On July 21, 2012, Chris Girard, Marina Temkina and Rachel Levitsky read works inspired by Bill Bollinger and his work on view at SculptureCenter.
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Poets Rachel Levitsky, Chris Girard, and Marina Temkina to read poems inspired by Bill Bollinger and his work on view at the SculptureCenter. A musical performance by Weyes Blood will follow the reading.
DETAILS
Abe’s Penny Poetry reading at SculptureCenter
Saturday, July 21st 2012, 5-7pm
4419 Purves St, Long Island City
ABOUT THE POETS
Rachel Levitsky is a poet, an author of four books, an Associate Professor of Writing at Pratt Institute, and a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative. She has recently opened a new venture, The Office of Recuperative Strategies (OoRS), with the poet Christian Hawkey. You can find out more about OoRS here. Her first novel, The Story of My Accident Is Ours, is forthcoming from Futurepoem this Fall.
Chris Girard believes that embracing and being exposed to artwork and writing of all forms reinforces his interest in collage poetry. He is a Ph.D. candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London. Examples of his work can be found on his website.
Marina Temkina is a poet-artist, an author of four books in her native Russian, and a grantee of National Endowment for the Arts, ArtsLink/CEC International and Jewish Memorial Foundation. Marina’s two recent books were published by Ugly Duckling Presse in Brooklyn.
*Abe’s Penny will be there JUNE 2nd, 1-6pm.
BUSHWICK OPEN PAGES 2012
June 2nd-June 3rd, 2012, 1-6 p.m. Brooklyn, NY
For a decade now, Brooklyn has been a fulcrum of both DIY ethos and literary exploration. To celebrate this tradition, Arts in Bushwick and Slice magazine present the third annual Bushwick Open Pages, the literary fair component of the annual Bushwick Open Studios.
The festival aims to present a non-hierarchical cross-section of independent publishing. Organizations across strata and media have been invited to participate, including literary journals, online publications, zines, individual letterpress publishers, brick-and-mortar booksellers, and more. Confirmed participants include: Abe’s Penny, A Public Space, The Bad Version, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Cluster Mag, Explosion-Proof, Feedback Press, Gigantic, Guernica, Purgatory Pie Press, Moonshot, n+1, Washington Square Review, and special out of town guest Noo Journal.
This year’s fair will feature a discussion panel as well as a reading. The panel will discuss the state of the independent organization amid a changing arts publishing landscape. The reading–Slice is thrilled to announce–will be performed by local acting troop The Liars’ League NYC who will be putting on a show entitled “Live Journal: An anthology of Brooklyn Prose Gone Paperless.”
Duck Duck will be running happy hour discounts all day, both days of the festival.
The days and times of the aforementioned events are as follows:
Saturday, June 2nd at 3 p.m.
STATUS UPDATE: INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS AMID INDUSTRYWIDE CHANGE
Esther K. Smith (Purgatory Pie Press); Mike Young (Noo Journal); Jordon Scott (Moonshot Magazine)
Sunday, June 3rd at 2:30 p.m.
LIVE JOURNAL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF BROOKLYN PROSE GONE PAPERLESS
A special selection of stories from some of Brooklyn’s best literary magazines performed by special guests, The Liars’ League NYC
COME CELEBRATE INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING IN BROOKLYN!
The “I Found God on the Subway” [IFGOS] project is an ongoing collection of discarded religious pamphlets found in the NYC metro system.
by Rebecca Brunn
David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea is currently hosting Yutaka Sone’s newest exhibition “Island” until October 29. The installation, which enjoyed a fair amount of press even before opening, features as its centerpiece a 2.5 ton block of white marble sculpted in the likeness of Manhattan. In this case “likeness” is quite the understatement. Sone has somehow cut every building, road, park and pier into the stone, all to scale, using Google Earth and an unearthly number of helicopter rides over the city as references.
This piece, entitled “Little Manhattan”, is easily the most impressive work in the exhibit; though it includes a handful more marble sculptures none bare the astonishing detail that “Little Manhattan” does. And no piece represents the relationship between the natural and the man-made, as the press release indicated the artist was exploring, better than the “island” itself. Marble is one of the natural foundations of Manhattan, found in many places below the layer of Manhattan Schist that forms the surface of the city. To create such a pristine replica of Manhattan is to excavate and sculpt that which formed Manhattan. Well, maybe not literally.
