Sarah Hromack

“This font was inspired by Monica Lewinsky” —Paul Chan, “Wht is a book?”, the New Museum, 10 December, 2011

Blogging About Books on Christmas Eve (or, Catching Up on the Backlog While Home for the Holidaze)

+ Paul Chan’s new essay, A Lawless Proposition was published on e-flux following two recent talks at the New Museum, “Wht is Lawlessness?” and “Wht is a Book?”. While I missed the former, I was able to catch the latter, a relaxed, self-effacing account of Chan’s experiences as a newbie publisher that felt less like a lecture than a public conversation with lots of “chiming in” from the audience. Gratifying.

+ The Guggenheim is indeed the first museum to release a digital exhibition catalogue for Maurizio Cattelan: All (along with a slew of titles from its back catalogue). Am I experiencing a moment of good-natured professional jealousy? Why yes, in fact, I am. Related: Do recall the 54th La Biennale di Venezia iPad catalogue (2010) and Badlands Unlimited/Creative Time’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: a Field Guide (2011). Also, the Getty Foundation’s OSCI Project.

+ Take This Book is a Kickstarter-funded—seven more days to go—history-in-the-making of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, written by LadyJourno Melissa Gira Grant. A first excerpt from the project was recently published on Rhizome. Back that book up!

+ Bookish Things to See ASAP: At MoMA, Scenes from Zagreb: Artists’ Publications of the New Art Practice, organized by library Bibliographer David Senior (on view through February). Especially looking forward to the publications of Dimitrije Bašičević Mangalos, whose manifestos were some of my favorite works in the 2004-5 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh. (I was the curatorial assistant—the Wrangler of the Checklist never forgets!) The curator of that exhibition, now-MoMA curator Laura Hoptman, wrote a book that I suspect would make an apt companion to Senior’s presentation, Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s. It was published by MoMA in 2002, just as we began working on the International, and functioned as an English-language introduction to Eastern European practices of the late 20th century. Related: Projects by Grupa O.K. (a.k.a. Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska)

Another Yvonne Rainer GIF (and also, a reading)

Badlands Unlimited’s Minister of Information just issued this GIF, designed for Yvonne Rainer’s reading at St. Marks Bookshop on December 6th. Her new book, Poems, was recently published by Badlands in print and e-book form, the latter of which features awesome embedded performance documentation; audio recordings of Rainer reading her own work; and an interview between she and BU publisher Paul Chan. Emoji!

I can’t think of a better icon image for the New York Art Book Fair—whose schedule is actually on the Internet this year, not-so-incidentally—given today’s public launch of the Kindle Fire. Meta.

Remains of Kindle, Original Kindle Fire
by Paul Chan, 2011
9” x 12” x 6” Glass Display Vitrine
Remains of a Kindle set on fire in the summer of 2011
Courtesy Badlands Unlimited, who will premiere the print version of Yvonne Ranier’s Poems over the weekend.

My conversation with Paul Chan, A Thing Remade, is now live on Rhizome. We began this project following a piece I wrote for the May issue of Frieze on his publishing house, Badlands Unlimited, as I realized that I had, in fact, been downloading files and texts from the online analog to his practice, National Philistine, for well over a decade. The online distribution model thing is not new, in other words!

Bonus points to those who make it through the whole interview (which is admittedly epic) to the last question, wherein I ask Paul what it’s like to convene with the ghost of Saddam Hussein. We went there.

BONUS: Paul dug up some old school GIFs from his archives and re-released them for Rhizome’s audience, including the one above, Cursor (2000).

“What is an exhibition catalogue or an artist’s e-book – or rather, what could they be – when materially bound to a physical format rife with implications, commercial and otherwise? Art e-book publishing invites institutions and artists alike to imagine a new and different future for these forms while reconsidering their historical and ideological positions. Clearly, that future is now.”

Off the Page, a piece on digital publishing I wrote for the May issue of Frieze magazine, is now online.

Another thing that happened while I was waiting for the G train this morning: the “enhanced e-book” version of Paul Chan/ Badlands Unlimited’s Waiting for Godot: A Field Guide went on sale for the iBook and Kindle. I wrote about this book in my piece, and it is—well, it was designed by Artforum art director Chad Kloepfer; features video documentation of Chan’s Waiting for Godot production; and is simply stunning.

