The Weeping Blunderbuss

Toward a Radical Historiography

2010-09-18T19:42:00.005-04:00

Here is an unpublished essay completed in the Spring of A.Da. 91 (2007) for a publication which never appeared. As there was a word limit, this text is particularly condensed in its logic and argumentation. I am currently undertaking a theoretical manifesto likely to end up as a thick chapbook which pursues much more radically the conclusions implicit in this text. Elements of the text I am posting here will end up integrated into this larger undertaking, which is intended as a burning of bridges. But as that text will most likely not see the light of day until spring, I make this available here.

Creative Sociality and the Traditions of Dissent:
Toward a Radical Historiography
Olchar E. Lindsann

If I were to state that I am writing on Art (or even art), and provided that I present neither a straightforward exposition of technique nor an unadulterated report on economic activity in the home-decoration industry, it would be understood that I referred to a cultural edifice dealing with a concept of Art inextricable from an intellectual or discursive dimension--a notion of Art as being related to Thought. What was once called 'High Art', and has since been given the euphemism of Fine Art, is a cultural edifice which distinguishes itself from the broader range of human aestheticreative activity, and especially from domestic decoration ('kitsch') destined for popular consumption, through either the controlled and managed scarcity of material objects or through the assumption of formal frameworks and characteristics destined to alienate normative audiences; Art justifies this (implicitly hierarchical) distinction and elevation from the general field of production of social artefacts on the grounds that Fine Art is uniquely self-critical. In turn, Fine Art's intellectual veneer is what makes it valuable to the avatars of established power, providing them with a hypocritical yet serviceable ethical alibi for the systems they perpetuate.

Utopia is thus implicit in the very genetics of any concept of Art entailing this distance from the normative (which is, after all, inseparable in practice from the Mass Market). Art, and Artists, buy their status as Intellectuals; and the currency they use is their presumed responsibility toward the Higher Ideals of a culture whose designers and maintainers do not in fact subscribe to them. High Art can maintain the ethical legitimacy of its distance from popular culture (the ivory tower, the hermetic vessel, the white gallery walls, the subculture) only if this distance, this self-definition, serves to create new techniques of living and of thinking which can materially and radically re-register society, granting that such shifts must (by reason of this necessary distance) be transgenerational and indirect.

Yet around this model of Art as a Utopian Island which carries on the selfless work of the best of our culture and floats above the petty materialism of our actual society, an infrastructure of closely-entwined institutions has simultaneously developed--museums, publishing houses, financial support from Nation-States, contests and State-funded biennials, commercial and non-profit galleries, corporate-funded residencies, academic tenure systems, philanthropic and corporate endowments, festivals, auction-houses, etc.--all closely allied to the political and economic entities responsible for the maintenance of Capitalist Imperialism.

These institutions mark the removal of Art from the mass market, but at the same time they reinstitute within this sphere of presumed integrity another market, this one targeted at small elite audiences, well-educated enough to feel a twinge of guilt about the global cost of the lives they live and of the systems for which they provide specialized support. This market creates and manages cultural Capital in a sociopsychological economy, its function to perpetuate amongst the educated classes the lie that they are living up to their ethical responsibilities as the privileged children of the Western Polis and, by extension, the very symbol of the decadence of the human project.

Starting years before any potential student or cultural worker's formal education and intellectual life begin, these institutions regulate every possible facet of the discourse which defines Art itself. They gradually establish the intellectual terrain in which students are to attempt to establish themselves as artists or intellectuals--which is also to say that these institutions of power establish the borders, the blind-spots, and even the psychological logics and insecurities which will keep the sheep within the fold without their feeling the bite of a whip; for a whip might bring too many realities home.

Thus liberally domesticated, the situation of the artist in relation to society is altered and channelled; in the gentlest and most discreet of ways, the avatars of power (or their more euphemistic avatars) offer the Artist status, security, and possibly money (at least enough to keep off a workshop floor and avoid the stigma of Worker) in return for an elaborate, quasi-conceptual proof-of-purchase declaring implicitly, and any overtly 'political' content not withstanding, that the system is all right, and that at least those holding the reins still support the advance of Abstract Culture, even whilst starving entire continents with the policies that they design and execute.

Every element of the dominant discourse on creative activity must therefore be looked upon as suspect.

If we examine any mainstream historical treatment or ‘analysis’ of creative currents (‘Anti-Art’, ‘Avant-Garde’, ‘Alternative’, etc.) standing in defiance against the commercially and institutionally mediated infrastructure of ‘High Art’, we will nearly always find that this analysis, and the historiographic framework which it silently presupposes, organizes itself around productions (objects, public actions, published texts, etc.) and ideologies (positions, units, and systems of thought, segregated from the practical contexts in which they acted). The social structures of these groups and traditions, their internal dynamics and modes of interaction, organization, and communication, are effectively ignored or marginalized.

Since the majority of such anti-institutional projects in the ‘creative’ domain have been emphatically collective endeavours, the exclusion of this dimension of avant-garde activity in orthodox histories, the slight of hand by which the strategies and modalities of this collectivity are whisked under the rug in official pedagogy and analyses, reveals itself a politicized blind-spot. It is incumbent upon those of us attempting to continue this broad tradition of dissent to examine this historiographic ploy, and to haul the issue into the open with an eye toward combating it.

One consistent project of this dissenting tradition―arguably its most defining project―has been to abolish the social definitions and the discursive, disseminative, and commercial walls that pen creative activity within the edifice of ‘High Art’ and away from the social conditions in which everyday life takes shape.

The collective impulse―in all of its countless manifestations―represents a focus on creative sociality. The sociality of the 'creative' subculture is merely the hermetic vessel within which the Avant-Garde performs experiments; more pertinently, its project might be conceived of as the conscious re-designing of how humanity can relate to itself. This consciousness and active involvement in how we conceptualise subjectivity and society constitutes the greatest revolutionary potential of the creative project―and the greatest threat to the commercial and institutional structures whose function is not so much to profit from it (despite its decadence, the yields of the Art Market form a negligible portion of the GDPs of the great Western nation-states) as to constrain it.

The radical potential of Thought emerging from the Avant-garde does not reside in Ideas: it resides in the way ideas are made. Different communities communicate differently; new ways of relating and interacting lead to new ways of thinking and of acting collectively upon the world.

The maintenance of this social prison, ‘High Art’, has therefore found its principal task to be that of mediating and regulating creative relationships through institutional structures. Students (formal or, less directly, autodidact) in their most formative, insecure, and critically-undeveloped stage are inculcated with the idea that validation and respectability can be easily located and enumerated through either the commercial gallery system or the State-sponsored University and Artist Grant systems (the former too often a compensatory myopia, the latter by design a monetary leash). The discourses and organizational protocols--both official and conventional--are ready-made; and thus new forms of sociality, which might threaten to destabilize the discursive and commercial infrastructure that this notion of High Art veils and supports, are curtailed. Creative agents are segregated and neutralized as ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’, ‘creators’ and ‘critics’, ‘practitioners’ and ‘theorists’. Ideology, in turn, is as subject to this operation as the production of objects or actions; it becomes something to be consumed or rejected, not discussed and activated.

Within anti-institutional traditions, a group’s productions and the ideology they articulate reflect, they do not embody on their own, or merely through their transgression of the boundaries of dominant social ideas of ‘Art’, the deeply radical stance of a group. These gestures have been metonymic, not self-sufficient. A new technique or material was an element and manifestation of a deeper revolt; its goal was analogous to, or a tool toward, but not equal to, an alternative vision of human potential. Moreover, as originally presented, these ‘artistic’ gestures were inseparable from the presence of the collective, because the collective permeated the context of the creative act, its creation and its circulation.

The dominant institutional discourse with which we are faced today―‘Post-Modernism’ or its derivatives―has rendered this kind of transgression inadequate. Their symbolic function has been pre-empted. Such gestures are immediately recuperated into its intellectually hazy brand of ‘relativism’―merely a euphemism, when so employed, for its abdication of ethical responsibility, whose fruits it nonetheless continues to collect. The artistic ‘production’ can no longer be effectively transgressive so long as it can somehow be consumed.

The same ‘Post-Modern’ logic also neutralizes any Ideology it encounters by obscuring it through a metadiscourse of ‘irony’. Even an explicit challenge to orthodoxy becomes atomized, circumscribed, packaged, and imported into the self-assured commercial and status-economy of the institutional infrastructure. Anti-Institutional gestures end up published by Phaidon. This is why it has been possible for this system to discuss, to varying degrees and with staggering distortion, the productions and ideologies of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, etc.

But the creative sociality developed in these and other collective efforts cannot be recuperated in this way; they are not symbolic of a dissenting stance, but rather constitute a tangible, practical structural threat. The sustained existence of a non-mediated or self-mediated community makes the functioning of a stabilized commercial infrastructure literally impossible, by removing the very conditions in which a controlled and centralized discourse can operate. This is why mainstream history and historiography―always instruments of subtle propaganda―have attempted to ignore and bury it.

Radically new and productive modes of sociality have always continued to develop―e.g. Mail Art, heteronyms, virtual and mythic projects, countless new forms of international cooperation on every level enabled by technological development (at least in more privileged nations)―and forms of collectivity inherited from earlier generations continue to be developed, amended, and expanded, in both local and international configurations. Nonetheless, much of the discourse coming from within or occurring between dissenting communities continues to focus almost exclusively on transgressive forms and ideology, thereby limiting the revolutionary potential of the practice of the creative re-structuring of interpersonal relationships, which in underlies the production and the thought of dissenting communities. It also effectively limits the applicability of this discourse, constraining it (as the institution also does) within the social and conceptual boundaries of High Art.

We must recognize that the frontier between ‘life’ and ‘art’ has largely shifted to the level of structure rather than ideology.

Without abandoning ANY of this discourse then, we must begin to articulate explicitly and in detail that what is at stake are not merely new forms of making, but new forms of living, thinking, and relating. We must examine the various strategies of socialization that have been adopted, their successes and failures, and we must explicitly address these issues among and between communities continuing these struggles and explorations. Only by forcefully establishing and maintaining rigorous and strategic alternate historiographies to combat the subtle propagandists of the commercial Institution can we locate and attack the governing structures themselves which support that orthodoxy, recover the significance of creative activity itself (which would cease to be ‘production’ and ‘consumption’), and begin the definitive erosion that constrains the potential compass of our various developments within a bounded ‘subculture’ of educational elites, while the rest of our society withers and contaminates the rest of the world with the poison leaking from it. We must collectively strategize, both within and between the various communities involved in this heteroclite struggle. Our collective strategizing and our strategies of collective action must constantly reinforce and develop each other. Only in this way can we dissolve the foundations of this particular avatar of Power, and deny it the opportunity to rebuild.

Update of Sorts

2010-08-28T21:34:00.001-04:00

The following is nicked from the mOnocle-Lash blog, but it doesn't hurt to throw it up here too as it's only partially publishing-bound. There are further updates there.

Until I have a home and full access to my files, archives, materials, workstation etc. mOnocle-Lash is still in half-gear. But things ARE moving, and here's a scattered and meandering update in-between 'official' website news posts, partly on current and future projects, partly on potential directions and focuses for mOnocle-Lash:

The Jeunes-France Bouzingo

Here, I shall be brief, for fear of being far too long-winded. Suffice to say that things procede swimmingly, as one can see by going HERE. This new Jeunes-France/Bouzingo website is not quite ready for official launch, but since this blog has only two regular readers, I doubt it will hurt to mention it here.

OSU Avant Writing Symposium

From Aug. 19-21, Ohio State University hosted one of the largest gatherings of visual poets, performance writers, avant-gardists, mail artists, and theorists, critics, and archivists of experimental writing in years, drawing attendees from across the US, Canada, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Spain, and elsewhere. The symposium included over 40 lectures and performances (12 hours a day!) in three languages, several exhibitions, and various other activities.

A Post-Neo/Collab Fest delegation drove up from Roanoke, including Olchar Lindsann, Warren Fry, Jim Leftwich, Sue Leftwich, and Aaron Bensen; in Columbus we met up with Ohio Post-Neos Bela b. Grimm (our host), Imogene Engine, Aaron Andrews, and Tomislav Butkovic in from New Jersey for quite a strong Post-Neo showing. We were able to see old friends again, meet long-time ocllaborators for the first time, and begin new relationships. I'll not go into detail or I'll never finish, but among a great many stimulating presentations were Fluxus actions by Keith Buchholz and Reed Altemus, a very thought-provoking presentation by Lizabel Mónica on underground literary activity in Cuba (more below), some provocative questions regarding the efficacy of the avant-garde by William James Austin, a performance by the Be Blank Consort, several presentations on digital writing in South America, a fascinating and spirited presentation by Michael Peters of materials relating to Fleury Colon donated to the OSU Archive, superb performance-lectures by Geof Huth, Martin Gubins, and mIEKAL aND, a joint reading in memory of Thomas L. Taylor, a wonderful mail art show organised by C. Mehrl Bennett, Collab Fest organised by Jim Leftwich, also a lecture and performances by myself--and much, much more.

