Friday, January 30, 2009



I culled the following videos from the archives of YouTube Hunting:


Raccoo-oo-oon perform live at the M-Shop in Ames, Iowa
October 2005






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Cibelle - "Punk da Periferia" (live)





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Pell Mell "Toccata" (1973)





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"Nayu" by Gevende
Animation & Direction by Denizcan Yuzgul & Burcu Urgut





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Eglantine Gouzy "live at Midi festival"
French Riviera 2007





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"Reflected Message" by The Focus Group
Directed by Kate Dawkins




Thursday, January 29, 2009







If you are a writer, please follow his lead and remix/mash-up an existing text. I'm doing it. So should you. It will be the future. It will be the post-postmodern.



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The estimable Adam Robinson tagged me in facebook-world, but since I don't really participate much in that world (or in myspace-world, for that matter, despite the fact that I do exist in both) I figured I would address his inquiry about my position on Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room" right here.

To be honest, I had never heard of Lucier or his work before. So I did some research and can now share what I've discovered:

"I am sitting in a room" is a composition in which Lucier records himself speaking this text:

"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."

Then, he plays the recording back in a room where he records the recording. Then, he repeats the process until the recording is simulacra of simulacra.

It was composed in 1970 and was first performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that same year.

You can here the original iteration, before it becomes multi-generational, here.

More Lucier stuff, including the complete 15minute original recording, at UbuWeb.

"Collage artist Residuum takes the text by Lucier and lets the computer speak it. And as a computer can only speak virtually, the technique is applied to virtual space, i.e. a plugin, that simulates the echoes of real space. Over and over again, 59 times, to be precise."

Also, Digital/new media artists Joel Kraut and David Tinapple created a live, interactive digital version of Lucier's piece.



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William T. Vollmann shares his ten favorite books, and what makes them special to him.




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"Paradoxes and Oxymorons" by John Ashbery
Created by Kate Raney
Read by DJ Spooky





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"Beckett with Lacan"

by

Slavoj Žižek

part one
part two




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Sci-fi movies at this year's Sundance Film Festival.




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Martinez Bourguet String Quartet
plays
Silvestre Revueltas's Cuarteto No. 4 Musica de feria





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Martha Argerich
plays
Ravel's "Jeux d'eau"





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French Canadian band Karkwa "Oublie pas"



Tuesday, January 27, 2009




NO COLONY 002 is now for sale.

I am honored to be included in this issue alongside:

Isadora Bey
Kristina Born
Aaron Burch
Blake Butler
Luca Dipierro
Scott Garson
Rachel B. Glaser
Brandon Hobson
Edward Kim
Matt Kirkpatrick
Rauan Klassnik
Lee Klein
Darby Larson
Evan Lavender-Smith
Patrick Leonard
Eugene Lim
Sean Lovelace
Anthony Luebbert
Conor Madigan
Gene Morgan
Bryson Newhart
Christian Peet
Jennifer Pieroni
Kathryn Regina
Joanna Ruocco
Bradley Sands
Ken Sparling
William Walsh
Corey Zeller

My contribution is a remix of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi.

The whole thing can be yours for only $10.




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Speaking of new issues of literary journals...

Octopus Magazine #11




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Thanks to CSP for sending me a link to Judson Cowan (aka Tettix, aka Cicada)'s chiptune reworking on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring - free download here.



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Click here to read Christian Bök's Eunoia online.




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Thanks to Joseph Nechvatal for sending me a link to his complete Viral Symphony - free download here.



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Ohio artist Kristin Coburn earned her MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University:







Monday, January 26, 2009




"There's still time to submit for the second issue of Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. We're looking for submissions that take a smart and savvy look at everyday persuasions. Please take a stroll through our current issue and then head to For Creators to submit something yourself. We welcome contributions of all sorts—no observation too pointed, no style too random. Submissions for the spring issue are due February 2. So, get out there and analyze the everyday, critique the common, and bring the banal to Harlot."



Sunday, January 25, 2009





John Zorn's phenomenal Godard/Spillane (1985), which he describes:

"When a single composition contains noises, guided improvisation, written passages and a variety of genres and unnotable musical shapes, the problem of unity becomes particularly compelling. Unity in a composition means that each and every moment has a reason for being there, and that every sound can be explained within a system. Using a dramatic subject (Godard, Spillane, Duras, Duchamp, Genet) as a unifying device was a revelation. It insures that all musical moments, regardless of form or content, will be held together by relating in some way to the subject's life or work."


