Gertrude Abercrombie

Reading  the necropastoral posts got me thinking about grotesque art and fantastic art, which led me to the work of Gertrude Abercrombie. These are some of the paintings I associate with the imagined Dortchen Wild.

-- Jillian

Camp Printing

Not long ago I was fortunate enough to finally come upon a copy of Rosemarie Waldrop's gorgeous Camp Printing (1970). I'd heard of the book a few times before (it's mentioned at length in Craig Dworkin's study Reading the Illegible) but was surprised to find almost no mention of it on the internets, and only a single grainy image. To rectify this, I've scanned and uploaded the entire book to my server. The link, in addition to a few notable pages, appears below.

[ Rosmarie Waldrop - Camp Printing (33.3mb) ]

––Ryan

Battle Game

Michelle Gay - Battle Game
detail, digitally printed tapestry, 1999-2000

Quake source code and C++ dictionary printed as 10 point courier type in form of Bayeaux Tapestry.
2.5 feet x 50 feet, ongoing length

Takes the two representations of war - 1000 years apart - the online multi-user game Quake (circa 1996-99) and the representation of the 'Battle of 1006', Bayeaux Tapestry as a merger point

––Ryan

Werner Herzog - Burden of Dreams

"We are surrounded by worn-out images, and we deserve new ones."

Pictures from the Alpine Desire show at the Austrian Embassy

Two types of portable mountains...


Hans Schabus, "Das letzte Land," 2005.
Christian Phillip Muller, video


--Matthea

Milton Babbitt (1916-2011)

The great avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt died today at 94. I've uploaded two of my favorite pieces –– The Head of the Bed for soprano and four instruments (1982) and Concerto for piano and orchestra (1985) –– to my server [link].

His contentious and brilliant 1958 essay Who Cares If You Listen? is impressively relevant, especially if you find-and-replace music with poetry and composer with author. An interview is here.

(Bonus track –– replace concert hall with poetry reading in the following:

“I can't believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions, unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit at home under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as they want to hear it.” –– Milton Babbit)

–– Ryan

From "The Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton

"The fear of forgetting anything precious can trigger in us the wish to raise a structure, like a paperweight to hold down our memories. We might even follow the example of the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, who in the late eighteenth century had a thirty-foot-high Neoclassical obelisk erected on a hill on the outskirts of Plymouth, in memory of an unusually sensitive pig called Cupid, whom she did not hesitate to call a true friend."


--Matthea

Consciousness shifting in its spacial locations

This is a Sufi I have been listening to a lot lately.  I think this video, especially the second half, informs the Bewilderment essay... and I think he's wonderful.

Anne Carson's "Possessive Used As Drink (Me)..."

This is a series of videos where Anne Carson reads her sonnets over dance performances. I've been dying to share them. Here's what it's all about:

 “Possessive Used As Drink (Me): a lecture on pronouns in the form of 15 sonnets”, a 25 minute performance involving text, sound, and dance (on video) by three dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. A&D faculty Stephanie Rowden worked on the sound design and Sadie Wilcox (MFA ‘07) did the video.

Artist’s notes: [The artist is Anne Carson]
” I had to compose a lecture on pronouns for a conference at Harvard and this was the result. I wrote a sonnet sequence, which Stephanie Rowden recorded and made interesting. Then three Merce Cunningham dancers improvised choreography in response to the sonnets. Sadie Wilcox videotaped everything they did and edited it to fit (or not) the sound score.”

Here's the easiest way to see them all in one place.

                                       (Starting after the first video)


The use of light (primarily the lack of it) and the layering echo of the voice are haunting. I listened with headphones the first time and it was hard to snap back into the world after.


Also, here's an index of Jenny Holzer's projections (which I love):
http://www.jennyholzer.com/list.php




-Rachel

The Necropastoral

Fellow poets/poetesses of the intarwebs ––

I'm sorry I missed you all on Wednesday afternoon –– though at least the virtual (preferable) me can surf alongside you through these series of tubes. My girlfriend's father passed away early Wednesday morning (precipitating my absence) –– and weirdly enough it's in this climate I find myself preparing some poems from Ariel for my undergrad students for Monday. I've been following (as maybe some of you have) the discussion of Plath's "necropastoral" that's been taking place across the poetry blogonets the past few weeks. Below are the more significant posts on the subject, which I find extremely interesting, especially when applied, as Corey suggests, to some of the recent mutations of the avant-pastoral like Goldsmith's The Weather.

Joyelle McSweeney, Citizens of the Necropastoral: Lady Lazarus and Kubla Kahn

Danielle Pafunda, Annotated Mash-Up Plath, Jones, Necropastoral, WOUND WOUND WOUND

Johannes Goransson, Media Bleeds Through Apertures: Necropastoral, Pornography and Insectoid Psychosis

Joyelle McSweeney, 13 Necropastorals

Monica Mody, Necropastorals and Counterfeit Hindus

Joshua Corey, Joyelle McSweeney's Necropastoral

(I've also uploaded a PDF of Joshua Corey's dissertation, The American Avant-Pastoral: Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, Ronald Johnson, to my server if you want to read more on the subject.)

–– Ryan

Beth Hoeckel

I love these collages so, so, so much.

http://www.bethhoeckel.com/

Blaise Cendrars

"I am haunted by no phantoms. It is rather that the ashes I stir up contain the crystallization that hold the image (reduced or synthetic) of the living and impure beings that they constituted before the intervention of the fire. If life has a meaning, this image (from the beyond?) has perhaps some significance. That is what I should like to know. And it is why I write." 

Animaterasures

 Oni Buchanan's Mandrake Vehicles are quite beautiful on their own, but also the coolest way I've seen process shown. I can't stop trying to trace back each little decision. 

And here are two photos my little brother sent me to prove he wasn't just being a weirdo when I found him standing in a dark room in the middle of the night, holding a flashlight. I thought of them when Rachel was talking about looking at the object that isn't there. Rachel, I think you should look at them. 

where the mouth words steal from

listen to her voice


(please).

Sebastiaan Bremer

These make me feel pretty amazing.

http://www.sebastiaanbremer.com/

--jamie

a. rawling's volcanology blog

http://volcanologists.tumblr.com/

also here are some images of volcanoes I recently posted on my own blog

http://yellowghostsandarmour.blogspot.com/