In addition, and more on-topic for this particular blog, was a store with stalls of material from 15 or 20 micro-presses focusing on experimental writing, including mOnocle-Lash. In addition to transactions carried on here, there was a large amount of direct trading among us. It was wonderful to see so much variety both in content and in publishing approach, especially as print becomes increasingly rare in micropress publishing. These exchanges include Reed Altemus' Tonerworks, mIEKAL aND's Xexoxial, Endwar's IZEN, Tom Cassidy's Musical Comedy Editions, Crag Hill's Meritage Press, and of course John Bennett's Luna Bisonte. There was much more that I have yet to check out. I've added links on the mOnocle-Lash webpage to some of these presses (as well as to some additional online presses), and plan to distribute catalogs of of some who do not have webpages along with outgoing packets.

mOnocle-Lash publications available there included the journals Synapse 4 and BARM 1; the anthology Lung Crackle; Imogene Engine's The Iuk Kide; b.b. Grimm & O.Lindsann's The Myopic Deathray; David Beris Edward's Mr. Rutabega & the Clockwork Mince; Megan Blafas' DadMama Baroness Paper Dolls; my The Ecstatic Nerve, Toward a Breathing Text, Ananchronism as Dissent, and Feral Pool; and the mOnocle-Lash catalog.

Some Thoughts on What's Next

As one would hope, I went into the symposium with certain thoughts in the back of my mind, and emerged with them at the front. The participation of many writers from Spanish-speaking countries--and in particular the presentation by Lizabel Mónica of Desliz on Cuban dissenting literature, conversations with her later in the weekend, and the accompanying packets of work and documentation that she brought along--helped to bring into focus a concern that I have had for some time, already made pointed by my interaction with Gleb Kolomiets' Slova in Russia and the linguistic and traditional complications that make up the fabric of mOnocle-Lash's own Bouzingo project. This concern is the isolation of the anglophone avant-garde.

I have for some time become increasingly impatient with the ethical and political complacency of marginal creative communities--what I would like to consider avant-gardes. My attempts both to think my own way out of this impasse and to goad the milieus with with I engage to more rigorous self-reflection and action in this regard are complex and have met with widely varying degrees of success so far. These attempts repeatedly pose the questions: How can we define, and then achieve efficacy? What must my own generation--those of us now entering our intellectual maturity and faced with a field of possible ways forward--achieve in order to re/establish a groundwork from which the avant-garde can become a social force rather than a literary-artistic genre? What must we address, and how?

These questions have been sharpened and recontextualized through my engagement with Gleb's Slova project and the group of writers, performers, and intellectuals with whose work I am slowly becoming familiar through it. As I interact further with communities across languages, in political situations vastly different from my own--realising along the way how deeply isolated my own Anglophone conception of the avant-garde community and tradition has become, and how difficult it is to overcome this limitation in the absence of adequate translation--this line of questioning solicits further and even more uncomfortable questions:

What can be the role of a Western, Euro-American Avant-Garde, especially an Anglophone avant-garde, which is in the final analysis an avant-garde of the undeserving elite? Of the only such communities who can afford to be "apolitical", or to choose to be otherwise, who have the privilege to risk complacence? To what extent does the Anglophone avant-garde reproduce within itself, unconsciously and hypocritically, the isolationism and nationalism of the society it wishes to subvert, an isolationism that takes the form of a blindness and an obliviousness to its own linguistic and political situation that is only possible when one speaks the language that is, after all, the literary equivalent of the Dollar, by which every other linguistic and literary currency is oriented and, all too often, devalued?

What are our responsibilities, and to whom? What are our unique resources, and how might they best be utilized in service of a vision of a truly global and transnational avant-garde?

And, most pointedly to the purpose of this particular blog, what role ought mOnocle-Lash to play in asking and then answering these questions, and providing platforms for response?

I am groping toward answers to the initial questions posed here, or more precisely toward a platform through which these questions might be asked. The most obvious and immediate answer is an increase of translated texts in Synapse and other venues; the practical issue of getting texts translated can come largely through increased dialogue and involvement with the communities themselves from which texts originate, and some hurdles might be overcome via the experiments in collaborative translation being carried out via the Bouzingo project.

But beyond this, platforms of exchange must be established through which these questions can be asked and answered within an international context. Here again I find excellent models in Slova (and the associated decentralized press Mycelium) and Desliz, both of them multifaceted projects, network-nodes whose focus is on facilitating exchange on local/national levels and on international/transnational levels simultaneously, both of them establishing a loose centre via journals that bring together poetic, artistic, and theoretical work from an array of nations and, to the extent possible, languages.

Desliz in particular uses the internet to host this wide range of discourse, creative work, documentation, announcements, calls for entries, etc and as the most effective way (despite its illegality in Cuba) to slip through national borders. Lizabel in fact upbraided me for this reason for having so little of the mOnocle-Lash material in pdf form. (I am in the long, slow process of digitizing--new publications will almost all appear simultaneously in both forms.) This kind of thing must be a long-term goal, but it is long-term.

In the meantime, there is at least one way in which the pervasiveness English can be turned against itself; as the language most commonly translated into and out of, it can serve as a kind of way-station of translation. A text translated from Russian to English may stand a better chance, on the underground level in which we work and if directed toward this purpose, of ending up in Spanish. Etc. etc. The same goes for discourse in general, including strategic exchange.

The most recent issue of Gleb's Slova includes a number of English texts translated into Russian, including SPART/Post-Neo's Nobody Go Anywhere Essays, and a number of Russian texts rendered into English. He's sent me a text detailing the current conditions of micropress and small press activity in Russia, which I'm waiting for an opportunity to publish. Lizabel's presentation last weekend, also translated, covers analogous territory. In both cases I have discussed potential translation/publication/distribution of work by others in their communities.

While I'd initially conceived of carrying these ideas out primarily in Synapse--and certainly there will be translations and quite possibly untranslated work in future issues--I am moving toward the notion of a separate journal, with an emphasis on expanding dialogue regarding these issues and resolving the challenges that avant-gardes and related communities face in their various contexts, evolving ways of coordinating internationally with an understanding of the very different resources and conditions that face cultural workers everywhere. What such a project might turn into would be decided organically as a result of this conversation.

This is where I am right now. Such a project as outlined above would not be put together until early next year (I still need to find a job, rent an apartment, and help establish an educational co-op this year...) I am on something of a precipice, and welcome ideas.

On the Voicing (em-bodying) of Poetry

2010-03-29T21:01:00.003-04:00

Lecture notes/Score for the lecture that I gave at the Marginal Arts Festival in Roanoke, concerning the development from poetic recitation to performance poetry over the course of the 19th century:

INTRO

Capsule Argument: Poetry has its roots in the oral, to which Performance Poetry is a return.

BUT it is not the same thing; the fact that it is a return makes it unique.

Perf. Poetry often talked about as if it burst forth from Futurism/ Dada/ someone specific

In fact was the terminus in at least a hundred-year development in avant-garde writing.

(this trajectory not definative)

BACK UP-

-Most systems of writing have their origin in religious and magical practices.
-Over the course of thousands of years, as writing became more secularized & literacy grew, poetry became increasingly connected in people's minds with a text.
-This means that readers could re-read poems; things could become more subtle, and did not have to depend upon sound to set them apart.
Oral Poetry derives from storytelling and/or ritual; Perf. Poetry from reading.

ON RECITATION / DECLAMATION; “reading aloud”

-Regular part of life from at least the 16th Century onward: in living rooms, taverns, stagecoach, etc
-Poems still regularly read aloud, but A.) it was an option, & B.) no memorization
-meter & rhythm act similarly like 'score' elements for both voiced & 'silent' reading
18th-19th Centuries: The Lyric: primarily written form (unlike ballad) modeled on speech
-spoken of as twining of music & language on subtlest level
-generally personal, introspective in nature: focus on subjectivity.
-Coleridge, Shelley, & others trained themselves to speak & think extemporaneously in verse, choosing terrain to walk according to verse they hoped to speak
-Application of declamatory technique to conversation
As in oral poetry, sound attempts to reinforce (while denaturalizing) subject-matter
Recitation rhythmic & chant-like, w/variations introduced to infuse lines with emotion and force
Intro- dream transcription

ex.- COLERIDGE, KUBLA KHAN (1816)

content and form can be apprehended simultaneously, reinforce each other
declamation is experienced as hieghtened speech in this way--'natural' rhythms under- or over-riding metric structure

In the following two generations of Romantics, sound and rhythm kept taking on more prominance;
rhyme and metric schemes became more complex and virtuosic.

INTERLUDE: Nonsense & Satire

-Genesis in children's lullabyes etc., heavy rhythm & rhyme for memory & attention when read aloud
-Benefited from the Romantic freeing of verse-forms & subject matter
-Emphasis on pure sound & musicality led to use of nonsense words/phonetics
-By 1840s-50s, a definite tradition of Nonsense verse existed and moved into Satire

ex.- CARROLL, RULES AND REGULATIONS (1845)

-Hood: Third-Generation Romantic; Punch, etc. directed at Bourgeois audience
-combines Romantic virtuosity & sensibility of sound with those of traditional ballads and of British comic & nonsense poets (Lear, etc), often infused w/social satire or critique, still reinforced by rhyme & shadows of ballad.

ex.- HOOD, THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS (1844)

-This poem is quoted in full by Poe in The Poetic Principle several years later, notes tension between nearly absurd scansion and pathetic subject matter.
-For Poe, most important element of poetry is rhythm; rhythm is addressed primarily through languages/concerns of music and mathematics
-tension between regular rhythm and repeated meter on one hand, & small anomolies of rhythm and distensions caused by semantic element on the other ('melody')
-Metric, rhythmic, rhyme & assonance schemes of a poem designed before even choosing a subject.
-For Poe, the organizing goal of a poem is not narrative, emotional, moral, etc but Phenomenological/phisiological. All decisions in writing a poem derive from their effect.
-Emphasis in declamation was rhythm, the maintainance of the metric time with rhyme & rhythm acting as reference-point and assonance & internal rhyme as counterpoint

ex.- POE, THE BELLS (1849)

-Poe had almost no influence on American writing--primary influence was on French Avant- Garde => Symbolism
-Symbolism attempted to reconcile through intensification poetry's oral-mystical roots with its textual-technical development through intensification:
a.) return to idea of Language as sacred/magical (developed by Atheists, etc...)
b.) intensification of opaqueness/ “textness” of poem
Symbolist poem as object of meditation--rel. Monastic text. meditation, mandala, etc
To be read, re-read, re-read over years in order to come to grips with
Principle developer of Symbolist thought => Mallarmé
-Goal to eliminate what triggered poem, leaving only its traces of thought
-Intra-& inter- oeuvre Symbolic system
-Grammatical bivalence
Jarry: disciple of Mallarmé, author of Ubu

ex.- JARRY, VEGETABLE (1894)

-instant comprehension of poem impossible-
-reading aloud is fundamentally different than reading as text
-when read aloud, becomes a score rather than a text
-for first time, poem IS something different when being voiced
Symbolist Declamation:
-In contrast to object of meditation, the declaimed symbolist poem is ritual/prayer
-Sometimes presented in intimate settings & soirées, sometimes alongside plays, w/choreographed lighting and trained singers & actors reading
-hieratic reading style--restrained, subtly musical, measured, without obvious or straightforward emotion
-text reading the body
-performers instructed to block out semantic aspect of poem when reading
-listeners intend to be suspended at the edge of comprehension, feeling the effects of semantics but not actually understanding 'meaning' of poem--NOT 'solving a puzzle'

ex.- JARRY, VEGETABLE (1894)

-Comp. Mallarmé's performative conversation to Coleridge 'gestures of officiating priest' etc
-used declamation, whispers, gesture, silence, planned actions, mime as part of lectures
-When Mallarmé died in 1898, left immense unfinished performance poem called 'The Book'; half burned by executors
-200 remaining pages--to be unbound in 20 volumes, with repetitions
-Performance (basic):

In domestic setting with invited guests
Customized shelf with pigeonholes containing volumes
Bell rings, 'operator' enters up aisle between chairs
Takes sheet from random from each, shuffles them
Reads & comments in sequence; shows some to audience, others not.
Leaves abruptly as if finished; but returns after 15 min. with another bell.
Switches volumes around, repeats

-Final major poem was also published w/discussion as score, and direction for score's interpretation
-Unlike tightly-woven sonnets, etc., is a treatment of Mallarmé's atheist mysticism, organized around rhythmic alterity of silence & Language
-Potential field of performance Poetry sketched out by Mallarmé taken up 15 years later, exemplified in different aspects by Schwitters, Hausmann, Huelsenbeck, etc

ex.-MALLARME, A THROW OF THE DICE WILL NEVER ABOLISH CHANCE (1897)

A Heterogenous Update

2010-03-27T17:40:00.008-04:00

A few scattered things here to supplement the update to the mOnocle-Lash blog that I"ll be doing later today:

I plan to get the hell out of Jersey, and the nacreous spillage of New York in general, for good at the end of May. Roanoke, Virginia: brace yourselves...

