Assembled Texts by Harm van den Dorpel
If rationality and consistent thought are the preferred
distinguishing marks of man, then even if it is admitted that man, as a whole,
also has passions, the supremacy of rational thought over them may well seem an
unquestionable idea. This is all the more so, since it is quite obvious that
gaining some such control is a basic condition of growing up, and even, at the
extreme, of sanity. But to move from that into making such control into the
ideal, rules out a priori most forms of spontaneity. And this seems to be
absurd.
I would suggest to find your deepest impulse, and follow that. The notion that
there is something that is one's deepest impulse, that there is a discovery to
be made here, rather than a decision; and the notion that one trusts what is so
discovered, although unclear where it will lead—these, rather, are the point.
The combination—discovery, trust, and risk—are central to my sort of outlook,
as of course they are to the state of being in love.
Although this is not print, I write in a manner that facilitates transmission in other forms such as print, spoken word, and via a screen reader. So terms such as "this article" are preferable to "this website," and I avoid terms like "click here," which makes no sense when using a screen reader, for instance. In determining what language is most suitable, it is helpful to imagine I'm writing the content for print. So my work is no longer a finished corpus, some content enclosed in an object or its margins, but a differential network, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential traces. The content in these traces is a glimpse of something, an encounter ...
Two Poems by Cathy Park Hong
Engines within the Throne
We once worked as clerks
scanning moth-balled pages
into the cloud, all memories
outsourced except the fuzzy
childhood bits when
I was an undersized girl with a tic,
they numbed me with botox.
I was a skinsuit
of dumb expression, just fingerprints
over my shamed
all I wanted was snow
to snuff the sun blades to shadow spokes,
muffle the drum of freeways, erase
the old realism
but this smart snow erases
nothing, seeps everywhere,
the search engine is inside us,
the world is our display
and now every industry
has dumped cubicles, desktops,
fax machines into developing
worlds where they stack
them as walls against
what disputed territory
we asked the old spy who drank
with Russians to gather information
the old-fashioned way,
now we have snow sensors,
so you can go spelunking
in anyone’s minds,
let me borrow your child
thoughts, it’s benign surveillance,
I can burrow inside, find a cave
pool with rock colored flounder,
and find you, half-transparent
with depression.
A Wreath of Hummingbirds
I suffer a different kind of loneliness.
From the antique ringtones of singing
wrens, crying babies, and ballad medleys,
my ears have turned
to brass.
They resurrect a thousand extinct birds,
Emus, dodos, and shelducks, though some,
like the cerulean glaucous macaw,
could not survive the snow. How heavily
they roost on trees in raw twilight.
I will not admire those birds,
not when my dull head throbs, I am plagued
by sorrow, a green hummingbird eats me alive
with its stinging needle beak.
Then I meet you. Our courtship is fierce
in a prudish city that scorns our love,
as if the ancient laws of miscegenation
are still in place. I am afraid
I will infect you
after a virus clogs the gift economy:
booming ...
Robot Literature by Angelo Plessas
Angelo Plessas, from Untitled Portrait Gallery, 2009
Double Faced
For those who Know Best their mirror,
a Conspiracy revolves around.
Silence from behind devours a relic from the past.
Life is usually attached to lengths of magnetic fields.
You might be Emerging as something else.
I might Switch Back. All I wish is that when I start up,
my life will be OkaY
Around us
Keep, Art was Stolen By a Masked man in thong.
I thank Obama because he\’s black,
he said We love Colors.
You are feeling suicidal now please stop.
Apocalyptic, I contemplate the Universe around us.
elated quilt
elated quilt establishes despairingly
victorious coma becomes elatedly
thoughtful income clips deprecatively
beautiful sidewalk checks long-windedly
combative pie cracks giddily
crowded haircut buzzes dazzlingly
quaint answer enhances garishly
A TYPICAL DAY OF DALI AND GALA
DALI, materialized in a apartment. Many persons in a single body. It was the
sixth game of attention. Behaving scarcely angered, DALI punched a ninja star,
but this certainly didn't encourage DALI deciding what to do in smart way. Out of
nowhere, DALI hoped that DALI's marginal fidelity is to be perpetually positive,
because hatred is born out of fear. Unconsciously DALI emailed GALA, DALI's
neighbor/accomplice 'Free yourself from common sense', said DALI. DALI must
have seen GALA for 20 hours in Tahrir square during the Revolution some of
them were modest diabolical and empirical inspirations. GALA was a nobody.
