,It's going to be slow, and maybe a bit out of order, but it will happen. We need to recover. But as an offering, here's the rest of the stuff from Weekend 1 of the festival:
Paul Bruner's first performance of the night, Presidential Penises and Hanging Chads.
Olchar reads Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1816 poem, Kublai Khan.
And from exactly 100 years later, Tristan Tzara's Saint of 1916
.
Warren Fry reads Daniil Kharms' To Ring To Fly.
Lindsann & Fry give you some facts about Rufus Choate.
Paul Bruner's second piece of the night, Square Hatman Goes Glip Nigat.
Reid Bingham organises a circuit-bending chaos session with everyone playing.
Thanks, when we're able we'll get up documentation of weekend 2 with Alan Reed, then the rest of the festival and the last couple Fiddlesticks events....
Showing posts with label Documentation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Documentation. Show all posts
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
ANTI-FESTIVAL WEEKEND #1: Barm release reading
We're getting these up here as fast as we can--for the BARM release on Saturday, 7 June, people from the New Jersey community took turns mangling and wrangling poems from the journal. Here's every single one! Huzzah!
Steve Dolnack performs T. Butković, To Be Performed Out Loud
Julian Matthews performs B. Chriss' Icarus
Kevin Donnely performs D.B. Edwards, Some Things.
Karl Doerrer performs a poem by Professor Aristotle.
Olchar Lindsann performs Fast Sedan Nellson's translation of Wordsworth's Lines Written in Early Spring into Even-More-Boring
Kevin Donnely performs a text by T. Butković
Reid Bingham delivers an Anti-Prophesy by O. Lindsann
Tomislav Butković performs A. Howard's Your hair sweeps naturally and gracefully
back from your face
back from your face
Paul Bruner performs Imogene Engine's Sensory Oneirocritica
Warren Fry and Miss Ricketts debate the eternal question: Radish Art or the Babylonian Empire?
Documentation of the rest of the evening's proceedings asap!!!
Friday, April 25, 2008
FIDDLESTICKS 4 VIDEOS !!!
Here at long last is the video from FIDDLESTICKS 4!! Olchar's report below contextualizes this installment's events, which acquired a certain consistency.
Warren, Olchar, and Tomislav perform a four-part text by Tom Taylor.
Alex performs his piece Close it Closet.
Reports and Documentation of FIDDLESTICKS 5 as soon as we can manage to find time to get it up here!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
FIDDLESTICKS #4 Photos: D. Hartke, A. Andrews, A. Lennard finally!
Finally, here are Tsubasa's photos of the fourth installment of FIDDLESTICKS, with additions by Post-Neo co-founders dadaDavid Hartke and Aaron Andrews, and at long last Angee's work wrested away from UPS and mostly installed. Reports and video of the events to follow soon, and then documentation of FIDDLESTICKS 5...
Andrews' Fist Fuck and Hartke's ANTI- army logo adorn the door. These ought to become stickers sometime....
Beside the door, large printouts from Angee's Mossdale Estates that served as partial scores when we'd done the Mossdale puppet show the week before. In them Rose encounters Hartke's, Andrews', Lindsann's and Chriss' Post-Neo band Catharsism of Narcotica.
The Lost & Found Gallery!
Angee Lennard's new cardboard-tile floor for the L&FG
dadaDavid's amazing puppet, built for the projected Müppet Flesh project and inspired by his own mOnocle-Lash logo, reclines on a corner of Angee's floor near some of Jamie's wall drawings and J.M. Bennett collaborations with C. Mehrl Bennett, Jessy Kendall, and probably others.
David Hartke's Cheez-ItnA mask emerges from the nether-bits of some Chriss-flesh
A syzegy: Aaron's The Judgement of Los Iron Man print and two John M. Bennett pieces (one with Italy's Luigino Solamito) hung over Tsubasa's drips at the conjunction of Lenny's and Brad's wall drawings.
A painting by Craig Olsen watches over the whole affair from above.
A better look at Dave's puppet, whose leather accoutrements need repaired. This puppet performed the Funereal Poem for Sir Hugo Ball-Rat at the opening, as you'll see when we get video posted.
Somebody or other saw fit to make a wall drawing in chocolate on the wall in-between shows (and kindly labeled it for us), and it seemed a good place to post up Aaron 's Professor Aristotle poster.
Underneath Andrews' looming Kitty Genovese Must Die print, the publication table expands with a collection of Angee Lennad's Sputnik Press comics, Alan Reed's City Poems for the taking and posting, various mOnocle-Lash books and journals, and some sculpture: Dave Hartke's Ice Cream Cone made of glass for some reason, and Angee's tiny dioramas, which will get their own post with close-ups very soon here.Saturday, March 29, 2008
FIDDLESTICKS #3: Puppet Play by A. Lennard, readings by W. Fry & O. Lindsann
Warren & Olchar do the most subtle (?) Post-Neo puppet play ever, an adaptation from a scene from Angee Lennard's comic book Mossdale Estate. In it, the nursing home resident Rose comes upon an album by the firs Post-Neo Group, Catharsism of Narcotica--Dave Hartke and Aaron Andrews (work going up in Fiddlesticks 4 this afternoon), Lindsann, and Bradley Chriss (Fiddlesticks 1).
Warren's reading of his own poem The Dipthong of FQ and four phonetic poems by William Clippenger from Synapse 4.
Olchar performs his sub-phonetic poem Prayer for the Poison-Child. For compare and contrast, see the video of his performance of this piece in England a year or two ago on his facebook page, or the score for it in Puking Trolley.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Documentation and Olchar's Un-Report on the Silent Soiree and The Disappearence of Imogene Engine
Never say that we're not suckers for self-inflicted punishment, for it has come about again: the 'documentation' must be specific to the particularities of the event from which it is culled, even though it entails our giving ourselves absurd amounts of extra work that we certainly don't need.
There have been (among others) two key motifs that can be seen in both the FIDDLESTICKS #2 exhibition and the events related to it (and there was a great fluidity between those two parts of the whole shebang that weekend), that it is worth pointing out here, to whit:
1. Tsubasa's beautifully subtle care-taking of the space; cleaning up the debris of the shit we leave him to deal with (last week, the local bureaucrats; in this case, the bloody rubber carnage of five life-or-death surgeries!) despite our attempts not to do so, and in the attention that he pays to that process, transforming the space in a way that is nearly invisible but entirely pervasive, better than than a work of 'art' because we can't even put our finger to it, it is already dissolved into the world. (You could compare this to Post-Neo's roots in an art school maintenance department; what if instead of Catharsism of Narcotica you'd had someone who wasn't lazy? You might have Tsubasa...)