On April 16, I'll be participating (along with the rest of NJ PNA) in a Flux-Festival held half inside Printed Matter Bookshop in New York city, half outside on the sidewalk in front. This is organized by Keith Buchholz and promises great fun. There are a gaggle of other Fluxus and Network gatherings and events throughout the weekend, including another Fluxus/avant history tour of New Brunswick like the Anti-Tour we hosted several years ago. I'll be making as many of these events as I can, everything considered. I'll post Keith's announcement on everything later. For the moment there's this:

And here's a work in progress, largely inspired by the Bouzingo quasi-translation/versification, which has my blood pumping metrically of late; posted primarily with a view toward the translation of Bouzingo work being done by various people right now, as an example of what the construction of such texts look like.

The theme is a favourite Decadent/Symbolist one touching on the logothetic practices dealt with in The Ecstatic Nerve, that of the incubus. I've devised a variation of a ballad form, allowing me to frame the poem as a cautionary tale sung from mother to daughter and attempt to de-mysogify, if not un-complicate, the traditional treatment of the theme.

The same '-ying' B rhyme (a double-rhyme, including slants) recurs throughout the poem, while other A sets dodge around them from stanza to stanza. I've not yet decided on the C rhyme, which will scan across the poem as a whole, one in each stanza:

Song of Caution for the Virtuous Incubus

[alternating iambic tetrameter & trimeter w/bastard syllable, w/terminal pure trimeter]

[5 stanzas: ABABC, C to rhyme across the poem]

{stanza: didactic summery of argument}

A Pay heed, young XXX in XXXXXX[hurt/ girt

B lest into XXX you XXX

A For what XXXXXX turns back to dirt

B XXX rot XXXXXXXXXXXX

C [trimeter]

********************

A For once a XXX some XXXXXXXXX

B with men of meat go[es] lying;

A and though she tremble intoXXX

B she ends XXXXXX repining

C [trimeter]

*************

A XXXXXXXXXXXX with XXX of flesh,

B In XXXXXXXXX reclining

A XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX enmeshed

B are soon enmeshed with dying

C [trimeter]

**********

A A dying XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX {dying not death...}

B XXX lamia XXXXXXXXX

A XXXXXXXXX she replies that there

B are many forms of writhing,

C and

************

{stanza: echo & subtly subvert 1st stanza}

A For flesh grows old, and cold, and dies;

B And XXXXXXXXXXXX crying

A Despite she who, XXXXXX, replies:

B XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX signing

An Extended List

2010-02-02T18:38:00.012-05:00

PRODUCTIVE CODEX (Not Quite EXHAUSTIVE):
OLCHAR E. LINDSANN

The listing below is well-nigh as comprehensive as it's going to get; more hyperlinks and a thoroughly up-to-date online directory are also eventually on their way. (Needless to say, projects initiated under [other] pseudonyms and heteronyms, and projects not intended for public consumption, are excluded.) At some point I will collate an alternative articulation of this material, wherein everything is presented chronologically rather than subdivided into formal or other categories.
In the current thematic format, dates are given in Annum Domini for the benefit of those not committed to the Annum Dada system; the opposite approach will be taken for the chronicle.
A.D. 2002 = A.Da. 86 A.D. 2009 = A.Da. 93 etc.

Here, the activity is organized under the following headings, in a not entirely irrelevant order (I have tended to attempt to reduce redundancy, though some exists in cases of seperate functions perpetrated under the umbrella of a larger event or project):

Affiliations / Stewardships
Anti-Cabarets, Orchestrated Events & Devised Performances
Other Performance Events as Organiser
Published Books & Tracts: Sole or principal Author
Published Books: Multiple Authors, Anthologies, Etc.
Journal Publications (excluding Synapse & Appropriated Press)
Publications, as Editor

As Performer: Performance Poems, Readings, and Musical Sets

Video/Film
Released Sound Work & Albums

As Performer: Dramatic Work & Puppetry
As Performer: Selected Street Actions, Interventions, Anti-Adverts, Etc.

Lectures/Anti-Lectures/Workshops
Permanent Collections
Gallery Exhibitions (as contributor)
Radio Broadcasts
Selected Texts and Other Work Available Online (also see online Journals)
Blogs as Contributor
Reviews/ Discussion in Interviews

Copies, manuscripts, works, documentation, flyers, correspondence, relics, and ephemera relating to all of these actions, publications, and events reside in (and are available from, upon request) my Post-NeoAbsurdist Archive, the itemized cataloguing of which is currently underway, to be posted online as sections of the archive are prepared.

Other online resources can be found to the right, with more coming soon. The best sources for recent documentation are the Post-NeoAbsurdist and textimagepoem blogs, and Jim Leftwich's flickr site.

Affiliations / Stewardships

Maintenance Dept., Columbus College of Art & Design (2000-2002)
Catharsism of Narcotica Artmaking Collective (2002-present)
Founding member, Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Collective (2002-present)
Editor/publisher of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. (2003-present, 46 published titles to date) http://monoclelash.wordpress.com/
Post-NeoAbsurdist Archive. Hundreds of documents, manuscripts, publications, performance relics, and original artwork associated with the Post-NeoAbsurdist movement and affiliated groups, communities, and collaborators in the avant-garde and Eternal Network.
Founding Associate of Post-NeoAbsurdist Institute for Anti-Rational Affairs. (2006-present)
Senior Associate, Right-Geist Connections, Ltd.
Involvement with Post-NeoAbsurdist, Fluxus, Neoist, zoum-correspondence, noise, and death metal communities.

Anti-Cabarets, Orchestrated Events & Devised Performances

Fluxus Street Theatre. Participant in event organised by Keith Buchholz, w/R. Altemus, M. Bloch, T. Butkovic, M. Campbell, W. Fry, P. Gaglione, R. Janssen, M. McCarthy, A. Revich, C. Tarantino, C. Touchon, J. Zoellner, etc. Printed Matter Bookshop, New York, NY. April 16, 2010.
Apocalypse. Co-organiser & performer w/B. Chriss, W. Fry, J. Mathews, T. Butkovic, T. Campbell, M. Blafas, & K. Doerrer. Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, D.C. Sept. 11, 2009.
Quadricentennial Bilge-Worm Cabaret. (w/D.B. Edwards, W. Fry, E.F. Waterfowl, & A. Oliver.) Co-organiser & performer. International Post-NeoAbsrdist Anti-Festival, Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 28, 2008.
First Blood. Co-organiser/host/performer: Barm #1 Release, Anti-Adverts, etc. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 7, 2008.
Mr. Squibbles Shows some Films. Participant, Organiser, & co-Director w/E.Lennard of live filming-event. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. April 12, 2008.
The Silent Soiree. Participant & co-organiser w/W.Fry. PNA HQ, New Brunswick, NJ. March 8, 2008.
Anti-Surgery. Participant & co-organiser w/W.Fry. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. March 8, 2008.
Bosch on Ice. Co-captain w/W.Fry of 'Hell'. Protec Hockey Rink, New Brunswick, NJ. March 1, 2008.
FIDDLESTICKS #1. Co-organiser & performer. Collective reading of poems by John M. Bennett. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. Feb. 23, 2008.
Brutesthletics 2. Co-organiser & participant w/T. Rusotti (Institute of Aesthletics) & W. Fry. Two events. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Sept. 29, 2007.
Anti-Soiree. Co-organiser & participant w/W. Fry. Series of bi-monthly events. PNA HQ NJ, New Brunswick, NJ. July-Dec., 2007.
Brutesthletics 1. Co-organiser & participant w/T. Rusotti (Institute of Aesthletics) & W. Fry. Two events. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. May 12, 2007.
Professor Aristotle's All-Star Aquatic Ovulations Cabaret. Co-organiser and performer w/ D.B. Edwards, W. Fry, E.F. Waterfowl, A. Oliver, &R. Chaloner. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. March 20, 2007.
Gravy Salon. Participant in collective event instigated by D.B. Edwards & W. Fry. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. March 18, 2007.
Brut Salon. Regular participant in collective events instigated in New Brunswick, NJ. From Feb., 2007.
Morphemic Clamour. As performer w/ W. Fry (organiser), B. Chriss, & M. Blafas. Rutgers University Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. Feb. 7, 2007.
Papery Head Bother. (organised by D.B. Edwards.) As performer. Poetic event/recording. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Nov., 2006.
Gravy. (organised by D.B. Edwards.) As performer. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Oct. 2006.
Itinerant Mirror 5. Co-Organizer & Performer w/N. Waldbaum, D.B. Edwards, and K. Wynne. Including collaborations w/ B. Chriss, R. Chaloner, and K. Karpilov. King Ludd, Exeter, UK. Sept. 13, 2006.
Itinerant Mirror Cabaret 4. Co-Organizer & performer w/N. Waldbaum, D. Edwards, and O. Asciano-Reale. Including collaborations w/ W. Fry. King Ludd, Exeter, U.K. May 28, 2006.
Itinerant Mirror Cabaret 3. Co-Organiser & performer w/N. Waldbaum, D. Edwards, and K. Wynne. King Ludd, Exeter, U.K. April 23, 2006.
Itinerant Mirror Cabaret 2. Organized event with N. Waldbaum, D. Edwards, and O. Asciano-Reale. King Ludd, Exeter, U.K. March 26, 2006.
Dada = Fluxus. Served as organizer and “captain” of Dada team for regional performance event by one.c. Devised and/or performed approx. 10 pieces including both original and Dada pieces. South Brent Town Hall, Devon UK. March 11, 2006.
Itinerent Mirror Cabaret I. Co-Organizer & performer w/K. Wynne and N. Waldbaum in commemoration of 90th Anniversary of Cabaret Voltaire; performed 25 pieces including work by H. Silva and Etc. King Ludd, Exeter, U.K. Feb. 5, 2006.
Fluxconcert. (organised by R. Hunter.) Participated in Fluxconcert presented in conjunction with Art’s Birthday celebration, performing work by E. Andersen, J. Mac Low, Y. Ono, K. Friedman, A. Knowels. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Jan. 17, 2006.
Anti-Cabaret. Organizer & performer. Eight events. Dartington Hall Estate, Oct. 2005- Jan. 2006.
Bearded Synapse Cabaret. Co-Organizer & performer B. Chriss, W. Fry, and E. Panzeri. Readings by Lindsann, Chriss, Fry, Panzeri; John M. Bennett, Edward Lense, Robert Inhuman, Joshua Seyfreid. Keruac Cafe, Columbus, OH. Aug. 5, 2005.
Anti-Art Massacre. Organiser & participant. C.o.N. Headquarters, Columbus, OH. Sept. 18, 2004.

Other Performance Events as Organiser

BarBarBarian Trifectum. Co-organiser w/W.Fry & C. Wellington of themed programme of readings & film. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. July 25, 2009.
High Noon. Co-organiser w/T. Butkovic & W. Fry of 8-hour line-up of music, comedy, & poetry. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. May 24, 2009.
Aesthletics/Panel Discussion. Co-organiser w/W.Fry of Chair Jousting tourney. (main event organised by T. Russotti & M. Clippenger.) The Dirty Dirty, Brooklyn, NY. March 14, 2009.
Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. Coordinator, Ubu Roi and Post-Neo participation. Roanoke, VA. Feb. 20-23, 2009.
Be Blank Consort. Co-organiser w/W. Fry & T. Butkovic. Artichoke's, New Brunwick, NJ. Nov. 8, 2008.
Artichoke's Kickoff. Co-organiser w/W. Fry & T. Butkovic. Multimedia event involving R. Weaver, K. Faist, R. Bingham, K. Doerrer, & show curated by Spudnik Press. Artichoke's, New Brunswick, NJ. Sept. 27, 2008.
International Post-NeoAbsurdist Festival. Organizer w/W. Fry of festival w/19 writers, artists, & theorists from three countries. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 1-July 2, 2008.
Fiddlesticks. Co-curator w/T. Berg & W. Fry of 5 group exhibitions featuring local and international artists, w/weekly performances & events. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. Feb. 23-May 10, 2008. (Individual performances listed below under Devised Performances.) Curated visual artists include: A.Andrews, J.M.Bennett, T.Berg, M.Blafas, J.Bruno, B.Chriss, L.Corea, S.Dolnak, D.B.Edwards, S.Granett, b.b.Grimm, D.Hartke, A.Lennard, J.Leftwich, E.Lennard, C.Olson, A.Reed, &C.Whalen.
The Long Goodbye. Co-organiser & performer w/ R. Chaloner & D.B. Edwards. Installation-event. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Dec. 15, 2006.
Last Great Anti-Annual International Anti-Annual All-Devon Anti-Contra-Realist Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Festival. Organizer w/D.B. Edwards & performer. Devised and performed 16 related events over three days. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Sept. 28-30, 2006.

Published Books & Tracts: Sole or principal Author

Scores by Olchar Lindsann. 13 pp. Fluxpress. April, 2010.
Anachronism as Dissent. 12 pp. mOnocle-Lash. Feb., 2010.
Carmen Pro Pleroma: A Brief Treatise Concerning the Invocation of Yog-Sothoth. 15 pp. mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. Nov., 2009.
Cipher & Military Carp. Online chapbooks. VUGG Books. 2007. http://vuggbooks.randomflux.info.
The Ecstatic Nerve. 343 pp. mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. 2007.
Puking Trolley: Love Songs of the Leper. 38 pp. Luna Bisonte Prods. 2007.
Cheating Art History: Strategies in the Fight Against Modernism. 10 pp. mOnocle-Lash. June, 2007.
Profanity Poems. 18 pp. mOnocle-Lash. April, 2007.
Flayed Men. 6 pp. mOnocle-Lash. Dec. 2006.
Toward a Breathing Text: The Art of Madness: Insanity as a Creative Act. 12 pg. mOnocle-Lash. Dec. 2005.
Ghoul. 10 pp. mOnocle-Lash. 10 pp. Dec. 2005.
otidna/andinto. TLP in response to I. Engine's 'And Into'. 8 pgs. Luna Bisonte Prods. 2005.

