Khans & Cosmonauts

An exercise in anti-perfectionism.

The “Bulgarian Icarus” monument in Haskovo, Bulgaria.

This first post might be the single most challenging thing I ever write on this site. I have never been very good at introducing myself – largely because I’m not sure exactly what it is I do.

Originally I wanted to be an astronaut until at the age of seven I made my first attempt at writing a book, and decided I’d rather be an author. Throughout college I was set on becoming an architect, but by my 20s, I primarily described myself as a musician. I’ve always been interested in brains, which led me to a degree in psychology and a diploma in clinical hypnotherapy, and then for a while I was planning to pursue a PhD researching “mood-congruent memory” (e.g. The way you might remember the lyrics to a sad song better when you're sad).

But writing is the one thing that has been a constant for me throughout. I can't not do it.

When I started travelling a lot, around a decade ago, I desperately wanted to share the places, emotions, and human connections I was experiencing. So I wrote, and I interviewed people, and I also bought a camera to better illustrate it all. Since then my photos have appeared in a lot of places and I sometimes get described as a “photographer.” I never really felt like one though. If I have made some powerful images, it is only because I figured out how to take accurate photos of powerful places. I do enjoy it, but as a medium for expressing ideas it can feel limiting. 

By comparison, what I enjoy most about designing tours (something I have been doing since 2015) is the freedom to create a fully-immersive experience that engages with all the senses: seasonal scents, the sound of birds, the rough brush of concrete, and the warmth of sunshine on skin. This is an enormous canvas to work with. In my tour design I have become particularly interested in ideas such as phenomenological learning, and the incorporation of pluralist narratives – featuring numerous, and sometimes contradictory, speakers – to explore difficult or conflicting histories.

I am probably best known for my work on the subject of post-socialist landscapes. I researched a PhD on this subject from 2015-2022, which crossed over into academic activism and conservation campaigning. In 2020, I authored Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide, which was conceived as a kind of psychogeographical work redefining the Exclusion Zone in various ways according to the perspectives of the different people who still inhabit it (with chapters focussing on the experiences of residents, tourists, illegal tourists, scientists, and so on).

I think this review summed it up particularly well: “The book weaves together the numerous strands of history, mythology, and ecology that intersect at Chernobyl, from Prometheus as an atomic Marxist saint, to pop-cultural references like the Fallout games and HBO’s Chernobyl, to mushrooms as a potential solution to the problem of nuclear waste.” (John Peck, Degraded Orbit.)

Since 2011, I have been writing a site called Ex Utopia. Typically I share long-form history- and place-writing there, photo-illustrated essays averaging 3,000-4,000 words in length. If you haven’t seen it, this recent article about falling in love with a crumbling socialist hotel in the twilight of its life is probably a good example of what the site’s about. I am proud of Ex Utopia, I enjoy it, and I believe I’ll always keep publishing things there; but I also have a lot of ideas that just don’t fit that format.

My interests include architecture and design, history, folklore and mythology, film and video games, memory (both in the cognitive and heritage senses), language, literature, futurism, and music. I am particularly interested in situations where multiple of these categories overlap. Most recently I have been preoccupied with AI. In the past I have only really shared my nonfiction writing and photography, but I also spend a lot of time making music, writing fiction, and lately I have been studying game design too.

The purpose of this newsletter is to have a place with no rules, and no genre, where I can publish ideas, drafts, demos – whatever I feel like – and maybe sometimes get some feedback. I will aim for Wednesdays, though if I don’t have something to say then I won’t publish anything.

Why Khans & Cosmonauts? As a challenge to myself, this newsletter is named after my personal white whale, the largest project I ever failed to finish.

Starting in 2014, I wrote a massive manuscript about the modernist monuments I was researching in Bulgaria, which together told the story of a nation evolving from khans into cosmonauts. Then history started happening, monuments were suddenly getting knocked down, and the text needed constant revisions. I got caught in a loop of cursed perfectionism (every time I reached the end, the first chapter was wrong again) until it drained my batteries, and my attention began drifting elsewhere. 

I have generally been much better at starting projects than finishing them. Recently though, I finished two major projects in a row – the Chernobyl book, then the thesis – and the secret, I now realise, was this: I knew full well that neither of these things was perfect, but I submitted them anyway.

So – Welcome to Khans & Cosmonauts, my multi-format online scrapbook, and exercise in anti-perfectionism. Maybe you’ll find some of it interesting too.