Dave Dyment | Thirteen Serious Considerations

Dave Dyment
Thirteen Serious Considerations
Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2019
13 pp.,11 x 16 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 25

Thirteen Serious Considerations borrows it’s name and format from a little known mail-art project by Dick Higgins, published in 1978.

The hand-stamped cards are excerpts from a video called Pop Quiz, which collects every question from the lyrics in my personal music library. A recent iteration contains over two thousand questions and is over four hours long. A previous sampling was published as a bookwork by Paul+Wendy Projects in 2010.

Produced as part of the Undecimals mail art project, which also included Jimmy Limit, Maggie Groat, Liz Knox, Lyndl Hall, Kara Uzelman, and many others.

Lenka Clayton | 63 Objects Taken From My Son's Mouth

Lenka Clayton
63 Objects Taken From My Son's Mouth
Pittsburgh, USA: Self-published, 2014
66 pp., 5.75 x 4.25 x 0.25", softcover
Edition of 250 signed and numbered copies


A bulldog clip, a bottle cap, bus tickets, a spool of thread, an acorn, pebbles, rocks, and coins in three different currencies. These are a sampling of the sixty-three objects the artist fished out of the mouth of her infant son.

First exhibited at the at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, in 2013 (see below), the book features size-as photographs by Tom Little of the potentially lethal rescued items, all removed from her son Otto's mouth when he was between the ages of of eight and fifteen months. “The collection indirectly documents those months of our lives,” Clayton says.

“We carried on until he stopped putting things in his mouth, or when I stopped being so terrified of it,” she told the Telegraph.

The work was produced in residency, self-directed and self-initiated. In her home, while raising her first child.  “It still seems to be a commonly held belief that being an engaged mother and serious artist are mutually exclusive endeavours,” she wrote. “I don’t believe or want to perpetrate this.”
So Clayton created a seven-and-a-half month-long "Residency in Motherhood" after struggling to produce work while suffering a “lack of resources, anxiety and overwhelming tiredness”.

The 227-day stint resulted in a number of works, including Maternity Leave (the sounds from her baby monitor broadcast live into the Carnegie Museum), Dangerous Objects Made Safer, and the video work The Distance I Can Be From My Son. All speak to the unfathomable fear and responsibility a mother feels about the vulnerability of her offspring.


63 Objects Taken From My Son's Mouth is available from the artist, here, for $35.00 US, or from Printed Matter, here.

Richard Artschwager | Corner Exclamation (in 2 Parts)

Richard Artschwager
Corner Exclamation (in 2 Parts)
Self-published, 1993
upper element: 63.8 x 15.2 x 10.8 cm.
lower element: 14.6 x 12.1 x 7.6 cm.
Edition of 30 signed, numbered and dated copies [+6 AP]

Susan Hiller, RIP

Jaroslaw Kozlowski turns 74 today

Jenny Holzer | Survival: Finding extreme pleasure...

Jenny Holzer
Survival: Finding extreme pleasure...
New York City, USA: Self-published, 1984
6 x 10"
Edition of 10 [+1 AP] signed copies

Text on cast aluminum plaque.

Barbara Kruger turns 74 today

Christine Walde Reading Tonight

Christine Walde will read from Bride Machine, her boxed folio of poems inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, tonight at knife | fork | book, at 244 Augusta Avenue, in Toronto's Kensignton Market.

Additionally, Aaron Tucker will read from IRRESPONSIBLE MEDIUMS, a collection of poems that translates Duchamp's chess moves into writing.

Doors open at 6:30pm for a 7pm start.

Jonas Mekas

Lithuanian Filmmaker Jonas Mekas - often called "the godfather of American Avant-garde cinema" died yesterday, at the age of 96. Below is a quickly cobbled together bio.


Mekas was born on Christmas eve, in Semeniškiai, Panevėžys, in 1922. When he was 18, the Germans invaded Lithuania. He joined the resistance, typing out news stories sourced from BBC broadcasts and distributing them clandestinely.

Mekas attempted to flee the country in 1944, but he and his brother Adolfas were removed from their train, and were imprisoned in a Nazi labour camp near Hamburg. They escaped after eight months and hid on a farm near the Danish border for the remaining two months of the war. They then spent time in displaced persons camps.