This care extends to his documentation of this whole campaign; in a way that is far from merely aesthetic, in the attention payed to all of the nuances of each situation as it unfolds, and an equal sensitivity of how it might say itself in a different form when viewed by you-all out on the blog in England or Ohio or Canada or Washington or Florida or Chicago or Cornwall, he does not record what happens, but translates it into another language. Because of this there has been a kind of growing conversation between the photos and blog, and the events as they happen; his photos have become as much a part of the whole enterprise as the events they come from.
To be (relatively) brief, Tsubasa's photos are different from 'what happens', but are something just as integral, and a definite addition, to constituting what the festival 'is'.
2. The action of arrangement in Imogene Engine's poetry, which as many of you presumably know was part of the literary/performative aspect of FIDDLESTICKS 2. This constant arrangement and shifting, and the way in which it oscillates between the life that it stems from and the 'something else' that it is, might be related to the subtle shifting about, lining up, relating, that Tsubasa does with objects such as the remnants of the Surgery, and with patterns of light and socialized movement through his camera. Re-arranging relics. The way in which her poems are dismembered and refigured, constantly re-arranged, to create discrete poems that are never in fact discreet but are different forms and combinations of parts of each other.
3. You might also see how this theme relates to the idea of silence, of not-saying, of thinking of saying but--because you can't or because it won't be said--withholding. And even more specifically to the idea of a Silent Soiree, the need to communicate even when you cannot say, to find a way to speak when you can't speak; and so whatever you talk about isn't itself. And so really, in Imogene's work, in Tsubasa's work, and in the idea of a Silent Soiree, its the idea of speaking through silence, of speaking through not speaking-about.
Pure magical evasiveness. (Engine: 'if she tucks her leg underneath, she disappears')
This is also to say that if this installment of Fiddlesticks throws up a certain facet of Post-Neo (and all of the people involved--Alan, Imogene, Tsubasa, Charlotte, and Angee ,whose work was absent due to UPS--have positioned themselves outside the noisy, polemic aspects of Post-Neo, and in some cases or ways outside of its various more 'speechifying' (un)centres, while all being vital to Post-Neo in a relatively silent manner; a quiet and careful and even cautious embodiment of it, or interjection into it, without which Post-Neo as it is would be unthinkable), a facet which realizes that subtlety and respect are not enemies of fun or energy, and in fact that neither has any value without the other.
And it is here that we find that the idea of silence has an unexpected relationship to that of trust (and therefore, equally, with its reciprocal, respect). To withhold speech, to remain voluntarily silent, is a mark of respect for the speech, or the silence as such, of the other. To request silence is to trust that the other will extend this silence, to allow one to speak to them. To withhold speech may be to hope that one has earned enough respect for others to trust in what is not said, in the deliberation of this withholding.
Of course, all of this does not only go for what calls itself a 'silent soiree' (and the soiree itself, in fact, was fairly silent).
Now, as events continue to unfold, these kinds of motifs have a tendency to reduplicate themselves, especially once you notice them; so that they somehow manage to become seemingly necessary to carry on, even if it costs you a good deal of extra energy, worry, and time that you can ill-afford. And what do you know, it's ended up happening once again.
For the video (we're getting to it) stemming from the Silent Soiree and my reading of Imogene's poems attaches itself to this set of themes. It is not a representation of what happened, but an attempt to remain silent about it, while re-arranging its elements to create something else of value, something new; because what happened, of course, cannot be said, and those of you who did show up and experience it itself will understand why; though even then, only in part.
(What a lot of speech I have found necessary to articulate this silence, which nonetheless remains silent within itself,--it turns out to be practically a whole essay on silence! And motivated by the very silence that it perpetuates while, perhaps, speaking.)
At times, one wants to speak to so many people at once that the only option is a complex silence through which one can speak silently to each; only silence has so many tongues. And one must be silent even about the relevance of this silent speech (which is the opposite and the same as a speaking silence).
Therefore: Here is a palimpsest of the evening--and all palimpsests are, of course, creations, they are leaving things out or they would not be palimpsests, and that is such a lovely word. The transition from silence to speech, which was not an easy one (it never is), is here, as much as I could make it, preserved; I have arranged Imogene's poems into something that I hope is (even, of course) better than the reading itself that has disappeared; if her disappearance that night (and she did disappear, of this there is no doubt) cannot help but disappear again when all the many of you who were not there view it, then is it not best that it disappear as beautifully as possible?
Of course it is equally possible for her not to disappear, and her poems may reappear at any time.
Now. Please excuse my digressions; and feel free, if you wish, to put it all down to simple eccentricity. I will remain verbosely silent on the subject, as usual.
There have been (among others) two key motifs that can be seen in both the FIDDLESTICKS #2 exhibition and the events related to it (and there was a great fluidity between those two parts of the whole shebang that weekend), that it is worth pointing out here, to whit:
1. Tsubasa's beautifully subtle care-taking of the space; cleaning up the debris of the shit we leave him to deal with (last week, the local bureaucrats; in this case, the bloody rubber carnage of five life-or-death surgeries!) despite our attempts not to do so, and in the attention that he pays to that process, transforming the space in a way that is nearly invisible but entirely pervasive, better than than a work of 'art' because we can't even put our finger to it, it is already dissolved into the world. (You could compare this to Post-Neo's roots in an art school maintenance department; what if instead of Catharsism of Narcotica you'd had someone who wasn't lazy? You might have Tsubasa...)
This care extends to his documentation of this whole campaign; in a way that is far from merely aesthetic, in the attention payed to all of the nuances of each situation as it unfolds, and an equal sensitivity of how it might say itself in a different form when viewed by you-all out on the blog in England or Ohio or Canada or Washington or Florida or Chicago or Cornwall, he does not record what happens, but translates it into another language. Because of this there has been a kind of growing conversation between the photos and blog, and the events as they happen; his photos have become as much a part of the whole enterprise as the events they come from.
To be (relatively) brief, Tsubasa's photos are different from 'what happens', but are something just as integral, and a definite addition, to constituting what the festival 'is'.
