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Two free disposably printed ephemera

May 10, 2013

Just put together two small chapbooks. Download PDFs below, or send me a message & I’ll send you a copy. Danke sehr schön Jasper Spoelstra, for the cover art.

SCAFFOLDING (PDF)

Jasper K

DiFFRACTIONS(PDF)

Diffractions

Natalie Häusler’s Case Mod(ification): surprise(d) meetings between poems, people, pixelated panels

January 26, 2013

“What I notice is that I architect my poems. . . . Rooms are not just square boxes. You design how people move through them and so that’s [a] projected imagination already of how you’re not going to live in a room, but how you’re going to go from one passageway to another.” Robert Duncan (from Duncan: The Ambassador From Venus, Lisa Jarnot, 2012)

   entrance

Hesitancy upon entrance. The gallery floor is covered with coloured panels & there is a momentary natural uncertainty. Is this part of the art? & if so, surely it is not meant to be walked on. Inherent to the gallery experience, a para-part perhaps, often unnoticed, sometimes annoyingly defining (by its obstruction; for example, the famous Mona Lisa which can only be viewed from behind glass & a distance of metres). More often than not these restrictions are probably necessary; artworks are regularly defaced or stolen. A  Rothko was recently vandalised, as well as a Picasso (whose defacer is, absurdly, getting his own art show); & then there was the overzealous janitor who ruined (or improved?) in any case, thoroughly scrubbed clean, an artwork that she thought was a dirty trough.

Rarely however, is the permitted distance of the viewer from the artwork, or for that matter the viewer herself, actively integrated as part of an exhibition. The Invisible Show (at Hayward Gallery, London) last year did contain some nice pieces that were designed to frustrate, provoke, titillate the visitor. In an essay about a similar exhibition Voids: a Retrospective (Centre Pompidou, 2009) the proposition is made of that, “Voids revealed that the exhibition is contingent upon space (architecture), language and memory.” Natalie Häusler’s work now exhibited in gallery Supportico Lopez recognizes and incorporates these uncertain relations between space, language, body, the viewer.

people

Not only is there a moment of uncertainty upon entering the gallery, when the visitor becomes part of the artwork before or probably while realising this is happening. There is another way in which visitors’ presence as absence, “out of sheer synthetic voids”, is incorporated into the artwork itself. As visitors move around the gallery, the coloured panels, which are not connected or stuck to the floor in any way, will inevitably begin to move around and get dirty. This means that the exhibition, which will last for a month (until 16 February), will incorporate the marks, movements, and moods of the visitors, the outside world, the weather. The shifting and shuffling of the visitors is recorded by the coloured panels covering the floor, “a stutter /  a a a stutter on behalf of recreation” (reads Häusler’s poem ‘Balcony’)

balcony

thereby, in a self-reflexive loop, becoming part of the artwork itself. The exhibition thus reflects and incorporates some of the contingent processes of its becoming in the world, ”an excess of flaming fractures”.

bed

The panels on the floor, I was told, go together with one poem. Other poems, with their own artworks of panes of glass are attached to the gallery walls.

wall floor

Further, the poems have been recorded, each poem by different reader, and are played via small speakers. This means that as you walk by  each poem–artwork, you are gradually enveloped, first by the static then the audible poem, and as you move on away, or to the next poem, you are released again from poem, into noise, commotion, new poem, exit.

sam

Or perhaps you will wander over to the small alcove in one corner of the gallery, where you will find a book of watercolours created according to similar principles of allowing moments of contingency to interrupt and inform the creative process and final work. The book Watercolors is the result of a 1 1/2 year correspondence with artist David Horvitz, during which the two artists responded to each others’ drawings and texts.

Art exhibition, or poetry surreptitiously snuck into an art gallery? Not the most important or interesting question; nevertheless, the combination of text, art, installation, book, is unexpected, unusual, and fun. It also reminded me of another favourite artist, Mark Manders, who similarly combines art installations with text (& parenthetically, runs the amazing art / poetry books Roma Publications). In this case, the text usually takes the form of the work’s title. These titles are often very long, with words sometimes separated by foreword slashes suggesting a poem’s line break, or with ellipses combined with words.

Häusler’s exhibition, in its constant metamorphosis, is also reminiscent of Zeger Reyer’s rotating kitchen.

