hyper-velocity chickens.GM chickens with an extended wing-span. maybe an accidental release of unfinished protein-molding or a bio-pharm alchemical spill, nobody knows. they gyre, spiralling up and up until they can't be seen unaided, then hover, stoop, and dive. predatory screaming but they never pull out. feathery cannonballs of malignant force smacking through windshields, through roofs, taking out the family dog, the neighbor's kid, the bougainvilla, whatever's there at the end of their line of descent. the protectorate's so distracted with human agencies of sabotage they can't afford the manpower to search out the roosts, where they come from. the latest rumor is it's a guerrilla cross-breed of osprey and leghorn, some hippy commune's last act of defiance, working with the Man's own demonic tools...
6.8.03
Also included in the exhibition are three recent works which investigate the mental maps we make to interpret space: In Going Nowhere, 1998, a figure slowly disappears over a hill as it walks through drifting snow. Like an out of body experience, the camera left behind on its tripod, records the figures departure, absence and eventual reappearance. Map, 1999, is literally a simple, line-drawn map but one which seems to describe a parrallel universe. The outlines are familiar and yet the countries and seas are alien. In this map the world has been turned on its head. What was water has become land; what was land has become water. What should be a tool to interpret the world has become untrustworthy; what was familiar is now skewd and strange. Lee Navigation, 1999, again records a journey - traveling from the mouth of the River Lee where it meets the Thames in East London, to its source beneath a tower block in Luton, a series of Palm Pilot drawings reconfigure this strange urban non-space, recording isolated fragments of skyline, objects and signs found in this bizarre and banal landscape.
Simon Faithfull Psychotopography
at Artsway (UK)
simon faithfull's journal
at Namibia International Artists Workshop at Dia Nippon
4.8.03
He invested the money in new white talent, notably Perkins and Cash, as well as the country singer Charlie Rich. After a lengthy theological discussion, it was Phillips who finally persuaded his piano session player, the pulpit-bound Jerry Lee Lewis, to cut Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On in 1957.
Another target of his advice was Fidel Castro, who had been ridiculed by the press on his visit to New York in 1960. Phillips had a certain empathy with those damned by the moral majority and, after a few drinks, decided to call Havana. He eventually pummelled the operator into connecting him with Castro's bemused brother.
"Raul," he said, "you tell Fidel the next time he comes to America he can come to Memphis, Tennessee, and stay with Sam C Phillips. Then maybe we can straighten things out."
Sam Phillips obituary Telegraph UK
3.8.03
"And you are never supposed to eat on the chuck box lid. We have a lid, a box where the cook keeps all of his dishes and his, uh, cooking utensils with a fire about ten feet behind that wagon. The chuck box is lid down, and you are never supposed to walk between that chuck box and that fire, because that part of the ground belongs to the cook. And you're never supposed to eat on a chuck box lid. The beds are thrown off at noontime for the boys to sit on and rest on. And they sit down on the ground and put their plate right on the ground. When we're through eatin,' there's two big wash tubs, right close to the fire. Every man is supposed to clean out his plate, throw it away, and take it and put it over in the tub. That's what we call rackin' 'em, rack the dishes. Sometimes, they'll stand twenty feet and try and see if they can rack, rack 'em but then, that's a, that's an unwritten law that belongs to the wagon. And you are never supposed to ride up to the wagon from the side the wind's comin' from, because your horse and the dust and the hairs off your horse will fly into your cookin' utensils. You're supposed to ride facing the wind coming to the wagon and never get too close..."
Excerpts from DARE Tapes
The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE)
Learning Support Services
University of Wisconsin-Madison
link from links page at
alt.usage.english
"I lean forward and rest my hands on the glass top that protects the brown velvet swags. Even now, even as it's gotten this out of hand, I'm distracted from my thoughts of the Xes by the trappings of the Xes. And really, it strikes me, isn't that the point?"
excerpt from The Nanny Diaries
(p. 300 St. Martin's Press hardcover)
by the mysterious Nicola Kraus and the equally mysterious Emma McLaughlin
2.8.03
...who am alone
From all Eternitie, for none I know
Second to mee or like, equal much less.
Who is like God but God? And who exists
for God to love? No one, for God is One.
Milton imagines the infinite loneliness
of an infinite being. But God relents.
And in the creation of Eve, Milton
reveals the blessing of our finitude....