2. The action of arrangement in Imogene Engine's poetry, which as many of you presumably know was part of the literary/performative aspect of FIDDLESTICKS 2. This constant arrangement and shifting, and the way in which it oscillates between the life that it stems from and the 'something else' that it is, might be related to the subtle shifting about, lining up, relating, that Tsubasa does with objects such as the remnants of the Surgery, and with patterns of light and socialized movement through his camera. Re-arranging relics. The way in which her poems are dismembered and refigured, constantly re-arranged, to create discrete poems that are never in fact discreet but are different forms and combinations of parts of each other.
3. You might also see how this theme relates to the idea of silence, of not-saying, of thinking of saying but--because you can't or because it won't be said--withholding. And even more specifically to the idea of a Silent Soiree, the need to communicate even when you cannot say, to find a way to speak when you can't speak; and so whatever you talk about isn't itself. And so really, in Imogene's work, in Tsubasa's work, and in the idea of a Silent Soiree, its the idea of speaking through silence, of speaking through not speaking-about.
Pure magical evasiveness. (Engine: 'if she tucks her leg underneath, she disappears')
This is also to say that if this installment of Fiddlesticks throws up a certain facet of Post-Neo (and all of the people involved--Alan, Imogene, Tsubasa, Charlotte, and Angee ,whose work was absent due to UPS--have positioned themselves outside the noisy, polemic aspects of Post-Neo, and in some cases or ways outside of its various more 'speechifying' (un)centres, while all being vital to Post-Neo in a relatively silent manner; a quiet and careful and even cautious embodiment of it, or interjection into it, without which Post-Neo as it is would be unthinkable), a facet which realizes that subtlety and respect are not enemies of fun or energy, and in fact that neither has any value without the other.
And it is here that we find that the idea of silence has an unexpected relationship to that of trust (and therefore, equally, with its reciprocal, respect). To withhold speech, to remain voluntarily silent, is a mark of respect for the speech, or the silence as such, of the other. To request silence is to trust that the other will extend this silence, to allow one to speak to them. To withhold speech may be to hope that one has earned enough respect for others to trust in what is not said, in the deliberation of this withholding.
Of course, all of this does not only go for what calls itself a 'silent soiree' (and the soiree itself, in fact, was fairly silent).
Now, as events continue to unfold, these kinds of motifs have a tendency to reduplicate themselves, especially once you notice them; so that they somehow manage to become seemingly necessary to carry on, even if it costs you a good deal of extra energy, worry, and time that you can ill-afford. And what do you know, it's ended up happening once again.
For the video (we're getting to it) stemming from the Silent Soiree and my reading of Imogene's poems attaches itself to this set of themes. It is not a representation of what happened, but an attempt to remain silent about it, while re-arranging its elements to create something else of value, something new; because what happened, of course, cannot be said, and those of you who did show up and experience it itself will understand why; though even then, only in part.
(What a lot of speech I have found necessary to articulate this silence, which nonetheless remains silent within itself,--it turns out to be practically a whole essay on silence! And motivated by the very silence that it perpetuates while, perhaps, speaking.)
At times, one wants to speak to so many people at once that the only option is a complex silence through which one can speak silently to each; only silence has so many tongues. And one must be silent even about the relevance of this silent speech (which is the opposite and the same as a speaking silence).
Therefore: Here is a palimpsest of the evening--and all palimpsests are, of course, creations, they are leaving things out or they would not be palimpsests, and that is such a lovely word. The transition from silence to speech, which was not an easy one (it never is), is here, as much as I could make it, preserved; I have arranged Imogene's poems into something that I hope is (even, of course) better than the reading itself that has disappeared; if her disappearance that night (and she did disappear, of this there is no doubt) cannot help but disappear again when all the many of you who were not there view it, then is it not best that it disappear as beautifully as possible?
Of course it is equally possible for her not to disappear, and her poems may reappear at any time.
Now. Please excuse my digressions; and feel free, if you wish, to put it all down to simple eccentricity. I will remain verbosely silent on the subject, as usual.
So here it is:
THE DISAPPEARENCE OF
THE DISAPPEARENCE OF IMOGENE ENGINE
and the SILENT SOIREE!!!
thusly:
THE DISAPPEARENCE OF
THE DISAPPEARENCE OF IMOGENE ENGINE
and the SILENT SOIREE!!!
thusly:
FAMILIAR SURGERY PHOTOS!
Tsubasa Berg was on hand to record the series of delicate procedures carried out in the Lost & Found Gallery/operating theatre during FIDDLESTICKS 2 (Dr. Fry's report has been filed below):
Doctors Fry, Dolnak, Lindsann, and Butkivić gather round the operating table to examine the horribly-mangled Anti-Tom.
Drs. Butković & Fry work on the Anti-Tom in the Staple Room, as Dolnak and Salazar observe.
Dr. Steve Dolnak coping with the pressure.
The newly reconstructed Anti-Tom
A close-up of his luv-er-ly new face.
Miss Ricketts, sans tongue!
Miss Ricketts on the table, a Familiar-sized bottle of 'anesthetic' beside her.
Dr. Butković with that other rubber chicken.
Comptroller Needleman goes under the cosmetic knife.
After the surgery, he demands more 'anesthetic'.
Take a look at your new face, Comptroller!
After seeing his new face, he goes back to the bottle again.
Hector Clam's state as s/he entered the emergency room
Hey, that new snake-tail has to be put on there somehow.
And then there was hot wax for some reason.
Hector's mane is now a beard, and his broken jaw is still strong enough to grasp a paint brush!
The recovery room: plenty of soft string and hard ice.Thursday, March 20, 2008
FIDDLESTICKS #2 VIDEO TOUR!
As promised, here's the video tour of FIDLESTICKS #3, with poem machine by Charlotte Whalen, video installation by Alan Reed (which you hear playing in this documentation), and ink washes and surgery-curation by Tsubasa Berg.
FIDDLESTICKS #2 DOCUMENTATION
All right, it's pretty fucking crazy out here trying to keep all of this moving, and we're behind on our documentation, but here are some of Tsubasa's photos of the second incarnation of FIDDLESTICKS, Alan Reed, Charlotte Whalen, and Tsubasa Berg. (Angee Lennard was supposed to be included, but UPS stole her artwork--see the post below; we've finally received it and it will be installed for the next one).
