Dan Graham | Rock My Religion

Dan Graham

Rock My Religion

Cambridge, USA: MIT Press, 1993

330 pp., 20 x 27.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Sharing its title with Graham's celebrated 1984 film (scored by Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth), this volume collects eighteen essays written by the late artist between 1965 and 1990. These include articles rejected by magazines such as Artforum, Arts, Esquire, ZG and Screen, and published by Aspen Magazine, Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer's 0 - 9, Open Letter (Toronto), Real Life (New York), Parachute (Montreal), Art Press (Paris), and (eventually) Artforum. 

The volume is divided into three sections: "Information: Conceptual Art/Magazines/The Sixties", "Performance: Punk Rock, Popular Culture, Theater" and "Architecture: Art/Design/Urbanism". Each alternates between descriptions and documentation of Graham's own projects with his writings about other artists (Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman) and musicians (The Ramones, Devo, Patti Smith, The Sex Pistols, The Runaways, Lydia Lunch, The Slits). 

The title essay traces the parallels not only between religion and rock music, but between rock music and propaganda, rock music and capitalism, politics, the media, etc. etc. 

Flipping through it today - for the first time in years - I'm most enjoying a text about Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. It recounts the story of the band Adam and the Ants asking the impresario to help "reshape their image". McLaren began by ousting Adam as the lead singer, replacing him with fourteen year-old Annabella Lwin (and briefly, also, George Alan O'Dowd, who would later achieve superstardom as Boy George). Changing the band's name to Bow Wow Wow, he wrote the controversial lyrics to their songs which ranged from the innuendo-laden "Sexy Eiffel Tower" (complete with faux-orgasmic panting by the adolescent singer) and songs promoting cassette piracy (released on the largest record label at the time). 

The book includes Graham's influential interventions in newspapers and magazines, such as Detumesecence (1969) and Figurative (1965), important texts such as Homes for America (1966-67),  performative works like Performer/Audience/Mirror (1977) and early forays into public art, including 

Children's Pavilion (1989), a collaboration with Jeff Wall. 

Wall also provides a blurb for the dust jacket:

"Dan Graham's essays are essential reading for everyone interested in the big issues in art and culture since the 60s - and some of the little issues too." 

as does Kim Gordon: 

"Dan was the first person to encourage me to write. By participating in performance of his involving an all-girl band he also encouraged me to play music. Sonic Youth would never have existed without Dan Graham. Rock My Religion is a fresh momento of Dan's perceptive brilliant and friendship". 

Rock My Religion spans twenty-five years of Graham's work, which would continue for another thirty-two, until his death on Saturday at the age of 79.  

Just Another Asshole #6

[Barbara Ess, Glenn Branca]

Just Another Asshole #6

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2018

192 pp., 7 x 4”, softcover

Edition of 2000

My very first curatorial projects were exhibitions of artists’ magazines and artists’ records. Just Another Asshole was included in both.  

The periodical was a No Wave mixed-media publication started by Barbara Ess in her apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in 1978. It began life as a personal ‘zine of her collages, with the title scrawled in red nail polish on the cover. The third issue changed the format (to a tabloid newspaper) and each subsequent issue the format changed again. Number four was a four page spread in the 1980 issue of Artforum. Number five was a 12” LP: an anthology of seventy-seven very short tracks, by eighty-three artists. Co-published with White Columns, the album was co-edited by Glenn Branca and featured contributions from Jenny Holzer, Carla Liss,  Dan Graham, Barbara Kruger, Lee Ranaldo, Dara Birnbaum, Eric Bogosian, Thurston Moore, Amy Taubin and others. 

The sixth (and penultimate) issue was a paperback book. Again co-edited by Glenn Branca, this collection of writings included over sixty artists from the early 1980's downtown scene. It includes short stories, performance transcripts, plays, monologues, screenplays, and essays. 

Contributors include Kathy Acker,  Judith Barry, Buczak, Michael Gira (singer for the Swans), Jack Goldstein, Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cookie Mueller, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), David Rosenbloom, Jane Sherry (who co-edited a previous issue of the publication), Kiki Smith, Michael Smith, Wharton Tiers, Lynne Tillman, Martha Wilson, David Wojnarowicz, and many others. 

Re-issued by Primary Information in November of 2018, the title is already out-of-print. 

A poster for a "benefit concert and dance party" held forty years ago today, in aid of Volume, the international catalogue and directory of audio work in the arts.

The event was hosted by One Ten Records, the short-lived NYC-based label ran by visual artist and archivist Bob George, from the late seventies into the early eighties. One Ten released Laurie Anderson's debut single Oh Superman, Jackie Apple's Mexican Tapes, and the 1977 Airwaves compilation (which featured Anderson, Apple, as well as Vito Acconci, Terry Fox, Meredith Monk, Dennis Oppenheim, etc.). 

Anderson performed on the bill with Peter Gordon's Love of Life Orchestra (Gordon was a frequent collaborator of Anderson's, as well as Suzanne Vega, David Johansen, The Flying Lizards, David Van Tieghem, Lawrence Weiner, and Arthur Russell) and Glenn Branca.