NEWSgrist - where spin is art

VendorBar @ Editions | Artists’ Books Fair, X-Initiative, Nov. 5th - 8th, 2009

Kirby Gookin and Robin Kahn announce VendorBar, our newest curatorial endeavor hosted by the Editions | Artists’ Books Fair 2009 Nov. 5th - 8th, 2009.  
 
VendorBar presents artists who will directly engage the public by presenting actions, exchanges and services that result in the production and distribution of artists editions made specifically for the event.  As part of this year’s “E|AB’09 Special Events” series, VendorBar offers a unique site where interaction supersedes transaction.
 
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
ARTifariti - Western Sahara Collective, Andrea Beeman & Ken Montgomery, Mike Bidlo, Alan Bowman & Alison Knowles, Gaye Chan & Nandita Sharma, Geoffrey Hendricks, Nancy Hwang & Elaine Tin Nyo, Amanda Keeley, Cary Leibowitz, Larry Miller, Peter Nadin, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Sal Randolph, Showpaper, Robert Watts

VendorBar poster design by Tom Otterness [click for pop-up]
        
Schedule
 
THURSDAY  5th (Opening Night Preview to benefit PS1)
7:00 pm          Alison Knowles & Alan Bowman, Lentil Etching for Charles Curtis
7:00 pm          Mike Bidlo, Not Marcel Duchamp
 
FRIDAY  6th
11:00 am        Peter Nadin, Noses & Old Field Farm Collective
2:00 pm          Showpaper, Party Lab (made-to-order cassettes), Flipswitch video program, Blissed Out + Graffiti Monsters collaboration, (3:00 pm)
4:00 pm          Geoffrey Hendricks, Headstands for Peace and introducing a new special edition “Tooth & Nail”
5:00 pm          Nancy Hwang & Elaine Tin Nyo, Happy Hour: Big Ball Bar
 
SATURDAY  7th
12:00 pm        Sal Randolph, Free Money Actions
1:00 pm          ARTifariti-Western Sahara Collective, Sahara Libre Wear Fashion Show
2:00 pm          Tom Otterness, VendorBar Poster Signing
3:00 pm          Larry Miller, Meme, Even
5:00 pm          Nancy Hwang & Elaine Tin Nyo, Happy Hour: Big Ball Bar
5:00 pm          Andrea Beeman & Ken Montgomery: Lamination Ritual Featuring Ken, the Minister of Lamination and Amanda, the Enchantress of Bioluminosity.
 
SUNDAY  8th
12:00 pm        Amanda Keeley, Love/Hate
1:00 pm          Cary Leibowitz, bumper stickers – pass it on
2:00 pm          Showpaper,  Party Lab (made-to-order cassettes), Flipswitch video program, Eskalators perform, (3:30 pm)
3:00 pm          ARTifariti- Western Sahara Collective: IPCNY Discussion
 
ONGOING (Thursday thru Sunday)
Gaye Chan & Nandita Sharma, Eating in Public
Yoko Ono, Add Color: Imagine Peace -Stenciling Action
Robert Watts, Fluxpost
 
LOCATION:
 
E|AB’09 Fair at the X-Initiative ( formerly DIA )
548 W. 22nd Street  New York, NY (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues)

E|AB’09 is free and open to the public Friday to Sunday.
 
 
FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
Kirby Gookin /   Robin Kahn
[email protected]
[email protected]

SPAM verse #1

New shopping
new life!
the best service to customers

they provide you
with original products
of good quality

and what is more,
the price is a surprising.
Happiness to you!

It is realy a good chance
for shopping.
Just grasp the opportunity,
Now or never!

V.Mag: Alphonso Lingis: To+Have+Been+Dangerous

via Version.org:

.illuminations
.Alphonso+Lingis
.To+Have+Been+Dangerous
.060309

Joy is that surge that breaks out of the compound where possessions accumulate and gratification is oral; ecstasy is finding oneself swept away...

Joy is that surge that breaks out of the compound where possessions accumulate and gratification is oral; ecstasy is finding oneself swept away into inhuman spaces. We step out of the deck of our house in the middle of the night and our eyes travel to the billions of blazing stars of the Milky Way millions of light years away. We go to a nearby meadow one summer afternoon and listen to the tiny songs of the insects as our eyes drift with the passing clouds, enter microscopic and cosmic realms. We climb to Saqsayhuamán high over Qosqo, assembled of stones that weigh up to 200 tons each and fitted together so tight that we cannot push a knife blade between them; we go up the spirals of Borobudur to gaze at the wall of simmering volcanoes over the jungle below. We go to ancient monasteries in Ladahk and spend hours entranced before images of monstrous Himalayan deities dancing in rings of fire; we wander among the massive carved stones of Gobekli Tepe temple in southeastern Turkey, crafted and arranged 11,000 years ago by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery, until we find ourselves possessed by unknown ancient gods and demons.