But rather than remaining a self-contained whole that turns on its own axis, Häusler’s Case Modification, as the exhibition’s title indicates, emerges as an open–ended process of becoming, incorporating and reflecting the surprises that it evokes in the world. Surprises, in part, brought in and imprinted on the art pieces by all the different visitors; but no less emanating outwards and leaving, in turn, their own impression on all the varying expressions and bodies of the visitors and by extension all their own separate worlds they eventually wander back to.

avant l’attaque après l’attaque

January 19, 2013

Barricade1848

what will have been
beyond the bend
a history of hallelujah
castle of ecstatic pixilated
presence   both more away &
imminent    the tracers of the travellers
(or traveller?  uncounted multitudes
sutured to one & one is counted
by the swarming stuff) pierced by
a muted roaring grace

Diffractions 2

January 11, 2013

bone pop  knuckle crack  some variations
of her body’s grinds & snaps  reverberate
in crazy ritornello  she slides along
a pavement  at both a centre & an edge
of certain sonoric constellations  an
open-ended mesh of points of sound
becoming grinding bone  her popping
knees  the rain  fat drops occasional
on leaves & smash on pavement tile
a creaking gate  opens white picket fence
crow screech  from nowhere  horror film
car wheel  chafes curb  walking cane
scratches  tethers lady, miserable
humbug  beetle  shell of sheathed wing
much like the day  solid aquarium
which tremors momentarily  all
of the scene including her body & desire
she steps through this sheet of shimmer-
ing translucent moment  some wavves
of vibrant matter  rip her into shapes &
wrap her bodies into  perambulation
band of sisters  kind of dervish  2 or
20 pairs of hands  skin mostly naked
except for balaklava extend the circuit
of the body with sky  with snare of music
instrument  he sets alight  on an open plain
in the middle of the middle of the city
his body  er holt sich sonne  scorches all
our sorry state  deliberation  sorry ass
equivocation he blazes his uncounted kind
of existence  1400 centigrade  of desire
soot of his ashes  the Manga ball of fire
incinerates the tepid plastic-wrapped press-
statement of a pink-shirted, flush-faced,
ham-eyed politician  surrounded by
Mongolian steppe 1 1/5 million kilometers
of 50° degrees of freeze  into visibility
compressed  a baby  pulls all over
her body boiling water  her mother
turns the water instant into snow
she throws it out the yurt  the water
stops mid air  turns into powder
& drops down vertical  Wile E Coyote
back to the drawing board  schematic
schadenfreude  shades of Freud
un friendly fire caught on your own
intra-cranial  cross-lines  ruminations
wrapped with bow-ties  packaged
throw-away leaking the neon-coloured one-
syllabic words  he dreams each snowflake
a different colour  arranges crystals into patterns
trail of fairy Pollock dust  fractal workings
without effort  deliberate unplanned  perfect
storm of smudges just outside & inside
of the lines  interrobang?! Interrobang!?
semi-automatic rhythm in  interrobang
flesh of words  straight people made
from queer bits & pieces  supine  linear
recto / verso alongside parallel
the moonlight slides  across the surface
flesh of words & quasi- partial pieces
no where to go  against his body  fists
open onto  ecstatic marker  thrown hands
outward  he disappears his music  is not
his  it rushes from his form distorting
expectations of the people standing
reassembling signs  new positions  shapes
new time within a broken halted movement
if there is meaning  they do not ask perhaps
some flows  frozen lightning  Ibsen
keeps a scorpion  starves its sting
he can write  when it strikes  at sporadic
soft fruit  in a jar on his desk  there was
a poet in Rwanda  Himmler always
had the Bhagavad Gita with him “I am
not far from condemning poetry  dharma
with out being fully involved  totalitarian
poetry redefines the very problem of violence
it is no longer me stabbing you  a knife
in my hand  as part of a cosmic dance
is moving in space  I am nothing but
an observer  living God  God of the real
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
identify fanatical parts of the brain
influence someone’s belief by  direct bio-
genetic intervention! biography of
bibliographer of biographies of biographers;
or biographer of biographers of biographers
beugh  graphia  many enough maps
for the moment  would like one step
out of the refrain  map the city according
to the senses  eat at every restaurant
in high street  pin the flags to scenes
petrol stations  garbage trucks  “all of these
autists come to language in poetry”
mindblinding  objectile  bud of an object
attends to its dance  of its scene  flower
travel story  I need to cross-check with
mother  uncertainty in the aroundness
already active within the field attentive-
ness of the environment to the environ-
ment I meant to affirm with these modes
of existence the person you have left
≠ the same person  neuro typical  in-
formation  no cartwheels in the classroom
but how were the bodies before
the classroom took over?  2 + 4 must
equal 6  no reaction from the kid
he is treated as mindless separated
from himself  because he does not want
to violate the numbers by naming them
straitjacket  6  like he is named  impossible
autistic  reduced to spastic wheelchair speak
his mind brings peace among the numbers
a commotion of relational activity
islands of self-enjoyment of the environ-
mental field  quivers in disquiet of
the resonant field spinning around
& through the 4 + 2  vis a vis
the gateway that is moment
relational qualitative  the autistic
boy cannot speak but writes
“The great united states of America
is breathtakingly not free  equality
is not sacred because not everyone
has access to it  freedom is not
as available as many people think
free people treat us as mindless
they underestimate us very badly
instead of reaching out to us
the creators of the declaration of
independence have wasted their breath”
facilitated communication  all of these
autists come to language in poetry
the autist or the awrtist?  indeterminacy
enabling constraints  co-determination
subtends  a vagueness that is
a determination to be determined
causal efficacy  presentational immediacy
what occurs in the cusps  on the edges
what are the conditions  for it being what it is
the chaos is uninteresting   the everything-goes
is not where we situate ourselves at all
strange elasticity of time in autistic expression
in the world where we live in  if you can t
find the object you are not going to get on the bus