Available for free download here.



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Graphic work from Pedro Mari:











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"The purpose of art, for Hegel, is thus the creation of beautiful objects in which the true character of freedom is given sensuous expression.

The principal aim of art is not, therefore, to imitate nature, to decorate our surroundings, to prompt us to engage in moral or political action, or to shock us out of our complacency. It is to allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding."


New entry in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hegel's Aesthetics



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"Story from North America"

Created by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore

running time: 4 minutes 20 seconds






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The movie version of David Foster Wallace's
"Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"




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Luca Dipierro was born in the Alps in Northern Italy and now lives in Brooklyn:











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"Exterminate all the Brutes": Gaza 2009

by

Noam Chomsky




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Visual poetry by Andrew Topel:









Saturday, January 24, 2009



Watched an amazing 45 minute documentary this morning that Mathias Svalina posted on his blog about this New York City street performer called S.K. Thoth. I found it absolutely captivating: I could not stop watching. The guy has created his own world with its own language, its own creatures, its own mythologies. He plays the violin and sings opera-style in the language he created.

For what it's worth, the video, directed by Sarah Kernochan, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject:.




For an example of the cultural bankruptcy of the American masses, witness the abysmal reception Thoth received on NBC's "America's Got Talent":




Sometimes people make me feel embarrassed and disgusting.



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Speaking of musical genius. Have you ever heard of Craig Burk? I came across his work while researching experimental music earlier this week. I can best describe it as incomparable. And I give it my highest level of recommendation.

In the course of listening to about five minutes of his album The History of Decency/Out to the Various Edges, Caitlin remarked, "It’s like a kid’s television show – he's like a Henry Darger-type - this sounds like bad sci-fi shows – talk about marching to your own drummer - this is crazy and fun!"

I agreed. Then I began writing an essay about it.

Thanks to the file sharing capabilities of rapidshare, you can pick up Burk's 1986 album The History of Decency/Out to the Various Edges and his 1984 album Codes of Abstract Conduct for free.

Friday, January 23, 2009





KORA, edited by Zachary C. Bush, is a journal of avant-garde poetry, prose, & 'experimental' literary hybrids.

Issue #1 is now alive, including work by:

LOUIS E. BOURGEOIS
J.A. TYLER
SEAN LOVELACE
BRANDI WELLS
J. MICHAEL WAHLGREN
RAY SUCCRE
&
a new piece by moi entitled "Personal Example of Friedrich Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence," which is intended to be read forwards and backwards.




Thursday, January 22, 2009





I just read Jacques Rancière's The Politics of Aesthetics (2004).

Here are two interesting quotes:

“Postmodernism, in a sense, was simply the name under whose guise certain artists and thinkers realized what modernism had been: a desperate attempt to establish a ‘distinctive feature of art’ by linking it to a simple teleology of historical evolution and rupture.” (pg. 28)

“The notion of the avant-garde defines the type of subject suitable to the modernist vision and appropriate, according to this vision, for connecting the aesthetic to the political. Its success is due less to the convenient connection it purposes between the artistic idea of innovation and the idea of politically-guided change, than to the more covert connection it establishes between two ideas of the ‘avant-garde’.…In short, there is the idea that links political subjectivity to a certain form: the party, an advanced detachment that derives its ability to lead from its ability to read and interpret the signs of history. On the other hand, there is another idea of the avant-garde that, in accordance with Schiller’s model, is rooted in the aesthetic anticipation of the future.” (pg. 29)



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Tobias Waite went to NYU:











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"Theatrum Philosophicum"

by

Michel Foucault

[to quote my friend Tim: "It's where he basically says that he's wrong and Deleuze is right. It's the essay where he ends the first paragraph with the prophetic, 'perhaps one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian.'"]



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"The Incoherents"

by

Monique Laurent



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Rachell Sumpter
is from Los Angeles:











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"Theorizing the Avant-Garde in the European Context: The Local, the Global and the Universal"

by

Wladimir Krysinski




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Barack Obama's Favorite Books



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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is an artist.