The ecstasy of traveling the night skies from the deck of our house; of entering enchanted microecosystems in a nearby meadow; of going into the ocean, into the skies, into the rock core of the earth, into the Ice, is a pleasure radically different from the contentment that simmers over contents possessed. We will be dispossessed of apparatus to capture images and memories, dispossessed of memory and foresight, dispossessed of our identity, of our human upright posture and bodily skills. We will be adrift in the immensities and sublimities of reality. We will weep the bitterest tears and roar with wild laughter, our hands will extend blessings and curses. We will know reality.

Two practical rules are all we need:

Rule 1) Believe our happiness! Never make any important decision out of depression, a sense of need, of dependency. If we decide to get married because we are feeling lonely, afraid of becoming unattractive as we age or of being uncared for in old age, then we will marry badly. Make every important decision in a state of exultation. Isn't it on the dance floor that we feel right, our body feels right, we never have to urge ourselves to go, we never want to leave? Then decide to be there, to become a dancer, whatever the costs, the uncertainties, the counsels of prudence pressed on us!

Let us believe our happiness! Boredom and depression, wariness and prudence are not realistic. They narrow down our view, they raise up fences and walls, they leave the horizons and the depths in darkness. Joy is the most expansive state, it illuminates the distances and the heights, it opens wide upon what happens, what is.

Rule 2) Do it right away! Think of the most expansive, exultant thing imaginable. Visiting Anghor Wat or the Galapagos? Skiing Antarctica? Skydiving? Rafting down the Amazon? Go there now! Fear not that the world will appear more mediocre by contrast after—we will find new heights and depths in places that before looked closed in their somnolence.

Abe's Penny: a new "micro-publication"

Above: from Vol. 1.1 featuring  Tod Seelie and Brandon Johnson. [Link]

I just received my first installment of Abe's Penny, a new "micro-publication" that comes in the mail (yes, print on paper, not electronic), in the form of single postcards with an image and a text. They are in line with one of my favorite projects of all time (which is entirely email-driven): Carol Szymanski's inimitable Cockshut Dummy. The May volume of AP consists of photographs by Peter Bernard Killeen and a story by Eric Ledgin.

via Artnet news, 4-14-09:

ART & LITERATURE, ALL ON A SINGLE POSTCARD
Downtown Manhattan art-scene veteran Anna Knoebel, who labored in the fertile fields of artist Devon Dikeou’s Zingmagazine for several years, has launched a publishing empire of her own. Dubbed Abe’s Penny: A Micro-Magazine, the publication -- helmed by Anna with her sister, Tess Knoebel -- consists of four postcards that subscribers receive one by one, once per week, for one month. Each postcard features an image and a few lines of text. The full set of four postcards is a full story. Volume 1.1 featured photos by Tod Seelie with a poem by Brandon Johnson, and Volume 1:2 had photos by Melanie Flood and a poem by Sam Witt. Subscriptions are $48. For details, see www.abespenny.com

More info, and an interview; via Pacific Standard, 4-21-09:

Print Is Dead / Long Live Print

The decline of print publishing has been chronicled just about everywhere over the past several years, and while it's always a bummer when good magazines or newspapers shut down or the New York Times seems to shrink a little more every week, I'm certain that no matter what there will always be creative-minded people who are interested in producing and searching out beautifully tactile, self-contained printed objects. I for one look forward to seeing all the innovative new works that are sure to develop in the void – projects that explore classic printing methods, innovations with new techniques, and radical ideas about what even constitutes a publication.[...]

What's behind the name?
The name, Abe's Penny, came from the penny press, which we were enamored of because making newspapers inexpensive made the spread of information affordable. Using the word penny worked because of what we were saying before about paring down a magazine to its essence, or smallest form. We decided to call it Abe's Penny because it's self-contained and referential, like the postcards.

[...]

And a cute Q&A with the editors from Evil Monito Magazine, 4-14-09:

 Q&A: Anna & Tess Knoebel

 

 

EM: Occupation and Position
Anna: Anna Knoebel, Co-Founder, Editor, Abe’s Penny

Tess:  Tess Knoebel, Co-Founder, Editor, Abe’s Penny

Derek Walcott: A Sea-Change

Image Via

via Harper's Magazine, Oct 08 :

A Sea-Change

By Derek Walcott, in Agni: 67. Walcott’s new collection, White Egrets, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010.

With a change of government the permanent cobalt,
the promises we take with a pinch of salt,
with a change of government the permanent aquamarine,
with a reorganized cabinet the permanent violet,
the permanent lilac over the reef, the permanent flux
of ocher shallows, the torn bunting of the currents
and the receding banners of the breakers.
With a change in government no change in the cricket’s chirrup,
the low, comical bellow of the bull, or
the astonishing symmetry of tossing horses.
With a change in government the haze of wide rain
which you begin to hear as the ruler hears the crowd
gathering under the balcony, the leader who has promised
the permanent cobalt of a change of government
with the lilac and violet of his cabinet change.