Sasha Chavchavadze reading from “The Poets Duel”  as Wendy Walker, one of the event organizers, looks on.

It might be considered a tradition at this point. It being an evening of readings related to the Proteus Gowanus year-long theme organized by Proteotypes’ publishers/editors (and authors) Tom LaFarge and Wendy Walker.

I asked if they would do such an event during War of Words portion of the Battle year (knowing they couldn’t resist with a title like that). They came up with a great list of texts (see below) and found some wonderful readers very close to home (many who are members of the Writhing Society, the ad hoc literary group that meets most Wednesdays in the gallery to practice various forms of constrained writing).

And so, on very cold and dark December 15th a small group gathered to hear…

William Burroughs, “Word Authority More Habit Forming Than Heroin,” The Burroughs File (read by Angelo Pastormerlo)

Kurban Said (aka Lev Nussinbaum), Chapter 5, “The Poets’ Duel,” Ali and Nino (read by Gallery Founding Director, Sasha Chavchavadze)

Jane Collier, “To Parents,” An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (read by Carrie Cooperider)

Paul Metcalf, “Bash Bish”, Apalache (read by Tom LaFarge)

Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (read by Wendy Walker)

Anonymous, “The wicked who would do me harm,” The Rattle Bag, ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (read by Michael Flory)

Thank you Tom, Wendy and readers/performers for an inspiring evening of War of Words word-slinging. Bang!

Stills from Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

Events and Détournments. Keith Sanborn came by and screened “Can Dialectics Break Bricks?” a classic Situationist film by René Viénet and one of the few extant examples of détourned film. Keith is a scholar, curator, artist, media-maker and translator and he was the translator of the film. A bit about the event can be found here. For those missed the screening, the film can be found online at UbuWeb.

I invited Keith to screen this film because there was a thread in the exhibition that owed a bit of debt to the strategy of Détournement or was a nod to the Situationists. Carrie Cooperider presented My Romance by Gordon Lish: A Contradiction, a work-in-progress that used an old German comic book as the underlying structure upon which she created a “Western” where the action and story arc centered around the library in town and employed all sorts of literary references including Proust. Some dialogue:

“It’s Jesse James!!”
“The other brother of … Henry James!!”

My Romance by Gordon Lish: A Contradiction by Carrie Cooperider

The Correct Sadist by Terence Sellers, Interactive Version by Angelo Pastormerlo

Angelo Pastormerlo’s book/sculpture loosely recalled the sandpaper-covered book, Mémoires by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn. His transgressive book not only didn’t play nice with other books on the shelves, but it was a trick just to place on the shelf without drawing a bit of blood. Entry number 2 from Angelo was his typewriter sculpture Qwertesean Typewriter (shown below), a writing device which emphatically enforces the constraint of left-handed typing.

Qwertesian Typewriter by Angelo Pastormerlo