Published Books: Multiple Authors, Anthologies, Etc.

Appreciation/blurb for It's Only Po-Et-Ry and I Like It by Peter Ganick. White Sky Books. April, 2010.
Exquisite Crypt 2. w/W. Fry, D.B. Edwards, E.F. Waterfowl, A. Oliver, R. Chaloner, T. Butkovic, B. Chriss & M. Blafas. mOnocle-Lash. March, 2010.
Appreciation/blurb for Vol. V of Remove a Concept by Peter Ganick. White Sky Books. Nov., 2009.
Critical introduction/afterward to revised Ed. of Doubt by Jim Leftwich. Blue Lion Press. Oct., 2009.
SARK srun+ SLOTD. w/J.M. Bennett & Serse Luigetti. 8 pp. Luna Bisonte Prods. Aug., 2009.
sr nt. w/J.M. Bennett. 8 pp. Luna Bisonte Prods. Aug., 2009.
Visual Poetry in the Avant Writing Collection. (anthology) ed. John M. Bennett. Ohio State University Libraries, 2008.
Automatic Volatile Blot. w/R. Altemus, J. Leftwich, J.-P Kervinen, J.M. Bennett, A. Genusa, A. Topel, & J. Kendall. 12 pp. Tonerworks Press. Nov., 2008.
Incense Trivial Disintegrating Helix. w/R. Altemus, J. Jeftwich, J.-P. Kervinen, J.M. Bennett, & J. Kendall. 8 pp. Tonerworks Press. Oct., 2008.
My Kimono Book. w/C. Mehrl Bennett & others. Luna Bisonte Prods. 2008.
Dossier inédito de poesía visual norteamericana. 3 pieces included in special issue of Cuban online journal Desliz. July, 2008. http://proyectodesliz.blogspot.com/
Secret Histories of Rutgers' Underground Artists. w/W. Fry. 8 pp. mOnocle-Lash, Sept. 2007.
Nobody Go Anywhere: Stay Home Make Art. w/W. Fry & SPART Action Group. Published simultaneously in Northern Ireland and the U.S. 9 pp. SPART / mOnocle-Lash. July, 2007.
Book. (anthology) ed. A.A. Jones & M. Leahy. w/M. Ensslin, M. Greenwood, A. Reed, A.A. Jones, & P. Zeal. Dartington College of Arts. May, 2007.
Exquisite Crypt 1 (anthology.) As editor and contributor. 24 pp. mOnocle-Lash. April, 2007.
The Myopic Deathray and Other Tawdry Conflagrations. w/ b.b. Grimm. 16 pp. mOnocle-Lash. Feb., 2007.
Lung Crackle. (anthology, ed. Warren Fry.) 16 pp. mOnocle-Lash, Feb. 2007.
The Lidless Daintily Tongue/A Gossamer Guillotine. w/E. Panzeri. 12 pp. Appropriated Press. Nov. 2003. 2nd Edition (Revised) published under mOnocle-Lash, Sept. 2006.

Journal Publications (excluding Synapse & Appropriated Press)

Special Feature on Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Collective, documentation, texts, & interview (w/B. Chriss, W. Fry, & D.B. Edwards) by Michael Peters. Word for/Word #16 online journal, ed. Jonathan Minton. Posted March, 2010.
On Fun. Transmission #3. SPART Action Group, Northern Ireland. May, 2010.
Make it Home, Not Art. with W. Fry. Transmission #2. SPART Action Group, Northern Ireland. 2007.
Toward a Breathing Text. Sponge Pudding #4. one.c, England. Jan., 2006.
25 visual or verse poems and short manifestos published in journals beginning 2004 in Barm (NJ, ed. W. Fry), Desliz (Cuba, http://proyectodesliz.blogspot.com/ ed. L. Monica) Hat (Canada, ed. R. Priddle), The Idiot's Manifesto (Ohio, ed. R. Icon), KUH[n] (NJ, ed. T. Butkovic), Letter Founder (Maine, ed. J. Kendall), The Lost & Found Times (Ohio, ed. J.M. Bennett), One Big Cookie (Ohio, ed. N. Solsman), Sponge Pudding (England, ed. K. Wynne), Star Fish (Canada, http://www.starfishpoetry.net/current.htm ed. R. Chrysler), Transmission (Northern Ireland, ed. J. McKeown), and Word for/Word (US, ed. J. Minton, http://www.wordforword.info/vol16/index.htm).

Publications, as Editor

Synapse 4. (journal) Editor & contributor. 56 pp + distro inserts. mOnocle-Lash, Nov., 2009.
Synapse 3. (journal.) Editor & contributor. 52 pp + 60 min. Sound Supplement, stickers, posters, inserts. mOnocle-Lash, Feb., 2007.
Synapse 2. (journal.) Editor & contributor. 56 pp + 80-min. Sound Supplement. mOnocle-Lash. Aug., 2006.
11/11. (anthology.) Editor & contributor. 11 pp. mOnocle Lash. Limited edition of 11 copies. Dec. 2005.
Synapse 1. (journal.) Editor & contributor. 56 pg. mOnocle-Lash. Nov. 2005.
Antiglobe. (anthology.) Editor & contributor. 120 pp. in four volumes + 100 min. Sound Supplement. Appropriated Press. Sept., 2005.
Laugh Clump. (reissue) Editor& poetic forward to re-issue of Crabb Murlock’s 1928 edition. 48 pp. Approprited Press. Sept. 2005.
Myth: Digestion and Renewal. (anthology.) Editor & contributor. Companion book to gallery show (above) curated by B. Chriss. 24 pp. Approppriated Press, March, 2005.
The Appropriated Press. (journal) Editor & contributor. Nine issues from Aug. 2003- Nov. 2004.

As Performer: Performance Poems, Actions, Readings, and Musical Sets

Narcoleptic Squirrel Automaton Take 7. w/T. Butkovic, W. Fry, & Lexoe (Alex Fiory). Performed premier of simultaneous poem by T. Butkovic. Mason Gross Gallery, Rutgers University. New Brunswick, NJ. April 1, 2010.
Don't You Fucking Smile. w/W. Fry & T. Butkovic. Performed premier of simultaneous poem poem by D.B. Edwards at the 3rd Annual Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. Community High School. Feb. 14, 2010.
Participated in premier of Inlaid Stoic Roadbed, oratorio for trumpet and voices, by Billy Bob Beamer at the 3rd Annual Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. Community High School. Feb. 14, 2010.
Song for the Bride of the Leper King. Performed bruitist poem as part of the third annual Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. Community High School, Roanoke, VA. Feb. 13, 2010.
2nd Annual Marginal Arts Parade. w/W. Fry, T. Butkovic, & J. Mathews. Participated in DIY community parade organized by R. Eaton. Roanoke, VA. Feb. 13, 2010.
20-minute set of a-capella noise / bruitist poetry alongside Jack Callahan, Panther Modern, & Joe Ruck. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. Dec. 17, 2009.
Huntington Poetry Club. Participant in bi-weekly readings. New Brunswick, NJ. Oct.-Dec. 2009.
Song For the Bride of the Leper King. 20-min. set at 'Labor Day Noise' show alongside M. Concave, Lexoe, Hollow Man, & Panther Modern. Grind Central Station, New Brunswick, NJ. Sept. 7, 2009.
Now That's Entertainment. Action w/W. Fry & J. Mathews. The Waterpod, New York, NY. Aug. 15, 2009.
Le Morte d'Arthur. 25-min. reading from Sir Thomas Mallory's text at BarBarBarian Trifectum event. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. July 25, 2009.
Encyclopedia-Salesman Sketch. Vaudeville routine w/W. Fry at Nigh Noon event. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. May 24, 2009.
2009 Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. Readings and performances w/ W.Fry, T. Butkovic, E. Damerow, M. Blafas, B. Chriss, & J. Mathews. Feb. 21-22, 2009.
Be Blank Consort. Guest performer w/group, & solo performance of Tzara's White Giant Leper of the Countryside. Artichoke's, New Brunwick, NJ. Nov. 8, 2008.
Rape Van. (A. Andrews & M. Cooper.) Guest performer for musical set. International Post-NeoAbsrdist Anti-Festival, Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 22, 2008.
Set of electronically distorted and manipulated vocals with N. Hallam. International Post-NeoAbsrdist Anti-Festival, Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 21, 2008.
Plane. Performed Huelsenbeck score at International Post-NeoAbsrdist Anti-Festival. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 14, 2008.
Beowulf. (w/W. Fry) Simultaneous reading of passage from Beowulf in Old and Modern English. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 14, 2008.
Ballyhoo. (w/W.Fry & T.Butkovic) Reading of poems by David Beris Edwards. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. April 12, 2008
Prayer for the Poison-Child. Phonetic poem; and Medicinal Poems (by T.L.Taylor, H.Ball-Rat, D.B.Edwards, and others) performed w/W.Fry & T.Butkovic. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. March 13, 2008.
The Disappearance of Imogene Engine. Reading of Engine's work as part of Fiddlesticks series. PNA HQ, New Brunswick, NJ. March 8, 2008.
Bosch on Ice. Co-organizer of 'Hell' & performer. Protec Hockey Rink, New Brunswick, NJ. March 1, 2008.
2008 Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival. Readings and performances. Feb. 2-3, 2008.
Be Blank Consort. Guest performer w/group. Bowery Poetry Club, New York, NY, Nov. 7, 2008.
Camberwell Arts Festival / London Bienniele. 2 poems and remote-collaborative piece w/ Post-Neo Syndicate as part of one.c. Area 10 Project Space, London, England. July 1, 2006.
One Night Stanza. Set of performance poems in support of main set by Mike McGhee. Barrel House, Totnes, Devon. June 28, 2006.
Synapse 2 Launch. Organized and participated in Anti-Reading w/D.B. Edwards, Alan Reed, Amy Oliver, and others. Dartington College of Arts, Devon. June 27, 2006.
Whip 6. Noise set w/N. Hallam. Dartington College of Arts, Devon. June 26, 2006.
H.P. Lovecraft Festival. w/N. Hallam. Electronically manipulated phoneticthulic poems. King Ludd Bookshop, Exeter, Devon. June 22, 2006.
Whip 5. Reading from unpublished manuscript Galatea. Dartington College of Arts, Devon. March 6, 2006.
one.c Goes to the Cavern. w/N. Waldbaum. Performed poems by Lindsann and J. Bennett, including collaborative piece, on program w/ Low Profile, N. Rose, L. Yeates, M. Greenwood, K. Wynne, R. Chaloner, N. Waldbaum, D. d’Emilia, D. Paranyushkin, Vatican X-Ray Dept., The Toretz, Dirty Protest, Freaks Union. Cavern Club, Exeter, Devon. May 14, 2006.
Concourse. Served as ambasador of the Post-NeoAbsurdist Movement in the premier of D. Edwards’ Contrarealist play The Drastically Unequal Distribution of Lizards. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. March 10, 2006.
Whip 3. Completed action. Dartington College of Arts, Devon. March 6, 2006.
One.c Goes to Exeter. Performed four poems at event with Sponge Collective, Liam Yeats, Ula Daijerling. King Ludd, Exeter, U.K. Jan. 21, 2006.
Set of 7 bruitist and phonetic poems by Lindsann, Huelsenbeck, Ball, & Fry on programme with R. Inhuman, M. Concave, Ultra//Vires, & the Wild Gunmen. Art Damage, Cincinnati, OH. Dec. 21, 2005.
Whip 2. Performed Richard Huelsenbeck’s “Plane”. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Oct. 31, 2005.
Concourse. Debuted phonetic poem, Prayer for the Poison-Child and various unannounced pieces. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Nov. 25, 2005.
Whip 1. Performed Phonetic Poem. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Oct. 31, 2005.
Set of performance poems on programme w/ Jessica Rylan & Three-Legged Race. Charles Mansion, Lexington, KY. July 29, 2005.
Thrash Poems and Other Questionable Forms. w/Catharsism of Narcotica. Cincinnati Fringe Festival, Cincinnati, OH. June 2 & 9, 2005 (Official Band of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival).
Hymn to Dionysius. Phonic Poem performed in support of Auk Theatre. BLD, Columbus, OH. April 2, 2005.
Orphic Ode. 25-minute Phonic Poem. Jung House Gallery, Columbus, OH. April 2, 2005.
Dissemination. w/B. Chriss & A. Andrews. Simultaneous poems. Keruac Cafe Gallery, Columbus, OH. March 25, 2005.
Brutal Cincinnati Damage Festival. w/Catharsism of Narcotica. Set of thrash-poems & improvised simultaneous poem w/ B. Chriss. Mockbee Gallery, Cincinnati, OH. Jan. 29, 2005.
Learn to Time Travel NOW. w/A. Andrews. BLD Studios, Columbus, OH. Oct. 9, 2004.
2 Performances w/Catharsism of Narcotica. Cincinnati Fringe Festival, Cincinnati, OH. May 13-19, 2004.

