Janice Lee—
Watch the official book trailer for Dan Boehl’s Naomi and the Horse-Flavored T-Shirt. (& read Katie Smither’s previous HTMLGIANT review/interview with Dan Boehl)
Also cool book trailer/art animation piece for Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire. The book is just out from Norton. Get it here.
Comments Off on A couple book trailers
The Embrace of Impurity
Eva Hesse - Hang Up, 1966
Psycho Dream Factory
Psycho Dream Factory
by Caroline Picard
holon press, 2011
111 pgs / $20 Buy from The Paper Cave
In line at the grocery store Shiloh perches in Angelina’s arms and Whitney Houston is dead. Celebrity eyelids: collated rainbows. All the flesh slick, like paper money.
Celebrity
millions upon millions upon millions of images of Marilyn
Monroe:
her absence.
Psycho Dream Factory sat in a prominent area of my home for most of winter so I could see it because it’s beautiful.
One page is a glossy, hot pink. On it, Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism:
“If memory disorder provides a compelling analogy for the glitches in capitalist realism, the model for its smooth functioning would be dreamwork.”
One morning in December I took the book off the table and brought it down to the floor. On my knees I opened it. A slip of paper tumbled out: white postcard bleating sleek, black, hyper-large:
READ MORE >
4 Comments
May 7th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
May 7th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
Can’t understand reality: thoughts on & excerpts from The Sugar Frosted Nutsack.
This is probably just me, but I keep misreading the title as, ‘The Sugar Frosted Nutshack.’ Feels like my brain is trying to auto-correct, ‘Sugar’ and, ‘Sack’ into, ‘Sugar Shack.’
Nutsack. READ MORE >
Alexander Calder on Writing
The universe is real but you can’t see it. You have to imagine it. Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it.
Each element can move, shift or sway back & forth in a changing relation to each of the other elements in the universe. Thus, they reveal not only isolated moments, but a physical law or variation among the elements of life. Not extractions, but abstractions. Abstractions which resemble no living things except by their manner of reacting.
I paint with shapes.
The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape.
That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.
With a mechanical drive you can control the thing like the choreography in a ballet and superimpose various movements.. a great number, even, by means of cams and other mechanical devices.
My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six.
I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty but I understand it’s quite wonderful to go into it, to walk through.
To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect.
It whirls, it whirls.
Friday, May 4, 2012 ——–
It was 2012, or maybe the slightly distant future or past. Actually it must have been 2011, because for part of the time I was back in Germany. It was a systematic thing that was unclear. When you divulge into your consciousness, things happen that don’t seem to matter, and you wake up in a state—economic, emotional, sexual, political. Wake up may not be the right term, and, for these purposes, it’s actually the complete wrong term. More it is a sense of acceptance, wild, trusting and illusory. You grind your teeth, you wipe your face and scratch your sides until they become raw. It was the fall or summer, spring, sometimes winter that day. Surrounded by people you used to know and maybe still do.
The Blazing Fireplace of Guardianship
The Blazing Fireplace of Guardianship
by Shana Moulton
Content, Winter 2012
80 pages / $10 Buy from Content or SPD
Shana Moulton’s collection of found and altered images, The Blazing Fireplace of Guardianship, is the Winter 2012 edition of the Content series (which Blake wrote about here). This is a tender and enigmatic assemblage almost entirely devoid of words, which reads like a challenging and hysterical existential essay, an empathic exploration of modern spiritualism, a cynical contextual analysis of the marketing of the new age, a personal memoir, a mockery of a certain trend towards neo-mysticism in modern art or a map through “the decadent maze of spiritual liberation.”
3 Comments
May 4th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
May 4th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
Land of Enchantment, or, Fairy Tale Review
I live in New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment.
Most of us have wanted enchantment since we were kids. And if not enchantment, magic. Fairy tales. The stuff of Disney. And then we grew up and figured out Disney dreams are problematic, reinforcing heteronormativity, etc. Maybe not. But I think we all still want magic. And violence. And even more magic. Just look at the two Snow White remakes within 2012 for proof, each one portrays Snow White as a warrior. (Maybe “warrior” is too strong of a word.) But she’s no longer helpless. She’s in there, fighting, and looking hella glamorous.
So, if you’re keen on magic and fairy tales and enchantment, write something. And submit it to Fairy Tale Review. Our submissions are open until May 31, and what’s up? I’m guest editing. In the past, we’ve published people like: Kim Addonizio, Rikki Ducornet, Johannes Goransson, Lydia Millet, Joyelle McSweeney, Mary Caponegro, Francine Prose, Stacey Levine, etc.
Democratized Moments of Egoism in “Nothing Else Matters”
1. “The Solo,” James Hetfield
Video still (5:12), Youtube
© 1992 Warner Bros.
James Hetfield is the singer, chief songwriter, and front man of Metallica. He wrote “Nothing Else Matters” and is the predominant figure of not just this video, but all their songs, and their entire ethos. This is fine. It’s consistent with the logic of most bands: a guy drapes chords around a diary entry and finds three other guys to fill in the low and high ends. Traditionally, the guitar solo — appearing at approximately 2/3rds into it, whose melodic evocations serve as a tight stringy emotive refrain — is reserved for the lead guitarist, in our case Kirk Hammett; though, here, James had to not just perform the lead solo, but dedicate its duration to filming the nuances of the various facial expressions which all worked together to corroborate this personal rapture towards his own notes. Kirk Hammett is a very competent guitarist and could have easily done the solo. True, one could argue that James wrote the solo, but that is not the point. The point is James has overstepped the guitar solo boundaries. Every time I watch this part of the video I feel repulsed.