We're taking this weekend off from installing more and performing in order to try to get the documentation up to date, so over the next few days look for photos, video, written reports, etc etc. of the events for FIDDLESTICKS 2, the gallery show and events for FIDDLESTICKS 3, and announcements for the following weekend's FIDDLESTICKS 4.
We're taking this weekend off from installing more and performing in order to try to get the documentation up to date, so over the next few days look for photos, video, written reports, etc etc. of the events for FIDDLESTICKS 2, the gallery show and events for FIDDLESTICKS 3, and announcements for the following weekend's FIDDLESTICKS 4.
We'll post a video-tour this weekend.
So here you go, Post-Neo: THIS WAS FIDDLESTCKS !!!!!!
What you saw as you entered the gallery: Tsubasa's largely subtractive intervention into the space included adding layers of wash over Lenny's and Brad's wall drawings, taking down most of Jamie's string sculpture (how sad to see it gone! a combination of Tsubasa's prerogative and the school bureaucracy expressing disapproval of the removed ceiling tiles), and his uncannily apt and thoughtful stewardship of the space itself--organising the debris from the surgery on opening night into a kind of display, with a recovery/sick-bed for the Familiars.
To the immediate left as you enter, Charlotte's wonderful 21679 Short Poems About Capitalism, including a shredder-turned-poem-generating-machine that guests can use themselves.
What you saw as you entered the gallery: Tsubasa's largely subtractive intervention into the space included adding layers of wash over Lenny's and Brad's wall drawings, taking down most of Jamie's string sculpture (how sad to see it gone! a combination of Tsubasa's prerogative and the school bureaucracy expressing disapproval of the removed ceiling tiles), and his uncannily apt and thoughtful stewardship of the space itself--organising the debris from the surgery on opening night into a kind of display, with a recovery/sick-bed for the Familiars.
To the immediate left as you enter, Charlotte's wonderful 21679 Short Poems About Capitalism, including a shredder-turned-poem-generating-machine that guests can use themselves.
Instructions.
Free poem-refills.
If you look carefully, you'll see that somebody has recently fed one of Alan's City Poems through the shredder--a different shade of white. Like finding a needle in a poem-stack.
Tsubasa's arrangement of the surgical instruments from the Familiars' Hospital.
He preserved the operating table as well.
Alan Reed's video piece There is a Table. At first the video ran on a loop with headphones, but we later decided to remove the headphones and let the soundtrack play aloud to the whole gallery, as you'll hear in the video tour.Also in the gallery and elsewhere around the city are various of Alan's City Poems, posted anonymously in appropriate (or otherwise) spots; they'll continue to appear for the duration of the run of FIDDLESTICKS (maybe longer), and there is a stack in the gallery for you to take and post somewhere yourself. Some have also been fed through Charlotte's shredder, creating several score of Short Poems About Capitalism and the Alienation of the Post-Capitalist Flaneur (with the latter word under erasure). Alan, you are free to berate me for the inadequacy of this off-the-cuff moniker and suggest a better one, if you so desire.
More to Come!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Frater Lindsann's Chronicle of Bosch on Ice
As my brothers and sisters of the (Anti-)Cathar$ist Order have urged it, and as it is the sacred duty of every Anti-initiate to the cult of the Horse Tooth God to record for the generations the secret triumphs of our most defiant heresy, I here record what I did see with my own eyes and mind within Brother Thomas's legendary visions of Bosch on Ice, on the first day of March, in the ninety-second year since the Breaking-Forth.
Brother Thomas found himself in a garden of ice, and verily this garden was wondrous strange: all smoothe and white like a plane of marble; giraffes, their flanks flapping in the wind like the sail of some great vessel, caroused with haughty knights tossing their bosch-balls lightly through the air as they glided easily over the ice on their scaled steeds. To and fro they wandered, slid, skated, and hurried, as the spirit of their God wafted over them like a chilly breath of perfume.
Meantimes, we stealthily made our way round the walls of this garden with our arms and legions, and waited until they lie down to take sustenance and rest their arms, not knowing that we awaited them.
The forms floating about Brother Thomas's seven senses shifted then, like the rays of the sun upon the surface of a still pool when the water has been stirred by the appearance of a fish with both top-fin and tail breaking the surface, moving in such a way as to send the water coursing, gently however, in several opposing directions; and settled into a vision of the whole of the Earth, condensed and reduplicated, as if it were a stone in a crucible. Again the knights caroused, the beasts turned somersaults, humans ran about, in quest of the bosch-ball, in endless strife over its possession, birds caught it and tossed it about in their beaks, dropping it to the ice again like the pellets of the Roc.
At a certain signal, the Brutes fell upon them.
We were dived into two parties. The first Anti-legion sallied forth with a bold shout, led by the mighty Miss Ricketts, ripping and snarling, curling like a serpent swiftly across the ice, heedless of the many and savage blows of the Humans as she wreaked havoc among them. It is said that she crushed the bones of no less than four-hundred and twenty angels, fish, and leopards that day; among their number six princes, twenty mounted knights, and a bishop.
The second legion, among whom I myself was numbered, was ranged behind the formidable vessel A.A. Ariel, our Ship of Fools which cut courageously across the ice from the facing direction, as an uproar of Bars and Anti-s and Kamogs resounded upon the wind. The vessel was cruelly buffeted by the sticks, balls, sleds, tails, and feet of our enemies (for they are all of them our enemies) and soon it foundered and was hurled back and forth across the ice, the sharp cracks of its destruction splintering the air. Hideous was the crying out of the bold and diminutive admirals, seamen, soldiers, first mates, orangutans, merchants, rats, stowaways, pirates, and monkeys as they died on the ice.
Nonetheless, our forces pressed on, locked in sanguine combat. I do verily believe that our enemies had no notion of who we were or why we were attacking and tormenting them. So great is the power of the Anti- that it veils our intentions from the eyes of all.
During this combat the daring comrade Tomislav was given from mysterious forces a great horn, whose blast he was told would drive men and women mad, and win them over to our cause. And truly its voice spoke a babel that was understood by many. We formed a solemn procession, following in file where the Rubber Chicken, sent from below to guide our steps, showed us the way. And it is true, for I saw it with my own eyes, that as our procession continued to the joyous notes of this horn, we were joined by the beasts of the earth and the sea, and by soldiers of both teams as they threw down their weapons and ran to us.
