From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Mon Mar 10 11:33:55 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:33:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: OPEN LETTER from Dublin as doublin' signed Dexter Sinister Message-ID: <20080310112818.C7252@dhabat.pair.com> dear A, i guess i have to write this assuming you received a letter from Dublin, though the bastards didn't put that on the franked postmark, right? if you haven't received a letter, you'll have no idea what i'm talking about here. in that case, a scan of the full letter can also be found on the DS True Mirror website (http://www.sinisterdexter.org/) here: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/MEDIA/PDF/OpenLetter.pdf basically, that letter is a kind of further-to-what-we-were-emailing-about, but also not. by which i mean, our True Mirror project for the Whitney Biennial has nothing directly to do with your writing the magazine article about Joyce's reference to Dublin as doublin', but everything to do with it indirectly. both are concerned with mirrors, shadows, gaps, parallels as points of departures and metaphors. why is this so difficult to explain? all i'm trying to say is i'd love you to contribute something to this Whitney project. ok. and after all that, just to say that the Whitney letter was sent to a small list of people, all of whom have some connection through their work to what we're thinking about. the letter is intended as a starting point for a discussion as to what and how you might contribute (if interested and able). i'm sure a lot needs clarifying or elucidating, and if you respond with interest we could start that procedure. as yet, from the frame of the word "press release" anything is possible. best, Dexter Sinister -- Dexter, yes, the letter of invitation arrived in the post a few days ago. i'll pick up in the next few days, and see if doublin' up a shadow piece on Joyce might intersect with a strange double of a press release... as for press releases, writing, journalism, in general... i see what you mean & for a larger part i agree. i have been guilty in a sense of much of what you say too. it's how the "writing" & journalism industry is organized nowadays, and how it is necessarily organized around selling the writing (be it at one remove -- the paying magazine acting as a contractor, which is good, as it can also ensure a larger independent-ness/disinterestedness of the writer. this is the classic model, of course.) a writer is hired and does his/her job as well as possible. i think this is basically okay and i think most writers/journalists try to do their job well. they at least try to write well. but time is short, especially thinking-time. what we miss in the "fast media" is time to reflect. what i miss personally is time to look much harder, read harder, think harder. (it does not always pay off, of course.) my intention in writing is never to make people go to see/hear/read something as it is to see/hear/read better. and i am afraid i often do a bad job at that -- as a hired writer with a deadline. but then, i'm still learning to write. i have also written press releases and descriptions of art works for catalogues (you know the genre). i must say that i enjoy doing it, because it has taught me a lot about writing -- how to make sentences work, how to try to put as much information as possible in a sentence and still be clear, how to not state the same twice, or even three times. i also see how these texts stage the interpretation given in a lot of quick reviews (not in all cases -- not at all. the situation is not that bad). but it is funny to see how these things function... in a sense i find it fascinating to see how certain bits of texts are circulated, rewritten, keep on coming back: the description of a work of art given by an artist (asked by a despairing curator, who needs text tomorrow, no today, for the PR-person to advertise the show); the bits of text stating the aim of a show, or festival, or the description of a festival theme (worked out over a long time, written for the first time for a subsidy request, re-used for publicity, for a press-release, as an introduction to a night of discussions -- such texts evolve over time and are re-used again by the reviewer who states what a show might be about &c.) btw: there is no "world" that searches so hard again and again for the "new" as the world of contemporary art. it is worse -- much worse even -- than in the world of pop music. i have never understood that. 95% of what is "new" for one person (or world) is old hat for a much larger group. especially as the world of culture and art evolves slowly; certainly now. it is much more interesting to see how "culture"/art evolves in practice, in all these different pockets of the world (and I mean "world" in a geographical sense rather than, let's say, a "group"). enough for now, for a moment. well, i'll just dispatch this, not even looking again at what i wrote, hoping it