Fry Report: Feb 22nd (Fiddlesticks One)

On Feb. 22nd Brad, Olchar and I showed up to the Lost and Found Gallery for the first Fiddlesticks show after some breakfast. Jamie Bruno was just finishing up her addition to the room and Lenny Corea had added his marks (ranks upon ranks of ink-drawn, zygote like nodules) the night before. The two had opened up the ceiling to expose the organs of the building overhead, officially breaking the seal on the Post-NeoAbsurdist Perpetual Exhibition Machine. Jamie explained the lighting they'd set up while we navigated the string bound corners of the room and examined the miniature, yarn entanglements that alighted around Lenny's ink-leavings. For some hours, between running errands and spreading the word around the building I sat and talked with Tsubasa, Olchar and Brad as he painted leg-lobed vagipenises issuing from the sides of Lenny's wall drawing. It reminded me of the days when Brad used to paint in a room adjoining our living room at our place in Columbus Ohio. Talking with Brad in this social nerve center of the household as he worked was a daily activity.

At 8:00pm after some of the first visitors arrived Brad laid into a reading of Chants de Maldoror and explained the passage's significance in terms of how Lautréamont addresses the hermaphrodite and his interest in its existence as an undecidable subject. The hermaphrodite is beaten and prayed for. More people began to arrive. Brad read two new poems from a book he made (hint hint) for the exhibition entitled hermaphrodite. The poems seemed to detail the extra-romantic encounters of some as yet unborn Post-Neo sexual (thank you Evan Damrow). By the end of his second poem the relatively structured language broke down into herky-jerky spasms of garble-words reminiscent of his Split Tongue.

With anti-gears well lubed we commenced with the John M. Bennett reading. Olchar struck first, dexterously lip-locking the words with the aplomb of an ardent Bennettere. I planted myself and let one rip. Brad fiendishly chawed another with his tell-tale jabber-shouts. We handed the poems around to the gathered visitors giving everyone a chance to put down their noisemaker and operate one of John's phonetic jungle gyms. Tomislav V. Butkovic interpreted a poem using a slide-whistle. Olchar read a poem torn in half. Brad and I read a poem backwards. Jamie, who couldn't be there that night, read poems over the speaker on a cellphone generously loaned to us by Kate Illes. Lenny Corea, Megan Blafas, Steve Dolnack, and Andy Wolf also contributed their own distinct interpretations. As the tempo grew John's poems began intermixing with randomly derived performo-vocal exchanges between veterans of brute salon and PNA-New Jersey soirées. This resulted in noisemaker sculpture, free-style conversations in Bennett inspired tongues, and the random interspersing of 'vim's, 'barr's, 'blit's, 'the shirt's, 'vom's, 'blat's, 'the sheet's, and 'anti's within and around the poems.

Stay tuned for more images and video detailing Fiddlesticks: A Post-Neoabsurdist Perpetual Exhibition Machine's second escapade which includes work by Alan Reed, Charlotte Whalen, Angie Lennard, and Tsubasa Berg. We're planning a 'Familiar Hospital' event to coincide with the opening; Hector Clam is in critical condition after injuries sustained at last night's Bosche on Ice (more on this later) and most of you've heard of Professor Aristotle's continuing struggle with neck-leprosy. The evening will be capped off off with a Silent Soirée at our apartment leading into Olchar's reading of poems by Imogene Engine.