When Zero, the hero of our story, stumbles upon a mysterious manuscript, they’re thrown into a journey across centuries, continents, and concepts. They travel throughout the Muslim world, from Sumeria to India to Baghdad. They learn about Europe as other and outside. They’re guided by the cryptic mirror the manuscript provides as it traces a history of the number zero.

Anahita Jamali Rad’s No Signal No Noise is a playful poetic hybrid, sitting somewhere between philosophical treatise and experimental novel. No Signal No Noise is the first installment in a series that traces the origin of the binary (self and other, good and evil, 0 and 1) in relation to technology, identity, representation, class, orientalism, and nationalism.

A Jamali Rad is a text-forward artist born in Iran and currently based on the Traditional Territory of the Anishnaabeg people of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa). They have published two full-length books of poetry: for love and autonomy (Talonbooks, 2016) and still (Talonbooks, 2021). Their most recent work is the chapbook WHAT I WANT (Model Press, 2022). Jamali Rad also co-founded the journal About a Bicycle and the small poetry publisher House House Press.

A. Jamali Rad's profile page