Eulogies & STACKS



Eulogies by Douglas Kearney at STACKS Curated by Robert Pruitt at Art League Houston

Performance supported by Poets & Writers and Project Row Houses

Here is footage of the entire evening of woodchipping performance:


16 Points about United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP by Jim Hubbard

1. Too many people have no idea what ACT-UP was or why it was important. Read the wiki! Or watch the movie I just watched this weekend: United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP, a film by Jim Hubbard.

2. ACT-UP didn't just fight for people with HIV/AIDS. Almost all of the protests made specific calls for health care for all, for universal coverage. I wonder how much the idea of health care as a right in the United States was born during this era. It seems to be a critical moment in the move towards health care as a human right. I haven't seen any studies of this, but I wouldn't be surprised.

3. ACT-UP was committed to breaking down the cult of the expert, putting the most affected at the front.

4. Live and Love Before Profit said one of the signs at a march.

5. A division arose around whether "Drugs into Bodies" was enough. Another branch of ACT-UP said this analysis was not sufficient.

6. ACT-UP (and the movie) definitely focus on, as someone says in the movie, "the privileged within the margins."

7. Le Tigre's songs seem to have taken a lot from the chant styles of ACT-UP.

8. Just after the invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War, ACT-UP infiltrated CBS with Dan Rather and got on the air to shout: AIDS is news, fight AIDS not Arabs. I feel like I remember this, but maybe I am inventing the memory.

9. ACT-UP was dedicated to stealing access to the means of production.

10. I need to know more about Gregg Bordowitz. Good thing he's coming to Houston soon.

11. The link between tears, death, grief and activism.

12. At the end of the film, Jim Hubbard thanks the 147 chapters of ACT-UP worldwide. And yet in the movie we really only see the New York chapter. After being challenged on this point by Tish Stringer, Hubbard said there was not an archive of ACT-UP activism outside of NYC. Tish made the great point that the archive produces films like this; prior work to build the archive means the story gets told in a certain way, privileging certain sectors. I can't believe footage outside NYC doesn't exist. Most likely it just hasn't been collected or brought together. Most likely, it's rotting in garages and attics as we speak.

13. I want to know more about Maxine Wolf, an important lesbian feminist organizer who worked hard within ACT-UP and founded the Lesbian Avengers and many other groups. The crucial role of women and people of color in the fight around HIV/AIDS is often overlooked.

14. In the conversation after the movie, Jim Hubbard said that an essential part of gay culture is the juxtaposition of humor and seriousness. I saw a lot of heads nodding.

15. In the film, the story of the break-up or end of ACT-UP is not told. This leaves the impression that ACT-UP never ended. While ACT-UP still exists, I would have liked to know more about the story of its ending (or declining).

16. I want to see Jim Hubbard's experimental films from the end of the 80s and early 90s. If anyone knows how to see them, let me know, please.

Generosity is probably the "route" of all friendships, its first principle and ecological niche.

- Patrick Durgin & Jen Hofer in The Route

Douglas Kearney Live!

Two free events in Houston! 

1)

Douglas Kearney Live!
Friday, November 16, 2012
6-9pm
Art League Houston 
1953 Montrose Blvd 77006

 Rather than a traditional reading, renowned poet and performer Douglas Kearney will be live as part of the STACKS exhibition curated by Robert Pruitt at Art League Houston. The exhibit is a site of transformation addressing themes of Black imagination, creativity, and commodification. 

Douglas Kearney will be joining the artists of STACKS on opening night to participate in their performance. During this performance the artists will deconstruct materials and objects loaded with
 cultural stigmas. Mr. Kearney will provide eulogies for a selection of these materials, contemplating their former usefulness and the world in their impending absence.

 Please come out to see Douglas Kearney and the entire STACKS show. Kearney is an amazing poet, performer, librettist and educator based in Los Angeles who does innovative work with sound, visual poetics, rhythm and more. His interests are broad and diverse—from song lyrics to African American trickster figures, from performance aesthetics to opera librettos, from the L.A. riots to experimental poetry, from innovative visual poetics to text art on walls in galleries.

 More info on the STACKS exhibit is here.
More info at the Facebook event page for the Kearney reading.


To hear Douglas read more and for further dialogue and experimentation, there will be a workshop on Saturday, November 17 from 1-4pm at Project Row Houses. More info on the workshop can be found here.
2)

Workshop on Innovative Poetry
Saturday November 17, 2012
Project Row Houses, Live Oak and Holman
1-4pm

On Saturday, Kearney will offer a free workshop at Project Row Houses (2521 Holman St. 77004) from 1-4pm for all those interested in further dialogue and experimentation. The workshop will explore ways of mixing song lyrics and poetry; so bring (on paper, device, or in your mind) lyrics to one song you love; one song you’re sick of; and one song that reminds you of a struggle in your life. The workshop will be a space for discussion, reading, writing, performing and listening.

More info on Kearney's workshop on the Facebook event page.

Both of these events are supported by a grant from Poets & Writers, Inc.

