Short Story Highlight: “The Gallows-Horse” by Reza Negarestani

The excellent Weird Fiction Review has posted The Gallows-Horse, a short story by Iranian author Reza Negarestani, from the anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities:

Museum: Museum of Intangible Arts and Objects, Saragossa, Spain

Exhibitions: The Secret History of Objects; The Center for Catoptrics and Optical Illusions; Hall of the Man-Object

Creators and Causes: Objects themselves; Deviant phenomenal models of reality; Neurolinguistic and cognitive distortions

Dates of manifestation: May 4, 1808 – 1820(?); July 1936-January 1961; January 2003

Title: The gallows-horse

Objectal mediums: Gaspar Bermudez (Spanish, 1759 – 1820), Thackery T. Lambshead (British, 1900 – 2003)

Also known as the Edifice of the Weird, the gallows-horse is the highlight of the Museum of Intangible Arts and Objects. Simultaneously being displayed in three distinct and permanent exhibitions, the gallows-horse presents the four basic criteria of the museum — Immateriality, Intangibility, Elusiveness and Ephemeral manifestations. Gallows-horse was first brought to the attention of the museum’s board of experts and trustees by an international collective of researchers consisting of art and science historians, linguists and philosophers who were commissioned by the Universities of Oxford and Exeter to index and organize the notes and memoirs of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, a prominent British medical scientist, explorer and collector of esoteric arts and exotic objects. These notes, according to the research collective, include references to various objects and artworks collected by Dr. Lambshead during his lifetime. Whilst the majority of these references have been traced to tangible corporeal objects currently on display in various international museums, there were also scattered allusions to objects which did not have any record in museums or private collections. Either ravaged by a fire which broke out in Dr. Lambshead’s private residential collection or lost during his lifetime, nearly all of these objects — thanks to engineering and technological interventions — are now visually reconstructed through digital simulation. - continue reading.