“Repetition and Ruins: The Art of Radical Political Thinking” is a graphic novel collaboration with drawings by Julie Evanoff and text by Dalie Giroux. It is out now as an edition of 300 artist books printed and published by Rakish Light in Los Angeles.
Email julie[at]julieevanoff.com to order books. Include your mailing address and number of copies. Each numbered edition book is $45 (includes media mail shipping). I will reply to your email with payment information details – Venmo, Zelle, or check (or cash if you live in NYC and want to meet in person!) Books are 120 pages, printed on an AB Dick offset press.
From the 4Columns “Repetition and Ruins” book launch event at Giorno Poetry Center
Evanoff’s comics draw from a deep well of inspirations ranging from the art-historical to the pop-cultural, all rooted in her raw, compulsive, spontaneous drawing practice, and often including her characteristic philosophical-eyed animals as illustrative interlocutors. The result is a sly, incisive, and urgent intervention slicing through our current political climate of obfuscation, uncertainty, and fear.
Repetition and Ruins is based on a lecture by Giroux that Evanoff first learned of in a panel discussion following a screening of Moyra Davey’s i confess, which included footage of Giroux’s accompanying chalkboard drawing. The original talk freely used terms and ideas from critical theory, philosophy, and political theory, which Evanoff and Giroux have translated here into democratic, accessible language and images.
A bold, unusual, and radically generous adventure in theory and image, Repetition and Ruins contemplates and questions our current shared condition as twenty-first-century earthlings living in, by, and against power accumulators: capitalism and the state. The book’s images an concepts are an invitation to notice and interpret the connection between these power accumulators and daily life.”
From Rakish Light: We produced the Rakish Light edition of Julie Giroux and Dalie Evanoff’s Repetition and Ruins on an AB Dick offset press salvaged from a local school district. At our studio in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, we watched pages shoot out of this cranky machine, including Dalie’s words: “Repetition, as thinking, is as good as it is bad. It IS. And it is inescapable.” MacArthur Park is known for its history of labor demonstrations, immigrant communities, and, in the last century, art schools. In Spring 2026, at the time of printing, the streets around the park were being emptied by raids, cluttered with chain-link fencing, and maligned by political candidates. Inside our building, the press materialized Julie’s drawings and Dalie’s words.