-

Diffractions

December 16, 2012

imgres
Wave passes thru  surfer body
body whispers back into  the wave
he is the medium of his words,
the gathered journalistos
bobbing heads  the clutching  pencils
groping pads just the one  inarticulated
question  magic shatter  journalistos
feel their words & fail them  finally
becoming lumpen porous  proletariat
do revolutionaries surf?  These things
have been possible for years now
antifascist first aid brigade  sometimes
too late  or not enough  for a punctured body
toppled ambulance  bulk of testosterone
ironed shirts  walls of police in monster
gear  forceful separations  of the many
variations  entropic movements
“miracles of anarchy” petri dish &
seeing  sky eye  zooming centimetres
moving into coloured static nano
fractions  carbon atoms  imaged right
before dem eyes  pretty stuffed  air
full & push swell vibration flitting tight
angles assembling intra-acting  -ivities
inward collapse  constant  verge on-
side a ledge  arrows pointing  into
their equilibrium  fish hooks  catch hold
of the salt in the sea  homunculus
little person & her wide open space
desert in the city  everyone their own
absolute open  brain folded into person
effigy of certain style  friendship barter
whiffs of affect  interlocking  killer robots
no man in the loop   speaking circles
self-reflexive   fractal conversation
two human animals   collide  with force
of love   subjecting their   shared
& individual positions  to sexed positions
difference   wound  & safe from harm
a pair of pairs of arms  encircling  cocktail
lulling chatter  syncopated  he sees
in her a kung fu fighter  the tracers  of her
circles charge his body forward  chest
swan song  shared days  they  spiral
around  each interlocked & pushing
thru translucent mirroring  too many
repetitions in this lover’s head  dawn
dusk  the empty bed  they hurt her eyes
the body pulses with adrenaline  yet empty
of its differentiating features  such days
are never planned for  & that it rains
sometimes  Spielberg-machine  “movies
are meant to manipulate people”  emotion ≠
always cheap  water flows in folds
& pushes  carrying itself  in shifting layers
forward so it seems   the film hangs   cut
in strips   no heavy spool of acts  rather
a rack  with seconds separated  ribbon curtain
made from feet of 24-image seconds  the clock
both freezes in its frame & flows on regular
24 hours of one clock per scene per second
absence of linearity produces its own stories
continual reset playing on the screen  leinwand
line-wand  “Words have no power to impress
the mind without the exquisite horror
of their reality” “the movie will begin in 5 moments
the mindless voice announced… did you
have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?”
The Exorcist stretched over 24 hours
“Ghosts crowd the young child’s
fragile eggshell mind”  the stories
include   auto mutilation
Try to shoot yourself in the face
Handcuffed in a police car   the coppers
Tell stories   the stories include
Infractions on bodies    protected
& destroyed   by law   the strong arm
through the door where you live
bodies   manners of queer   different
monsters in town  what one needs
for another   what it takes   to become
ultra-evil   very fine   broken   sprayed
dazzled blind   fragile body  slash / mind
suppositions   tumbleweed snow  a child
wails by  her mother walks away  into
the hands of pretty certain  scumbag death
Maria Santos Gorrostieta  mayor  of a Mexican
Drug hole  survives 2 attempts  torture  the holes
In her body  of her husband subtracted  ’I
wanted to show them my wounded, mutilated,
humiliated body, because I’m not ashamed
because it is the product of the great misfortunes
that have scarred my life.”  gang of two
riddles 137 bullets into two individuals in car
the gang wears blue & badge of siren
Ich weiß nicht… bedeuten…traurig
A circle of strange friends  reciprocally
Listen  respond  communal stutter
Strange fruit  strange stranger  face
Mirrored in bad places  most every
Nearly where  at close to over all
Cobblestone stories shiny curved
Opaque heelways repaved for
Fewer stumbles  do rocks & stars live
From death or crumble into life?
exploding stardust bodies  the creatures
reassemble centres overlapping  disintegrating
circles  a leaning forward into the scribbled word
prosthetic text organises its prosthetic body,
virus machine  disperses evenly  distance
in all directions  phonemes into thoughts
piezoelectric crystalline  administration
of routes  enter the body  of folded
outside into into inside  the foetus
baby makes the organs fit inside
new places  doors opening & unstuck
from all sides of the walls of the spaces
coming undone from surfaces  grace
to wake up to & / or spiral away from
studying the blind spots  she crashes
open fontanelle  into solid surface
couples her infinite desire with a
series of the self-inflicted blows
constant gearshift  of perceiving
angles of perceptions  one wonders
about  not everything to be said
she thinks alongside  not about
scribbles her spacious time  into the
thought  that thinks her  all
the people  must be right  telling
her exclusive stories  circles of
Venn diagrams  none of which overlap
what or from what surface? littered
with prepositions  prepositionally
littered  they share a city  certain
shops, spheres of circumambulations
feasts of friends, but rarely interlocute
the words or even physicalities  he dives
into his prime position  palimpsest
of superpositions  ducks into a corner
of the moment  exploding rather infinite
traversing the contents of his head
& the uncounted singularities itself
emits  uneven line intersecting right
angles & the perfect lineations  determine
possibilities of people’s bodies  puncture
the many affects of desire  a finger
draws a line in dust & slips, regains
its constant movement  a bulldozer
does chin ups  from ledges  wasted
proper  heaps of chaos  childrens’
utopic playground  effortless re-
organization  ecstatic questions
elemental pieces  rubble
of their new beginnings part of
the landscape a flailing limb a
wailing father  5 cameras spent
& broken  documents of technologies
of war  love  of  recording machines
amanuensis  servant from the hand
transcribes accident into  his master’s
text  the hand shifts apparatus into gear
“the mind is in the bones” I sees myself
From every angle  except my window
To the world  beside myself  where I am
Not I   needle of first person personal
Pronoun threads sutures  gaps between eva-
nascent lungings after longings &
noisy machinations of the body  crepitus,

