Wednesday, October 23, 2013

New Writing

I wrote a piece about the critical response to Eleanor's Booker Prize winning novel The Luminaries for The Pantograph Punch. Which reminded me that there are two pieces of mine over at Montevidayo as well, one Pierre Guyotat, and in response to Johannes Göransson's blogging for The Poetry Foundation. Thought I should stick them here. This is kind of a depository.

Also my new chapbook MEMORY AS VOID is now available from Solar Luxuriance, and beck: nothing to be done from Publication Studio Mälmo. You can also still purchase my Dusie Kolektiv chap from above/ground press.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Ok, so I haven't posted here in a long time, as I've pretty much migrated all my activity to Facebook and Tumblr. But I thought I might as well at least keep things here up to date, so I've updated the links to writings online in the sidebar. Have a look. I also encourage anyone to have a look at my Tumblr, at the very least you'll probably find it confusing and/or amusing. I've been doing some stuff that I think it quite interesting.
Have a look.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

First question of my crowsourced interview.


Aindriu Macfehin
Why are artists afraid of making political work?
Thanks Aindriu - that's an awesome question.

I think this question is going to explode into several directions, but I need to interrogate it (as that is, in a way, what answering a question is): Firstly, in the question, there is the assumption that (some) artists don’t make political work, and then there is the idea that art can be apolitical. From my asking about these you can probably gather that I consider my work political, though it is not, on its face, overtly so - in the "realist" sense of, say, post-beat slam poetry or Brechtian social realism....

May I ask what you mean by "polictical"? It is a slippery term - I follow Guy Debord in believing that "every speech act is a political act", and treat the social and ethical - and art is, at its core, a social practice - as political; but many would dispute this - the common usage of "political" is tied to ideas of governmentality and large-scale social issues.

In a sense, my politicality (or that of my work - to conflate "me" and what I produce would be an error) stems from what I think of as the "avant-garde impulse" (though I know that many have issues with the term, for example Lyn Hejinian, who is wary of the military metaphor -and I can understand that) which is, in my case, directly tied to socio-political radicalism. Radicalism in one field goes hand in hand with that in another, and the boundaries become blurred.

Until quite recently radical artistic work was largely driven by politics, or had a very large political component - one need only look as far as dada, surrealism, fluxus, the Franco-African poets of negritude... language writing was/is based on (post-)Marxist/radical socialist theory (see Bruce Andrews' "Writing as Social Work and Political Practice").

Though there have been debates surrounding the efficacy of such, it isn’t really until the 70s, and the birth of minimalism and conceptual art that the politicality gets overshadowed or swept away (there could well be a political element to such work, but I don’t see it… I’ve got holes in my knowledge of art history). In the 80s through the 90s you have work like that of the pictures generation, hyperminimalists/post-minimalism (I still don’t know exactly what that is!), post-pop-art, the YBAs (with the notable exception of Tracy Emin), where much of it seems to be meant as a reflection or comment on the reality of living under capitalism, but there’s a kind of schizoid joy to it, a reveling in that depthless isolation and commodification – expemplified by the massive amount of money made by people like Jeff Koons and the like.

You’ve also then got the birth of ‘hipster irony’ and the growing marginalisation of sincerity – which is one of my personal pet peeves… this particular brand of irony holds little purpose, compared to dramatic irony or the ironic distancing of someone like Joyce in Portrait – it seems to me like little more than an excuse for people to not invest anything in their work, to shelter themselves emotionally. All you’re left with is a mirror that, rather than reflecting the real, reflects capitalist realism, the world as constructed by the apparatus of capital.

I suppose this is where the answer to your question comes in – capitalism has become the only imaginable ‘reality’. It is, so often, uncontested, because an alternative is unimaginable. There is the quote attributed to both Slavoj Zizek and Frederick Jameson that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. And it’s easier to report ‘reality’ or our experience than it is to contest it, challenge it, or try and do something different.

This leads to the difficulty though – is change possible, and what role does art play in this? I have to say that I honestly don’t know. I just know that capitalism treats people badly, and cannot in good conscience support that. So I make art that I hope opens lines of flight, or spaces in which things opperate (I hope) differently to the current hegemony. This may or may not be successful/effective, but it is, I think, worth while (and not the only thing that I do). I think, for instance, that “/k/” has some interesting things to say about ‘madness’, language, and the experiences and power relations that relate to these.

People can (and do) level critiques at my work saying that it is ineffective, elitist, too fringe etc… but I think that there is (or should be) a space for such. It’s worth remembering the debates between Adorno and Lukacs on similar points, Adorno arguing for the political efficacy of Kafka, and Lukacs disagreeing, and proposing Brecht as a more effective alternative. It seems history has proved Adorno right, in the effectiveness of Kafka’s anti-realism as an effective means of both describing and problematising the dehumanising experience of capitalist oppression.

