5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Maureen Connor (@Art21)

Check out my 5 Questions for Contemporary Practice feature with CUNY Queens professor, artist, and activist, Maureen Connor.

In the works of Personnel Connor explores a tension between the work environment as a kind of ruin—a place inhabited by future’s past—and as a site begging for revivification, to which one can give new life while not abandoning its history. Working with limited means, Connor has been resourceful in exploring these problems, which anticipate her most extensive project to date. The Institute for Wishful Thinking, which she founded with Gregory Sholette and others in 2008 and discusses below, moves beyond the criticism and practical design problems of her former projects into problems of legal and non-governmental mediation. Soliciting proposals from individuals, and making possible residencies for artists and art groups, IWT attempts to mediate between governmental and non-governmental sectors on behalf of artists who believe their work can benefit the public good.

LRL's zero profit model

The editors of LRL e-editions are thrilled to announce the launch of SIX new books! This time around, we’re changing things up a bit:

In the past, we’ve only ever charged $2-3 over cost for our print-on-demand books. We’re now ready to commit to making exactly $0 from this series: FROM NOW ON, ALL PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF PRINT-ON-DEMAND BOOKS IN THIS SERIES WILL BE DONATED TO A DIFFERENT SMALL PRESS EACH YEAR. First up: Chax Press. So, any purchase of a print-on-demand title from this series during 2011-2012 will have the added benefit of helping to support the efforts of Chax!

Over the next few weeks, we’ll launch one or two titles at a time, beginning with a book-length review of Michael Cross’s Haecceities (Cuneiform, 2010), which is now available for download/purchase.

Please stay tuned for new books from David Brazil, Sarah Mangold, Hugo García Manríquez, and Pattie McCarthy–as well as one monumental reprint from Beverly Dahlen!

Find out more on our newly redesigned e-editions site: www.littleredleaves.com/ebooks/.

Somatic Poetics

The following is part essay, part proposition, part thinking in motion (provisional, unfinished, disruptive). It is a response to Patrick Durgin’s generous invitation in spring 2010 to address “somatics” in regards to recent writing practices and poetics. Through the following text I take excursions with various contemporaries. These excursions are not meant to be representative by any means (the following is not meant to be a definitive mapping of a field, manifesto, polemic, or ‘last word’) but the continuation of a discourse that has become visible to me in the past few years. All the propositions here are hopefully extendable. To many of them I owe my conversations with the Nonsite Collective — and to Rob Halpern, Eleni Stecopoulos, Amber DiPietra, David Wolach, Taylor Brady, and Robert Kocik in particular. And also to Daria Fain, CAConrad, Dorothea Lasky, Brenda Iijima, David Buuck, and Bhanu Kapil.

I dreamt we were susceptive to language

that care might be agency’s complement

and form never more than condition
passing as body

— Eleni Stecopoulos

Etel Adnan Tribute at Small Press Traffic

Lindsey Boldt and Small Press Traffic have put together a tribute to the contemporary Lebanese-American poet and artist, Etel Adnan. Thanks to Lindsey in particular for inviting me to participate in this incredible bouquet of writings.

Contributors include Ammiel Alcalay, Anne Waldman, Ben Hollander, Robert Grenier, Brandon Shimoda, Cole Swenson, Csaba Polony, David Buuck, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Jen Benka, Joanne Kyger, Lynne Tillman, Megan Pruiett, Michael McClure, Nancy Peters, Roger Snell, Sharon Doubiago, Simone Fattal, Stacy Szymaszek, Stephen Motika, Steve Dickison, and Thom Donovan.