makes sense... A -- hello A, sorry i'm only getting around now to responding... though even as i'm writing that i'm thinking "why am i apologising for the slowness i'm supposedly promoting?" since when has 3 days been slow? anyway, i wasn't expecting such an involved response. i'm setting aside the weekend to reply to most Whitney responses in more detail, but i just wanted to say there is a hell of a lot in your mail to build on, and whether this is tied up with Joyce at all is completely open (maybe only by implication or influence). but from dealing with your own role and conflicting feelings, through the idea of deconstructing the press release genre (and not in a necessarily negative way, which would be what 99% of writers would do, i guess; Bank's press release project from the 1990s is a great example), through to your not rereading your mail before sending (something very nice there)... the logic of free and easy email conversation, where you can happily convince yourself you're not writing anything fixed or important, and so go on to write something fixed and important. all seem potentially ripe for development. and i think the shortform nature of the project -- in terms of the compressed time and space of a press release -- lends itself to much of what you're thinking about. so sunday i guess, but very promising. best, DS -- A, any further thoughts (i'm doing this to everyone involved)? -- just to be clear, and to maintain a sense of momentum, there's a nominal deadline of march 4th, which is the day we move into the room at the Armory building, but then it's fluid for the following 3 weeks. we're not intending to have a bank of pre-written contributions at the beginning. in fact, the idea is to start from zero, but it's probably a good idea to have some idea of how things might be progressing, not least in order for us and you to start considering together what the nature of the form and channel of distribution might be... DS -- DS, your mails are on top of my reply-to-list... waiting for a chance to get back to all the musings on writing & editing & the economies of writing. A -- A, in retrospect i don't have much to add to the comment i made last week, i.e. that there seems to be a lot to build on in your whole response. but i'll try and name them in case it help or triggers something: 1. THE ECONOMY OF INTEREST/DISINTEREST -- how the concrete job (being paid to be interested) enables the abstract musing (in what you're actually interested in), or at last ways in which they do and don't intersect. again, i like the idea of writing about something that would usually be seen as, i guess, negative (at its most extreme/melodramatic form: prostitution) from a positive, progressive viewpoint. as usual i'll resort to relating this to The Fall, meaning the band: i always enjoyed Mark E. Smith talking about the group as if it were any other community of workers, by which i suppose i mean manual laborers, and specifically about how he, being the boss, had "mouths to feed". "it's that kind of industry...", he says, i.e. anything but the fantasy the pop group is supposed to represent. i admire that kind of revealing contrariness -- taking the deliberately opposite opinion to the one expected; the practical polemicist. 2. TIME TO LOOK/THINK/READ HARDER -- this reminds me of a line i loved in a piece Ryan Gander first showed at the Stedelijk Museum last year, called THE LAST WORK. as he's musing, recording (it seems to me) the exact speed of thinking while drifting from his studio to his home in east London, he dwells on the idea of taking a sabbatical, taking time off, and how people are very suspicious of it. he ends this part with the thought that "... but just because you're not producing, doesn't mean you're not working. if you're a certain kind of person you're always working, even if the working is just thinking." i'm paraphrasing wildly, i guess, and in retrospect it seems very simple, but it has the ring of an infrequently acknowledged truth. 3. STILL LEARNING TO WRITE, AND THE IDEA THAT YOU ALWAYS ARE -- i can't get out of my head at the moment the beginning/end/continuum of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, how sublime that first/last looping word "riverrun" is, connecting the end back to the start seamlessly, without a full stop. writing as constant practice: i feel very close to this at the moment; not myself (i wish) but through being involved in publishing some works by a forgotten english writer called E.C. Large. he's a model of the practising, constitutional sunday writer -- writing because he HAD TO, to stay sane, in the guise of a hobby. you can almost feel him limbering up to write the 4 books he eventually produced, and that limbering has its own particular quality. this also reminds me of a report on the 1966 English world cup game by another largely forgotten British writer, B.S. Johnson, which is an incredible slow-motion account of the game -- razor-sharp, economical -- but then