Lauren Kelley, Adam Pendleton, Deana Lawson, and Sharon Hayes (@ Art21)

here

My last art destination this past weekend was PS.1.’s Greater New York show. Though I saw the show when it first opened (and meant to write about it then), I’m glad I am writing about it now after the smoke has cleared, the scathing reviews (such as this one) have been published, the verdicts passed, etc. A lot of works I had first seen in the show and not paid much attention to I had a new appreciation for, such as Leidy Churchman’s Painting Treatments, featuring bodies being covered in paint and other materials, and Ishmael Randall Weeks’s installation of architectural models and other architectural paraphernalia. But for the most part, I realized that there were a handful of works that I most wanted to return to and spend more time with, having had to speed through them during my first visit to the show.

Why Poets Theatre Now?

Here is my review-essay of The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985, ed. David Brazil and Kevin Killian, at PAJ: art + performance.

My initiatory experience of “poets theatre” occurred in the fall of 2002. Writers, scholars and artists were gathered at SUNY-Buffalo for a conference called Prose Acts, which focused on the West Coast literary and cultural movement now commonly referred to as New Narrative. Among the participants in the conference, organized by music and art critic Brandon Stosuy, were Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, Robert Gluck, kari edwards, Matthew Stadler, Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Dodie Bellamy, and Kevin Killian. At the close of the conference, Kevin Killian staged his play The Vegetable Kingdom (co-written with the San Francisco-based designer, Rex Ray). In The Vegetable Kingdom, the participants of a game show with the same name as the play, go in search of Linda McCartney who one of the participants claims to be her biological mother. On the way, the game show’s co-hosts attempt to pit McCartney against her arch-nemesis, Yoko Ono. This attempt culminates in a hilarious scene in which a stoned-out-of-her-mind McCartney and super mystical Ono face-off. The dialogue is peppered with witty plays on pop cultural reference (one of Killian’s signatures) and high camp humor. The result is a carnivalesque, topsy-turvy post-identity politics play paved by critical intelligence.

Bidoun Magazine's Library and Brion Gysin at the New Museum (@ Art21)

here

Also moving in the exhibition were documentary materials tracing Gysin’s longtime friendship with William Burroughs who, in a video included in the exhibit, laments that Gysin’s work was not more supported and economically rewarded in the artist’s lifetime. Among these materials were Burroughs’s film collaboration with Gysin, Towers Open Fire and a series of letters and papers responding to Gysin’s discovery of the “cut-up” composition technique. Though I have long heard repeated Burroughs’s famous dictum that language is a “virus from outer space,” I don’t think I fully understood the meaning of this phrase before encountering his letters with Gysin regarding cut-up, in which Burroughs argues for a kind of writing that will not only provide language with a new content (software), but which may actually change the hardware.

Blogging at Art21

I will be blogging at Art21 for the next two weeks.

When We Breathe (II)

Fear of the neighbor pretends
We have eyes to see the other with
Where number and measure were killed

Fear pretends this but then we kiss
But then we kiss my neighbor
Our ears open to no other fuck

Little fuck of sound, little flick
There is no other contract
That in our vigilance trembles

With the appearance of what is
Taken and what we take
Suffering another sovereignty

In which the semblance of a contract
A promise no one should keep
Hobbesian mind-fucks lament.


When you go
Into mourning my animal
My animal body
How you pretend
To devour me
Stumbling to see
With all these oughts
All these nots
Knot our fists
The body an object
Might actually speak

When you go
Into mourning, into moaning
My animal
A dream of symmetry
And belonging
Devours me
I wonder how we can be
I punish myself
The commons how
Come I cannot
Be close enough to you


Performed but not played
To blow that supplementary horn
What we sing remains
Of that communication that is not their dreaming
Which is what a scream was worth.

Labor Day 2010 in the Bay Area

I am very excited to see reports from this gathering in the Bay Area, which features poets/writers discussing labor practices, histories, and conditions.

Labor Day Event Details
Agenda for Sunday, September 5, 1:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Studio One Art Center, 365 45th Street, Oakland

1:00 - 3:30 p.m.

Welcome

Group I
Pam Lu
 (text read by Erika Staiti)
Steve Farmer
Jason Morris
Lauren Levin
Brandon Brown
 


(15 minute break)

Group II
Rodrigo Toscano (text read by Suzanne Stein)
Cedar Sigo
Chris Daniels (deputized by Pam Lu)
Dana Teen Lomax

Open Discussion

Break -- 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

4:30 - 7:00 p.m.

Group III
Laura Moriarty
David Brazil

Andrew Joron

Vanessa Place
 


15 minute break


Group IV
Sara Larsen
George Albon (deputized by Stacy Szymaszek, text read by volunteer)
Samantha Giles (deputized by CA Conrad)
Kevin Killian

Open Discussion
______________________

In an effort to include as many people as possible in this gathering, we are happy to announce that we will be posting audio files of the presentations here on the blog shortly after each one is given. You'll be able to listen and participate no matter where you are.

Please note, there is an hour long break in the middle of the day. We won't be able to provide food but there is a lovely grassy area and patio out front, and we encourage you to pack a lunch! We will have coffee, tea, and water.
______________________

Agenda for Monday, September 6, 11 am - 2pm
at 21 Grand Gallery, 416 25th Street, Oakland

11 am - Noon
Potluck brunch

Noon - 2pm
Open moderated discussion
_______________________

Feel free to spread the news! We hope to see you there!