Video/Film

Mr. Squibbles Shows some Films. Screening of five short films w/E.Lennard, A.Lennard & C.Lennard. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. April 12, 2008.
Ubu Roi. w/ Angee Lennard, Emilie Lennard, Chriss Lennard. Full-length treatment of Alfred Jarry script. 110 min. Appropriated Press. Sept. 2005.
U.S. Premier. Cara Bar, Columbus, OH. Dec. 27, 2005.
U.K. Premier: Dartington College of Arts, Devon. March 28, 2006. A. Reed’s Golem screened during intermission.
Red Square Film Festival. Contributor w/C. Lennard. “Mr. Squibbles Goes to School.” Cincinnati Art Museum. March 8-9, 2003.
Pheonix. w/Robert Inhuman. Video Poem. Madlab Theater, Columbus, OH. Jan. 12, 2003.
Gestation of An Anti-Idea. w/Catharsism of Narcotica. 40-minute film shown on loop at Re:Pete:The Novel.
Catharsism of Narcotica. 10 song (all silence) Cassette Demo LP. Oct., 2002.
5 Short Films shown at opening of Re:Pete:The Novel, Nov. 11, 2002.

Released Sound Work/Albums

Compulsory Bingo. w/Chris Lennard. Full-length album of music & text. 60min. mOnocle-Lash. April, 2008.
KUH[n]. (DVD journal, ed. T. Butkovic.) Contributor, video poems. Feb., 2008.
Balmy Slots. Album written by D.B. Edwards. Performer. Nov., 2006.
Synapse 2 Sound Supplement. Editor & contributor. 80 min. mOnocle-Lash. Aug., 2006.
Hrach Rioke Bull Colle. w/anonymous collaborators. 60 min. MOnocle-Lash. Jan. 2006.
Feral Pool. (album.) Sonic Poetry. 72 min. mOnocle-Lash. Dec. 2005.
Ubu Roi: the Soundtrack. w/ Two-Sheds Nellson. Soundtrack to video Ubu Roi. 105 min. Aug., 2005.
Laugh Clump. 20-minute album of parasitic sound-texts recorded and released in conjunction with publication of Murlock’s Laugh Clump (above). Sept. 2005.
Sound and Performance Poems. 25 min. demo. Jan. 2005. Expanded to 15 pieces, 52 min. in June 2005.
Appropriated Press Sound Supplement. Editor & contributor. 40 min. Appropriated Press. Nov., 2004.
Hrach Rioke Bull Colle. 22-minute single-track bruitist album recorded w/anonymous collaborators. Appropriated Press. Nov. 2004.
Fast, Clean, and Reliable. w/Catharsism of Narcotica. 70 min. Appropriated Press. May 2004.

As Performer: Dramatic Work & Puppetry

Ubu Enchained. Co-produced/directed/designed/acted production of Jarry's play (w/ W.Fry, T. Butkovic, E. Damerow, M. Blafas, B. Chriss, & J. Mathews ) as part of Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival, Roanoke, VA. Feb. 20-22, 2009.
Herodiade. Played Herodias in Mallarmé play directed by A. Reed. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 14, 2008.
Orpheus. Played Orpheus in play written & directed by Alan Reed. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 14, 2008.
Mossdale Estates. Adapted comic by Angee Lennard to short puppet play. Performed w/W.Fry. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. March 13, 2008.
Second Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine. w/ Itinerant Mirror and others. Organized and performed clandestine production of play by T. Tzara. Dartington College of Arts, Devon. June 21, 2006.
Dust & Deity. Wrote, produced, directed, acted 20-minute puppet play; constructed 15 puppets, six costumes, approx. 800 sq. ft. of sets. Beaton Hall, CCAD. April 14-18, 2002.

As Performer: Selected Street Actions, Interventions, Anti-Adverts, Etc.

Anti-Advertisement. w/ A. Reed and D. Edwards. Conceived & performed Anti-Advert for Contracting the Yellow Sign. Dartington College of Arts, May 23, 2006.
Anti-Carols. Street Performances w/ W. Fry. Columbus, OH. Dec. 25, 2005.
Unannounced Bruitist advert for Bearded Synapse Cabaret. w/W.Fry, B.Chriss, E.Panzeri. High Street from Blake Ave. to 14th Ave., Columbus, OH. Aug. 5, 2005.
Galatea. Unannounced action- sealed letters dropped through mail-slot over three-month span. Jung House, Columbus, OH . March-May 2005.
Time is of the Essence! Altered postcards mailed to various people. Feb., 2005.
Request to Chicago Art Institute to Credit Panel of Exquisite Corpse to Olchar E. Lindsann. Feb., 2005.
not LOST: DOG. Placard-Poem. Posted in area of Hudson + High St., Columbus, OH. Nov. 6, 2004.
Opportunity Zone. w/Catharsism of Narcotica. Street action at Artists for Change event, Fountain Square, Cincinnati, OH. Oct. 1, 2004.
Anti-Art Revival. Uninvited manifestos. High St. + 2nd Ave., Columbus, OH. Sept. 4, 2004.
Reflexive Poems. Small poems/designation-machines dropped in public places. Ongoing.
Request to Columbus Museum of Art to Credit “James Ensor’s The Assassination” to Olchar E. Lindsann. July, 2004.
Surprise! 30-second long guerilla exhibition at the jurying of the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Downtown Marriot Conference Room, Columbus OH. April 16, 2004.
Bomb France Next. w/A. Andrews. Posted throughout Columbus, OH. May, 2003.
Conflict of Interests. Guerilla Street Performance, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH. March 6, 2003.

Lectures/Anti-Lectures/Workshops

Guest Lecturer, Bergen Community College. Lecture/Demonstration on asemic writing, the Eternal Network, sound poetry, and Fluxus for approx. 20 students. Paramus, NJ. May 8, 2010.
Flux-Tour. Co-organized tour of historical Fluxus sites in New Brunswick, NJ. w/W. Fry, T. Butkovic, & G. Hendricks. New Brunswick, NJ. April 18, 2010.
Workshop on Mail Art, Performance Poetry, and Fluxus. w/J. Leftwich, K. Buchholz, G. Huth, W. Fry, & T. Butkovic. Community High School, Roanoke, VA. Feb 15, 2010.
From Poetic Declamation to Performance Poetry: Voicing Poetry Through the 19th Century. Lecture at 3rd Annual Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival, with readings of texts by Coleridge, Carroll, Hood, Poe, Jarry, & Mallarmé. Community High School, Roanoke, VA. Feb. 14, 2010.
Guest Lecturer, American University. Lecture/Demonstration on asemic communication through correspondence art and performance poetry for approx. 45 students. w/demonstrations by W. Fry, B. Chriss, J. Mathews, & T. Campbell. American University, Washington, D.C. Sept. 10, 2009.
Experimental Poetry workshop. w/ J. Leftwich, R. Altemus, T. Butkovic, & E. Damerow. Community High School, Roanoke, VA. Feb. 23, 2009.
Radish Art vs. the Babelonian Empire. Advisor in debate between W. Fry. & Miss Ricketts. Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June 7, 2008.
What the Fuck is Post-NeoAbsurdism? Lecture & powerpoint presentation w/W. Fry &E.Damerow. Lost & Found Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. May 10, 2008.
Experimental Poetry Workshop. w/ J. Leftwich. Community High School, Roanoke, VA. Feb. 4, 2007.
Panel disussion on experimental poetry w/J.M. Bennett & T.J. Anderson. Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival, Roanoke, VA. Feb. 2, 2008.
What Isn’t Post-NeoAbsurdism. Anti-Lecture / Demonstration w/ D.B. Edwards & Amy M. Oliver. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Sept. 28, 2006.
Contracting the Yellow Sign. Parasitic Anti-Lecture. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. May 23, 2006.
Rabbits, Tea, and the Fall of the Roman Empire. Pataphysical Mini-Lecture given at Itinerant Mirror Cabaret. King Ludd Bookshop, Exeter, Devon. April 23, 2006.
Ubu Roi. Introductory Pataphysical Lecture at U.K. Premier of Post-Neo film of Ubu Roi. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. March 28, 2006.
The Bruitist Poem & Micro-forms in Dada Poetics. Dartington College, Devon, UK. March 13, 2006.
Simultaneous Lecture. With W. Fry & B. Chriss at U.S. premier of Lindsann’s Ubu Roi. Cara Bar, Columbus, OH. Dec. 29, 2005.
Analytical Psychology and Experimental Poetry and Art. Roundtable discussion w/B. Chriss & W. Fry. Jung House Gallery, Columbus, OH. April 9, 2005.

Permanent Collections

Olchar E. Lindsann Collection. Ohio State University Rare Books & Manuscripts Division, Avant Writing Collection. Continually updated collection of all published, recorded, and documented works from Aug. 2005.
Post-NeoAbsurdist Collection. Ohio State University Rare Books & Manuscripts Division, Avant Writing Collection. Set of publications, albums, and video dating from 1998-2005 in permanent collection. Continually updated collection of publications, recordings, and other material relating to the Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-movement. from Sept., 2005.
SUNY Albany, Dept. of Special Collections & Archives, Geoff Huth papers: otidna/andinto collected.
Textimagepoem Archive, Jim Leftwich. Hundreds of pieces of mail art and collaborative pieces archived.
Dartington College of Arts: Synapse, The Ecstatic Nerve, and other publications held in permanent library collection.

Exhibitions (as contributor)

A Sound Exhibition. Pamphlet Secret Histories included in exhibition curated by M. Peters. University at Albany Library, Albany, NY. March-Nov., 2009.
3-D. Co-curator (w/A.Lennard, W.Fry, & T.Butkovic) and contributor. Project initiated by Spudnik Press, Chicago. Oromancer Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. Sept., 2008.
Post-NeoAbsurdist Solidarity Show. (Curated by J. Leftwich & R. Eaton.) Contributor. Water Heater, Roanoke, VA. June, 2008.
A.Da. 92 International Post-NeoAbsurdist Exhibition. Co-curator (w/W. Fry & T. Butkovic) & contributor. The Oromancer, New Brunswick, NJ. June-July, 2008.
Something Like Spit. (Curated by R. Weeks.) Contributor of collaboration w/Alan Reed. The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall. May 14-20, 2008.
Public Pages. (Curated by M. Leahy.) Contributor. March 27-April 8, 2007.
The Grand Exhibition. Co-curator (w/D.B. Edwards) & contributor to 1-day Post-NeoAbsurdist exhibition as part of 2006 Post-Neo Anti-Festival. Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK. Sept. 30, 2006.
Synapse 2 Launch. Curator & contributor to exhibition of visual work from Synapse 2. Dartington College of Arts, Devon. June 27, 2006.
Myth: Digestion and Renewal. (curated by B. Chriss.) Objects & performances. Jung House Gallery, Columbus, OH. March-April, 2005.
Downtown Toward Democracy. Contributed collaborative piece w/Aaron Andrews. SkyLab, Columbus, OH, w/locations in Cleveland and Cincinnati. Sept. 24, 2004.
Group Show. Mad Lab Theater and Gallery, Columbus, OH. May 8-15, 2004. 4 pieces exhibited.
Actively Inducing Boredom. Contributor & co-curator w/Catharsism of Narcotica. Warehouse Gallery, Columbus, OH. Nov. 11-22, 2003.
Re:Pete:The Novel. Contributor & co-curator w/Catharsism of Narcotica. CCAD Student Gallery, Columbus, OH. Nov. 11-21, 2002.
The Milk of Paradise. Solo Exhibition, installed with set and puppets from Dust & Deity. Beaton Hall, CCAD, Columbus, OH. April 13-19, 2002.

Radio Broadcasts

Fob, Slop, Lymph and A Bean: The Miraculous Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Hour. Hour-long programme for WFMU of Post-Neo sound poetry, documentation, and music. As contributor & co-editor. Aired on WFMU, 91.1 FM, New York. June 28, 2008.
Broken Words. (ed. Hannah Silva.) Sound poetry played regularly on experimental poetry radio programme. Soundart Radio, 87.7 FM, Totnes, England. Dec. 2006-Jan. 2007.
Soundart Radio 87.7 FM. on experimental/sound art/community radio station in Devon, UK. From Dec. 2006.
Featured guest on Experimental music programme & collaboration with R. Inhuman. Art Damage Radio, 88.3 FM, Cincinnati, OH. Dec. 22, 2005.
Sonic Poems in rotation. WFMU, 91.1 FM, New York. Starting Aug. 2005.
Entomelodical Radio. (ed. Irene Moon.) Sonic Poems in rotation on experimental radio show on WRFL 88.1 FM, Lexington, KY. June 2005-Spring 2006.

