Criterion Collection Sale

 

For those who experience cinema with physical media, the Criterion collection DVDs and Blu-ray discs are on sale for 50% off at Barnes and Nobles (in store and online). The sale lasts a month, ending on December 2nd. 

Miranda July | All Fours

Miranda July

All Fours

New York City, USA: Riverhead Books, 2024

336 pp., 6 x 9”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

Miranda July’s second novel (after The First Bad Man in 2015, some artists books and non-fiction, and a collection of short stories) was written after her break-up with filmmaker Mike Mills, whom she married in 2009 and has a thirteen year old child with. The book follows a woman who abandons a planned cross-country road trip and settles into a nearby motel. 

"For most of the writing, I thought it was just the relationship that most of us have to motels and hotels, which is that you don’t have your life around you. None of the clutter is there, and so there’s a kind of fresh and peaceful feeling. And it’s sexy—there’s something sexy about being dislocated and not having to do any laundry and things like that. Very late in the game, I realized that every summer until I was 12, I had driven across the whole country to a hotel. I just forgot that I had ever driven across the country. But in fact, this is something my family did to get to Grossinger’s, which was the dilapidated resort hotel that my grandparents owned. We were the poor relations from California, and this was a Jewish, formerly thriving, Borscht Belt hotel. And it was like a fairy tale for me: my parents weren’t anxious because there was no money needed there, and I had free rein as a child in this safe world. There had been this incredible feeling of relief and joy that I didn’t have in my daily life. The hotel went bankrupt when I was 12—the exact age my child is now.”

- Miranda July

Artists' Pillows

 

Pillows and pillowcases by Miranda July, Lucas Grogan, Bless, Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber, Marina Abramovic, and Christian Marclay. 

(I remember a Pipilotti Rist book from about twenty years ago that came with a pillow case, but I can't locate it now). 

Miranda July | Kissing Pillowcases

Miranda July
Kissing Pillowcases
Fitzroy, Australia: Third Drawer Down,
48 x 71 cm.
Edition size unknown

100% Cotton Pillowcases, packaged with a postcard. The embroidered text reads: “Here you will dream of endless kissing” and “Here you will dream of people you admire exposing your fraudulence”.

Miranda July | Margie Ruskie Stops Time

Miranda July w/ The Need
Margie Ruskie Stops Time
Portland, USA: Kill Rock Stars, 1996
7" 45 rpm single
Edition size unknown

The debut release for both Miranda July, and for backing band The Need (who went on to record for Kill Rock Stars, Outpunk and Chainsaw Records). July would later revisit the subject of stopping time in her second feature-length film, The Future.

"...it’s funny at another interview thing someone brought an old 7-inch of mine that’s called Margie Ruskie Stops Time, and I was like, “Oh, right! I forgot I already had this idea. Thankfully, you’re kind of the only person who has this 7-inch, I think!” But I’m a real sucker for anything to do with time or time travel. I could have gotten way nerdier there, but I tried to keep it emotional."

- Miranda July, interviewed by Christopher Frizzelle

The disc is available here, for between five and ten dollars (depending on condition). It is also available as a $2 download from Bandcamp, here.

July turns 43 today.

Miranda July turns 42 today

The Reference Points Book Series

Miranda July, via Facebook, endorsing a new project by her previous Learning To Love You More collaborator Harrell Fletcher:


"Ooo this is good. You should support this if only to get these books. And if you are not already a fan of the artist Harrell Fletcher or his Art and Social Practice Program, then look that up. Could be what's missing from your life. **********************************************
The Reference Points Book Series
This ongoing series of beautifully designed books focuses on artists that are central to the discipline of art and social practice, including Wendy Ewald, Pablo Helguera, Luis Camnitzer, Ben Kinmont, Pedro Reyes, John Malpede, and Temporary Services. The series is overseen by Julie Ault and Harrell Fletcher and published by Publication Studio in Portland, Oregon.

Support the book series and the historic role that it plays in the development of art and social practice:

http://www.portlandstate-foundation.org/art-social-practice

http://www.psusocialpractice.org/"

Harrell Fletcher | Everyday Sunshine

Harrell Fletcher
Everyday Sunshine
Portland, USA: PICA, 2001
56 pp., 21.5 x 16 cm., staple-bound
Edition of 1200

A pamphlet catalog from an exhibition of Harrell Fletcher's work at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art that also functions as an autobiographical artist's book. Projects featuring family snapshots, found photos, and real estate ads are reproduced here, accompanied by short explanations of his ideas and working processes. The bookwork also features an essay by collaborator Miranda July.

A short companion PDF, titled More Everyday Sunshine from 2004, can be downloaded here.

Nieves

Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Nieves is a publishing house dedicated to Artists' books and zines. Founded in 2001, they have published works by Mike Mills, Leah Singer, Tucker Nichols, David Shrigley, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Marcel Dzama, Larry Clark, Michael Dumontier, Daniel Johnston, Harmony Korine, Olaf Nicolai, Miranda July, Spike Jonze, Mark Gonzales and many others. The zines are generally small runs, and sell out quickly. For more information, visit their site, here.

Miranda July | It Chooses You

A procrastination project while making her last film The Future (excellent, except for the talking cat), It Chooses You tells the story of the artist's encounters with people selling goods via the Penny Saver classifieds. Feeling that the characters she met were "too big for fiction", she lets them tell their own stories here. The book, published by McSweeney's, is available at amazon and most bookstores.

To coincide with the launch last fall, July set up a temporary store inside Partner's and Spade in Soho, and re-sold the items, re-packaged with a brief interview, at their original price. The contents ranged from scrabble pieces without the board to an entire drum kit. Reportedly, the entire lot sold within the first hour.

Oblique Strategies

Oblique Strategies is a boxed set of cards created by Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt. The two met when Eno was a visiting lecturer at Ipswich art school in the late 1960s, and later became friends and frequent collaborators. Schmidt's images were used for the cover of Eno's LP Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) and on the Eno & Fripp record Evening Star. Early copies of the 1977 album Before and After Science included four watercolour prints by Schmidt. I was once given a framed set as a Christmas present (by the owner of the record store where I worked) but they were water-damaged in a subsequent move and thrown away. In the liner notes Eno writes: "Apart from our collaboration on this record, Peter and I have been working together and comparing notes for some time. In 1975 we produced a boxed set of oracle cards called Oblique Strategies, which were used extensively in the making of this record."

When comparing notes, the artists discovered that they had both independently arrived at a system of using cryptic axioms to overcome artistic obstacles. Schmidt had created a wooden boxed piece called The Thoughts Behind the Thoughts in 1970*, and Eno was undoubtedly influenced by George Brecht's Wateryam, other Fluxus scores, and John Cage's use of the I Ching to compose music.

Subtitled Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas, the first version of the Oblique Strategies was published in 1975, and is now in its fifth, open ended, edition. Recently an iPhone app was released, and individual cards have been printed as t-shirts. The cards in the series each contain an instruction which can be used to break a creative deadlock. Eno has reportedly used them when recording his own projects, and also when producing albums for bands such as U2 and Coldplay. Some of the cards are specific to music, but most are open ended. Eno writes:

"These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear…"

In R.E.M.'s What's the Frequency Kenneth, Michael Stipe sings "Richard says 'withdrawl in disgust is not the same as apathy." He is likely referring to Richard Linklater, whose debut film Slacker featured a character handing out the cards to passers by. On their follow-up album Up, Stipe mentions both the I Ching and the Oblique Strategies by name, in the song Diminished.

The following images of the cards in use were found at Flickr and various other image hosting sites.

*see next post