also only special if you read it through knowing him as a writer. and then VERY special. which is how a lot of art works too, of course. by which i mean Ryan's line wouldn't have meant anything to me, for better or worse, if i didn't know him. that's a very tricky thing to deal with, that kind of positive incest. there's something interesting here about that taboo of writing about friends in art, how that plays out in certain structures, and how it both helps and gets in the way. 4. THE CIRCULATION OF TEXTS -- even the brief experience of the few bits we've had to write for the catalogues, programs and wall captions. at the Whitney is very telling. we've been trying to USE them a lot, more consciously than we might normally. for example, we've been inserting things into descriptions and statements that would appear to be editorial or subeditorial oversights -- deliberately repeating lines, or suggesting or totally rewriting supposedly objective descriptions of us. your paragraph that starts "In a sense I find it fascinating to see how certain bits of texts are circulated, rewritten, keep on coming back... this is exACTly what we're interested in exploring. 5. NEWNESS -- i also keep coming back to Nabokov's line about "reality" being the only word that should always be set in quotation marks. since we started this project we've thought of a few more: "seeing", for example..., and as you point out, "new". we could carry on like this, perhaps. DS -- DS, i know, i know, this will be too late. you've been sending me mails, tiptoe-ing, reminding me of a text to be written, promised earlier. my inbox is my to-do-list and this weekend it contains four e-mails from sender "Dexter Sinister". is it that we always overestimate the time we'll have in the future? i certainly seem to. or is it rather that we undersestimate how much attention and concentration the task will need? looking back, i always think: but i MUST have had the hours to do it. maybe i did have the hours, but i did not have the time to think, to give attention. "i need more time" might signify: "i need more hours in a day". it might also signify: "i need more concentration, undisturbed moments, more flow, more getting caught up in the flow of things, more attention". more time to reflect. and i think "time to reflect" and "attention" are not measured in hours-of-work. time and money -- they are always on the mind of a writer. Joyce's letters are filled with money-matters, not with musings on literature. Samuel Delany states somewhere in one of his essays in ABOUT WRITING that novels are always about money. i don't want money. i need "time". but this is about money too; it always is. i am lucky to have a decent job that pays the rent. i don't have to worry too much. but the jobs take time, and i have hobbies that take time, (i need cycling trips to stay sane...), living with someone takes time. priorities, you say... you have to set priorities. but i'd like to do it all. i have to cut back somewhere, and THAT is about money... but we were going to talk about writing, not about time and money. we were going to talk about how texts travel through different media and contexts, how they are used and re-used, edited, re-written, translated, transformed. some text-work is "just work", it's "labour" -- i don't intend anything negative with that. when you organize a show, or a festival, you need text. in the first place to make clear to yourself, and then also to others with whom you are working, what you are up to. then you need text to convince others to collaborate, a means of presenting to your "boss", your colleagues, and the institutions that will hopefully give you money. and then, you need text for the first publicity and text to invite other artists and lecturers. as you approach the event, you need more text for publicity, but also for critics and journalists that you hope will visit, will interview the artists and lecturers that you've invited with your text, and of course you need text for the exhibition -- descriptions of the art, of what's going to happen around it. although all these texts are just one part of the process of organizing an event (other people talk on phones, face-to-face, so many informal e-mails going back and forth), and i find it fascinating to see how bits of sentences travel through that whole process. writing a press release is really something other than developing, in text, the content for an event. of course, you say. writing the press release partly consists in ransacking the texts already written -- for those good sentences, to repurpose them, rewriting them, refining them, as you go along. and so it happens that the first press release text turns out to be better than the previous texts, and is then used for the e-mails, for stating the theme of the event, becomes the text for the website. it might be re-used and rewritten again for a late or later subsidy request, improved again, maybe extended a bit for that purpose and that text then is used again for later press releases, slightly rewritten, shortened. this is the economy of texts. and once the publicity takes off a bit, you see your texts turning up in different contexts: blogs and magazines refer to it, put it in their agendas, etc. etc. what i was getting at was this: the labour of writing and editing such texts DOES take time, it DOES take working hours. it is labour that can be done when one is tired too. it can be done at the last instance before the deadline: a last check, a last correction, a few last re-phrasings. an e-mail like this one, on the other hand, needs a different type of attention. it needs (in my case) a feeling of F L O W (being caught up in a stream of ideas, you have an idea of what you'd like to say, and you give it shape with every sentence, and out of the improvisation a structure is built). (well, hopefully.) I cannot "just do it" (though once i sit down to do it, it feels like i could've done it at any time). it needs to be there in my head for days, slowly ticking away in the back of my head, taking shape even while i'm not thinking about it. attention, not hours. TIME, not time. regarding the problem of friendship, this is a difficult field. not so much for the "incest"-thing. generally you or i wouldn't push friends' work without being 100% convinced by it, but because knowing the author/artist of a work makes you see so much more -- where it comes from, what it's connected to. you tend to fill in the significant gaps with information known from the friendship. that makes it more subjective too -- and so difficult to assess the quality. but if the work is truly good, i think, anyone else can fill in the significant gaps and, well, have a worthwhile experience/thought/emotion. what i find troublesome to deal with is the call for the "new" and the "newest", "latest". where critics and organizers almost become the prophets of what will come after. i was once on a panel about art and biotechology when someone in the audience interrogated me critically for failing to come up with a prediction of the next thing in contemporary art. as if that's what i would obviously be interested in. as if art is this progression from "the comeback of conceptual art, via the new blossoming of painting, towards locative art, and then after that, biotech art, and then, yes, then what? can you please predict? (these things are important for the art market: "how will such and so be doing in 2 years time, is it a good way of making my money work.") ("well, a good way of making your money "work" is making sure that art is to be made, put your money in organizing concerts, give funds to artists, et cetera.") (ah, money again.) of course, you try to be topical, organizing something (a festival, an exhibition), you set a context for the now (and the future) and you rewrite the past. of course you can hit exactly the right note, and you can equally hit the wrong note too. and of course things change, and for instance painting nowadays (however interesting) simply does not bear the same cultural weight it had, say, a hundred years ago, and 200 years ago there was no biotechnological art (though there was art that reflected on the progression in science). back to "new": what I CAN deal with is the Poundian "MAKE IT NEW", without the call for the newest and the latest, which is something else altogether. "we could carry on like this perhaps." sure. all the best, A -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ -- From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Wed Mar 12 19:13:14 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:13:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Parallel Campaign I Message-ID: <20080312191220.A93088@dhabat.pair.com> ON THE NATURE OF THE PARALLEL CAMPAIGN The joke here, of course, is on General Stumm: the librarian is just doing his job. It's also funny, though in a different way, that the General guards the Campaign's mission like a military secret -- after all, the goal of the Campaign is not only to find an idea that will promote human unity, but to publicize it. For Stumm to be guarded is certainly in his nature, but it goes beyond that: Stumm, whose name in German means "mute," doesn't quite want to admit to the librarian that he has no idea what he's looking for. The dialogue that follows springs from this attempt to dance around saying the unsayable: 'Oh, all sorts of things,' I said, as if he were prying into state secrets; I was playing for time. 'I only meant what subject or what author,' he asked, 'Is it military history?' 'Oh no,' I said, 'more on the lines of the history of peace.' 'History as such? Or current pacifist literature?' No, I said, it wasn't that simple. 'Might there be, for instance, something like a compendium of all the great humanitarian ideas or anything like that?' You remember how much research I've already got my people to do along those lines. He didn't say a word. 'Or a book on realizing the most important aims of all?' I say to him. 