On the other hand, everything may be futile, but I’d rather not give up. And art is an enjoyable means of subversion as well – and in a way that’s where people like Beckett come in – the horrible absurdity of the situation – you have to laugh, and do something, or else it’s too much to bear.

A caveat though – I want to say that my writing isn’t solely a political project. It is obviously an aesthetic one, and is also deeply personal (one of the reasons for working with Artaud’s work…). Alan Loney has said that he writes “in order to keep the world from falling apart”, and I feel the same – or more to stop myself from falling apart. If I stopped I’d fall into a hole that I don’t know I could get out of.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Information as Material, Theory as Practice

So, I've been thinking about some things. I am working on a series of pieces largely dealing with duration - with the experience of differing levels of (dis)interest and expenditure while forcing one's reader-self through longform, largely a-significant texts (think much of Beckett's work, Kenny Goldsmith's No. 111 2.7.92-10.20.96 Tan Lin's BLIPSOAK01, Jackson Mac Low, Bruce Andrews' longer works, etc). I was also talking to my therapist this morning about the (normative) dichotomy between 'emotion' and 'intellect' - how most people divide their experience or understanding into these two poles (cf. Nietzsche's romantic construct, opposing Dyonisus and Apollo) - this also seems to correlate to the Platonic oposition between information and material, and between theory and practice. This is one of the things I really like about the Toronto Research Group's work (the TRG being Steve McCaffery and bpNichol). In the introduction to the Collected Reports, wonderfully title Rational Geomancy, McCaffery outlines the project as fundamentally practical - that the work is about doing and exploring as a means to the end of explaining, or as explaining in action. Such processes are also intrinsic to the work of Susan Howe, Leslie Scalapino (who is sorely missed), Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, William Blake, Bruce Russell, and Cecil Taylor.
This conversation arose out of a discussion of "work". I seem to have a similar problem with my work as Paul Celan did with his - he thought of his poems as accessable, and could not understand those who didn't, inscribing a volume to his English translater Michael Hamberger "nicht hermetisch". Similarly I sent a copy of A Pelt to a relatively prominant NZ poet, who described it as "too intelectual" (aside -another writer explained this in the following terms:
"whenever someone in New Zealand describes your work as "too" something, what they mean is what they say, but without the "too"), just as a girl who had been in a creative writing class with me drunkenly lectured me at a party about how I should "stop thinking about things so much" and "not be afraid to just write what I feel". I consider that book to be pretty close to the traditional lyric, and primarily 'emotional' - very much a work in which 'feeling is first' - although not quite, as, at least to the reader, the word is first, as ink on paper. This is something that many people forget, and which I find myself unable to.
In this way I would find verse that reports the internal thoughts and feelings of the poet as "too intelectual": the poet would then be paying attention to, and thinking about, and carefully manipulating language as a code, as a means to an end, rather than as an object that is beautiful in and of itself.
All of this makes me think about information, and language, as existant prior to my engagement with them. Kenny G, riffing on Douglas Huebler: "The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more". What we as writers do is intercept and alter the flows of desiring-production that are active in language, aggregating, manipulating, filtering, altering, deforming. This is probably why I'm more active on Facebook these days then I am here - it is the perfect medium for tapping this vein of hypersemiotic joissance: the divertion of links, sedementation of information, manipulation/appropriation/deformance of image and sound - something which my former flatmate, Matthew Ward, knows all about. He's got a show, "The Ghost / They can speak for themselves" coming up at None Gallery in Dunedin - if you're anywhere near there, you should check it out.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A Return of Sorts. Questions. The Durational

Hello.... If there is anyone out there... I'm returning, kind of, in a way. With some questions, but first announcements. Last year I managed to complete my BA(hons), with 1st Class hons., and am now undertaking a Masters in Creative Writing, also at UOA.
I've got a self-published chapbook out, A Draft from BIRDS, wich is the inaugeral publication of my micropress, &then&then, which will aso be publishing a chap by the great rob mclennan and launching a website very soon. There are also some very, very exciting names who want to / have agreed /have been bulied into participate in this venture, and I'm very excited.
I'm also teaching, which is really cool. I'm tutoring an introductory English/Writing Studies paper, and it's great, and I think a lot of my students are more on to it than I was in 1st year!