Selected Texts and Other Work Available Online (also see online Journals)

Cipher and Military Carp. E-books downloadable from VUGG Books: http://vuggbooks.randomflux.info/
Fob, Slop, Lymph and A Bean: The Miraculous Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Hour. Aired on 91.1 WFMU, New York. June 28, 2008: http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/27734
textimagepoem Archive. Mail art, collage, texts, & other work from Jim Leftwich's archive. http://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/sets/72157594562669996/

Blogs as Contributor

textimagepoem. host Jim Leftwich. Approx. 250 images & texts from Aug., 2005. http://jimleftwichtextimagepoem.blogspot.com/
Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Collective. co-host and contributor from Feb., 2008. http://postneoabsurdism.blogspot.com/
Blog Journal. host Peter Ganick. 12 poems from Feb., 2009. http://pganickz.livejournal.com/
The Title We Just Forgot... host Jaan Patterson. 7 poems from April, 2009. http://surrism.blogspot.com/
weeimage. host marco Giovenale. 1 piece from Aug., 2009. http://weeimage.blogspot.com/
mOnocle-Lash blog. host O. Lindsann. Essays & updates from Nov., 2009. http://monocle-lash.blogspot.com/

Reviews/ Discussion in Interviews.

Review of 2011 MArginal Arts Festival and Panel Discussion moderated by Lindsann. Roanoke Star-Sentinel. March 10, 2011.
Interview by Michael Peters in PNA Special Feature. Word for/Word #16 (ed. Jonathan Minton). Feb-March, 2010.
Reference in review by J.M. Bennett of Geof Huth's Longfellow Memoranda. In Galatea Ressurects blog-journal. Issue #12, May 20, 2009: http://galatearesurrection12.blogspot.com/2009/05/longfellow-memoranda-by-geof-huth.html
Review by Geof Huth of performance poem, Dec. 29, 2008: http://dbqp.blogspot.com/2008/12/sounds-of-be-post-neoabsurdist-blank.html
Interview of Jim Leftwich, Aug. 29, 2008: http://24-7designheaven.com/24-7dh/2008/08/joy-of-collaboration-jim-leftw.php
Review by Linda Cleary of Something Like Spit exhibition, May 22, 2008: http://www.artcornwall.org/exhibitions/something_like_spit2.htm
Review by Warren Fry in The Brooklyn Rail of Be Blank Consort performance, Dec. 2007: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/12/artseen/be-blank-consort
Review of chapbook Puking Trolley by Bob Grumman, Aug. 21, 2007: http://comprepoetica.com/newblog/blog01297.html
Interview of David Beris Edwards, Sept. 2007: http://proseplease.deviantart.com/art/Q-and-A-September-2007-66405153
Review by K. Wynne & P. Davies in Sponge Pudding No. Six of performance at one.c Goes to the Cavern Club. May 14, 2006.
Review by Melissa Starker in Columbus Alive of Re: Pete: The Novel: The Exhibition. Nov. 14, 2002.

Lecture on the Eternal Network and Sound Poetry

2009-12-12T20:14:00.010-05:00

These are the lecture notes for a two-part presentation I put together and delivered, with Warren Fry, Julian Mathews, Brad Chriss, and Tim Campbell, to some students in American University in Washington, D.C. back in September. The first part deals with the Eternal Network/Mail Art and the second part with sound poetry, presenting both as sustained practices of correspondence and direct communication operating on Zoum principles, rather than as Artistic practices with aesthetic motivations.

Both were organised historically, and both (especially the lecture on correspondence) attempt to realign the traditional canons and emphases on priority that tend to cling to radical activity. In both cases I located the beginning of my narrative with the 19th Century Symbolists, though both could as easily have been traced earlier.

In the case of Correspondence this meant ignoring Ray Johnson (sorry, Ray), expanding upon the ways in which zoum correspondence played a practical role in sustaining the international dada community, and beginning with an explanation of the epistolary poetics of Mallarmé and the Symbolists and the role of correspondence in the organisation of international Symbolism. During the lecture, students sat at various islands of desks with communal stacks of add & pass sheets and supplies to occupy them while the lecture proceeded. (An exquisite corpse spontaneously generated by the class during the lecture will be published in the second Exquisite Crypt volume, docked for January publication).

The Sound Poetry portion began even earlier with the Bouzingos, through Symbolist performance technique a-la Valéry and Mallarmé; the traditional emphasis on Dada is maintained but with a more honed emphasis on the social roles that the various dada sub-forms played within the contexts of the Dada cabarets of which they are rhetorical gestures. A number of examples were performed; for the Fluxus Poem, Waren enacted the lightswitch piece by turning out the lights, leading to a coffee-stain on the back of a Bob Cobbing books being read aloud by us and a couple of wrangled students by cell-phone light, followed by a Post-Neo Splat Poem in the dark.

I don't know why blogger insists on some passages being arbitrarily black, but don't have time to figure it out.

The notes:

PART 1 correspondence art focus

INTRO- Briefly describe what people see before them;

pieces of paper with various things done to them by people from all over the world

things to do things with

feel free to do things with these things as you listen to talk, or as you ignore it
different things at different stations, move around if desired

Won't mention many specific years or names-though happy to do so after or in q & a
instead, focus on gradual developments and groups- since groups are the main concern for us today

Don't worry about keeping track of specifics--general drift of development & range of potential within correspondence

Art as object of contemplation vs. Art as Tool (Ends vs. Means). WHAT is an audience?

Distinction between artist-audience model and circle-of-friends model

Avant-Garde as community founded on latter model who highjacked the techniques and strategies of Art to try to change consciousness & human interaction.

Some argue that the avant-garde is not even primarily an artistic movement but a social, political, philosophical utopian experiment

Symbolist Correspondence-- 1880s-90s

approached corrospondance as 'art', with 'art' or semiotics in turn approached as atheist mysticism, ex. Mallarme, Jarry, Wilde

Symbolist community used networks of this correspondence to establish and coordinate friendships, philosophical discourses, cross-publication, lecture and reading tours, translation projects, theatrical productions, donations for monuments and commemorative books, alternative to publication, etc. across national/linguistic barriers and literary traditions--French, Belgian, British, Polish, German, American, Italian, etc.

Heretofore, French was typically the 'International language'--still limiting

Zaoum (pre-wwI) as meeting of the Avant-garde with researches into subconscious/asemic communication

Visual Poetry
wider implications than within this one movement

From Zaoum to correspondence art
correspondence art as form of international communication

ex. Italian to Russian Futurism

Dada/Merz (1916)--Much corresponence is partially or entirely graphic and/or asemic

use of key words, sometimes asemic, in zaoum connection
ex. Merz--origin of name in collage

Fluxus-- (1950s-60s) Flux Boxes

Flux Warehouse & correspondence-order model

1960s-70s Development of Correspondence lists & multiple intersecting networks

Becomes known as The Eternal Network

1980s-90s International Mail Art Congresses & All-Network Congresses

People increasingly focus on correspondence/mail art/networking as distinct rather than supplemental practice
deprofessionalization of community (not all artists)
some people stop calling it Art--term's usefulness is over
Shift in focus to collaborative model (describe)
Add & Pass sheets

1980s on--Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot, Luther Blissett, et al & Neoism

only possible from within a correspondence art community

Correspondence art as medium of communication between various experimental communities of 1st and 2nd World countries as South American, Eastern European & Japanese networks proliferate

petitions, underground news, etc moved & circulated through network
ex. Serbia & Open World

Movement of mail art online

structure of correspondence art prefigures internet to great extent
networking sites
ex. heteronyms on facebook/myspace--analogy of avatars to heteronyms
ex. openfluxus

email/blogs for digital correspondence art

correspondence art archives/blogs
ex. textimagepoem

Physical mail art not slowed by net, but journals & other Network community organs have been

correspondence Art Journals
similar purpose to net presences, but still PHYSICAL & playing with what real correspondence is
ex. Open World continues
ex. Synapse (correspondence art w/ other work in same communities)
ex. Hat (same but differences in schedule & consequences)
ex. Letter Founder (curation based on correspondence chedule)

Mechanics of contemporary correspondence art

contact, not “quality”, is prerogative
materials ex. rubber stamps, collage, multiple photocop
passage back & forth between digital & analogue formats, evolution of pieces through multiple archiving
Contact Lists & addressed signatures

This is the present here in front of you.

Questions etc. & keep making

PART 2 perf. poetry focus

Idea of using experimental art for new forms of communication not restricted to international level

Avant Garde has always tended to form groups, formal or informal, who use their own communities where they live, or assemble informal colonies in the midst of various cities, as experiments in new modes of social life

Many people in avant-garde movements belong to both a local manifestation of a group and a national one

ex Dada, Futurism
many belong to multiple movements simultaneously as well
(correspondence art glue for these relationships)

Performance Poetry one form among many of strategies active on local level

bear with me...

Bouzingos Songs (describe) 1830s

semantic content secondary to social action
Used as social tools & as social bonding rather than “expressions” or entertainment or display of skill.

Symbolist Declamation (brief) 1890s

viewed music as different order of communication than language
reading literature aloud, if artfully done, could utilize both levels of communication
ex. Valéry spent two hours training a singer to recite a poem
recommended ignoring meaning of words while performing

describe Mallarmé's projected 'Book'
designed for living rooms & familiar groups of people
different in each performance

Futurist Poem ~1910

onomotopeaia
ex. Balla, Canzone, Maggio (trans. “Song, maggio”)
no instructions for score--implications
how scores affect poem's social dynamic
every scoring method developed has continued to be used for past century

Relation of Italian Futurism to Zaoum principles

PERFORMANCE: Bald Mountain Zaoum Poem

Dada 1916

Dada Cabaret as collective experience--describe
Poems serve as moments of condensation within denaturalized environment--
Development of different kinds of perf. poem with different relationships between viewers and performers & between performers themselves

Phonetic Poem
PERFORMANCE: Karawane
mysticism/priest

Merz Poem
relate to correspondence art & collage, name of Merz
Ursonate--performance poem as shamanic/meditative ritual
PERFORMANCE: pornographic i-poem

Simultaneous Poem
PERFORMANCE: Apocalypse Crunch
coordination, relationship amongst performers

Bruitist Poem
PERFORMANCE:White Giant Leper
performer vs. audience, reversal of roles
relate to bouzingos

Fluxus--Instruction Scores 1950s-present

performed sometimes in festival context, sometimes in familial context, sometimes alone
PERFORMANCE

Visual Scores

PERFORMANCE: Cobbing: back of interview book PULL FROM AUDIENCE 1960s-80s
Surprise performance from audiences as asemic 'meeting', shared experience w/out history

Schematic/Collaborative scores PULL FROM AUDIENCE
PERFORMANCE: Be Blank Consort Caw Huff
named after talismanic phrase BE BLANK from certain circle in Eternal Network
Written through correspondence art network--extension of 'performance' beyond geographic locality
sometimes use correspondence art as basis for scores
membership varies from community to community when performing--implications

Splat Poem DISTRIBUTE TO AUDIENCE TO PERFORM

ELICIT FURTHER PERFORMANCES IF POSSIBLE

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT

Questions

For More:

Online

http://ubu.com/ (Gigantic source of avant-garde sound poetry, film, scores, texts, etc.)

http://jimleftwichtextimagepoem.blogspot.com/ (huge Networking archive & blog)

http://www.mailartist.com/johnheldjr/ (essays & histories of correspondence art)

http://weeimage.blogspot.com/ (electronic correspondence art community blog)

http://vimeo.com/user891904 (Post-NeoAbsurdist performance poetry)

General

Brotchie, Alastair & Gooding, Mel, ed. (1995). A Book of Surrealist Games. London: Shambhala Redstone Editions.

Caws, Mary Ann, ed. (2001). Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

correspondence Art

Duncan, Michael & Kristine McKenna. (2005). Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle. New York: Distributed Art Publishers. 2005.

Home, Stewart. (1991). The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrism to Class War. Stirling: AK Press.

Mallarmé, Stéphane & Lloyd, Rosemary, ed. (1998). Selected Letters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Smith, Owen F. (1998). Fluxus: The History of an Attitude. San Diego: San Diego State University Press.

Williams, Emmett, ed. (1997). Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas. London: Thames & Hudson

Performance Poetry

Huelsenbeck, Richard/ Ball, Hugo/ Serner, Walter. (1995). Blago Bung Blago Bung Bosso Fataka: First Texts of German Dada. London: Atlas Press.

McCaffery, Steve & Nichols, bp. (1978). Sound Poetry: A Catalog. Toronto: Underwhich Editions.

Richter, Hans & Britt, David trans. (1997). Dada: Art & Anti-Art. London: Thames & Hudson.

Schwitters, Kurt & Rothenberg, Jerome & Joris, Pierre, trans. (2002). Poems Performances Pieces Proses Plays Poetics. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change.

Smith, Steven R. & Cobbing, Bob. (1997). Ballet of the Speech Organs: Bob Cobbing on Bob Cobbing (interviews). Toronto, Canada: Underwhich Editions.

Tzara, Tristan & Caws, mary Ann, trans. (2005). The Approximate Man & Other Writings. Boston, MA: Black Widow Press.

some Heavy Metal poems

2009-10-13T23:28:00.004-04:00

A couple of Metal-related poems from back in the day (circa 2003-04). The first poem is inspired by my first Slayer show, which is to this day one of the most intense public rituals I have ever participated in.

The second is a a response to the murder of Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. I haven't actually listened to Pantera since I was 17, and they were pretty much a bunch of misogynist rednecks, but I had my phase, and Dimebag was murdered in Columbus, Ohio at my regular metal venue at the time, the Al Rosa. So there was some nostalgia, plus the fact that he was killed by a self-described 'huge fan' (and ex-marine who'd been section-eighted and released back into civilian society...).