The pair decide to emigrate, and briefly considered Canada (1947 Diary entry: : “Everybody’s signing up for Canada. Mostly they are looking for tailors, shoemakers, professions like that. It’s enough to know how to sew a button on-you are hired. No requests for poets yet”) before settling on Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The brothers founded Film Culture magazine, which quickly became one of the most important American film journals of the time. The magazine published 79 issues between 1954 and 1996. Many issues are rare and valuable now, but PDF selections can be viewed at Ubuweb, here.

In November, 1958, Mekas became the first film critic for the Village Voice newspaper, with a column titled Movie Journal. “I went to see Jerry Tallmer, at the Village Voice, and I asked him why there was no regular movie column in his paper. He said, why don’t you do one? I said, O.K., I’ll have it tomorrow.” His goal was to “become a self-appointed minister of defense and propaganda of the New Cinema”, he wrote in a recent reissue of these writings, “I couldn’t afford wasting any of my space writing on commercial cinema."

In 1962 Mekas founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative, and two years later the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, which eventually became Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde cinema, as well as a screening venue.

When the Film-Makers Cooperative screened Jack Smith's 1963 film Flaming Creatures (see post here), the police arrived, seized the film and arrested the projectionist on charges of obscenity. The Village Voice reported:

"Mekas, a founder and guiding light of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, was not at the theatre at the time, but when he was notified of what was happening, he rushed down and demanded that he be arrested too. The police obliged.…"

His friends and collaborators included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Salvador Dalí, Kenneth Anger, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Nico, Jackie Kennedy (whose children he tutored), and Andy Warhol. “In my loft,” he told the Guardian, “Andy met film-makers and was inspired by them. That’s where he got the [filmmaking] bug. My loft was a gathering space for musicians, poets, film-makers.”

Mekas helped Warhol shoot the durational film Empire (1964), an eight-hour static view of the Empire State Building.

As a filmmaker, Mekas was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1963 for a film called The Brig, about a military prison. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Other films include Walden (1969), Lost Lost Lost (1975), Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990), Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), Letter from Greenpoint (2005), Sleepless Nights Stories (2011) and Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man. In 2007, he produced a film a day, for 365 days, released on his website.

He is the author of over twenty books and his work has exhibited at galleries and museums around the world, including Serpentine Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), PS1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA, Documenta of Kassel, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Venice Biennale.

Lee Lozano | Private Book 2

Lee Lozano
Private Book 2
New York City, USA: Karma Books, 2017
196 pp., 3 x 5", spiral-bound
Edition size unknown

Private Book 2 is the second in a series of 11 pocket-sized books, reproducing the notes of Lee Lozano in facsimile.

A highly regarded painter before she abandoned the medium to concentrate on conceptual works, and then abandoned the art world completely (and refusing to speak to another women for thirty years, as an artwork).

For more information, visit this post:

https://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2018/07/lee-lozano-notebooks-1967-70.html

Title TK

Title TK
Title TK
New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2017
242 pp., 6.5 x 8.5", softcover
Edition of 1000

Title TK is journalist shorthand used to signify information still forthcoming for the final copy edit. It translates to "title to come". It is also the name of a 2002 LP by the Breeders.

Here Title TK is a conceptual band consisting of artist Cory Arcangel, curator Howie Chen, and composer/guitarist Alan Licht. The group perform, but do not play music. Instead, they sit and talk about music, pop culture, art and anything else that emerges in their unplanned dialogues.

Fittingly, this collection of ten performances from between 2010 and 2014 feature only transcriptions of their conversations. The venues range from the Lit Lounge in New York to the POP Montréal festival to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Topics of conversation include American Idol, CanCon, Dan Flavin, the Grateful Dead’s Dick’s Picks, Fugazi, Guns N’ Roses, Lil Wayne, Seth Price, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, the Situationists, etc. etc.

Their previous "LP", ROCK$ tackled subjects as varied as Madonna, Deerhunter, Van Halen, Funkmaster Flex, Ben Stiller, Christina Applegate, and trying to remember every band on the 4AD label.

On-stage banter without the unnecessary music getting in the way.

Available from Tender Books, here.