NB: Thanks to Joanne and Rhizome for the reblog! Same goes out to Joy and Newsgrist!

“These populist movements reconceptualize real fears about deteriorating social and economic conditions as an imaginary loss of an “original” commonality at the center of society that must be renewed at the expense of those living at the circumference. Xenophobia, racism, nationalism, and homophobia fill the void left by the loss of lives and livelihoods ungrounded by the downturn. Government austerity measures meant to contain the economic fallout further erode the interconnections between classes, races, and ethnicities that make up contemporary life, adding to the growing sense of social isolation, which in turn reinforces the desire to forge a common country by punishing what is considered most foreign from within.”

From Idiot Wind: An Introduction by Paul Chan and Sven Lütticken, who have gathered a series of reports on the rise of right-wing, populist movements worldwide for the (online, entirely PDF download-able) January/February 2011 issue of e-flux, Idiot Wind: On the Rise of Right-Wing Populism in the US and Europe, and What It Means for Contemporary Art. Its arrival is more timely than anyone had anticipated it would be, I am sure.

Platform for Pedagogy 2010 holiday card by Paul Chan

Matter, meet hands: Paul Chan has launched an art book publishing empire, Badlands Unlimited, focusing on e-books, printed books and “whatever else comes to mind by artists and others writing and producing work about art and other matters.” Inaugural activities begin at next week’s NY Art Book Fair. Respect.

+ Badlands Unlimited
+ On Facebook

In a recent conversation with Artforum’s David Velasco, Gregg Bordowitz discussed his collaboration with Paul Chan on an operatic version of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality. Bordowitz wrote a libretto for five characters (Foucault-as-protagonist, Ephebe, Freud, the Pope, and a cop; Bordowitz himself makes a brief appearance as the California academic charged with introducing Foucault at a lecture.) Chan drew the character sketches above. Naturally, Freud wears assless chaps with a prosthetic penis that costumer Kristine Woods has fabricated quite formidably in felt, reportedly.

I’m most interested in the variables at play in the work-on-progress production, which is being staged today and tomorrow at Tanzquartier Wien, In Vienna. Bordowitz, who can’t and therefore hasn’t written a musical score, will direct an improvisational relationship with the performers based on an ambient, electronically-produced sound component that his Viennese counterparts have likened to a medieval chant. “It could be a big mess!” Bordowitz admitted of his production, which will allow for a given degree of on-stage improvisation. This, to my mind, is among the greatest premonitions one can have for a theatrical production!

+ 500 Words: Gregg Bordowitz (Artforum)

I’m patiently awaiting my copy of Waiting For Godot in New Orleans: A Field Guide, the definitive record—if such a thing were possible, that is—of artist Paul Chan’s 2007 production of Beckett’s existential masterwork, staged in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in collaboration with Creative Time. Buy it on CT’s website for $45; it’s a pretty enough, as a book. Or, just go to Paul’s site, National Philistine, and peruse/download the project’s source documents for free. That’s the real story here, after all.

+ Waiting For Godot in New Orleans: A Field Guide (Creative Time)
+ Creative Time Presents: Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: A Play in Two Acts, A Project in Three Parts (Creative Time)

Paul Chan’s “Sade for Sade’s Sake” installed at Greene Naftali

PAUL CHAN
Sade for Sade’s Sake

Thursday, October 22nd, 6-8PM

Greene Naftali Gallery
508 West 26th Street, 8th floor
New York, NY 10001

Seriously Sade: A little preview of Paul Chan’s installation in Venice.

Paul Chan: 2nd Light
World Class Boxing, February - March 2009
Essay by Sarah Hromack

You think
things will end.
And that will be the opening.

I want you to know
things don’t think to end.
And that is the promise

and the threat.

[Viral Marketing: The New Museum of Contemporary Art has launched its website for Paul Chan’s exhibition,The 7 Lights, on view through 29 June. Contents include: footage of all 7 Lights, Mp3 audio essays from My Private Alexandria, drawings, and texts by Paul (as per the above).]