Fellow Metalheads will recognise a number lines and titles laced into both of these. Both were first published in the Appropriated Press, and 'Divine Intervention' in Antiglobe as well. As usual, the blog format has fucked the formatting all up on both of these.

Divine Intervention

the crushing creeps before the blast
dead skin behind the mask
crowding (as if)
to see the serum spread before the clash
(of s/cymbols)
the loud impatient hush
then
dim forms the mechanical smoke
the air thick with blasts
(double-quick)
the epochal impend
the sixteen-cut call
the ensemble to sliding arms
and
the thousand-throated word:
then
the press gasping surge
the primal sweat
the sinew snapping at itself
the beat claw tribal flex
the thousand-tendon muscle
animal enlightenment of pulse-diluted minds
weirdly wakened to the chunk of charged string
screams
the cloven-hoofed spleen plays
the unanimous forebode of next
lone voice atonal screech and swallowed
by the vein outside the ear
the cleansing rain of blood
and
the (non)memory of millennia
heaved in shield-walls
religion written in gangrenous limbs
philosophy beaten on stretched skin
felt with the earnestness of flesh
the thrashed-dance spear-tip
damnation leering from forests that
slaughter allegory
and
have we fallen so far?
or
bonds still fold down two fingers
ward off vestiges of sunlight
one set of the philosophy of caves
ethics of embodiment
vicious sincerity of the newly crawled from clay
one tip of contact with essential
and throwing all reserve into the pit
laugh at the memory of forests
bristling with purely more that physical threat
and
skin and strings race like thoughts
savage intricacy
leaving words abhorred
slashing all complacency to chaos
ordered on the bones of ancient terrors

this is real art
(it makes the ears bleed)

************

Vulgar Display of Power

a grating thump of strings and then
the blast-beats stop

drink booze
smoke weed
make art
you are still clenched tightly in the jaws of the mad

and in the last seconds everything must unspool like notes abandoning the staff
must ring false among a harmonic hoarde

this is the obscure end to your exuberance
the smiles you
made have betrayed you
your racing frets knew not what they had done
eloi, eloi
my friends, my friends
you keep this love love love
how have you betrayed me

in a land of war and honey
this is where all beauty leads
even if it is soaked in smoke and blasphemies
gunned down because your art held the finger back from the trigger
gunned down because you were the only friend to kill
this is
what has driven ( )
far, far beyond

R.I.P. Darell Abbott 12 / 9 / 04

Current Projects

2009-10-04T22:54:00.003-04:00

This blog thing is slow-going. An indication of what I am doing whilst not updating this:

Current Projects:

An essay on JM Bennett's work in relation to Surrealist automatism on one hand and the Symbolist sonnet on the other, hopefully for an anthology dedicated to Bennett put together by Pudding House Press and aimed at a relatively mainstream poetic audience. If it's judged to be too, er, high-falutin' for that audience (I'm trying but I don't have much experience with mainstream writers) it'll find a home someplace else.

My first drawing in some six years, an illustration of a gnostic creation schema that I've been developing, mainly under the influence of my half-arsed understanding of Valentinian Gnosticism. The piece, in two plates each containing a number of sequential stages of the story, is keyed to the interpretation that my brother Chris Lennard is developing for his performance of Emmanuel Sojourne's Concerto for Marimba and Strings; if I complete them time, they will serve as energeia or memory-tools in his development of the performance. I may at some point do a third plate to complete the cycle.

Synapse 4. Yes, it is coming, despite constant financial and temporal roadblocks. The journal is 90% edited and the cover is half-completed, but after this there's the fairly laborious process of producing the master copy itself. Present estimate for starting to produce it is end of October. Beginning with Synapse 5 I'll be introducing changes to the process that will allow Synapse to start appearing more regularly and often.

mOnocle-lash Website. This will be officially put into action around the same time that Synapse 4 is released, heralding the new publishing season after a long hiatus. Around the same time we'll also see some new releases of varying sizes by Megan Blafas, David Beris Edwards, Warren Fry, myself, and possibly more.

These will be occupying most of my time through October, after which a number of other projects currently on deck will begin moving. These include a collaborative book with Imogene Engine, a novella with Alan Reed, an anthology of essays and interviews regarding the creation and stewardship of non-commercial intellectual communities, and the launching of a long-term project into translating and contextualizing the work of the nearly-forgotten French avant-garde Bouzingo group. Among other things.

More posts presently.

Galatea: 1st Fragment

2009-08-11T22:28:00.000-04:00

The first part of the first aborted piece, which I'll post in serial. Galatea was a projected 'simultaneous novel' organized around the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea (the latter being the name of the statue that Pygmalion created and with whom he then fell in love, and who was then granted life by Aphrodite.) It was undertaken in the Spring of A.Da. 89 (2005) under the spell of Lautréamont, into whose work I was then being initiated (rather obviously). The writing trailed off around the time that I returned from the UK in Winter, A.Da. 90 (2006).

The manuscript made it up to a bit over 8,000 words; the primary reason for its abandonment being that its prerogatives were folded into other projects. The conceptual and hermetic projects for which it was an index and cipher demanded more subtle and complex textual reflections and processes, while at the same time its formal conception was pretty ambiguous from the start, as was my poorly-articulated notion of a 'simultaneous novel', which I finally decided was essentially an excuse to call a prose-poem a novel and avoid tackling the issues inherent in the fictional form. The prose style, too, is rather flabby; even when crafting the kinds of long, tortuous sentences which I often use, a certain terseness or subtle rhythmic and tonal counterpoint is called for which I had not yet identified. There are a number of little gems, but they are lost amidst a cascade of coloured glass, to borrow a metaphor for this diagnosis from Max Jacob (who I believe cribbed it in turn from Valéry).

That being said, it's not an awful prose-poem, and does include some passages of which I'm quite proud (such as the veiled treatment of the Salomé motif toward the end of this strophe). Certain of its opacities might be more clearly approached when keeping in mind the central themes of The Ecstatic Nerve. From an archival or, shall we say, organicist point of view, Galatea represents my first attempt to seriously grapple with prose in all of its dimensions, and in its mercurial stage-managing of various argots and idioms is the prime prototype of Nerve, the still-underway Yellow Sign, etc. So here's the first strophe. A bit of arcane trivia: some of the text in the last paragraph below, which section is derived from Automatic Writing sessions, was also used in my Feral Pool album which I was working on at the same time as the bulk of my work on the Galatea text.

Galatea

Love of art is the greatest love of all

-Francis Picabia

I had wanted to write you, my dear, for at least as long as you have been written; and a text is a kind of eternity, for it (you) swallows up all pasts and all futures, endlessly destroying them, a constant present that churns with potentiality. And this, as you have whispered to me in the dark nights, is as close as we can come to eternity, unless we throw all of our faith in the letters of that word itself. And in this way I can say that I have always loved you, will always love you, and love you endlessly; but these words can be turned aside; and so I can say, equally, that I have never loved you, will never love you, abhore you like the vacuum that you are and are not. It is nothing to you- I say nothing in you. I leave you gently and freely to exist as you are, and yet I engage you with the utmost fixation and unfixity; and this, it might be said (though it might not), is itself a species love.

I was once outside the text, and am, and am not, and will be again, and am forever lost. In that place outside, from whence I issue, this jagged edge of me that juts adventurously into this sprawling house of language in which you and I (that jagged edge) reside, I sat with my ribs clenched tight in the fists of my thought. My forehead was squeezed lovingly in a crowd of letters, but the rest of me hovered like a transparent umbrella in the thin and whistling air. Shimmering clicks rebounded against the far walls, long cords of tarantula legs hummed their lengths perniciously between myself and a shadow blazed into a wheeled concrete grave that rolled to and fro with me whenever I stepped outside this iron door.

I have said, and will again, that all is simultaneous in you, my dear, the text. And thus it was that I found you beautiful while yet you were completely unconceived (and now, of course, you are growing still, as I type this; but at that “time” you were not yet begun; though, to demonstrate what we have both discovered, that past when you were not, is now imbedded in the you-that-is, and so within the logic of the text itself- and it is the text that we inhabit, or doubly are, [I might say triply are, if we are read, during this moment, the eternal moment that is] that past is now present, that is, presented to my memory and typing fingertips, to your structure, my dear, and to the reader that may be, or inevitably is, scanning us now). I gazed entranced into this non-idea that you were, this shapeless void with the promise of intricate shapings. And the legs of the spiders contorted with clatters, the concrete grave flung against a far wall in a far wing of this endless house, knocking a bust of Dante to the floor.

There were shadows kissing shadows in this place at that time. My eyes were glued shut with the honey from the sun, and I was drawn into an aery perambulator, was shot along a river of nodes, and I found you smiling in my flesh. I bent my chest in the tower of this mansion with its numberless rooms, the catacombs below digging into the soil like roots of dying. (It is whispered that there are corridors of mirrors there, and worlds made of straw, and a promise that stalks you, and a lovely ghost who shelters you from the jeers of mighty Jove.) In the next room, I heard an electron, abuzz with the sun, humming the typewriter cadenza from Satie’s Parade. Above it, I also heard the booming of a flake of my home, reciting the psalms of Hugo Ball. You know, my dear, because it is the constitution of you, how my brain tends to crawl out through my ears, in order to caress the thing that seduces it; and I was caught, tied to a mast and trapped between these rocks of sound and rhythm. And my brain ripped itself in half to follow these sounds, these rhythms, and in the rift as they ripped, I felt you rush through the tissues that wrapped the nerves of my head.

By what names have I called you forth? and am still calling? and will call long after my death? Yet as I type this I die, have died, my death is a precondition of this missive; and so I love you. This all is sutured tightly together. The word is rooted in the flesh. This fruit is nearing its dreaming in theramin here. I am hiding in leather, and here in the year it is drowning in yearly secretions. Here in the year, wreathingly nearing the red in here, in the year in here, trying to hear in here, in those that are dear. And here, in here, fighting in yearly, were drowning in lowering heat. I am in the red and gyrating lowering heat, in the yearly, in heat. In the upper-side, frowning in lettering here. They are dreaming in your garden of lillies, in the fighting, in dreaming, in nearing and leathery frowns. And nearing in fighting, in typing, a smile in glowing is finicky air. She was there, flowering and shimmered, solid inarticulation of the absent word condensced and yielding only to a point. Small winged mice fluttered around her, harps gestured coyly toward their interior strings, her throatfingers fitted with rings, and here lepidopterous murmers settle on her clavicle, bring marsupial caresses in their satchels, and fling fingerprints daintily at the fritillary significations couched in the carpet; and she sings, a tightened amourous, a language in beguiling movements that stir coyly the air, and this is her skin I speak of, the veins that pulse it subtly.

And didn’t you know, she whispered, when you began this incantation, this peon to the useless word, that the text cannot escape eroticism, that it can be said, (though just as quickly disproven) to be the very constitution of it? Because I am here, I speak to you as you write me, I am, we are, you feel me as you type, the words that I am are felt in your stretching tendons, the quick attention of your fingers as they dart across the keyboard. You write, and you are not yourself; you are the catalyst of a text- your will is the will of the text. We are inseperable, and yet you die as you enter me, lost and disemenated, you are open, a space of ifinite fields of language, immersed in language yet breathing the Inarticulate (the signpost of Desire), and for an instant the duration of the apprehension of a word, you are loosed from ‘your’ ‘self’ into the vast play of signification! Did you not see these things? Then write. Then love me.

Coy, cruel, how I love you. Bring me my head on a plate. I will watch my tongue form my words. I will see it curl and stretch itself to the shapes of serifs, tremble with undulations in praise of the nonexistant gods who have heralded your birth! I will see myself as you bear me, heavy in the soup of my blood, calling out your name and a million others, severed from myself, borne heavy on the shoulders of one that I love. I will see my mouth form words that I have scarcely heard, I will be a mirror, and watch the first startled gaze of my eyes as I tremble at myself, before this fatal split, this split that gave you to the world, and gave you to my gaze.

I am dreaming of you, Galatea, and I’m in between here, in the synapse of desire, but in the snow the cello is chewing on your wallet. It is masticating lovingly, a powdered sheen that lapses in the evenings of desire. A letter in the marigolds. A blind fox dancing merrily over swaying fields of iodine, and licking the heels of mindful indulgence here. It is blocking out the sun, a giant and a little one, a climbing out of interest, a tickling under rhythms. I do not know where the light has gone for today, my dear, nor the green leather mind of our fortuitous undoing. It is dreaming, (though this is merely conjecture) of yesterday, minding the shuttles; dreaming in heavily interested mires of purple arches. And that is where the lace is pointing: deep into a nation of smiling straps; and it is drinking from a pool of gyroscopes. This is where we must follow the little slingless nettles, those that end up looping whistles round a dime.

A Few poems online

2009-07-27T20:57:00.002-04:00

Three lyrics were put up on Peter Ganick's literary blog way back last week--

http://pganickz.livejournal.com/

It was posted on July 18 so click on the calendar to the right, or better yet browse some of the great stuff that's been posted inbetween then and now that my tardy ass is informing all three of you about it.

Also, I should get a post of part of an aborted novel manuscript up soon, I'm having a bit of trouble with it and the new Synapse issue is taking the majority of my time at present.

