MY GIRLFRIEND'S ARTWORK IS AWESOME

And now you can buy it on Etsy. Which you should. And look at more at http://www.coriecole.com Small press people: buying this work does (indirectly) support small press publishing. Everything, as always, is connected, and these things are human things.

NOW (NON)LIVE ONLINE: SILVER STANDARD BY JUSTIN SIROIS

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

Poems and images by Justin Sirois
56 pages, softcover, with printed and stapled dustjacket that adheres to book through a series of magnetic strips, double signature pamphlet stitched, 8 1/8” x 5 1/8”
Letterpress dustjacket & cover, digitally printed pages, staples, magnets
Edition of 100
2006 

The middle of this book has two fold-out pages. We did our best in translating them to this digital version. The image below shows what they look like and how they work in the real thing:

According to the website of Apollinaire's Bookshoppe, they still have some copies of silver standard available for purchase!

& the original post about this book can be found here.

SUPPORT FUTURE TENSE BOOKS, SUPPORT THE WORLD

An independent press that’s been operating for 20 years? Trying to raise money so that they can expand their production? Sold! I’m in!

Find out more and donate here.

And visit the Future Tense website.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (32): WHAT YOU WILL (18)

I have not so much been absent in these past two weeks, as present somewhere else, in the workings of that other press. But I have managed a few things during that time, specifically more press runs on the jackets for What You Will:

Only 10 runs remain.

A FEW THINGS, ALL CONNECTED, AMEN

Been away for a few days while not really being away—some busy mornings with no time to write. So we’ll ease back in with a few announcements of things:

The venerable poet, printer, and thinker-of-all-things-book, Alan Loney, has recently started a new blog for his imprint, Electio Editions. There are some good posts with lovely images (like the one above) of lovely things up there already.

A new press has started in our former home of The Bay Area: Zumbar Press, which is focused on producing letterpress chapbooks and broadsides, as well as documenting that process of construction (something we here at NewLights can certainly support). Only 9 copies of the first broadside remain.

And this new press in the Bay reminds me of Lyn Hejinian’s Tuumba press, which undertook a similar project, beginning in the 70s and continuing and discontinuing until now & into the future. There is a great interview with Lyn in the new issue of Mimeo Mimeo, which just came out. Get your copy here. Then subscribe.

And also in that issue is an essay about poetry and typography by the aforementioned Alan Loney.

Mimeo Mimeo gets thicker and better with each issue. Which is good for all of us, good for the world. 

EVERY DAY

OCCUPY the places and channels of power. The spaces in which power is exercised. The means by which we are subjected to their objects. OCCUPY the role of producer. TAKE IT BACK and show the world that we have been producing all along. OCCUPY the channels of meaning and knowledge. DISTRIBUTE everything you have ever loved and could love. TAKE CONTROL of what you consume, BREAK IT APART and show the shattered surface to the rest of the world. KEEP LOOKING for more cracks in everything and OCCUPY them. TAKE CONTROL of every possible media, show us what it is, what it can carry. DO NOT STOP until we can see that we DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT ANYMORE. There will probably never be any rest. GIVE IT ALL AWAY. The sunlight is the only model. OCCUPY your life in such a way that it is continually BURSTING, overfull. TEAR OFF THE TOP OF YOUR SKULL and LET YOUR MIND TOUCH SPACE & HISTORY. There is no such thing as GENIUS. There is no such thing as BOREDOM. IT IS ALL IN YOUR MIND. OCCUPY your language and the way that it MOVES IN THE WORLD. BURN AWAY the hardened, dried, blackened EXOSKELETON OF YOUR SOUL. It does not belong to you.

LOOK HARD.
LOOK AGAIN.
PAY ATTENTION.
LAUGH HARD.
WORK HARD.
WORK LATE.
SLEEP WELL.

BE GENEROUS

BE KIND.
LOVE FIERCELY.
OCCUPY EVERYDAY.

SOMETIMES THE BOOK SHOWS ITS TRUE FACE

The image above shows a random, beautiful moment that I found in an old book that I borrowed from Tutt Library here at Colorado College. The book itself is Milton’s Areopagitica and Other Prose Works, (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1927). This page spread is the opening of Milton’s “Of Education,” which was written in 1644. This marked up and cut down spread is a fantastic chance composition, but it also demonstrates the multi-authorial nature of this particular (and by inference, any) book. The large print is Milton’s original text. The smaller type before that is the editor’s introduction to this particular piece. But beyond that there are the authorial voices of the typeface, design, typesetting, and printing, by themselves and as a visual unit. There were also multiple binders/bindings, evidenced by the cropping off of the marginalia, the highly visible sewing, and the bright orange “library” bookcloth. & of course there’s also the marks of the former readers/owners. Did the same person make the notes in black, do the underlining in red, and fill in the “O” in “Of Education?” These two pages show the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of the text/book through time. The wonderful marks of a life lived living.

MACHINED, or THE HAND-MECHANICAL (12)

Looking at the ILSSA hand-mind essay that I’m working on this morning, and I see that although progress has been made, it remains a bunch of tenuously connected ideas. Here are a few of them, far from perfect, coherent, or done:

The example above [below on this blog], of an observational painting exercise, is quite literal as a representation of both “mind” and “hand.” But “hand,” or the use of it, does not necessarily have to be tied to the body part. “Hand” does not strictly mean the manipulation of something physical—although any interaction with a linguistic or conceptual object is mediated somehow, often through technology, like the typing and typesetting of this essay. “Hand” essentially means active or engaged. When someone writes or critiques the discourse of any given field, they are participating in it, manipulating the field and its (linguistic/symbolic) objects. Any act of participatory creation involves “the hand,” in its broad sense, at some level—and thus the hand becomes the mind, and the mind becomes the hand.

The hand and mind are connected, and that connection is attention.

The work of the hand allows for a “making strange” in the mind. The act of construction forces the mind into an observation of reality, of the here and now of an object being built. The observations of the mind refine the work of the hand against and to the mind’s original projected ideal. Every creative act is a continuous mediation and remediation between the ideal of the original idea (generated in the mind) and the reality of the thing-in-the-world (generated by the hand). The constantly attentive attention of the hand-mind feedback loop generates new knowledge, or reinforces/refines things already known. That knowledge extends the attention paid into the future, to new activities, new objects, new meanings-in-waiting.

The hand-mind feedback loop is analogous to the artist-audience feedback loop. The artist, engaging their own individual hand-mind, acts as the experimental, knowledge gathering hand of the culture. The audience members (at once individual and collective) engage their hand-minds to construct new knowledge/meaning from the objects made and presented to them. This new knowledge/meaning travels back to the artist, and is refined and manipulated further. The social space of art is a constant cycle of production. The social space of art is the feedback loop between artist and audience.