Soon all was chaos, and many of the adorers of the Horse Tooth were gathered in the centre of ice, beating the big drum; and it was at this time that the event took place, which has already been carried far and wide upon the lips of every one. For Hector Clam was cruelly set upon by treacherous rogues, and flung mightily against the ice in a woeful manner, and at terrible length. In vain he screamed and struck right and left with his hooves; in vain his comrades tried to reach him. It is said by many that he was hurled against the ice no less than for-thousand five-hundred and sixty times that day; though there are others who say the number was but two-thousand eight-hundred and seven. Likewise some say the great Clam was slain by a man, and others by a woman. But whatever be the truth, word of his fall spread rapidly amongst the children of the Horse Tooth God, and among our number all fell to our knees, awestruck, and wailing pitifully at our misfortune. But Comrade Reid called out to us saying: Think ye that Hector is dead? That the great Clam Horse can be so easily destroyed? O, ye men and women of little faith, behold! For he liveth yet, and succor may yet be given to him! Whereupon the forces of the Anti rallied, and gathered about the fallen Hector; and comrade Reid sealed his wounds by means of a mighty art. Hector Clam rose up again; and though his head was full metamorphosed by wrath, he led us from the field for a respite, serpents coiling about his gleaming body.
Truly the Gnosis was served this day, for it was well proven that the Earth is indeed Hell incarnate, and that all of the terrors numbered by the Orthodox among the terrors of Hell are verily here with us, and that we are ourselves the actors in these fearsome rites.
Therefore it was truly said that when Brother Thomas' vision shifted once more, it was not Hell that he beheld--for verily, it was much less terrible than the Earth, as he had himself insisted, for he owned that worse than Earth would try his sanity quite sorely--but merely the funeral for the condemned and abandoned Earth.
Once more the Orthodox danced to and fro across the ice, gliding or falling, shouting or snarling, in imagined safety. And after some time of this we solemnly made our appearance, the bodies of our slain piled high on our wain, which we dragged steadily to the centre of the ice, accompanied by ancient rites in hieratic costume, to the dirge of the big drum. And on either side of us the people parted and we proceeded on our way. After which our number dispersed in every direction, and many heroic feats are told of this day, and many more remain untold. With my own eyes I saw the Rubber Chicken immolate itself upon the steel teeth of the big drum, wielded in ecstatic frenzy from Comrade Tsubasa. And many other things occurred, of a number I cannot recount. And the Orthodox abandoned the field, and we retired to long celebration and jovial revelry that lasted deep into the night.
And this is a true account of Bosch on Ice, given from my own lips, who was there in that place and in that time.
And thus may it be, always and never. Sic Semper Absurdus. nemA.
Frater-Comrade Olchar.
Brother Thomas found himself in a garden of ice, and verily this garden was wondrous strange: all smoothe and white like a plane of marble; giraffes, their flanks flapping in the wind like the sail of some great vessel, caroused with haughty knights tossing their bosch-balls lightly through the air as they glided easily over the ice on their scaled steeds. To and fro they wandered, slid, skated, and hurried, as the spirit of their God wafted over them like a chilly breath of perfume.
Meantimes, we stealthily made our way round the walls of this garden with our arms and legions, and waited until they lie down to take sustenance and rest their arms, not knowing that we awaited them.
The forms floating about Brother Thomas's seven senses shifted then, like the rays of the sun upon the surface of a still pool when the water has been stirred by the appearance of a fish with both top-fin and tail breaking the surface, moving in such a way as to send the water coursing, gently however, in several opposing directions; and settled into a vision of the whole of the Earth, condensed and reduplicated, as if it were a stone in a crucible. Again the knights caroused, the beasts turned somersaults, humans ran about, in quest of the bosch-ball, in endless strife over its possession, birds caught it and tossed it about in their beaks, dropping it to the ice again like the pellets of the Roc.
At a certain signal, the Brutes fell upon them.
We were dived into two parties. The first Anti-legion sallied forth with a bold shout, led by the mighty Miss Ricketts, ripping and snarling, curling like a serpent swiftly across the ice, heedless of the many and savage blows of the Humans as she wreaked havoc among them. It is said that she crushed the bones of no less than four-hundred and twenty angels, fish, and leopards that day; among their number six princes, twenty mounted knights, and a bishop.
The second legion, among whom I myself was numbered, was ranged behind the formidable vessel A.A. Ariel, our Ship of Fools which cut courageously across the ice from the facing direction, as an uproar of Bars and Anti-s and Kamogs resounded upon the wind. The vessel was cruelly buffeted by the sticks, balls, sleds, tails, and feet of our enemies (for they are all of them our enemies) and soon it foundered and was hurled back and forth across the ice, the sharp cracks of its destruction splintering the air. Hideous was the crying out of the bold and diminutive admirals, seamen, soldiers, first mates, orangutans, merchants, rats, stowaways, pirates, and monkeys as they died on the ice.
Nonetheless, our forces pressed on, locked in sanguine combat. I do verily believe that our enemies had no notion of who we were or why we were attacking and tormenting them. So great is the power of the Anti- that it veils our intentions from the eyes of all.
During this combat the daring comrade Tomislav was given from mysterious forces a great horn, whose blast he was told would drive men and women mad, and win them over to our cause. And truly its voice spoke a babel that was understood by many. We formed a solemn procession, following in file where the Rubber Chicken, sent from below to guide our steps, showed us the way. And it is true, for I saw it with my own eyes, that as our procession continued to the joyous notes of this horn, we were joined by the beasts of the earth and the sea, and by soldiers of both teams as they threw down their weapons and ran to us.
Soon all was chaos, and many of the adorers of the Horse Tooth were gathered in the centre of ice, beating the big drum; and it was at this time that the event took place, which has already been carried far and wide upon the lips of every one. For Hector Clam was cruelly set upon by treacherous rogues, and flung mightily against the ice in a woeful manner, and at terrible length. In vain he screamed and struck right and left with his hooves; in vain his comrades tried to reach him. It is said by many that he was hurled against the ice no less than for-thousand five-hundred and sixty times that day; though there are others who say the number was but two-thousand eight-hundred and seven. Likewise some say the great Clam was slain by a man, and others by a woman. But whatever be the truth, word of his fall spread rapidly amongst the children of the Horse Tooth God, and among our number all fell to our knees, awestruck, and wailing pitifully at our misfortune. But Comrade Reid called out to us saying: Think ye that Hector is dead? That the great Clam Horse can be so easily destroyed? O, ye men and women of little faith, behold! For he liveth yet, and succor may yet be given to him! Whereupon the forces of the Anti rallied, and gathered about the fallen Hector; and comrade Reid sealed his wounds by means of a mighty art. Hector Clam rose up again; and though his head was full metamorphosed by wrath, he led us from the field for a respite, serpents coiling about his gleaming body.
