At Long Beach Notebook

I will be reading next week in Long Beach, CA with Rob Halpern and Amanda Ackerman for Jane Sprague's seminal events series, Long Beach Notebook. Here is the ad for the event:

Dear Friends,

Please join us next Saturday, July 12 2008 in Long Beach, California to hear the work of Amanda Ackerman, Thom Donovan and Rob Halpern.

Long Beach Notebook begins at 8:00 pm. The event takes place at the home office of Palm Press: 143 Ravenna Drive, Long Beach, CA 90803 (use Mapquest or Google Maps for directions).

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Amanda Ackerman lives in Los Angeles where she writes and teaches. She is co-editor of the press eohippus labs. She is a member of UNFO (The Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization) and writes as part of Sam or Samantha Yams. She is also a member of the event space Betalevel. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in flim forum; String of Small Machines; The Physical Poets; WOMB; and the Encyclopedia Project, Volume F-K. With Harold Abramowitz, she is also co-author of the book Sin is to Celebration, soon to be published by House Press in the fall.

Thom Donovan lives and works in Manhattan, where he edits Wild Horses of Fire blog (whof.blogspot.com), curates the events series Peace On A, and coedits ON, a new magazine for contemporary practice. He attended the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo and is an ongoing participant in the Nonsite Collective.

Rob Halpern is the author of Rumored Place, Imaginary Politics, and Snow Sensitive Skin (co-authored with Taylor Brady). Disaster Suites will be published this Summer by Palm Press. He's currently co-editing the writings of the late Frances Jaffer together with Kathleen Fraser, and translating the early essays of Georges Perec, the first of which, "For a Realist Literature," can be found in the recent issue of Chicago Review. He lives in San Francisco.

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From Disaster Suites by Rob Halpern:

This war
Of want
Says what

I want
To say
To you

Of dreams
Or need
We need

Not speak
To speak
Of wars

Of want
I come
To love

So late
To you
My lost

- marine.

***
from O Coevals by Thom Donovan

We witness bells that this was theirs
That shade equals sun in exquisiteness

Non-identities piling up like pylons
A physics without cars beings without

Impact move to what here to what
Their equated it I feel so much pressure

Around you to burn a discourse and not
Touch any time we were or event

Living us so live my life will never finish
What my death leaves unfinished this

Town never seems to work those sovereign
Stumps sing us into battle effects

Of power fires hymns even the sun
Forgot to burn so sing patiency which

Organs won't be consumed what ex
change won't always be sung for being

Too far from off-shore what bodies we
Haven't won't account for limbs little

Substances Nature complicit with who
Gets to live grieves its contrivance.

***
from Amanda Ackerman:

Here on fire we remove the husk of the seed with the aching to peel back with the aching to hear; to touch is to look, the seed looks like and says this:
It is spring, but my corn does not want to sell her rooster. If I wait another year, the rooster will be considered old, quite old, very old. And having been an upright and tireless citizen his whole life, always dressed in devoted red, always smelling like humid, dank gems and unbottled musk, the rooster will start to make up stories about how he fought in the war, welded the sides of tanker ships, wore a shattered, sandy green army helmet. Then no one will want to buy him, it's just a matter of timing. Let him stay and my lips will keep moving, turn the shapes of fortified roots, and I can stay forever awake in the dark folds of nucleotides, always siding with what is right, always siding.

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See you then...
www.palmpress.org

People Are Strange (When You're a Stranger)

Presented by Marisa Olson

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 8pm
55 33rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY
Ticket Price - $6

"People Are Strange" will be a night of multimedia performance and projections revolving around the release of Marisa Olson's new artist book, Poems I Wrote While Listening to the Doors, 1992-1994 (Before I found the internet). Written by the artist in high school "while burning incense and listening to the Doors," whose lead singer she then perceived as an "under-appreciated poetic genius," they are now a record of an active artist's earliest creative efforts and they provide evidence of an obsession with music, genre, psychology, and personal narrative that shines through in her more recent artworks. The title and form of the writings refers to a previous obliviousness to the internet, despite the fact that network culture (and particularly blogging or online diarism) have ultimately had a huge impact upon her practice. This evening will continue Olson's ongoing interest in public humiliation and the aesthetics of failure, from which she believes we can learn more, politically and personally, than from success. A handful of distinguished poets will read short excerpts from the book, a few experimental musicians will turn her words into lyrics, and of course Olson will do some singing and reading of her own. All of this will be mediated by live visual projections and recorded music videos created by the artist in an effort to reconcile past and present, word and image. Participating poets and musicians include Thom Donovan, Stephanie Gray, Christian Hawkey, Dorothea Laskey, and members of the bands Professor Murder, Aa, and Taigaa.

About Marisa Olson

Marisa Olson's work combines performance, video, sound, drawing, and installation to address intersections of pop culture and the cultural history of technology, as they effect the voice, power, and persona. Her work has recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou-Paris, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the 52nd International Biennale di Venezia, the Edith Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst, Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst/Montevideo, the British Film Institute, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Glowlab, and Free103Point9. She is also a founding member of the Nasty Nets "internet surfing club" whose new DVD recently premiered at the New York Underground Film Festival. Her work has been written about in Artforum, Art in America, Folha de Sao Paolo, Liberation, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. While Wired has called her both funny and humorous, the New York Times has called her "anything but stupid." Marisa studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College-London, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric at UC Berkeley.

About Light Industry

Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun as a series of weekly events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media and foster a complex dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.

Black Field II

What I forgets to leave
Here and what I forgets
It is here not home to itself

Like bodies the fan whirs
In the room a metaphor
Or something for conscious

ness this voice around
The air is something you
Swear to this that you will

Be you to me so this darkness
Where I must imagine your
Touch is more than me

Or you this discourse of
The senses more than any
thing one amounts to.