But down to the nitty-gritty - the masters project(s)..... here's the connundrum. I was planning on /trying to mash up various strands of my practice into some kind of agrogate, but it wasn't working. And my advisor was talking about lack of cohesion, or an affective center.... it was largely turning into a mushy blob.... but then I'm not sure of (or comfortable with) the parts as seperate.... and the idea of something happening in a poem seems strange to me... the point comes down I thin to this:

I'm a little bit worryed that my "taste" in things my be developing in such an absurd direction I'll lose connection with any kind of meta-discourse, or audience, or community.... things are getting kind of wierd.

Everything I like seems to be massive and largely centreless, flux instead of progression, or drone, poetry as both ambiend and psycho-traumatic(etymology is important here) experience, with an emphasis on duration.... reference points:Pierre Guyotat, Samuel Beckett, Tan A. Lin's BLIPSOAK01 (I've got to get the rest of them!), Kenny Goldsmith's No. 111, Artaud, Bruce Andrews more prolonged pieces, Karen Mac Comack in places, Steve McCaffery in The Black Debt or parts of Panopticon, the kind of psych-scapes of flux Auckland poet and mystic Jarrad Dickson constructs, the dronescapes of Swans, Earth, Campbell Kneale's various projects, late Coil, and Handful of Dust; much of the latest wave of US/Canadian blackmetal weirdness, the weirdest work fo Tricky, The Shadow Ring, the jagged, staccato time-fucking of grindcore and microgrind (ie 8sec songs one after the other) or rapidly moving polyrhythmic free-jazz or jagged post-musique-concrete composition-by-assembly... and internet hip-hop sensation Lil B "THE BASEDGOD".
Long form repetition that seems to go (k)no(w)where, other than the movement as an EMBODIED, EXPERIENTIAL ACT OF DURATION.
I need to perform this. How do you do it in a codex? Can you?
I'm leaning more and more toward sound-work as a possible answer.



Monday, November 22, 2010

Gap Filler Poetry

Hello. I haven't posted in a long time because I've written 40 000 words this year, not counting reviews and poems. The idea kind of scares me. But I just got an email from my friend Micah, who is organising this really cool event in earthquaked Christchurch, called Gap Filler, where there are poetry readings and all kinds of awesome stuff in the vacant spaces left by quake damage. More details here. If it all goes well, I'll hopefully take part when I'm down for xmas-new years times.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Thank You For Telling Me Vodka is a Ponsy Drink

I Went and saw Xiu Xiu play last night. It was really great. You should buy their albums. The show made me all swoony like a schoolgirl. I got emotional. My medication was making me shaky. I talked to them afterwards, and made a dick out of myslef I think. But they were really nice. I talked to Angela about how music and writing destroy ego and Jamie about how other people's horrible stuff can make your horrible stuff feel less, becuase there's less lonelyness, some kind of community..... I'm not sure. I'm typing maybe kind of like Ariana Reines with some kind of naïveté and direct sentences, because I don't know how else to say things at the moment. I really like her writing but don't normally write like her. I hope it doesn't make me sound like a dick or a hipster. I don't understand the idea "hipster". The people who would be them hate them. It confuses me. I don't have enough money to be one I think. This writing is going nowhere. I really like Xiu Xiu anyway. Here are links to some of the songs they played.

Grey Death
Dear God, I Hate Myself
Chocolate Makes You Happy
Save Me, Save Me
Sad Pony Guerilla Girl
Fabulous Muscles
Crank Heart
I Luv the Valley Oh!
Boy Soprano

Friday, September 10, 2010

A PELT A SHRUB A SOIL SAMPLE has sold out

Yes, that's right. I'm both happy and sad to say that there are no more copies left. That is, until someone want to reprint it. I would, but I'm poor. However as the previous post attests, there's more stuff coming......

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Forthcoming

Ok so I've got three things forthcoming. My latest volume, /K/:HAVEDONEWITH will be out by the end of the year (hopefully) from June Gloom, a new micropress in Christchurch run by the wonderful Timothy J Andrew. I would trust anyone with a tattoo of Arthur Rimbaud with my life, trusting him with my work comes naturally. The book is a long poem drawing from a mutilated text of Artaud's "Pour En Finir Avec La Jugement De Dieu".

I'm also publishing a small volume, tentatively entitled Draft from "Birds" as part of my (BA) Honours dissertation in an edition of 26 hand-lettered copies. I'm not sure how much they'll cost yet, but if you're interested chuck me an email.

Lastly, I've been asked to take part in the latest Dusie Kollektiv, which is really awesome, I'm a big fan. Susana Gardener is one of that rare breed of super-awesome people. I've got a manuscript lined up called Tempral Maze Denture. I'm proud of that title.

So stay tuned. I may have quietened down on the blogging front, but there's still things happening.