I'm back...

& so is Diagram. In the new issue you'll find many wow items including an essay by Michael Jauchen called "My Favorite Chapter in Moby Dick."

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& so is Action Yes. The new issue is brimming with brilliance, including an essay by Robert Archambeau entitled "The Avant-Garde in Babel: Two or Three Notes on Four or Five Words"; "Two Stories" by Blake Butler; & seven quasi-historical vignettes on artists and philosophers called "Today the Smell of Worms and Wet Pennies," by Josh Maday.

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& so is the annual University of California Press book sale. Here are some good-looking sale items:

Arthur C. Danto
Philosophizing Art
Selected Essays

Theodor W. Adorno
Essays on Music

Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
The Collected Writings

Allan Kaprow
Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life
Expanded Edition

André Bazin
What Is Cinema?

Robert Motherwell
The Writings of Robert Motherwell

Richard E. Strassberg
A Chinese Bestiary:
Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas

Ted Berrigan
The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

Harryette Mullen
Sleeping with the Dictionary

Mao Zedong
The Poems of Mao Zedong

Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume One
Made for America, 1890-1901

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Remarks on Colour
30th Anniversary Edition

Michel Foucault
This Is Not a Pipe
25th Anniversary Edition

Ron Silliman
The Age of Huts (compleat)

Luis Buñuel
An Unspeakable Betrayal
Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel

Rebecca Zurier
Picturing the City:
Urban Vision and the Ashcan School

Immanuel Kant
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

Cole Swensen
Ours

Michel de Certeau
The Practice of Everyday Life

Today, an assemblage of photographers who photograph women...also, I'll be on hiatus for one week starting today...be back next Thursday with a plethora of painters who paint various things...


British photographers Heather Longton & Ellen Noble:






Turkish photographer Akif Hakan Celebi:








French photographer Guy Bourdin:








Ohio photographer Chip Willis:








Korean photographer Ye Rin Mok:












New York artist Will Cotton:








Russian photographer Mark Ziselson:




Polish photographer Magdalena Kmiecik:








Kentucky artist Dana Lauren Goldstein:








British photographer Stephanie J :

Via Exit, pursued by a bear, poet Joshua Clover weighs in on voting:

impracticalities are possibilities

You will have read some version of the claim: By not voting, you are simply giving more weight to the votes of those who do bother to vote....In practical terms, you are voting for whoever happens to win.

Perhaps this is so. Of course, by the same logic, by not fighting, you are simply giving more weight to the violence of those who do bother to fight. Moreover, by not shopping, you are giving simply more weight to the purchases of those who do bother to shop. By not laboring, you are simply giving more weight to the value of those who do bother to labor. So we can dispense with the doctrine of pacifism. Boycotts should be avoided at all costs. General strikes should be mocked at every turn. And so forth.

In short: you are free to make any choice except the choice not to participate. Yes, who could disagree? In practical terms, that is exactly the logic everywhere on offer.

(posted on his blog)

For your Saturday enjoyment, a wicked and wild video carnival:

Karlheinz Stockhausen - "Kontakte"





Laurie Anderson - "O Superman"





Short film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet - "Foutaises"





Bikini Kill - "Carnival" live in DC, April 4, 1992





The ABCs of Dada, three part documentary









Norman McLaren - "Synchromy"





The Slits - "Instant Hit"





Charles Manson 1987 interview with Geraldo Rivera
(parts 2-7)





National Health - "Collapso"





French duo, Chewbacca, live at Grrrnd Zero 2007, in three parts

Today, three Czech artists:


Jiri Dvorak:








Mara Infidelious:

The Couple

The Office Rat

Blanka Dvorak:

Untitled
(2002)

Untitled
(2002)

Happy Days
(1997)

Bunny

Felicitator

Art by Studio K:

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Since Josh mentioned Robbe-Grillet's essay "From Realism to Reality" in the comments yesterday, I'll share a few deadly passages from that essay:

"The discovery of reality will continue only if we abandon outworn forms."

"The style of the novel does not seek to inform, as does the chronicle, the testimony offered in evidence, or the scientific report, it constitutes reality. It never knows what it is seeking, it is ignorant of what it has to say; it is invention, invention of the world and of man, constant invention and perpetual interrogation."

"[In response to the oft cited idiocy "deep down nothing ever changes" and "there is nothing new under the sun"] ...in truth everything is constantly changing and there is always something new."

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If you're interested in the question of realism, check out Roman Jakobson's essay "On Realism and Art" (1921), which you can read for free, here, via Dalkey Archive's journal Context.

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If you're interested in the avant-garde, check out Clement Greenberg's essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939), for free here.

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Don't forget Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), for free here.

Because I believe Alain Robbe-Grillet’s collection of essays, For a New Novel, is the apotheosis of important texts, and since I am seriously combing it these days, I’ve decided to begin posting passages. Today’s excerpt is from the essay “Time and Description” (1963), in which he discusses a film he wrote for Alain Resnais called Last Year at Marienbad:

“The universe in which the entire film occurs is, characteristically, that of a perpetual present which makes all recourse to memory impossible. This is a world without a past, a world which is self-sufficient at every moment and which obliterates itself as it proceeds. This man, this woman, begin existing only when they appear on the screen the first time; before that they are nothing; and, once the projection is over, they are nothing again. Their existence lasts only as long as the film lasts. There can be no reality outside the images we see, the words we hear.”

Both of these Eric Dolphy albums slice; click images for info:

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Check out Alain Badiou's "Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art."

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Download a free pdf of this new collection called The Humanities at Work: International Exchange of Ideas in Aesthetics, Philosophy and Literature, edited by Yubraj Aryal.

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Check out Johanna Drucker's amazing digital archive of artists' books.

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Canadian artist Genevieve Dionne: