Saturday, February 21, 2009

2-22 | nor by pressENTS | KARKOWSKY | TODER | MacDONALD

SCHOEN BOOKS

7 Sugarloaf Street. South Deerfield MA, 01373

Published by schoenbooks February 2nd, 2009 in Celansalon.

There will be a reading at EIGHT (8) o’clock (rock) p.m. this Sunday the 22nd day of the 2nd month. Please try to arrive either early (for light snacks and browsing of stacks: the remaining copies of Ice Cream Amnesia will be for sale) or eightly: for we would like to start promptly enough to hear three readers on a school night. Those of you coming from far off times and places, don’t be shy about arriving late: we will try to save seats in the back. Speaking of which:

It was written that MANNY KARKOWSKY shaves the devil’s back every Tuesday. As a child actor, his stage name was Manndroid the Magnificent. At age twelve, he built a tombstone escalator for counting: ‘one two three oclock four oclock rock, five six seven oclock eight oclock rock.’ Then he threw a herpes pie in the graveyard. At the age when most young men start reading, Manny’s grandfather evaporated at the stroke of teatime. He found that the Picasso-nightingale had snapped a cat’s neck on the patio. With both eyes on one side of its head it warbled from the dreamstufftree: ‘one two three oclock four oclock rock, five six seven oclock eight oclock rock.’ Dangling the cha-cha, broken-necked cat got the punchline: fuck the swandive! The Hamburgler gobbled zebra haunches in what the camera showed was a close second. Sure enough, Manny knows when it’s hammertime. Many of you may know that EMILY TODER is the printer and publisher behind Nor By Press, which published Manny Karkowsky’s Ice Cream Amnesia as the first book in its Bikes Like Us series. Her chapbook, Brushes With, is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky. I have been told that RYAN MACDONALD is a grapher of light, a sculptor of beeswax, and a maker of fictions. This will be his first reading.

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For those who might not know

The spring session of the venerable Jubilat/Jones unveils itself that selfsame Sunday at 3 o’clock at the Jones Library in Amherst. Details at http://www.jubilat.org/series.html.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Gold



ok, I just couldn't help myself.
Amanda Lear is something else.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Friday, February 06, 2009

Miroslaw Balka 2




a few quotes from Balka's artist talk at the opening:

Q: When did you start to work with salt?
A: When I started to sweat (laughter) or cry, for example.
That's why we corrode in life, because we work with a lot of salt.

"The camera is my vacuum cleaner. I choose these places (Treblinka for example), I clean up the dirt, I look into the bag and I pick out sometimes one sentence out of 60 minutes of footage...That's my function as an artist: Bringing the dignity to the things which are thrown away."

"I am not only a documentarian, I am also sometimes an artist."

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Miroslaw Balka



Had a very encouraging studio crit this afternoon with Miroslaw Balka. His presence was as intense as his picture (complete with all black suit).
Some things I learned about me: I should not worry about how much of a painintheass my materials are to move, how fragile they are, these are things for conservationists to worry about. I sometimes take a controlled action just a bit too far i.e. placing a house in a landscape that does not need one, or a hand in a video where the human element already exists in the voice.

True that some of the most simple gestures are the ones that work best.
Too much of anything flattens the whole of everything.
In the end he mentioned a few contemporaries that came to mind, one of them being 'Bobby Gober', suggested a book (Simon Shama's Landscape and Memory ) and made me feel pretty good about what I do,
which sometimes is all we need.


Some things I learned about Balka: his favorite author to read when he was 17 was Bruno Schultz. He believes we have so much freedom as artists that we have to define our own limits, 'trace out our own cell walls'. No matter how hard you try, and try I did, he will not tell you what he is working on for the huge Turbine Hall show in October. He is not allowed to. It pains him to keep exciting secrets from people.

Good for us locals:
Miroslaw Balka has an opening at the University of Massachusetts, University Gallery on Thursday Feb 5 to Sunday May 24th.

Good for Miroslaw:

"'Master poet' Miroslaw Balka gets Tate's Turbine Hall commission
Polish artist becomes the 10th person to create installation for Tate Modern:

A crack running through the floor, a helter-skelter and a simulated sunrise have all been part of Tate Modern's popular Turbine Hall series. Now the gallery has announced that Polish artist Miroslaw Balka is the 10th person to receive the prestigious commission."
Twenty million people have visited the Turbine Hall since it opened nine years ago. Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois, Olafur Eliasson and Bruce Nauman are among the artists who have created installations for the space.

Read the full article at the guardian.co.uk