Many persons outside a single body. Between the line of black and white. GALA
was outgoing more or less... pestering. DALI called GALA 'Somebody has to
listen to me' he said. 'These are the symptoms of the liberal-democratic affluent
society', said DALI.
GALA hypnotized by lazy DALI. 'Why and for whom does philosophy work today
?' , said GALA. GALA ...
Two Poems by Christine Kelly
Christine Kelly, Apple 1 is an apple. Apple 2 is the idea of an apple, 2011
One or More Occasions
If the diviner,
when he wakes up to the sound
of his own trumpet,
or presents the
MUST-HAVE
in moonlight, the wrong kind of bottle
we belong in the monosyllabic new
the diviner won’t embarrass
on fear of exits (this and an absence of such
fear are both aphrodisiacs)
stone cold absence
then the diviner becomes crooked
a bendy-neck swan totem stands in for
subjectivity
and
a subjective everything
features:
feature: handle
features:
feature: permanent hat
and guess what
this is a timeslot
a clutter among others
at which we marvel occasionally
sink
into clean and empty
sing about the full
about means around
or in proximity to
timespace designations. Hey,
take it like a spittoon.
sink
into the bloated order of cause and effect—
cranial piping is how I arrived
at permanent hat, actually
resembling a column of smoke
puff
puff
puff
puff
coming out of the diviner’s hat
I Baroque It
“DOES sport imply sanctity?” was a sporting question, which through no extension
other than the yawny, tragic phonetiks surrounding someone’s (I bet) snowmobile accident…
…less likely than a skiing accident,
more likely than a competitive taffy pull filling the interior of a milk hood shared by two school chums
with vacuum trident
tongues
hitchedup.
Early incidence of dual ownership can create loquaciousness so drippy that it requires a dish.
OBLITERATE WET GENEROSITY
-----towel towels-----
Shan’t discuss human sexual attraction in this one, but know, just know, know what you know,
when you hear those angels trumpeting: oxygen. 100% oxygen hands slip in from behind.
$527 Cobra Quiz [win again and again]
Cobra the yogic asana.
Cobra the health insurance for poor sods.
Cobra ...
"Two Days Diary" by Lisa Oppenheim
Alexandra Gorczynski, Bathroom in the Dark, 2011
March 23rd, 2011
Early mornings were never my thing. I mean, it’s not that artists are lazy. Or out drinking late most nights. Or not out last night, a Tuesday. Hungover. I go out with the dog. It’s still basically dark. A kind of dark blue fog, super cold and grey. A couple are out early, two middle aged men bundled up and both smoking with thick leather gloves. They are sitting on a bench in front of the takeout place on the corner. It’s way too cold to be sitting outside. I hear one say to the other as I pass them, “do you want the thing or the other thing.” And I think, this is true partnership, to have thoughts coalesce around the same object. Not a shared thought, but a coming together. The muffin or the bagel. Privileging someone else’s desires for a subjectless thing. Generosity. Just as likely the better looking half of an egg and cheese sandwich. I go in the store and order one for myself. Salt and grease.
Today in 1923 Tennessee became the first state to outlaw the teaching of evolution. Today in 1933 the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, granting Hitler total power. Fittingly, today is miserable. Still basically dark, hail. The never ending domino fall of winter storms.
March 29th, 2011
I live in America’s most bug infested city. There are bug infested mattresses all around my neighborhood this evening. It’s trash night and everyone has put the big stuff on the curb. Not just bug-ridden mattresses, also rugs, rotting Ikea cushions from a few seasons back, clothes of all kinds. I drop off my sheets at the laundry across the street and six o ...
