Sunday, November 15, 2009

Tuesday, November 24th at 7:30 or so: David Wolach, Jen Coleman, Ashley D'Avignon Goodwin and Kenny Anderson

Who: poets David Wolach and Jen Coleman, visual artist Ashley d'Avignon Goodwin and musician Kenny Anderson
When: Tuesday, November 24th at 7:30
Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Upper Floors
Etc.: Bring food or drink to share, or maybe throw some money in for beer. Bring extra cash you've got laying around in case anyone's hawking anything. Bring something to hawk. Or just show up with your lovely self.

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David Wolach is professor of text arts, poetics, and new media at The Evergreen State College, and visiting professor in Bard College’s Workshop In Language & Thinking. He is the author of several books, most recently Occultations (Black Radish Books, forth. 2010), Prefab Eulogies Vol. 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox, forth. 2010), Hospitalogy (Scantily Clad Press, forth. 2009-10), Acts of Art/Works of Violence (SSLA/Univ. of Sydney), and book alter(ed) (Ungovernable Press, 2009). His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, most recently 5_Trope, No Tell Motel, XPoetics, Dusie, Little Red Leaves, and The BlueFifth Review. Recipient of grants from the Washington Arts Council and the Olympia Fund for Diversity in the Arts, Wolach’s work is often site specific and uses multiple media. His work has been performed at venues such as The Buffalo Poetics Series, The Stain of Poetry Series, The American Cybernetics Conference, and EconVergence. Wolach is also a member of Nonsite Collective, and founding editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, a quarterly journal and chapbook series dedicated to radical text arts, poetics, and politics, which curates the yearly series PRESS Series & Conference in collaboration with The Evergreen State College. For reading dates, essay, calls or Wheelhouse submissions, & other happenings, visit David's blog.

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Jen Coleman is a Minnesota poet by way of DC, New York and now Portland. Former co-editor of the literary magazine Pom2 and former co-curator of the DC based “In Your Ear” reading series. Jen also has a chapbook, Propinquity, and her work has appeared in The Tangent, Ixnay, Chain and other splendid journals.



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Ashley d'Avignon Goodwin:


The goal I have in mind for this series is to encourage people to call into question their own domestic photo displays. Why this picture? Why this moment? The tendency to preserve "big" events; weddings, graduations, reunions - necessarily implies that the day to day lacks the importance of times such as these. Or at least, those days aren't worth sharing, those days don't contribute to the greater you. What's more is that the images often lie anyway - just because you had 27 of your closest relatives wearing the same colored sweater all smiling for 10 seconds doesn't mean they aren't in a perpetual pissing contest.

You can get a pretty good look at the image someone wants to project by looking at the photos they present. "My family is always this happy. I always look this pretty. Why yes I do play the guitar. My nonchalance alerts you that I am an artist and have no need to smile for you, that would be trite."

The images on display here are all of women who just got arrested for either shoplifting or some other mall misconduct. I believe this to be one of the many missing pieces in the usual photographic illustration of ones life. It's truthful, frightening and embarrassing. And isn't life just one frightening, embarrassing event after another? Is it just me? --But even still, some of them smile as to say "fuck you, I'll be back next week," some of them look like they're going to deck you as soon as you take the cuffs offs - the presentation of oneself is not void here. Is the "fuck you pig" photo any more or less real than the "I'm going to love this woman for the rest of my life" photo? Was seeking the real even my goal? Did I just fail at writing an artist's statement?





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Kenny Anderson doesn't understand things. He tries to play the guitar his very best. It takes him over twenty years to write a song. You wouldn't know it to hear one, but it's true. He is very happy. There is a rumor floating around that he doesn't vote. Maybe that's why he never complains.