Institute Zagreb 1986 & The Air Of Conquerors

INSTITUTE ZAGREB 1986/THE AIR OF CONQUERORS are two new novella-length works of fiction by the Melbourne-based writer S.T. Lore that are presented in a flip novel. The book is the first solo publication by Lore, featuring stories that pivot around characters immersed in scenes of claustrophobia, obsessive archiving, impossible architectures, image-saturation and delusion.

INSTITUTE ZAGREB 1986 intertwines two narratives about a religion conceived by a pair of demographic analysts on the rooftop of an abandoned building, and a rock-collecting character named The Saxon. The narrative is collated through a process of uncovering archived audio recordings retained by an 'explosion proof' telephone. INSTITUTE ZAGREB 1986 is interspersed with a series of graphic elements created for the publication by Joshua Petherick.

THE AIR OF CONQUERORS is a piece of surreal detective fiction set against a backdrop of the South Australian Desert scattered with ruined Parisian monuments. It chronicles two investigators' search for a lonely telephone operator who has disappeared into a subterranean hotel. The narrative was written in reference to a series of photographs that were taken by Nicholas Mangan in Paris in November 2011 and sent to the author as part of a project exploring the fictionalisation of images – both historical and the everyday.