen aboard a cargo plane at Dover AFB.” Below, a quote from Laura Tohe recounts a personal story: driving through Northern Arizona in 2006, seeing miles of military freight, and feeling compelled to speak to the war’s costs through the libretto. She notes President George W. Bush had banned media coverage of returning coffins, reducing the fallen soldiers to names only. Quote concludes:
“I felt strongly that the libretto should say something about the war and the tremendous costs to our families and our nation.”
— Laura Tohe, on Enemy Slayer
July 13, 2025 at 12:05 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
My thoughts on Pollock's art, and why Tohe's opera supercedes it through sound.
Slide titled “Why Tohe’s opera, not Pollock’s art”. A large quote in the center from Jackson Pollock reads: “I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk round it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the methods of the Indian sand painters of the West.”
— Jackson Pollock, My Painting (1947)
(quoted here to expose the aesthetic extractivism from which Tohe’s work decisively departs) Below the quote are three bullet points: * Pollock invokes “Indian sand painters” to legitimize his method—without credit, context, or community. * Tohe, by contrast, works from within Diné knowledge systems, translating cosmology with care for land, voice, and the sacred. * Pollock is a post-Romantic figure. Though many Romanticists have written on him, his work doesn’t illuminate the infinite— it forecloses it.
July 13, 2025 at 12:03 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Today, I’m reflecting on Diné cosmology, sonic form, and the libretto’s politically urgent offer of a counter-media to appropriative aesthetics and imperialist-colonial cultural amnesia
Slide titled “Core takeaways” with the subheading: “What if opera—in the hands of a creative practitioner like Laura Tohe—could:” followed by a landscape photograph of Dook’o’oosłííd in summer bloom, one of the four sacred mountains of Dinétah. The caption explains that this mountain, located in present-day Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, is a site of emergence, return, and relation. Three bulleted points follow: * Become a medium of resistance, translating Diné spiritual cosmologies for non-Diné audiences? * Hold critical space to help metabolize the traumatic experiences of Indigenous Veterans who served during the US-Iraq War, 2003–2008. * Rewrite sonic form through hózhǫ́́, the foundational Diné concept of balance, beauty, harmony, and right relation with the world—restoring not just sound, but connection across ecologies, ancestors, and self.
July 13, 2025 at 12:02 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Continued thinking through Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio.

In it, Diné poet Laura Tohe and composer Mark Grey create a ceremonial response to the violence of the US-Iraq War rooted in relation.

#Music #Opera #Decolonize #NavajoNation #VeteransVoices #PublicHumanities
Image featuring the question: “What might Diné opera teach us about place, media & dissent?” in bold black font. Below the text is a page of orchestral sheet music from Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio by Laura Tohe and Mark Grey, performed by the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. The caption reads: “This carousel opens up a few reflections from yesterday’s reel,” followed by three bullet points: 1. The role of sonic art in healing; 2. Opera’s capacity to remediate Diné image practice—offering a ceremonial alternative to the appropriative-extractive aesthetics of Jackson Pollock; 3. How sound holds politics.
July 13, 2025 at 12:01 AM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
What if opera could help rebalance the world?

Laura Tohe’s Enemy Slayer refigures oratorio through Diné cosmology—returning voice as ceremony. In the wake of the Iraq War, it makes audible what was silenced: grief, memory, and dissent.

#EnemySlayer #CompLit #Opera
July 11, 2025 at 8:22 PM
jacobhleveton.bsky.social
Coming soon, the debut issue with two vanguard thinkers in the theory space.

We need new journalism illuminated by footnoted urgency

#TheNonStandard #ExperimentalHumanities
A black-and-white, three-column newspaper titled the non-standard with a bold, typographically varied masthead. In the top-left, a photo of a man in glasses holding a glass of wine. Below, an editor’s note by Jacob Henry Leveton introduces the paper as “not a platform, not a launch,” but a proposal for thought grounded in politics. Center and right columns feature faux-Latin articles by fictional authors “Cassianus M. Viroletus” and “Tullius N. Ferrandinus,” formatted in classic serif type. A strip of colorful woven textile art spans the bottom, captioned as Zachary Cahill’s The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious. Design evokes revolutionary broadsides and footnoted theory journals. The issue is dated June 19, 2025, Vol. 1, No. 1.
July 11, 2025 at 3:25 PM