Posted by Labor Day 2010 at 2:28 PM 0 comments
FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2010

Please join us in the Bay Area this Labor Day Weekend for a unique collaborative event.

Sunday, September 5, 1-7pm, Studio One, 365 45th Street, Oakland,
Monday, September 6, 11am – 2pm, 21 Grand, 416 25th Street, Oakland

THIS EVENT IS FREE.

We are convening around the notion of labor and poetics. Because issues of labor and money are integral to so many of our lives as artists, we hope that gathering as presenters and participants will highlight the particularity of our struggle to “do two jobs,” that is, make artworks and earn a wage to support ourselves. For the many of us who are not employed by the University, the occasions for speaking in and with a group concerned with poetics and politics in a formal way are rare. We think and hope this gathering will be a positive model for thinking cooperatively in the future.

Our participant-presenters:

Chris Daniels (as deputized by Pamelu Lu), Steve Farmer, Samantha Giles (as deputized by CA Conrad), Andrew Joron, Kevin Killian, Lauren Levin, Dana Teen Lomax, Laura Moriarty, Jason Morris, Vanessa Place, and Cedar Sigo. We are also glad to be able to present short texts from Pamela Lu, George Albon (as deputized by Stacy Szymaszek), and Rodrigo Toscano.

The gathering will include two events. On Sunday at Studio One we will have a day of presentations. On Monday (Labor Day), we will reconvene at 21 Grand Gallery for an open, informal, but hopefully rigorous conversation about issues and ideas raised in Sunday’s presentations and performances. This will be a potluck brunch at 11:00 a.m., with moderated conversation from 12:00pm to 2:00pm.

A detailed schedule of presentations will be available shortly before the event.

As we are organizing this in our "free time," we do of course need your help! There are several ways you can help. If you can host out of town attendees, furnish supplies for the potluck brunch, have video or other technical skills, or would like to pitch in and lend a hand facilitating the event itself, we would love to put you, uh, ‘to work’! Please send us an email and tell us what you can offer.

Finally, this community event is open to all, and there will be no door charge. We would be quite grateful for help defraying costs of the event: for those who would like to contribute cash, we have set up a PayPal account. Money will go towards space rental costs, supplies, and tech.

Feel free to spread the news! We hope to see you there!

david brazil, suzanne stein, brandon brown, sara larsen, alli warren

SMALLS

I am happy to have a few shorter pieces in the inaugural issue of SMALLS, edited by Will Owen out of Pilot Books in Seattle. According to Owen, "[SMALLS is a monthly inceptual zine hosted on the third Wednesday of each month. Incomplete and out-of-context works presented like workbooks or interesting puzzle pieces that, in theory, are to be added together to build greater wholes.]" Great idea!

Movement, Somatics and Writing: A Practice-Based Research Symposium, University of Michigan Call

Call for Fellowship Applications:
Movement, Somatics and Writing: A Practice-Based Research Symposium

February 18th/19th2010, Duderstadt Video Performance Studio, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Conference Team:

Amy Sara Carroll, Assistant Professor of English and American Culture (Latina/o Studies), UM

Thom Donovan, poet and essayist, co-editor of ON: Contemporary Practice and the weblog Wild Horses Of Fire

Kate Elswit, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow (Drama/Dance), Stanford University

Bhanu Kapil, Assistant Professor, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University (Cross-Genre Narrative and Poetics)

Jina Kim, PhD student, English/Women's Studies, UM (VisualCulture)

Petra Kuppers, Associate Professor of English, UM (Performance Studies)

Eleni Stecopoulos, poet, writer, educator, curator of the Poetics of Healing project at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University

In our fourth arts-basedinquiry symposium (after Anarcha: African American culture/DisabilityCulture/Medical Ethics; Touching Time: Bodies/Writing/Histories; Eco-Performance) we want to build on the inter- or transdisciplinary methods explored so far, and invite scholars and artists to engage in experimental writing and art practice at the sites/cites of the moving, living body and themoving, living text.

We invite up to ten fellows (graduate students, faculty, independent artistsand writers) to come together for two days, to workshop, to use performancesand presentations as provocations, and to plumb methods of merging art practiceand critical writing . The specific topics we will address are yet to be determined by applicants' interests. But, to date, this symposium's foci include or relate to innovative methodologies, writing-as-practice, somatics/embodiment, breath poetics, prosodic magic, language limit zones, conceptual –isms, skin and membranes, mixed media and metaphors, the ethics of touch and movement, enjambed spacetime, transitions and becoming ______ .

We will be in praxis together: this is not a conference to share the results of previous research or practice. Thus, we are not looking for papers, performances, portfolios, or readings; we plan to experiment. Come and share the excitement of your creative and critical research, present a workshop based on your passions, and find out what could happen...

Each invitee will have transport and accommodation costs reimbursed up to $200 dollars. The conference hotel offers rooms for about sixty dollars a night, and we will assist people who want to be hosted by graduate students.

Application Process: please send a short CV, a sample of your writing(creative, experimental, performative or critical), and a brief statement about why you would like to participate, to petra [at] umich [dot] edu. You can also send URLs or a DVD or CD with performance or visual arts material. Query first about snail mail address by emailing the symposium director: Petra Kuppers, petra [at] umich [dot] edu.

Deadline: October 1, 2010 Notification: October 20, 2010

The Offending Adam

Thank you Ryan Winet for this beautiful statement, and to The Offending Adam for putting up these two poems "for" Fred Moten and Adam Pendleton.