Truly the Gnosis was served this day, for it was well proven that the Earth is indeed Hell incarnate, and that all of the terrors numbered by the Orthodox among the terrors of Hell are verily here with us, and that we are ourselves the actors in these fearsome rites.
Therefore it was truly said that when Brother Thomas' vision shifted once more, it was not Hell that he beheld--for verily, it was much less terrible than the Earth, as he had himself insisted, for he owned that worse than Earth would try his sanity quite sorely--but merely the funeral for the condemned and abandoned Earth.
Once more the Orthodox danced to and fro across the ice, gliding or falling, shouting or snarling, in imagined safety. And after some time of this we solemnly made our appearance, the bodies of our slain piled high on our wain, which we dragged steadily to the centre of the ice, accompanied by ancient rites in hieratic costume, to the dirge of the big drum. And on either side of us the people parted and we proceeded on our way. After which our number dispersed in every direction, and many heroic feats are told of this day, and many more remain untold. With my own eyes I saw the Rubber Chicken immolate itself upon the steel teeth of the big drum, wielded in ecstatic frenzy from Comrade Tsubasa. And many other things occurred, of a number I cannot recount. And the Orthodox abandoned the field, and we retired to long celebration and jovial revelry that lasted deep into the night.
And this is a true account of Bosch on Ice, given from my own lips, who was there in that place and in that time.
And thus may it be, always and never. Sic Semper Absurdus. nemA.
Frater-Comrade Olchar.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
FIDDLESTICKS #2, EVENT #1: IT'S VERY HARD TO TELL YOU THIS...
Soon we'll post photos and reports of BOSCH ON ICE; but in the meantime... well...
Sit down.
We TOLD Hector Clam not to attend Bosch on Ice. "You'll get hurt," we said. But he insisted. It is such a major event for the New Brunswick community who have collectively raised me, he argued, that I must be a part of it, how could I not be involved? Especially with the Professor and Miss Ricketts going, and even the two rubber chickens who don't have names! We reminded him that they were made of tough rubber (though that didn't stop one of those rubber chickens from getting slashed from throat to gullet!). "After all, the Comptroller and Bill Murray were staying home!" But you forget, he countered, that my first appearance was at the first Brutesthletics game, four days after Olchar arrived in town, as everyone was buying props at the thrift store! I must come! I owe it to all of my beloved Brunswites!
Well.
Someone--there are conflicting reports as to whom--got hold of Hector Clam. Over and over again he careened into the ice like Icarus dropping onto a frozen ocean. In the end he was split in half, and a part of his flank caved in--
BUT NEVER FEAR--
Reid Bingham led us all in an emergency triage operating--Hector was bound together again by a rubber snake (caduceus?) wound round his waist, and a donkey-puppet pulled over his head like a hood-mask to hold his skull together (and to protect him from the sight of his own temporary dismemberment). Hector Clam is still among the living! But like the Professor, the Comptroller, Miss Ricketts (whose tongue was torn out and who has sprung a leak), Bill Murray (who no longer sings and dances), and the unfortunate unnamed rubber chicken who was torn apart while being used as a drum stick by Tsubasa during the climax of Bosch on Ice, Hector is certainly worse for wear.
Before (above) and After (below)
This is why we are convening an emergency Anti-Surgery THIS SATURDAY at 5:00 PM at the LOST & FOUND GALLERY at the opening of the 2nd FIDDLESTICKS installment. In addition to Angee Lennard (Chicago) and Alan Reed (Montreal), this show features Tsubasa Berg and Charlotte Whalen, both of whom have been Hector's roomates and foster-parents during his formative years.
Hector Clam will require some heavy reconstructive surgery, so it's been suggested that perhaps we might provide him with a form even more befitting of his grandeur; hasn't it always seemed like he might have a unicorn's horn? a __(noun)___? an etc.?
So come visit, see what these four have done with the gallery, and bring along some ideas or materials as all of us work together to repair and comfort our rubber friends and RESURRECT HECTOR CLAM!
And then, after a break for eating or otherwise refreshing, meet us AGAIN at our place at 221 Howard St., floor 3 (enter through the rear) at 8:00 PM for a Silent Soiree culminating in poems by Imogene Engine--more information below!
Sit down.
We TOLD Hector Clam not to attend Bosch on Ice. "You'll get hurt," we said. But he insisted. It is such a major event for the New Brunswick community who have collectively raised me, he argued, that I must be a part of it, how could I not be involved? Especially with the Professor and Miss Ricketts going, and even the two rubber chickens who don't have names! We reminded him that they were made of tough rubber (though that didn't stop one of those rubber chickens from getting slashed from throat to gullet!). "After all, the Comptroller and Bill Murray were staying home!" But you forget, he countered, that my first appearance was at the first Brutesthletics game, four days after Olchar arrived in town, as everyone was buying props at the thrift store! I must come! I owe it to all of my beloved Brunswites!
Well.
Someone--there are conflicting reports as to whom--got hold of Hector Clam. Over and over again he careened into the ice like Icarus dropping onto a frozen ocean. In the end he was split in half, and a part of his flank caved in--
BUT NEVER FEAR--
Reid Bingham led us all in an emergency triage operating--Hector was bound together again by a rubber snake (caduceus?) wound round his waist, and a donkey-puppet pulled over his head like a hood-mask to hold his skull together (and to protect him from the sight of his own temporary dismemberment). Hector Clam is still among the living! But like the Professor, the Comptroller, Miss Ricketts (whose tongue was torn out and who has sprung a leak), Bill Murray (who no longer sings and dances), and the unfortunate unnamed rubber chicken who was torn apart while being used as a drum stick by Tsubasa during the climax of Bosch on Ice, Hector is certainly worse for wear.
