l'art pour l'art

"fuck understanding, live in confusion"

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:29:31 -0500

“fuck understanding, live in confusion”

- my Lit professor (via womyneyes)

hobartpulp: I don’t consider myself overly nostalgic. I...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:26:40 -0500

I don’t consider myself overly nostalgic. I typically take things from the past (from pop culture to family photos) and somehow break those images down. I erase the identities in family photos. I either draw VHS tapes with permanent markers or reproduce them as pixelated images. My two overall themes are memory and change. So the memories typically come from my youth. I remember in the early 90s when I was in high school, I thought the 80s were so uncool and terrible and I would never look back fondly on that time, but it really was a special time. Bright colors. Max Headroom. The Goonies. The NES and digital technology in the early phases. I think using memory and change as my main themes, I’m really concerned with mortality. Not concern or fear or death, but that human element of knowing that we are limited. I think using personal memories rather than a generic idea of memory makes the mortality association more subtle or balanced.

(via Hobart :: ““Memory, Change, Mortality” — Hobart 14 cover artist, Hollis Brown Thornton, in Conversation with Christopher Higgs )

lookatallthisstuff: Young Critic Engaging with John...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:26:11 -0500

lookatallthisstuff:

Young Critic Engaging with John Lavery’s “Portrait of Anna Pavlova” (1911)

(via Christopher Higgs, “How To Be A Critic (pt. 2)”)

"I’m always curious to hear how something was made—though I have no interest in why an artist did..."

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 13:20:33 -0500

“I’m always curious to hear how something was made—though I have no interest in why an artist did something, or what his work means. Like with Jackson Pollock: I’m always interested in what kind of paint and canvas he used, I just don’t want to know what he meant. You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.”

- Soderbergh, hero extraordinaire (via vinylisheavy)

I am pleased to announce that my new book, ONE, a collaboration with Blake Butler & Vanessa...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:59:26 -0400

I am pleased to announce that my new book, ONE, a collaboration with Blake Butler & Vanessa Place, is now available from Roof Books. It’s an experiment wherein I asked Blake to write the exterior perspective and Vanessa to write the interior perspective; then I assembled the two into ONE.

Here’s the jacket copy:

From the room inside the room, from the house inside the house, memories of a one-legged father and various acts of jurisprudence haunt the mysterious creature who writhes in somatic isolation from one waking nightmare to another. Here, two writers have produced textual bodies: one speaking for the interior and the other describing the exterior, while a third writer has assembled these two bodies into a single grotesque symphony of chimerical language. A hitherto unprecedented collaborative experiment, ONE defies categorization and heralds a new approach to exploring the boundaries of authorship and narrative.

And here’s the blurb from Dennis Cooper:

In theory or even usually, three contemporary majors like Butler, Higgs, and Place interlocking works inside a single book would leave users fannishly dissecting more than reading, but One is something way else. It’s as sublimely integrated as any single-minded novel I can think of, but with this absolutely crazy mega-wattage. I.e., not since Ashbery and Schuyler co-made A Nest of Ninnies, but, whoa, even more so.

You can get it on Amazon.

At Barnes and Noble.

At Books-A-Million.

Or through Small Press Distribution.

If you are interested in reviewing it or conducting an interview, please email me!

"bright stupid confetti is back!!!"

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:14:00 -0400

“

bright
stupid
confetti

is back!!!

”

- click here

criterioncollection: 50 years ago today Jean-Luc-Godard’s Vivre...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:51:00 -0400

criterioncollection:

50 years ago today Jean-Luc-Godard’s Vivre sa vie premiered in France.

A day late, but worth commemorating. One of my all-time favorite films, made by my all-time favorite director.

ONEwritten by Vanessa Place & Blake Butlerassembled by...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:38:37 -0400

ONE

written by Vanessa Place & Blake Butler
assembled by Christopher Higgs
published by Roof Books

From the room inside the room, from the house inside the house, memories of a one-legged father and various acts of jurisprudence haunt the mysterious creature who writhes in somatic isolation from one waking nightmare to another. In ONE two writers have produced textual bodies, one speaking for the interior and the other describing the exterior, while a third writer has assembled these two bodies into a single grotesque symphony of chimerical language. A hitherto unprecedented collaborative experiment, ONE defies categorization and heralds a new approach to exploring the boundaries of authorship and narrative.

Coming Soon ONE A Collaborative Experiment Written by Blake...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 11:29:59 -0400

Coming Soon

ONE

A Collaborative Experiment

Written by Blake Butler & Vanessa Place

Assembled by Christopher Higgs

Finisterrae (2010) Finisterrae, “a bizarre, belated debut feature from 45-year-old...

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 23:48:00 -0400

Finisterrae (2010)

Finisterrae, “a bizarre, belated debut feature from 45-year-old writer-director Sergio Caballero” (Hollywood Reporter)

Finisterrae, “an absurd joke filmed photography Eduard Grau, one of the most impeccable of late, which tells the story of two ghosts, whose ordinary appearance a couple of sheets with holes to eye. One night, in a parking lot, decided to put some action to their boring lives and penitents, and rush to make the famous Camino de Santiago, so stop being human and become ghosts.” (Desist Film)

Elise Dodeles

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:30:29 -0400

Elise Dodeles

Lee Boyd

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 17:27:44 -0400

Lee Boyd

Photo

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:33:13 -0400

Kaye Blegvad

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 22:12:52 -0400

Kaye Blegvad

Photo

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:14:14 -0400

David Reed

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 20:55:46 -0400

David Reed

Amy Friend

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:08:18 -0400

Amy Friend

Reading my paper “Gilles Deleuze, ‘Pataphysician of the Posthuman’” at...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 09:40:31 -0400

Reading my paper “Gilles Deleuze, ‘Pataphysician of the Posthuman’” at the 5th International Deleuze Studies Conference, New Orleans 2012.

Considered through Deleuze and Guattari’s somewhat idiosyncratic interpretive lenses, Ghérasim Luca...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 08:32:04 -0400

Considered through Deleuze and Guattari’s somewhat idiosyncratic interpretive lenses, Ghérasim Luca is a minor writer — minor in the sense that he relentlessly pushes language toward its limits, that he deterritorializes it, that he transmutes it from a mere instrument of representation into an extreme style of intensities. This is to say that Luca should not be deemed “minor” in any canonical sense — quite the opposite in fact — for within Deleuze and Guattari’s system of thought, to be called minor is an honorific of the highest order.

— “Surrealism in a Minor Key: Recent Translations of Ghérasim Luca” by Michael Leong

Video

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:33:15 -0400