I'm the author of the novels Solip, Say, Cut, Map, The Country, and The City. I've also written the nonfiction books EarthBound and Eat the Flowers. I'm currently publishing my novel A Task via Kickstarter in order to have an hourlong conversation with each of its first thousand readers. For a decade I published books through Sator Press, and for a decade I acted in film and television; now I help students at St. John's College. More info: kenbaumann.com.
In every corner of this endlessly-cornered room there’s blood running down my chin.
Luca makes films, makes paintings, makes stories. He recently moved from New York to North Carolina, where he has become a visual artist full time. We talk about this recent decision, the relationship of art & commerce, art as work, and what is beautiful/not pure.
KB: So, what I’m immediately curious about is your thought process before you moved to North Carolina and decided to make art your primary business. Was there a definite moment in which you decided this?
I reviewed Light Boxes back in February, 2009. In honor of the official US release day of the Penguin presentation, here are those words, slightly altered and here again:
I feel it’s hard today to find a work of art that is earnest, that is compassionate. (Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody comes to mind). I was startled by Shane Jones’s novel because it is so painfully both; it bleeds itself, and bleeds for others.
Light Boxes is a story about a community, about a man’s quest to rid his community of February, a bitter and long spell of cold that haunts the the town and its people. I don’t want to speak explicitly of the ‘narrative’ here, only because I think there is magic in discovery; it’s a sensual work. Many of the images affected me viscerally, and will stay with me for a long time. Dead bees pour from the sky, a broken father sits in the middle of a snow-covered street, a body surfaces in a river covered in text… I could list all the beautiful and often tragic images contained within for awhile.
To go deeper: The people in Light Boxes breathe true. I felt them living and felt them dying. They seem warm, hot & cold all at once, much like the seasons that surround them. The story also functions on a level outside its own prison, outside the printed page, but, again: I’d like to keep quiet. I’d like you to discover the layers and try to keep warm yourself.
Shane has crafted a fine myth, one I hope lasts for a very long time.
This means starting with a very simple definition of the avant-garde. I stole it from Fairfield Porter, the great midcentury painter and critic, who said the avant-garde was always just the people with the most energy.
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The scene seemed wild, but there were simple rules all along. You were given a white room in a Big Art City for a month. You had to do something in that room to generate attention beyond that month. You had to be written about, bought, or at least widely discussed. Then you would get to have the white room again for another month, and so on. If you did this enough, you had what was called a career. This generated what is perhaps this century’s biggest art movement: careerism.
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A practical avant-garde is post-careerist. It seeks out low rent and private time, and it concentrates on powerful objects.
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All of this means that the practical avant-garde has a lot of work to do. It knows that manifesto is the weakest genre and that promises are irrelevant, so it will use words but not hide behind them.
1. Alone, for one moment. –directions to performers from Erik Satie
2. Lutgardis, mystic. Born at Tongeren in 1182, died at Aywieres in 1246. Lutgardis’s family fobbed her off on a Benedictine nunnery when she was still a girl. In her mid-twenties she decided that she needed a more austere existence and so joined a group of Cistercian nuns near Brussels. There she levitated and dripped blood from her forehead and hair. –Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present” In Another Context
3. “Try going a day without it you’ll miss it Charlie–” –Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule is live
4. The Pharmako trilogy by Dale Pendell is a massive accomplishment, and great to read. You will want them. Look inside.
ADDITION: 5. The hallway of blood scene in The Shining, recreated with CGI. Look up.
Matt Bell is going to write a story live. We can watch him write. Then, later this week, we can rewrite the story. Then Michael Kimball & Lily Hoang will rewrite the rewritten story, and we can watch. And then we can watch Matt rewrite the revised rewritten story. Good luck to us all.