Before (above) and After (below)
This is why we are convening an emergency Anti-Surgery THIS SATURDAY at 5:00 PM at the LOST & FOUND GALLERY at the opening of the 2nd FIDDLESTICKS installment. In addition to Angee Lennard (Chicago) and Alan Reed (Montreal), this show features Tsubasa Berg and Charlotte Whalen, both of whom have been Hector's roomates and foster-parents during his formative years.
Hector Clam will require some heavy reconstructive surgery, so it's been suggested that perhaps we might provide him with a form even more befitting of his grandeur; hasn't it always seemed like he might have a unicorn's horn? a __(noun)___? an etc.?
So come visit, see what these four have done with the gallery, and bring along some ideas or materials as all of us work together to repair and comfort our rubber friends and RESURRECT HECTOR CLAM!
And then, after a break for eating or otherwise refreshing, meet us AGAIN at our place at 221 Howard St., floor 3 (enter through the rear) at 8:00 PM for a Silent Soiree culminating in poems by Imogene Engine--more information below!
Monday, March 3, 2008
Video from the FIDDLESTICKS #1 Reading
Here are some highlights from the readings of Brad Chriss's and John M. Bennett's work at the kick-off for the first installment of the FIDDLESTICKS gallery:
Chriss introduces his set with commentary and a chapter from the Comte de Lautréamont's 'Chants de Maldoror' of 1869.
Introductory commentary and Chriss reads his poem 'A Divine Crackle'
Chriss reads his poem 'hermaphrodite.'
W. Fry reads Bennett's 'Jleeber'; O. Lindsann & B. Chriss rip J.M. Bennett; Fry & Chriss rorrim Bennett.
Lindsann and Fry tag-team Bennett
B. Chriss chortles JMB
The whole crowd gives Bennett a go in turns, culminating in T. Butković translating him into horn.
W. Fry stirs up Bennett's 'La M al'
Lindsann and a guest split duties on a Be Blank Consort piece.
W. Fry & T. Butković turn Bennett upside down and inside out
A little Noisemaker-tower of babel is constructed to Bennett as babbled by Fry and Lenny Corea (responsible for the wall drawing facing the door of the gallery).
Chriss and Butković shred Bennett with their lungs.
Lindsann throttles Cantar del Huff in the midst of inexcusable craziness that is ENTIRELY John Bennett's fault, we assure you.
Jamie Bruno (responsible for the forest strings amidst which this all takes place) phones Bennett in from a lavatory someplace, to the support of everyone else. Everyone else pulls their cell phones out too.
Megan Blafas and Warren Fry trap Bennett between a rock and a hard place.
We may post a few more over the next couple days, we're still going through the footage! And look out VERY soon for official information on the next FIDDLESTICKS evolution this coming Saturday as Tsubasa Berg, Charlotte Whalen, Angee Lennard, and Alan Reed move in to the L&F Gallery.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Olchar's Report on the Chriss/Bennett Reading
The FIDDLESTICKS exhibition, a three-month show at the Lost & Found Gallery leading up to the Anti-Festival in June, opened last Saturday with work by Bradley Chriss, Lenny Corea, and Jamie Bruno. Photos and a video of what they did with the space are posted below, Lenny's vaguely Cthuloid clusters of phalluses wrapping around the wall, merging into Brad's choratic and androgenous prima materia, with Jamie's string angling across the space, slicing off the corners, and wrapping itself around the appendages of Lenny's drawing.
At 8:00 the series kicked off with a reading by Chriss, followed by a reading by all of us of poems by John M. Bennett. Here's my own report of the event, hopefully other people who were there/involved will post their own too.
Brad's reading, formulated around the notion of the Hermaphrodite, moved back and forth between his thoughts on the hermaphrodite as a figure, and his poems in which he engages with it. He started out with a reading of the chapter on the hermaphrodite from Lautréamont's Chants de Maldoror (Book II, Strophe 7), which certainly made my fucking day at the very least. As the chapter progressed, his rhythms and cadences began to subtly disrupt the text, they developed their own ebb and flow that worked independently of the grammar and sense of the passage. It's the first time I've heard someone other than myself voice this seminal text, and it was nice seeing this gesture of turning back to examine this tradition that he (and we all) are continuing, so that we can all take a measure of both how an Anti-Tradition has developed and changed, and also of the continual projects and concerns that we share with our counterparts 150 years ago... Brad then read two other poems on the hermaphrodite from his book-in-progress, hermaphrodite. These poems are quite a bit more constrained and refined than his earlier stuff (formally at least; in most other ways they're still pretty, mm, balls-out shall we say?) and his reading was more restrained as well, which (as a kind of microcosm of the progress of his set as a whole) made the final, a-semic strophe of the second poem that much more effective as it broke apart into rhythmic phonetics.
Which led us right into the Bennett reading.
We began with the (by now ritual) Distribution of the Noise-Makers. Warren, Brad, Tomislav Butković, and myself planned to take turns reading at random from a stack of Bennett poems to the accompaniment of everyone else--we had La M al, Sound Dirt, Cantar del Huff, Backwords (Quite a bit of Konstelanetz got read somewhere during the evening as well, an interesting added dimension of a joint endeavour on that book's model), and a thick sheaf of printouts of recent poems, especially from John's Globbolalia series. We would offer the opportunity to any of our guests to come up and give it a go themselves. As so often happens with New Jersey Post-Neo crowds, their energy was too restless to allow anything so straightforward to proceed. After several poems, Brad sent a stack of poems around the room, forcing everybody to step into John's linguistic world at least once. As the texts began to crisscross the room, there would sometimes be a couple going at once, sometimes read intentionally as simultaneous poems and sometimes nearly oblivious to each other; an impromptu assemblage grew out of the floor, and it took on the quality of a Brute Salon (the gatherings of collective automatism that have been going on intermittently in New Brunswick for the last couple of years), though the spine of Bennett's texts being read--sometimes as the centre of activity, sometimes on the periphery--provided a textual and (a-)linguistic continuity. Not what we had expected or planned, but it is nice to be surprised by your friends sometimes. Whenever new people showed up they were commanded to perform duets with us--Lenny, Andy Wolf, Megan Blafas when she arrived from Washington at the height of the thing. Jamie was unable to attend the event in person, so she called in to a speaker phone lent to us by the audience and belted out some Bennett poems from a bathroom stall someplace for about 15 minutes. (a side-note: as it happens, the set of Bennett poems performed by David Beris Edwards and I at the Anti-Festival in England a year and a half ago also took place in the toilet.) The phone sparked off some other ideas and Steve Dolnack started playing feedback produced by playing two cell phones off each other. At this point precise memories begin to fail me, perhaps other people can fill you in, but--eventually it all ended, apparently, everyone very kindly pitched in cleaning the place up, and a group of us went out and got pizza, then back home for further refreshments.