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One of Simon Høgsberg's many interesting projects is this one called Faces of New York:

"Once in a while I see a person on the street who immediately attracts my attention. I’m fascinated by the appearance of the person and feel a strong urge to walk over and say hi.

I spent one month, seven hours a day, walking the streets of New York in search for people who had this effect on me. I found ten, and asked each of them the same question: What do you think about your face?"


"I think that if you sliced my face down the middle then both sides wouldn’t be the same."



"My face has made me a lot of money because I’m a professional model. I pose for artists and photographers, and people love to do sculptures and portraits of my face."



"I think that God has given me a beautiful face. I’m very grateful for my face."



Monday, January 19, 2009





Blake Butler's new novella, Ever, is alive and ready to be read by you. I share my thoughts about the book here.



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One of my favorite spots, "Exit, pursued by a bear" brought to my attention new additions to the John Ashbery page at Pennsound.



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Karen Knorr currently teaches photography at the University College of Creative Arts in Farnham:








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Here is a good spot to find full text versions of critical theory for free download.



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There is still time to preorder Shane Jones's Light Boxes at a discounted rate from Publishing Genius Press.



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Here is a good spot to find experimental music for free download.



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Photography by Mark Weaver:






Sunday, January 18, 2009



Ground & Sky is a pretty good site for experimental music.




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Jerry Abrams

"Eyetoon"

(1968, 16mm: color w/ sound: 8min)






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Impossible Histories
By
Dubravka Djurić, Miško Šuvaković

The first critical survey of the largely unknown avant-garde movements of the former Yugoslavia.



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Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut

"Beatles Electroniques"

(1966-69, 3 min, b&w and color, sound)






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Berkley Professor of Philosophy Hubert Dreyfus has posted a fascinating essay called:

"Heidegger on Art"




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Magma

"Theusz Hamtaahk - Trilogie Au Trianon"

Live




[parts 2-4]



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Diamanda Galas

Live At the Poznan Jazz Fair 1999 (part One)





[parts two-six]




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Philosopher Graham Harman offers up (for free download!) thirteen unpublished essays. (Right now I'm reading one of them called "Aesthetics as Cosmology," which is pretty interesting.)



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Gong

"Radio Gnome Invisible"

Live 1990






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"DeLanda Destratified: Observing the Liquefaction of Manuel DeLanda"

by

Erik Davis




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Popol Vuh

"Improvisation"

(1971)






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If you are interested in signing a petition to Obama for the creation of a Secretary of the Arts, click here.



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Michael Harrison performs "Tone Cloud II" from his epic
72-minute composition "Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation"
(2008)




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"Manifestations of Surrealism"

by

David Matthews




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Kling Klang

"Heavydale"

Directed by Neil Maclean




Saturday, January 17, 2009



The 10 West Prize Acquisition Finalists for 2008:


Rob Carter, "Theatre of Bergama"





Nathan Vincent, "Gun"





Georg Parthen, "Village"





James Johnson, "First Mirror Picture"





Deborah Hamon, "Wonderland"





Dufala Brothers, "Ice Cream Truck Tank"





Thomas Doyle, "Null Cipher"





Jonas Criscoe, "2 Marks #2"





Brian Cooper, "Art in Public (Blue Boxes)"




And also Amy Toebbe, whose work I posted recently.



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Verso has just published The Essential Žižek: The Complete Set (The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Ticklish Subject, The Fragile Absolute, The Plague of Fantasies.



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Check out David Clark's project 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein




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"A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language"

By

Mark Twain




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THE ART INSTINCT: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
By Denis Dutton

reviewed by

Jonah Lehrer




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Peter Ganick's website hosts some interesting experimental writing.




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Here's a great site for prog rock.



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The next time some reactionary blockhead trots out the whole Sokal affair...




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Rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs:









[many more here]


Friday, January 16, 2009



My new essay:

"The Annoying Lacuna: One Unofficial History of the Oulipo"

is now up at AGNI online.


Wednesday, January 14, 2009



Here is avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin talking about his editing style, which might be interesting for experiential writers to consider:




And here are three of his short films:



A Trip To The Orphanage (2004)





Hospital Fragment (1999)





The Heart of the World (2000)



Tuesday, January 13, 2009



New work from Lincoln, Nebraska artist Jake Gillespie:














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Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB
by Jamie Lowe

reviewed by

Michael Louie




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Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad: