recommendations
as the non-world falls away
as the non-world falls away is set of fragmented poetic compositions, created through iPhone scans of the artists notebook that have then been worked over digitally, testing the boundaries between image and text in a palimpsestic manner
WITHOUT THE E is a series of pamphlets responding to a presence or an absence felt in contemporary digital culture.
Drafts
A weaving draft is a kind of notation for planning and sharing woven textil structures. The threading, along the top, shows how the warp is threaded through the heddles and frames; the treadling, along the right-hand side, show the order in which the treadles of the loom are to be pressed; and the tie-up, in the upper right-hand corner, shows how each treadle interacts with the loom’ frames. The drawdown, in the lower left, shows whether the warp or weft will be on top at any particular intersection of threads—thereby providing a “preview” of the completed textile. Often a draft diagram will indicate the intended color of the warp and weft threads, and the drawdown will show the completed textile’s color patterns. In “Drafts,” Allison uses letters instead of colors, melding digital weaving with writing.
WITHOUT THE E is a series of pamphlets responding to a presence or an absence felt in contemporary digital culture.
A Queen in Bucks County
An epistolary sequence about sex, exchange and social space set along the Northeast Corridor.
In A Queen in Bucks County, our protagonist Turner, who both is and is not the writer, makes his pleasurable way through miserable space. Men "buy him things," lovers drive across state lines, users down volatile cocktails to see what happens, landlords turn tenants out, and Turner writes poetic tracts to friends about it. Part pornography, part novel, all love letter, A Queen in Bucks County is an experiment in turning language upside down to see what falls out.
2023 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST
Waterslides
"Waterslides is a falling and plunging, short starts and stops aided by movement, until we splash, climb and plunge again. Each sliding is the same but different—with each descent new expectations and thoughts swirl, shifting focus and gaining new insights or blockages. Waterslides are brief moments of remembering, remembering as a present tense activity, one that happens as we think of it, projected on our now. The waterslide is the moment of past and present working in tandem, a movement of repeating, revisiting and remembering all at once.”
Written by nvk 2021-2023. Dedicated to Judi, MM & TNN.
A version of these poems was published as an audio work through Ignota Press’ The Mountain (2023) and included in a reading with James Loop on Montez Press Radio (2023). nvk would like to thank Jan Matthé, Stine Sampers and Michelangelo Miccolis for their patience & love.
This book was first presented at Kransen in Antwerp, May 6th 2023, with a performance by Sassy (costume by Rosa Schützendorf). Printed and bound at Risiko Press, Borgerhout. Cover image by nvk. Fonts: Adonis, Garamond Pro. Limited to 150 copies.
128x195mm, 16p., stapled, cover: green, yellow and black risoprint on 160gsm caramel paper, inside: black and blue riso on 120gsm Munken Pure paper.
Sonnet(s)
A lost gem of permutational conceptualism from a key figure in artist's book culture, available again
Known internationally as one of Mexico's most important conceptual artists, Ulises Carrión (1941-89) played a decisive role in defining and conceptualizing the genre of the artists' book through his manifesto, The New Art of Making Books (1975), which he wrote soon after the 1972 publication of SONNET(S) and his move from Mexico City to Amsterdam, where he opened the legendary bookshop gallery, Other Books and So, the first space dedicated exclusively to artists' publications and an important precursor to such artists' book hubs as Printed Matter.
One of Carrión's earliest bookworks, SONNET(S) represents a landmark shift in the artist's output from poetry to artists' books. Here, Carrión takes a single poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti through 50 typographic and procedural permutations. This republication is supplemented by new essays on Carrión's bookworks by contemporary artists, writers, and scholars from Mexico, Europe and the US.
Published March 2021
You Who Suffer, Because You Love, Love Still More
In You Who Suffer, Because You Love, Love Still More, Serubiri Moses offers an intimate and personal study of the lives and loves of pop star Freddy Mercury, combining a detailed epigraphy on the duplicitous nature of Mercury's origins, sexuality, and artistic talent with his own delicate memoir as a poet. Through this series of interlocked poems, yet again Moses lures us into an atmosphere both sensual and scholarly that echoes well past its last verse.
With ardor and grace, Serubiri Moses traverses a catalogue of pop music, visual art, and cultural history to bring his readers to a state of openness — to love, to art, and the freewill of ecstatic experience. Moses’s writing forefronts pleasure as a gateway for deeper critical inquiry, braiding personal memory and epigraphic excursions into sex, stardom, and poetry, reminding us in this journey that "pleasure almost happens without us knowing."
— Tausif Noor
Serubiri Moses, Ugandan curator and author, lives in New York City. He serves as a part-time faculty member at Hunter CUNY, and visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. He previously held faculty positions at New York University, and the New Centre for Research and Practice, and delivered lectures at Chazen Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Williams College, Yale University, University of Pittsburgh, The New School, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, and basis voor aktuelle kunst (NL), and University of the Arts Helsinki (FL). As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; the Hessel Museum, Bard College, NY; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. He has curated solo presentations of Carl E. Hazlewood, Reza Aramesh, and is working on a retrospective of Taryn Simon. He previously held a research fellowship at the University of Bayreuth, and received his MA in Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and is an alumni of the Àsìkò International Art Programme. He serves on the editorial team of e-flux journal and his short stories have appeared in print in Ursula, and online in Lolwe. He has published poetry in the online journals Jalada and Badilisha Poetry Exchange, as well as in print journals Kwani? 7, Kwani? 8, and READ: A Journal of Inter-Translation (2022). He is the author of the poetry collection THE MOON IS READING US A BOOK (2023; Pântano Books).
Salamander's Wool
The involuntary whispering of the dew-harvest.
A grimoire carved in scarlet, SALAMANDER'S WOOL is the inaugural full-length collection of writing by V Manuscript, amalgamating a vast array of arcane rituals into an ensorcelling poetic corpus. To read SALAMANDER'S WOOL is to consort with spirits and scry with dæmons, a linguistic alchemy which transmutes both language and reader.
V Manuscript is a poet and scriptomancer living in New York City.