There will be some photos and video posted as soon as possible; we've got a pretty driving schedule here but we're getting everything up as quickly as possible.
This weekend--in fact later today--is BOSCH ON ICE, organised by Tom Russotti, which we'll get reports up on as well once we can do so; and the following weekend FIDDLESTICKS will undergo its first metamorphosis as Tsubasa Berg (New Brunswick), Alan Reed (Quebec), Charlotte Whalen (New Brunswick), and Angee Lennard (Chicago) move their stuff in; celebrated by (among other things) a Silent Soiree (this idea's been in the air for a long time) and a reading by myself (Olchar) of poems by the Ohio Post-Neo, Imogene Engine.
At 8:00 the series kicked off with a reading by Chriss, followed by a reading by all of us of poems by John M. Bennett. Here's my own report of the event, hopefully other people who were there/involved will post their own too.
Brad's reading, formulated around the notion of the Hermaphrodite, moved back and forth between his thoughts on the hermaphrodite as a figure, and his poems in which he engages with it. He started out with a reading of the chapter on the hermaphrodite from Lautréamont's Chants de Maldoror (Book II, Strophe 7), which certainly made my fucking day at the very least. As the chapter progressed, his rhythms and cadences began to subtly disrupt the text, they developed their own ebb and flow that worked independently of the grammar and sense of the passage. It's the first time I've heard someone other than myself voice this seminal text, and it was nice seeing this gesture of turning back to examine this tradition that he (and we all) are continuing, so that we can all take a measure of both how an Anti-Tradition has developed and changed, and also of the continual projects and concerns that we share with our counterparts 150 years ago... Brad then read two other poems on the hermaphrodite from his book-in-progress, hermaphrodite. These poems are quite a bit more constrained and refined than his earlier stuff (formally at least; in most other ways they're still pretty, mm, balls-out shall we say?) and his reading was more restrained as well, which (as a kind of microcosm of the progress of his set as a whole) made the final, a-semic strophe of the second poem that much more effective as it broke apart into rhythmic phonetics.
Which led us right into the Bennett reading.
We began with the (by now ritual) Distribution of the Noise-Makers. Warren, Brad, Tomislav Butković, and myself planned to take turns reading at random from a stack of Bennett poems to the accompaniment of everyone else--we had La M al, Sound Dirt, Cantar del Huff, Backwords (Quite a bit of Konstelanetz got read somewhere during the evening as well, an interesting added dimension of a joint endeavour on that book's model), and a thick sheaf of printouts of recent poems, especially from John's Globbolalia series. We would offer the opportunity to any of our guests to come up and give it a go themselves. As so often happens with New Jersey Post-Neo crowds, their energy was too restless to allow anything so straightforward to proceed. After several poems, Brad sent a stack of poems around the room, forcing everybody to step into John's linguistic world at least once. As the texts began to crisscross the room, there would sometimes be a couple going at once, sometimes read intentionally as simultaneous poems and sometimes nearly oblivious to each other; an impromptu assemblage grew out of the floor, and it took on the quality of a Brute Salon (the gatherings of collective automatism that have been going on intermittently in New Brunswick for the last couple of years), though the spine of Bennett's texts being read--sometimes as the centre of activity, sometimes on the periphery--provided a textual and (a-)linguistic continuity. Not what we had expected or planned, but it is nice to be surprised by your friends sometimes. Whenever new people showed up they were commanded to perform duets with us--Lenny, Andy Wolf, Megan Blafas when she arrived from Washington at the height of the thing. Jamie was unable to attend the event in person, so she called in to a speaker phone lent to us by the audience and belted out some Bennett poems from a bathroom stall someplace for about 15 minutes. (a side-note: as it happens, the set of Bennett poems performed by David Beris Edwards and I at the Anti-Festival in England a year and a half ago also took place in the toilet.) The phone sparked off some other ideas and Steve Dolnack started playing feedback produced by playing two cell phones off each other. At this point precise memories begin to fail me, perhaps other people can fill you in, but--eventually it all ended, apparently, everyone very kindly pitched in cleaning the place up, and a group of us went out and got pizza, then back home for further refreshments.
There will be some photos and video posted as soon as possible; we've got a pretty driving schedule here but we're getting everything up as quickly as possible.
This weekend--in fact later today--is BOSCH ON ICE, organised by Tom Russotti, which we'll get reports up on as well once we can do so; and the following weekend FIDDLESTICKS will undergo its first metamorphosis as Tsubasa Berg (New Brunswick), Alan Reed (Quebec), Charlotte Whalen (New Brunswick), and Angee Lennard (Chicago) move their stuff in; celebrated by (among other things) a Silent Soiree (this idea's been in the air for a long time) and a reading by myself (Olchar) of poems by the Ohio Post-Neo, Imogene Engine.
JOHN M. BENNETT READING Photos
Here are a few photos of the John M.Bennett reading at the Lost & Found Gallery, taken by Tsubasa Berg and other people as the camera was passed around. We'll get some video up presently as well, and a flickr account with more photos.
Brad Chriss reads from Lautréamont.
Chriss reads hermaphrodite.
Chriss reads hermaphrodite.
Warren Fry reads John M. Bennett
Brad Chriss reads Bennett
Sarah Grannet gives Bennett a go
Olchar and a guest perform a Be Blank Consort piece.
Chriss Bemused by Bennett.
...and then this happened...
Jamie Bruno belts Bennett through a mobile phone.
Brad Chriss reads Bennett
Sarah Grannet gives Bennett a go
Olchar and a guest perform a Be Blank Consort piece.
Chriss Bemused by Bennett.
...and then this happened...
Jamie Bruno belts Bennett through a mobile phone.Thursday, February 28, 2008
FIDDLESTICKS!!! #1- J. Bruno, B. Chriss, L. Corea
A set of photos from this first incarnation of the Fiddlesticks exhibition at the Lost & Found Gallery, by Lenny Corea, Jamie Bruno, and Bradley Chriss. The show kicked off on Saturday with readings of poems by Chriss and John M. Bennett; photos and video of that event will be posted within a day or two.
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