Jenny Holzer Sushi Plate

Jenny Holzer
[Protect Me From What I Want]
Chicago, USA: The Renaissance Society, 1997
5 x 56 x 36 cm.
Edition of 25

A Sushi Platter with the artist's signature Truism etched into it. The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago produced a series of functional objects by artist for it's annual fundraiser, including dinner plates by Ed Paschke and dry-goods canisters by Kara Walker.

This week on Tumblr: Jon Sasaki

Open Letter to the New Museum

"We stand in solidarity with the New Museum Union.

We are troubled by New Museum leadership’s decision to hire an anti-union firm to sow fear and hostility and to misinform both management and staff about the role of unions in the workplace. Intimidation and misinformation do not constitute open engagement with the Museum employees. Moreover, such behavior goes against everything that the Museum has historically stood for—that is, equity, diversity, and a commitment to institutional responsibility.

We implore New Museum leadership to do the right thing and allow their employees to form a union without interference. We also urge leadership to bargain with the New Museum Union in good faith for a fair contract. Your coworkers are not simply union supporters but devoted colleagues who deeply love and believe in the institution and are fully committed to its future.

Signed:

Julie Ault, Artist

Andy Bichlbaum, the Yes Men

Claire Bishop, Professor, PhD Program in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center

Hannah Black, Artist

Nayland Blake, Artist, Chair ICP-Bard MFA

Jennifer Bolande, Professor, New Genres, UCLA Dept. of Art

Justin Vivian Bond, Transgenre Artist

Gregg Bordowitz, Artist

A.K. Burns, Artist

Paul Chan, Artist

Howie Chen, Curator

Liz Collins, Artist

Leah DeVun, Associate Professor, Rutgers University (Member, AAUP-AFT Local 06323)

Kimberly Drew, Writer and Independent Curator

Andrea Fraser, Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of Art

Malik Gaines, Artist

Liam Gillick, Artist

The Guerrilla Girls, Artists

Miguel Gutierrez, Artist

House of Ladosha

Sharon Hayes, Artist

Katherine Hubbard, Artist

Juliana Huxtable, Artist

David Joselit, Distinguished Professor, PhD Program in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center

Alhena Katsof, Curator

Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Artist and Writer

Nicole Killian, Artist and Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University

Devin Kenny, Artist

Kate Kraczon, Curator

Molly Larkey, Artist

Simon Leung, Artist and Professor of Art, UC Irvine

Monica Majoli, Artist and Professor, UC Irvine

Yong Soon Min, Professor Emerita, UC Irvine

Fred Moten, Professor, New York University

Carlos Motta, Artist

Gala Porras-Kim, Artist

R.H. Quaytman, Artist

Halsey Rodman, Artist; Co-Chair of Sculpture, Bard MFA; Critic, Yale School of Art, Painting and Printmaking

Martha Rosler, Artist

Alexandro Segade, Artist

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Artist; Visiting Artist Faculty, California Institute for the Arts and

Bard Summer MFA

Gregory Sholette, PhD, Professor, Queens College Art Dept, CUNY

Patrick Staff, Artist

Eric A. Stanley, Assistant Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley

A.L. Steiner, Artist

Eric Golo Stone, Writer, Artist, and Curator

Lincoln Tobier, Artist, Otis College of Art and Design / SEIU Local 721

Mariana Valencia, Artist

Chris E. Vargas, Artist

Anton Vidokle, Artist and Founder of e-flux

Matt Wolf, Filmmaker

Yellow Jackets Collective"

Joe Jones | History of the Music Bike and Other Stories

Joe Jones
History of the Music Bike and Other Stories
Verona, Italy: Francesco Conz, 1977
32 x 42.5 x 5 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 40


"In the Asolo period, which goes from about 1973 to 1979, Francesco Conz was the host of numerous neo avant.garde artists, accumulating many documents and giving life to a series of editions and publications henceforth become historical. Many of these were edited in collaboration with Pari & Dispary Editions or with editions of Beppe Morra, even if in these editions the collaboration is not cited in the colophon.

The first Fluxus guest were Joe Jones (who stayed there until 1979), Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, followed by Al Hansen, Jon and Geoffrey Hendricks and Takako Saito."

- Philip Corner

Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham turns 70 today.