Rhizome Today: A critic, with opinions about postinternet art
Rhizome makes money from benefit auctions of postinternet objects whereas Artforum and Art in America do not
Displacement is the New Translation
DECENTER: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show
United States of America
The Abrons Arts Center of Henry Street Settlement is proud to present DECENTER: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show, curated by Andrianna Campbell and Daniel S. Palmer. Opening February 17, 2013 and on view through April 7, the exhibition celebrates the legacy of the Cubist paintings and sculptures in the historic 1913 Armory Show by featuring a group of 27 emerging and internationally recognized contemporary artists, who explore the changes in perception precipitated by our digital age and who closely parallel the Cubist vernacular of fragmentation, nonlinearity, simultaneity, and decenteredness. The show highlights the sponsorship of the 50th anniversary exhibition by the Henry Street Settlement in 1963, the occasion which announced the building of what is today known as the Abrons Arts Center located at 466 Grand Street, New York, NY, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
The exhibition commences on the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show, Sunday, February 17, with a 1913 Armory Show Centennial Event, which will feature panel discussions about the 1913 exhibition, as well as the theme of perception and art in the digital age, followed by an opening reception. The show exhibits a group of artworks in the gallery, and also features digital works displayed at www.decenterarmory.com. The site launches February 17.
At the 1913 Armory Show, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors showcased the “New Spirit” of modern art. A backlash of scathing criticism showed how baffled the general American public was by the seeds of abstraction in the Cubist artworks, which quickly became a shorthand expression for the structural changes precipitated by modernity. They not only redefined artistic practice, but also altered our understanding of the process through which we perceive the world. On its 100th anniversary, we will celebrate the Armory Show by posing the question: What is the legacy of Cubism in the hundred years since the Armory Show’s radical display of modern art, and especially, how has this become relevant today?
Accordingly, this exhibition celebrates the centenary of the groundbreaking Armory Show by assembling artworks that analyze the digital revolution and the ways it has affected our perception of the world. Artists as varied as Sara VanDerBeek, Gabriel Orozco, Liz Magic Laser, and Abrons AIRspace residency program alumna Amy Feldman evoke the formal innovations of the historic avant-garde but differ through an embrace or flirtation with digital mediation. Artists today like Andrew Kuo, Tony Cokes, and Cory Arcangel are inspired by the inter-cultural circulation of images, ideas, and data in a worldwide network. While Pablo Picasso and fellow Cubists combined archaic Western forms and appropriated exotica to shatter inherited modes of representation, today ubiquitous computing and the digital image explosion create an intersection of the physical and the virtual, and in doing so, have decentered the locus of artistic praxis.
Although the far-reaching historical significance of the Armory Show was examined through a partial re-creation on its fiftieth anniversary in 1963 (sponsored by the Henry Street Settlement), even then, scholars acknowledged that the exhibition’s social import could not be replicated simply by re-staging the show. In order to honor that “New Spirit,” and the collaborative process through which the 27 members of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors organized this radical exhibit, the 2013 show will inhabit all available exhibition spaces at Abrons and also feature a corresponding online component of digital works. This web-based portion of the show, accessible at www.decenterarmory.com, will grow as artists invite others to contribute in a process that highlights the diversity and expansiveness of the 1913 show’s legacy as it relates to our world today.
This event celebrates the 1913 Armory Show, exactly 100 years after its doors opened to the public. What is the legacy of the exhibition, and how has it been understood and misinterpreted? Is there a “new aesthetic” brought about by perceptual shifts in the digital era? How do these changes align with the formal innovations of the historic avant garde? These two discussion panels, organized in conjunction with Abrons Art Center’s “Decenter: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show,” will address the legacy of the 1913 Armory Show, and the ways that perception and artistic practice in the last hundred years has been radically transformed by our digital era.
Panel Discussion: The Legacy of the 1913 Armory Show:
Charles Haven Duncan (Collection Specialist, Archives of American Art)
Franklin Evans (Artist, New York)
Andrea Geyer (Artist, New York)
Marilyn Satin Kushner (Curator and Head, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, New-York Historical Society; Co-curator of The Armory Show at 100)
Mary Murray (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute)
Panel Discussion: Perception and Art in the Digital Age:
Introduced by: Israel Rosenfield (City University of New York)
Ethan Greenbaum, Barbara Kasten, Andrew Kuo, Travess Smalley, Sara VanDerBeek
Moderated by: Brian Droitcour