'Something in theological ethics?' he suggests. This exchange of self-definition between the librarian and Stumm serves, in a way, as a microcosm of the Parallel Campaign's entire purpose, both in the world of The Man without Qualities and as part of Musil's outlook on the nature of writing. Thomas Sebastian, a Musil scholar, explains in his book The Intersection of Science and Literature in Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities that "The [Parallel] Campaign is shown to originally exist only in the form of a vague idea manifesting itself first in loose verbal associations, then in a circular letter, and finally in a press release. It is thus an allegory of what one can do with words. The campaign only exists because people start to speak about it. From the start then, the novel's main plot has the peculiar qualities of being merely the possibility of becoming a plot; it has the potential of a plot because it is spoken about and written about. Accordingly, the novel's own progress depends in a peculiar way on the creation of a story that relates to how stories are made." This revelation, as Coetzee, Gass, and Musil himself might all suggest, is tied to the unideological ideology of essayism: in writing around the knowledge we seek, we discover it. -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Wed Mar 12 19:15:30 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:15:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Parallel Campaign II Message-ID: <20080312191431.Y93088@dhabat.pair.com> ON A CERTAIN PASSAGE OF PLATO'S PHAEDRUS While Socrates's discussion of language privileges speech over writing because writing makes people forgetful of what they know, his dialogue with Phaedrus has been discussed, debated, refuted, and republished for nearly two dozen centuries. Through writing, that speech has endured and enriched us, and it is here that Socrates got it very wrong: "Thanks to books, we know Socrates distrusted books," writes poet and cultural critic Gabriel Zaid. "Culture is conversation," he continues, "Writing, reading, editing, printing, distributing, cataloging, reviewing, can be fuel for that conversation, ways of keeping it lively. It could even be said that to publish a book is to insert it into the middle of that conversation, that to establish a publishing house, bookstore, or library is to start a conversation -- a conversation that springs, as it should, from local debate, but that opens up, as it should, to all places and times." -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Fri Mar 14 18:26:52 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:26:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Will Holder will operate the Whitney Museum elevator tomorrow, Saturday 15 March 2008 from 11 am to 6 pm Message-ID: <20080314182541.J47396@dhabat.pair.com> For Gropius and his goal of an integrated architectonic vision, the predominance of the Expressionist element in the Bauhaus faculty was a negative factor, and in 1923 he decided to draw stronger Constructivist forces into the orbit of the school. Paul Citroen, a student of that time, described the divided feelings: "None of us who had suggested Moholy, liked his Constructivism. This 'Russian' trend, created outside the Bauhaus, with its exact simulatively technical forms was disgusting to us who were devoted to the extremes of German Expressionism. But since constructivism was the newest of the new, it was -- so we figured -- the cleverest move to overcome our aversion and, by supporting Gropius' choice of one of its creators, incorporate this 'newest' into the Bauhaus system. We were conscious of the danger of drawing into the inner circle the representative of an art form we basically negated. But it was only an experiment, something easily to be undone since Moholy was very young, and most probably inexperienced. So Moholy came to Weimar as 'the champion of youth,' as we labeled him in contrast to the 'old' faculty members Kandinsky, Feininger, and Klee, who were between forty and fifty-five." -- AS PART OF DEXTER SINISTER TRUE MIRROR FOR THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL, WILL HOLDER WILL BE RELEASING AND RECITING A TEXT WHILE OPERATING THE MUSEUM ELEVATOR ALL DAY, SATURDAY 15 MARCH 2008 FROM 11 AM TO 6 PM. PLEASE ALSO REFER TO THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE HERE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=21 From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Tue Mar 18 13:34:41 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:34:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Warhol's Dream release -- Armory Addendum Message-ID: <20080318132930.I47407@dhabat.pair.com> SATURDAY 22 MARCH 2008, 7PM COMMANDER'S ROOM 7th Regiment Armory 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street Under the wing of their TRUE MIRROR project at the Park Avenue Armory annex of the 2008 Whitney Biennial, DEXTER