 

tumblr_lu1s6l2b771qhqfw3

A try at counter counter point

December 4, 2012

for gramma

tumblr_l8rypqSAxl1qahuhjo1_400

Shifting plates of constellations, push of points into point against point after point against point. She sits straight & strong & fading. Plays precise with movements, yet with the mistakes, with the faults of shifting plate tectonic, grind of time inside the bones & skin & matter of her core. Presses piano into piano keys. Grandson, grown & in another room, not far, steps only, away. Spacetime curves perverted, the bodies one of grandson & one of grandma, into awful counterpoints of distances. She plays, already hardly there, no more; he hears both totally his memory & sees her fully in his sight; straight back, slender spotted hands, proud touch & smile. she forces point & counterpoint; she grabs him by the throat with memories of memory & distinct & precise charges staccato rushing, changing routes of veins; general rewiring; & tightening of cables where they were before unnoticed in their grind & chafe. He holds her in his arms smaller than a tiny human animal, becoming indiscernible, in singular position made purely up of speed, traverses infinite, condenses vibrant into being,

messiah

A try at growling mad

December 4, 2012

City lights

She slides against her wall, slides with her back into between a duvet & a white bed sheet; he growls at her, a slow continuous growl, almost a humming, coming from nearly everywhere, a plane of threat & squeeze into her face, a pretty pleasing gargling of the throat strings, love song on the disc of wind that cuts the air at latitude of neck & face. She stares, ahead, at him, through him, middle distance, into a spot of air behind the man, imagining the parallax, the shift, between her present middle-distance stare from tucked between the sheets & her stare at that same point were, in this same moment, she hangs, around his neck, with arms around his neck, head resting on his shoulder or on her forearms on his shoulder. He moves forward, throwing his body somehow right onto the bed, scorpion tail, snake head; she winces & she does not flinch a thing; his body ruminates, the body of his, moves left to right & back and forth, but slow as turtle pace & silent but with the pressure of a pushing draft & always facing her. His feet tell patterns, & when they stop his words take up a scribbling, that, meant perhaps as words or thoughts express a dog in heat, a dog that plays at terrified, is terrified of play. He walks away from, after hours, her room, basic four cornered deal, a simple wooden bed. She waits for him to enter his own house; she has already helped herself inside, sits on a bench that holds her well, around her piles of broken household objects. Extended arm, extended arm, flat face, erased from affect, she holds his head against her chest; he hangs the full weight of his head into her hands, he sobs with tearless heaves, he turns to right & fall his hands & fingers into themselves, into their lap, head hung down, with baldness pointing into his pile of broken mirrors. She walks upright, she trails herself behind, she wanders in a straight line, into outside his door. the bald head screams into its potted hands, practices some words, hollers hands; the body slump heaves hiccups all directions, all at once, faces face forward, widening his smiling face until it cracks,

Prayer wheel

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