The piece is also an interesting example of the crossover that occurs between magnification and miniaturization. Though the sculpture is quite obviously a miniaturized Manhattan, it is also a Manhattan that very few of us get to see so up close, and in so much detail. The intricacies of the sculpture give the viewer a rare insight into the sprawl in which they live, a sprawl that has been documented and illustrated for decades but never in a way that makes your own apartment building important, or more accurately, necessary. In this way, “Little Manhattan” is truer to big Manhattan than the majority of other NYC-centric artworks.
The remainder, or should I say the majority, of Sone’s pieces are dwarfed by “Little Manhattan”, which has the first room in the gallery all to itself. Moving into the back rooms is a bit of a surprise, actually, what with the gigantic spring-green palm fronds and camouflaged marble sculptures. It’s like moving from the city to the jungle, both literally and theoretically.
Interspersed between the palm fronds are marble pieces that, for the most part, depict rays of light shining through trees. The marble sculptures, however, are nearly invisible thanks to the standard white gallery setting and ostentatiously bright palm sculptures. In this case the man-made vs natural theme shifts; one is more inclined to believe that the palm fronds are the representation of the natural while the “Light Between The Trees” pieces are the man-made. Yet both depict man-made natural settings. The palm fronds appear to be more natural, but only because they are green, and green (as we all know) means nature. The marble sculptures are not more or less nature-themed than the palm fronds, but they become an instance of product, of the artist’s intention and final work, while with the palm fronds he was simply imitating nature. The collection in the back room thus becomes an interesting mechanism to observe how New Yorkers relate to nature.
“Island” will be up until October 29th.
Found Oct 7, 2011 during the morning rush riding the A train from Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Chambers St.
The “I Found God on the Subway” [IFGOS] project is an ongoing collection of discarded religious pamphlets found in the NYC metro system.
It’s already harder to keep this going than planned. I was in PA this weekend and could easily have picked up a postcard at a local attraction, but I forgot. Here’s one I sent last week when I was still on schedule.
My daughter painted this image on some postcard watercolor paper I’ve had since high school or maybe college. I’ve carried it with me all over the country to different apartments. I’m determined to get rid of it by using it up.
When people ask how we were inspired to print Abe’s Penny on postcards, we always talk about the number of postcards we sent as kids. We sent postcards all the way through college. I sent letters, too. Lots of them.
We also talk about how Abe’s Penny makes opening your mailbox fun again. Very few people send snail mail these days, but I still hope something great’s going to show up in my mailbox — a letter from an old friend, or (and this is a big dream) a package — but the bulkiest thing I’ve found lately is a SAKS 5th Ave catalogue and I don’t even know how they got my address.
So, I’m going to stop wishing for mail to descend upon me and start sending it out again. Maybe one of these old friends will write back. Here’s my first, to a friend I met in LA who now lives in Massachusetts. The postcard was given to me by Melissa Lohman Wild from Viva Snail Mail. She also does great kids events.
About the writers:
P. Scott Cunningham is the author of Chapbook of Poems for Morton Feldman (Floating Wolf Quarterly, 2011). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Court Green, Pool, Pure Francis, PANK, Abe’s Penny, Northville Review, OH NO, Roanoke Review, Redivider, and elsewhere. He is the founder of the University of Wynwood and the executive editor of Jai-Alai Magazine.
Adam Gilders was a virtuoso of the deadpan prose miniature. He published his stories in The Paris Review, The Walrus, Sunbird and J&L Illustrated, before passing away in 2007, at the age of 36, of a brain tumor. His posthumous collection, Another Ventriloquist collects Gilders’ previously unpublished vignettes. Miranda Purves will be reading from his work.
Mike Sacks has written for Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, Time, McSweeney’s, Radar, MAD, New York Observer, Premiere, Believer, Vice, Maxim, Women’s Health, and Salon. He has worked at The Washington Post, and is currently on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair. His first book, And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 26 Humor Writers About Their Craft, was released in July 2009. Some of those interviewed include: George Meyer, Harold Ramis, Al Jaffee, Buck Henry, Bob Odenkirk, Stephen Merchant, David Sedaris, Jack Handey, Robert Smigel, and Dick Cavett. Paul Morris will read his contribution.