SINISTER will issue a special ARMORY ADDENDUM to SAUL ANTON's recently-published book Warhol's Dream (JRP Ringier & les presses du reel, 2007). The new text is written by Saul Anton and produced with DS as one of their series of parallel press releases. This extended edition of the book will be available for $22. The author will be present. Drinks will be served. Reading may occur. A: The annoying thing is that whenever people hear the word 'art,' they start acting like lawyers. Whenever you mention that word, they start getting very stiff and nervous, and begin asking you what you mean, as if you were signing a contract and they wanted to know what you mean when you say you're going to 'pay' them a thousand dollars. Critics are the worst. I guess it's their job, but you say one word and they start asking you what you mean, but if you ask them the same thing, they behave as if they've said the most obvious thing in the world. If I were a critic, I would worry about my words rather than the artist's words. Everyone knows they'll say just about anything, and that most artists don't have any idea what they mean anyway. ... B: The Ultramoderne buildings of the thirties transcend Modernist 'historicist realism and naturalism, and avoid the avant-garde categories of 'painting, sculpture, and architecture.' The Ultraist does not 'make' history in order to impress those who believe in one history. The Twin Towers, though they might seem to embrace Ultraism's love for repetition, continue to shape space, and so they are Modernist. The distance between them is false. A: Did you hear about the guy who walked between them on a tightrope? B: I didn't, but that's only more evidence that the Towers are modern through and through. The empire State is neither a thing or a place. It's a sign, more like the ziggurats or the pyramids. It's like a prime number, a little gateway to infinity. -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WarholsDream.gif Type: image/gif Size: 20202 bytes Desc: Url : From reinfurt at o-r-g.com Tue Mar 18 21:01:37 2008 From: reinfurt at o-r-g.com (david reinfurt) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:01:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: "Audio Guide" by Jason Fulford with Dexter Sinister Message-ID: <20080318205908.O77176@dhabat.pair.com> Produced by Jason Fulford with Dexter Sinister, "Audio Guide" is a parallel audio program for the 2008 Whitney Biennial. "Audio Guide" may be downloaded and played to accompany a visit to the exhibition. Replacing the existing Whitney audio program, the first two tracks (The Elevator and The Bells) are available now. Additional tracks will follow over the next week. Released via iTunes Music Store and the Whitney Biennial website and produced as part of True Mirror, Dexter Sinister's project for the Biennial. For more information and to subscribe to "Audio Guide", click here: http://sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=26 -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Tue Mar 18 22:44:26 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:44:26 -0400 Subject: "Audio Guide" by Jason Fulford with Dexter Sinister In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <499933F6-2D7F-4486-B21A-8B5381CA93FD@o-r-g.com> 'tis one and the same. he should be around when you're here. though he is actually in SF right now until thurs I think. d -- http://www.dextersinister.org http://www.o-r-g.com On Mar 18, 2008, at 10:27 PM, raimundas m wrote: > yesterday going through my notebook i found 'research jason fulford' > note > taken after i've seen his photo book in SF, must be the same guy who > took > the photo of clifford irving, no? i would like to meet with him when > i am in > nyc... > > > > On 3/18/08 6:01 PM, "david reinfurt" wrote: > >> Produced by Jason Fulford with Dexter Sinister, "Audio Guide" is a >> parallel audio program for the 2008 Whitney Biennial. "Audio Guide" >> may >> be downloaded and played to accompany a visit to the exhibition. >> Replacing the existing Whitney audio program, the first two tracks >> (The >> Elevator and The Bells) are available now. Additional tracks will >> follow >> over the next week. Released via iTunes Music Store and the Whitney >> Biennial website and produced as part of True Mirror, Dexter >> Sinister's >> project for the Biennial. >> >> For more information and to subscribe to "Audio Guide", click here: >> http://sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=26 >> >> -- >> >> DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT >> ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF >> PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH >> REFLECT >> ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. >> >> MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: >> http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ >> >> -- >> >> To Subscribe, Unsubscribe or Forward, go to >> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/open-reading-group >> >> -- >> > > > From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Wed Mar 19 15:45:53 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:45:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: DEXTER SINISTER presents "B", a composition by ALEX WATERMAN, Sunday 23 March 4pm Message-ID: <20080319154228.C3175@dhabat.pair.com> DEXTER SINISTER presents A composition by ALEX WATERMAN "B" (for Bartelby) Sunday 23 March in the Entrance Hall of the Park Avenue Armory Park Avenue at 67th Street 4pm Reception to Follow "We would like to commission you to write a CONCERTO FOR MUTED TRUMPET for an upcoming art event of international scope and appeal." For further details see: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=27 -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Thu Mar 20 19:47:59 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:47:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Depart From Zero Message-ID: <20080320193605.Q58372@dhabat.pair.com> Depart From Zero Can code create a true mirror of the world? The notion of FEEDBACK is all pervasive in contemporary culture -- a technical and behavioral mechanism which today works in all levels of the media, from reality TV shows, to the construction and broadcast of a news event, to everyday e-mail exchanges and social networking activity. The term was popularized via the Macy conferences on Cybernetics (1946-1953). It was at these conferences where the application of the paradigm of cybernetics (the science of feedback) was first instituted across a number of scientific disciplines (behavioral psychology, evolutionary theory, anthropology, communications theory, modern [war] games theory to name a few). The 10-minute video was written and performed by Steve Rushton with the visual aid of Ray & Charles Eames, A Communications Primer (1953). Recorded on location in the Commander's Room, Park Avenue Armory and produced by Dexter Sinister for True Mirror, 2008. Released in two versions -- via YouTube (lo-signal, high-noise) and via on-location screening (hi-signal, lo-noise). For more information: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=28 To watch the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzM3Gkcltkw -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Sun Mar 23 13:48:13 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:48:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: How to Make Our Ideas Clear Message-ID: <20080323134619.N54123@dhabat.pair.com> Please see attached PDF with embedded hyperlinks in blue. (Produced with Larissa Harris) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: HowToMakeOurIdeasClear.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 126967 bytes Desc: Url : From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Sun Mar 23 15:55:27 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:55:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: WBPR08, Hey Hey Glossolalia / True Mirror (after Napalm Death, You Suffer, 1988, 1.316 sec., N. Bullen / J. Broadrick) Message-ID: <20080323155237.K65963@dhabat.pair.com> Please refer to the attached MP3. This sound file consists of a reading of the 11-page Whitney Biennial 2008 press release compressed to 1.316 seconds. "You Suffer" is a song by the British Grindcore band Napalm Death. The song has earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest recorded song ever. It is precisely 1.316 seconds long and consists entirely of the lyrics "You suffer, but why?" The MP3 is accompanied by the text "Resisting Language (The Silenced Voice)" by Nicholas Bullen, founding member of the band Napalm Death (the band credited with creating the Grindcore genre which blended elements of Extreme Metal and Punk music). The text is available as a PDF here: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/MEDIA/PDF/WBPR08.pdf In January 2006 Mark Beasley invited Nicholas Bullen to present a lecture about Napalm's development of the "death growl." The death growl, also known as growled vocals, harsh vocals, death vocals, pig vocals, throating, death grunts, unclean vocals, Cookie Monster vocals, or simply growling, is a vocalization style usually employed by vocalists of the death metal music genre. The resultant essay commissioned for the publication "Hey Hey Glossolia: exhibiting the voice" edited by Mark Beasley and co-produced with Dexter Sinister will be published by Creative Time in May 2008. Nicholas Bullen will be speaking and performing at Hey Hey Glossolalia: The Voice (after Mercedes McCambridge) on May 22 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Produced with Mark Beasley For more information: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=38 -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WBPR08.mp3 Type: audio/mpeg Size: 22315 bytes Desc: Url : From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Sun Mar 23 18:52:15 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:52:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Refracted