When one of Jess Shepard's critically-acclaimed art installations in the desert is hijacked by individuals experiencing a "religious awakening" inside, her artwork is turned into a media sensation for all the wrong reasons. She tries to move past the incident, the violent fallout, and the guilt of having inadvertently caused this pain; but she is forced to confront it head-on when she's asked to help one of the very same individuals who distorted her artwork.
For fans of California noir, as well as art-world thrillers like those by B.A. Shapiro and Maria Hummel's Still Lives and fictional cult narratives like The Girls, Zero Zone expertly joins the hazy atmosphere of the 1960/70's art scene with the heart-pounding, goosebump-inducing reading experience of literary thrillers like Woman No. 7
Inspired by an incredibly positive experience at the James Turell Ganzfeld room at LACMA, and a contrasting, unsettling encounter with a reader at a public Q&A for one of his books, Scott O'Connor's Zero Zone probes the responsibility of the artist. We celebrate the positive impact of art, but what about the negative experiences, and negative impacts that art can have? What, if anything, does the artist owe those impacted by their art in either direction?
Scott O'Connor is the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award winning-author of Untouchable, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He is based in Altadena, CA.
Acquired by Counterpoint Editor in Chief Dan Smetanka, editor of Maria Hummel's Still Lives