Eric Charles LeMay
The Loneliness of God
Poetry Daily August 2 2003
1.8.03
Former Fellow of TNI, Berger is an acclaimed novelist, playwright, screenwriter, painter and art critic. His innumerable books, include G., for which he was honoured with England's Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Seventh Man (with Jean Mohr) about migrant workers in Europe, translated into all the languages of the subjects, including Bengali, Turkish and Arabic; Ways of Seeing, a product of his popular BBC television critical art series; and Into their Labours, a fictional trilogy about peasant life, a favourite read by Sub-Commandante Marcos to the children in Chiapas! His latest book is King: A Street Story (Bloomsbury, UK 1999, paperback due May 2000 and Editions Olivier, France 1999; also published in Germany, Sweden and soon out in Spain, Greece and Turkey). King is a story of the new urban homeless. In Sweden, the book is sold for a 50% commission on the streets by the homeless magazine sellers, and in Germany, the proceeds of various readings go to homeless peoples’ organisations.
John Berger profile
Transnational Institute Festival at The Edge
le refus
à un certain moment, face aux événements publics, nous savons que nous devons refuser. Le refus est absolu, catégorique. Il ne discute pas, ni ne fait entendre ses raisons. C'est en quoi il est silencieux et solitaire, même lorsqu'il s'affirme, comme il le faut, au grand jour. Les hommes qui refusent et qui sont liés par la force du refus, savent qu'ils ne sont pas encore ensemble. Le temps de l'affirmation commune leur a précisément été enlevé. Ce qui leur reste, c'est l'irréductible refus, l'amitié de ce Non certain, inébranlable, rigoureux, qui les tient unis et solidaires.
Le mouvement de refuser est rare et difficile, quoique égal et le même en chacun de nous, dès que nous l'avons saisi. Pourquoi difficile? C'est qu'il faut refuser, non pas seulement
le pire, mais un semblant raisonnable, une solution qu'on dirait heureuse.
Maurice Blanchot, 1958.
________
InterTran (over 25 word count):
him refusal
a certain moment , face at the event open , we know as we have to decline. Him refusal am absolute , categorical. He ne argues not , neither ne does hear her motivations. Is at what he is noiseless and lone , Mrs as s'affirme , as he him blame , outdoors day. The men thanksggiving decline and thanksggiving are liés forcibly any refusal , know qu'ils ne are not yet in concert. Time about the affirmation common their has precisely been enlevé. What their remainder , is l'irréductible refusal , the friendship of this No certain , steadfast , inclement , thanksggiving the holds unison and solidaires. Him gesture about decline am infrequent and difficult , notwithstanding alike and him Mrs at anyone about ourselves ds as ourselves lawyer seizure. Why difficult? Is qu'il blame decline , no not just worst , but a show affordable , a solution qu'on shall say blissful.
Maurice Blanchot, 1958.http://www.ombres-blanches.fr/pages/bulletin/octnov01/edito_oct01.htm
http://www.ombres-blanches.fr/
ibiblio proceeds apace
31.7.03
...Some writers devoted much of their lives to revisiting a single book. Walt Whitman frequently amended "Leaves of Grass," softening or even deleting the earthy language and images of the first edition, published in 1855. William Wordsworth's classic autobiographical poem "The Prelude," first came out in 1799. He issued an expanded edition in 1805 and continued working on it for decades, with another version out in 1850.
When writers die, publishers often decide which text works best. Norton has released an edition of "The Prelude" that includes all three versions...
Hillel Italie Contra Costa Times Jul 31, 2003
sort of neutral piece sort of about Joyce Carol Oates' revision of Garden of Earthly Delights'
"...the story of that peculiar institution, whose fortunes, since man first etched a symbol in stone, have been governed as much by mass uninterest and bureaucratic incompetence as by war and natural disaster. 'Libraries are as much about losing the truth ... as about discovering it,' writes Battles, pointing out that much of what has survived through the ages is owing not to public institutions but to private collectors, who were better able to weather the tides of biblioclasm - the destruction of books - that have periodically swept the world."
National Post (CA) July 31 » 2003biblioclastic rampage
link from ArtsJournal
Heart Heart Heart Heart Heart Heart Heart
Albert Goldbarth at Poetry Daily 7/30/03
(archives after date)
29.7.03
Photo:(AFP)Greg Wood
A Sotheby employee inspects a giant Aboriginal collaborative painting titled the "Ngurrara" canvas, in Sydney, prior to a two-night auction of Aboriginal paintings.
AFP Actualité Jul 30, 2003
28.7.03
Graven Image
Jandek
Forced Exposure
Tiger Thrush
Ami Yoshida