Alina Simone is a singer and writer based in Brooklyn. Her last album, Everyone Is Crying Out To Me Beware which covers the music of Soviet punk-poet Yanka Dyagileva, was described as either “haunting” or “haunted” by more than a dozen publications, including The New Yorker, Spin, NPR and Pitchfork. Her next original full-length album, Make Your Own Danger, and her first book of autobiographical essays, You Must Go and Win (Faber and Faber) were both released in June.
Adam Wade is a record 15-time SlorySLAM winner and 2-time GrandSLAM winner at The Moth. He’s written for the NY Times, NY Press and Glamour Magazine. You can find him on the web at adamwade.com.
Also check out The Brooklyn Baker!
by Rebecca Brunn
October 4, 2011
You’re strolling along 37th St by 8th Avenue–maybe you just got out of work, maybe you’re paying a visit to the Empire State Building–when you happen upon a tiny, whited-out storefront under the name Chashama. You don’t think much of it, a new store is probably opening, or maybe a new cafe. But something is amiss. You notice that the glass is not entirely concealed, that there are minuscule holes in the paint that allow you, upon pressing your eye to the glass, to peek into the store. Intrigued, you look into the peepholes one by one. The peepholes reveal fractions of a model city, though whether it’s brand new or already destroyed, you cannot tell.
The enigmatic storefront is Will Corwin’s new installation entitled Tanis: Welthaupstadt. Tanis refers to the ancient Egyptian city as depicted in Raiders of The Lost Ark, while Welthaupstadt represents Hitler’s redesign of Berlin as the World’s Capital. Corwin, at the opening of the installation, explained his inspiration further:
“It seems diametrically opposed because it’s George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and the Ark of The Covenant, but then you also have the Nazis. It was just one of those weird art connections that you can make visually but doesn’t really exist philosophically. Both of them are white cities made out of plaster or clay that reference some kind of magical idea, one is incredibly evil and the other is very mystical.”
The installation itself is indeed a model city, or rather a mutation of it. Taking up about three quarters of the inside space, the model is currently composed of equal parts completed, intact structures and crumbling, shattered debris. But that doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to stay.
“The whole idea is that while I build it, it falls down. So over the next couple days I think I will keep adding to it so that by Friday it’ll be more of a mess, and it really does look like this archaeological ruin…I see that as the opposite of the architectural master plan, which is the reality, which is things falling apart.”
Yet the evolution and inevitable devolution of the city as a whole is beyond the common viewer. The vast majority of those who view the installation will see it as the artist intended, which is solely through the peepholes. This curious method is itself the piece’s most affecting aspect, as it manages to convey the complexity of the artists statement without allowing its viewers to ever see the art.
“It fits in with the fascism too, of not being able to do anything, so you have this peephole and you know there’s something really big and fantastic through the peephole but you can only see a little tiny bit of it”
The peepholes are also an homage to the pivotal scene in Raiders of The Lost Ark where in the map room, Indiana Jones is led to the Book of Souls by a guiding beam of light emanating from the jewel. The focused points of view created by the peepholes mimic the beam of light, suggesting that there is something of import to be found in those places. This concept turns the “ideal city” notion on its head. Rather than being a frustrating obstacle that prevents the viewer from seeing the whole, the peepholes are tools the viewer can use to observe the significant areas. The view from the peephole becomes the whole. Perhaps more importantly, when observed within the Indiana Jones frame of mind, the model city takes on a whole new life: a discovered archaeological ruin. Hence the initial question, Is it a plan for a new city or remnant of an old one? It is certainly both, an impossible city that is always being built while always being destroyed.
This eternal perpetuity of creation and destruction (in theory anyway, since the installation comes down on Monday) gives the installation a doomsday tint, and Corwin himself exists as the city’s blithe architect of destruction. His role is to build structures engineered to collapse. How could a city like this survive? It can’t, and no ideal city for the most part has. Corwin’s city, though, unlike the plans for new Berlin, exists outside the boundaries of time, using the city itself as a metaphor. He, as dictator of the Chashama storefront, built a city and preempted the inevitable overthrow by building destruction into its design.
“No one really ever makes models of collapsed buildings because it seems pointless. But on the other hand, most of the time you make models of buildings that never actually are built. So everyone wants to design this city of the future, but the real city is usually bombed or destroyed or it decays over time, so it’s really like building the reality of the city of the future which is that it’s dug up 5,000 years from now and there’s nothing left of it.”
Tanis: Welthaupstadt is on display until Monday at 266 West 37th St. Whether the peepholes will reveal a taller grander plaster city or a pile of rubble only the architect knows.
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