Light Though Armoury Show (Demo) Message-ID: <20080323184451.O35847@dhabat.pair.com> Written and performed by Dan Fox on location at the 7th Regiment Armory for True Mirror, this 21-minute compilation MP3 includes embedded liner notes in two channels. Released as a Demo version MP3 on www.sinisterdexter.org, now. To download the MP3 file: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/MEDIA/MP3/RefractedLightThroughArmouryShow.zip For more information: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/index.html?id=41 -- DEXTER SINISTER WILL OCCUPY THE COMMANDER'S ROOM AT THE 7TH REGIMENT ARMORY EVERY DAY FROM 4 MARCH TO 23 MARCH 2008 RELEASING A SERIES OF PARALLEL TEXTS THROUGH MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION WHICH REFLECT ON THE 2008 WHITNEY BIENNIAL. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE TRUE MIRROR WEBSITE: http://www.sinisterdexter.org/ From open-reading-group at o-r-g.com Sun Mar 23 21:31:06 2008 From: open-reading-group at o-r-g.com (open-reading-group at o-r-g.com) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:31:06 -0000 Subject: Open Letter Message-ID: <1199759457.6481.16.camel@cory-desktop> Whitney Doublin, 7 January 2008 Dear cooperator, I have taken the typewriter down from the stack of boxes in the backroom in order to guarantee a certain slowness and precision here. I'm after the formality that is so easily obliterated by more recent and ubiquitous technologies, and in this spirit I write to you -- one of a small community of convalescents -- in the hope of convincing you to participate in this not because you can or can't but because you care and will.* >From the 7th Regiment Armory building on Park Avenue in New York City -- a parallel site to the 2008 Whitney Biennial exhibition -- I aim to coordinate a series of PRESS RELEASES written by different people and issued through different distribution channels. My hope is that this will slow down, complicate, or at least draw out the reception of the exhibition. Given both the location and status -- at a vortex of critical mass -- the Whitney Biennial is immediately cannibalized by the media who surround it: reviews are typically written on the first day before the general public is invited, and each critic duty-bound to weigh in with their direct interpretations of the show. The result is that for most the exhibition is REviewed before it has even been viewed. As such, my interest is in the possibility of arranging another reading through these parallel press releases ... released neither under the umbrella of the Whitney Museum nor that of any known publication. What happens when information is released from within the show but not sanctioned by The Show? (It functions as a shadow.) (It functions as a mirror.) Proof of the fact that a mechanical device can Reproduce personality And that Quality is merely The distribution aspect of Quantity. Journalists have conquered the book form; Writing is now the tiny affair of the individual; The customers have changed: televisions aren't viewers, but advertisers; publishing's not potential readers, but distributors. The result is rapid turnover, The regime of the bestseller But there will always be A parallel circuit, a black market. And so this letter is addressed to no one in particular, but specific to each of you for reasons I trust you understand. I suppose I am merely asking you to write as a (Wo)Man of the Crowd, a community that can still act, not because it is entitled to do so by the institutions of power, but by virtue of an unconditional exuberant politics of dedication (I quote.) If you accept all this -- and the invitation -- you will contribute a reflective text to double as a press release. This could be a new text, an existing text, or not even a text at all. Furthermore, it might be produced remotely, or on-site with me at the Armory in the Commander's Room, a locked office accessed by a secret panel release from the Colonel's Ballroom. Your press will then be released during the three weeks following the opening of the exhibition, with the channel of distribution -- fax, word-of-mouth, trumpet, parachute, etc. -- directly determined by the contents of its message. Normal press releases are, of course, typically compressed into a series of literal sound bites on a single sheet of paper and designed to be easily re-purposed -- copied, pasted, combined and inserted back into other media streams. This model might as well be our point of departure too. I hope that my formula of 'disinterestedness plus admiration' will seduce (I I I I I I I I quote) and that the various non-textual qualities of this missive fill in some of the gaps in explanation. If so, we ought to continue this discussion by email or telephone (see below). Please try to get in touch within the next week. For now, Dexter Sinister 38 Ludlow Street (basement south), New York, New York 10002, USA * And what do you do? You just SIT there. (I quote)