L&FT Review

2009-07-11T15:25:00.002-04:00

A rather dizzying essay using for its departure point and most recurrent motif the anthology Loose Watch, a collection of work drawn from The Lost & Found Times, one of the principal models for Synapse and incidentally where I published my first poem (right at the end of the journal's 30-year run).:

here

I was pleasantly surprised to see somebody besides myself making correlations between the Avant Writing community facilitated by the L&FT, the First- and Second-generation British Romantic circles, German Surrealism, and Neoism. In Richard Marshall's (I don't know anything else about him) essay these connections are more freely associational glosses whilst I tend (in the Ecstatic Nerve, Yellow Sign, etc.) to try to establish more of an associational infrastructure through interweaving historical, dialectical, and ideological logics into these associations--I operate perhaps more on a Kristevan model while Marshall reminds me of Gregory Ulmer (who has also written on 'Kubla Kahn' as it happens...

And it's off.

2009-07-10T22:25:00.000-04:00

So here is a blog.

Quasiluddite that I am, it will not be everything that a blog might be--neither a blogzine, nor a blog archive in the model of textimagepoem, etc., nor (I expect) a site of continuous discussion, but rather a repository for ephemera which might be of interest to those who take an interest in the full spread of my work or thought, but which are unlikely to be made public elsewhere, or have done so in ways or contexts that are severely out-of-the-way. The blog as a form of liminal half-publication. It's mandate is primarily the following:

Full lists (in various forms according to your preferred ideological prerogative--none using professional hierarchical models) of all of my activity in various fields. I will try to keep these fully updated.

Updates concerning the various projects on my palette at any given time, upcoming or recent performances, publications, etc. These replace the emailed updates I used to send out while in the UK, which I suspect most people did not read or care about. Huzzah.

Fragments of texts which reached a certain degree of fullness of conception before being either abandoned or folded into other projects.

Fragments and other posts relating to ongoing large-scale works whose completion is not expected for years or decades.

Ephemeral texts or documentation of unpublished work, and work published in limited editions or no longer available.

Cuttings and passages edited out of the final, published versions of essays or other texts. The shadows or the shit of these texts.

Historical work that I feel is worth bringing into discursive contact with the activity with which I associate myself.

Occassional reports of events or texts that I attend or read which are either exciting enough or awful enough to provoke me to divert my time from other things.

Random philosophemes or marginalia that occur to me when I happen to be near the computer.

Whatever short poems, etc. I happen to feel like posting.

Things that are not listed here but which I post anyway.

Since the conception of the blog is still at its base archival, I will try to attach contextualizing glosses whenever possible. There's some stuff up here to start with: A Coleridge poem, a gloss on current projects, a 'Pataphysical lecture with dodgy mathematics, and a list of everything I have published, organised, performed, made, lectred about, etc. Beyond this we'll see what happens.

Economic Outlay for the Limited Energies of Olchar E. Lindsann, LLC

2009-06-28T20:17:00.009-04:00

i.e., ongoing projects in the works. Putting one of these together every month or two is intended to cut down on the time needed to reiterate the same information infinite times in private correspondence, to keep the latter from utterly overwhelming my productive capacity. Since I've been largely out-of-touch with a number of people over the last year, this one will be pretty long:

Two essays are forthcoming in the next couple months:

An essay On Fun in the journal Transmission, published by the SPART Action Group in Northern Ireland, along with stuff by Vittore Baroni, Istvan Cantor, Mark Greenwood, editor Justin McKeown , and a few others.

A critical introduction for the revised edition of Jim Leftwich's monumental aleatoric theoro-alchemical poetic opus Doubt, along with other splendid commentaries & tributes by Thomas L. Taylor, John M. Bennett, John Crouse, Scott MacLeod, Sheila E. Murphy, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, and Michael Peters. Doubt was first published by the indubitable Potes & Poets Press in 2000, and the new edition purged of a number of typographic errors is being put out by Peter Ganick's Blue Lion Press.

Also knocking into shape an old manuscript essay for the forthcoming Synapse: 'Creative Sociality and the Traditions of Dissent: Toward a Radical Historiography' and beginning work on two possible essays for a John M. Bennett anthology being assembled by Pudding House Press; one prying apart the experience (in the word's various senses) of reading Bennett's writing, the other interweaving the way that his work is circulated with a notion of a memetic macro-poetics of dissemination.

Also in the works: a slowly-but-surely-though-slowly progressing Sketch Comedy Show with Warren Fry and others. A pilot set of seven or eight sketches (one written by David Beris Edwards) exists in various stages of completion.

On September 11 of this year, the Washington Post-Neo group brings the heat with an apocalypse-themed performance event co-ordinated with us here in the Jersey group, at an exhibition by Bradley Chriss of the same theme, for which he is eminantly qualified to be sure. Believe it or not this date for the show's opening was a coincidence (as far as I know). Brad, Megan Blafas, and Tim Campbell came up to Jersey over the 4th of July.

And on the note of visits, Aaron Andrews, ex-Rape Van (RIP) bassist, printmaker, and Post-Neo co-founder, recently came out to visit us here in New Jersey as well, where the three solid weeks of rain and...um, New Jersey, had us all in rather numb spirits. Nonetheless:

Aaron slaughtered us with his newly-invented mixed-drink concoction 'The KGB', which tastes like chocolate milk but is pure liquor and takes no prisoners. The next morning I felt like a journalist three days after criticizing Putin.

I finally got my theramin into working order (for all intents and purposes). It is housed inside a rubber chicken.

I spent far too much on books in Princeton, but have acquired a First (American) edition of Ambrose Bierce's Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. (I believe a British edition had been published several years earlier under the title 'Can Such Things Be'.) This book was the main impetus behind my beginning to write fiction when I was 16 or so, and Bierce was my main literary model for a couple years. Brilliant.

There is a rumour that bela b Grimm might make it out this summer too, possibly presaging a follow-up to The Myopic Death-Ray...

Another short-ish term goal is to continue the meticulous process of filing and cataloging the Post-Neo Archive at a rate to allow me to start posting the catalog online as it progresses. Currently there are hundreds of items filed and many hundreds more awaiting filing; but only A-F of the individual artist files have been numberd and cataloged.

mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press & Publishing
I've been very busy re-structuring the way that mOnocle-Lash is run--even with only one person cordinating everything, a bureauocracy is still necessary--in order to be more efficient both fiscally and in terms of time. The fruits of this reorganisation will hopefully begin to reveal themselves over the course of next year.

We are finally able to serve as a distro for European staple-bound publications, having found a source for UK paper sizes, and are beginning to reprint and distribute a number of titles from the UK Post-Neo Mouse Milk Press, and soon copies of Northern Ireland's Transmission. (Probably a few Luna Bisonte TLPs as well).

The long-long-long-awaited Synapse 4 will hopefully be completed by the end of the Summer. It will be disseminated over the course of the autumn in a packet along with a Sound Supplement on disc with cover by Aaron Andrews, a newly-inaugurated line of little TLPs inspired by Luna Bisonte Prods, and other goodies.

Also by the end of the summer, mOnocle-Lash should have a simple but functional website, as well as an associated blog that can function both to communicate what is being published and potentially to host a discussion of what the communit/ies associated with mOnocle-Lash would like to see us do. If anyone uses it.

For A.Da. 94 (2010), partial plans involve:

A line of free .pdf books

The inauguration of a line of translations of 19th and early 20th Century avant-garde groups previously unavailable in English (beginning with the Paris Bouzingos group of the 1830s--other eventual groups under discusion include Croatian Dada and the Incoherents group of the 1890s.).

The inauguration of a mOnocle-Lash RPG imprint under the supervision of Warren Fry.

Several anthologizing and historicizing projects destined for perfect-bound print-on-demand editions.

Increased interaction with 'Zine and Anarchist micropress communities via conventions, distro, etc. in addition to our focus on avant-garde communities.

It was Jack who built this shitty house.

2009-06-10T22:19:00.000-04:00

I christen this blog with one of the first cut-up (or proto-cutup to be fair) poems I ever read--a sonnet pieced together by Samuel Taylor Coleridge entirely from snippets and phrases from other poems throughout his ouvre, and published under his satirical pseudonym Nehemiah Higginbottom in The Monthly Magazine in 1796 (later reprinted in a footnote to Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, on which I first weaned my Philosophic teeth). The poem was intended as a commentary on form divorced from conceptual neccessity, and employs the common 19th Century satirical device of the House that Jack Built--with Jack literally mooning us bare-arsed at the end.

Don't ever say I don't repay my poetic debts, Mr. Coleridge, you turn-coat Tory Monarchist bastard.

Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil'd,
Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild,
Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt.
Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade!
Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho' she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd:
And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white.
Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest moon!

.

An old letter

2009-06-06T01:15:00.003-04:00

The following letter was affixed to my (as yet unpublished) essay Toward A Nagean Pataphysics in late A.Da. 89 (2005), when it was submitted for marking at Dartington College of Arts (R.I.P.). The essay (according to base Bourgeois standards of mathematics) was nearly 60% over the maximum allowed word-count of 5000 words. This note was determined to prove that the word-count was, when looked at in the proper 'Pataphysical light, in fact nearly perfect. To his credit (I think), Mark Leahy approved of the calculations--one more bit of proof as to Dartington's pedagogical value before it had its throat cut by its own treacherous administration.

The essay itself will be published in the course of time; the context of that publication is still being decided upon.

To whom it may concern:

I am attaching this prefacexplanationlettermissiveappendix to the body of my essay, Toward (and away from) A (potential) Nagean Pataphysics for two main purposes (in addition to a few supplementary ones). One is to introduce some critical background to the piece itself, for Pataphysics (as you will find) is by its nature fiercely inward-turning, potentially hermetic, patantially occult; and for those not familiar with certain terms, sources, and areas of Pataphysical concern, these carefully constructed Anti-symmetries and Anti-logical arguments might appear as meaningless chaos, rather than meaningless structure.

1.} This essay contains a number of references to various definitions of the Anti-discipline known as Pataphysics, given by Alfred Jarry, its (Anti-)founder. Many of these (taken from Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician) are so thoroughly ingrained in its practitioners as to be commonly invoked in their texts merely by a single word or phrase without being made explicit. I have appended a list of these canonical definitions; pay particular attention to the wording and metaphorical themes themselves. Some additional definitions will come into play in the piece itself.

2.} Two terms have come to be traditionally invoked in Pataphysical discourse in a particular way: the clinamen as a swerve, on some register, that disrupts a given order or circuit of transmission; and the syzygy as a coming together, or superinduction, of two disparate elements.

3.} Most engagements with Pataphysics have involved as their principle (though not exclusive) strategy the bringing together in some way of a literary/poetic/imaginative model with either a mathematical model (Oulipo), or a scientific model (Canadian “Pataphysics).

The second (main) goal of this letter (which, might I stress, is to be regarded simply as a helpful supplement of the piece itself) is to explain, in the most straightforward way possible, the number of words contained in this essay, both the apparent number and the actual.

According to Microsoft Word, this piece of criticism includes exactly 8,375 words. However, I must stress that (Microsoft Word being, when approached as a word-counting tool, nearer to the metaphor of a club than that of a stiletto) this is merely the apparent number of words; but after a short explanation of several factors involved in this revelation, I shall proceed systematically to demonstrate that I have, in fact, when looked at in a more judicious light, approached the paradigmatic goal of 5,000 quite closely.

First, let me point out that if we designate the ideal number of words in the essay as x, and the ideal amount of intellectual capital, or “meaning” as y, the equation that most perfectly expresses the ideal state of the projected essay is:

x = y.

However, upon closer inspection, we realize that y is not in fact a number, and that in the present situation (i.e. algebraic rather than phonetic) it can in fact signify any number- for instance 6, or 5000, or 93, or 385,430 –6.
x however, has been fixed in its signification, thus:

5,000 = y

It has, however, been conclusively shown, in different ways, that x (the word) can never be charged with a strict one-to-one (or x to x, or y to y) correspondence with intellectual capital, i.e. “meaning.” (see McCaffery, “Writing as a General Economy” [McCaffery 2000, pp 201-221 or Derrida, “Speech and Phenomenon.” [Derrida 1991, pp 6-30.]) As a result, if 5,000 is taken as a constant, then y, which we now realize can never equal x, must always have a certain amount of “capital” or “meaning” either added to or subtracted from it in order to restore an equilibrium. This can be expressed mathematically in one of two ways, depending on the value of y relative to x:

y = y - z
or,
y = y + z

Therefore, in order to equate y with x, we are always faced with one of two equations (or, potentially, a point of tangency between them which is nonetheless not a mere neutrality). Thus:

5,000 = y – z
or,
5,000 = y + z

The former might represent Lautreamont, Derrida, Jarry, or Stein; the latter Hemingway or Kostelanetz. In my case, the former is most certainly the case, since the very confusion bred by syntactic complexity, and the added subtlety for grammatical and semantic manipulation that it allows, is vital to the working of any potential Nagean Pataphysics, which must operate as much on the level of literary technique, rhetoric, and structure as on argumentation. Thus I am faced with one of two possibilities:

5,000 = y – z
or,
5,000 < z =" 5,000" 000 =" y" z =" 5,000" z =" 5,000" 5 =" 4,989.5" y =" 4,989.5">