Bio:

Douglas Kearney's first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and published by Fence Books in 2009. It was also a finalist for the Pen Center USA Award in 2010. His chapbook-as-broadsides-as-LP, Quantum Spit, was released by Corollary Press in 2010. His newest chapbook, SkinMag (A5/Deadly Chaps) is now available. He has received a Whiting Writers Award, a Coat Hanger award and fellowships at Idyllwild and Cave Canem. Kearney has performed his poetry at the Public Theatre, the Orpheum, The World Stage and others. His poems have appeared in journals such as Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, nocturnes, Ninth Letter, miPoesias, Southampton Review, Washington Square and Tidal Basin Review. He has been commissioned to compose poetry in response to art by the Weisman Museum in the Twin Cities, the Studio Museum in Harlem, FOCA and SFMOMA. Performances of Kearney’s libretti have been featured in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Europe and he has been invited to speak on poetics in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Malmö, Sweden. Born in Brooklyn, and raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts and Antioch.

For more info on Kearney: http://www.douglaskearney.com/




OUTSIDE THE LOOP Tour

All of you are inside the loop, because if you weren't in the loop, you wouldn't be reading this. But other people from outside the loop might read this. There are two loops: the physical 610 loop around central Houston and the metaphorical loop which you may or may not be in. In any case, I'll be going on a tour of some outside the loop areas in November. So make it a day trip if you live in the loop. Or if you live outside the loop, but near Houston, here are some great chances to see me perform or speak or workshop or to see some textworks made by me. All events are free. So now that you are in the loop, get outside of it. Here goes:


Saturday, November 3 - 2PM
Public Poetry Reading: Jasminne Mendez, John Pluecker, Robin Reagler, Scott Wiggerman
@
Vinson Neighborhood Library/Hiram Clarke Multi-Service Center 3810 W. Fuqua Houston 77045

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Wednesday, November 7 - 4pm
As part of 3G Gallery Exhibit: Sand in the Line (Curator: Michael Henderson)

 Workshop: How to Cut and Paste Your Way to Artistic Freedom, with John Pluecker 
@
Sam Houston State University (Location Details TBA)

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 Thursday, November 8 - 5-8pm

As part of 3G Gallery Exhibit: Sand in the Line (Curator: Michael Henderson)

5-6pm Panel Discussion: Creative Writing and Visual Art
Panel members include: Jen Hofer, John Pluecker and Dawn Pendergast
6pm Gallery Reception for Exhibit


@
3G Gallery, Sam Houston State University 
Exhibit will be open from November 5-29.

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Wednesday, November 14 - 7:30pm
Indie Penned Events Presents: The Poetry to Portrait Series & Anthology 
@
Independence Art Studios, 419 Janisch Rd Houston 77018


John Pluecker is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant Award. This grant is funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.  

A public radio station in San Diego, KCET, is publishing a lot of interesting work from Tijuana; as Josh Kun says:

 Over the next several weeks we'll be posting excerpts from a chapter in our upcoming anthology, Tijuana Dreaming: Art and Life at the Global Border. The book collects writings on contemporary Tijuana, Mexico from a variety of poets, critics, novelists, essayists, and scholars from both sides of the border, many of which have been translated into English for the very first time. "Crossfader Playlist" is one such piece-- a sampler of key tracks (blog posts, essays, digital riffs) from noted Tijuana writer, DJ, teacher, blogger, and after-hours chronicler Rafa Saavedra, whose 1995 book Esto no es una salida: Postcards de ocio y odio has just been re-published by Nitro Press.

 "Crossfader Playlist" was translated by yrs truly so check it out if you have a minute. Rafa is well worth your time. 

"In this book, I finally wrote myself out of my outsiderness," Rubén Martinez says. Though he remains a nomad, at least physically -- he and Angela split their time between Oakland and Los Angeles -- "existentially, my home is all these different places. My home is the West, my home is the desert, my home is the border fence. Wherever I go, somebody could say 'Hey, I have a deed from King Carlos V that says I've been here 15 more generations than you.' And I'd say, 'That's cool.' But I'm still from here." 

 - A fragment from a profile of Rubén Martínez on High Country News.

Is there any way to be in a place for generations and talk about it that generational history without it being read as aggressive and exclusionary and parochial? I'm honestly wondering about this question. I'd love to hear your thinking.

That Idea of Everything

I've made a little audio cut-up piece called "That Idea of Everything" that is now posted on the Hear Our Houston site, which is "a hub of public generated audio walking tours around our city."  I say this about it in an intro I wrote in an open letter to project creator Carrie Schneider:

I think it was November 2011, and you gave me a recorder and invited me to record a walk, and my dad, Tom Pluecker, was in town and I walked with him and my dog from my home in Eastlawn to what was his house (and his parents' house) in Broadmoor. "We're going toward Telephone Road," he says when we set out. We walk through all these memories and all these moments, a million moments he lived and I live now and it all threatens to be full of treacle (according to Dictionary.com, contrived or unrestrained sentimentality). And it was. The walk became an mp3 recording that lasted 37 minutes as we walked out onto Telephone and down the wide Road and then back over to the house he grew up in, the house his parents built in 1928 when the neighborhood was new and there weren't trees and it was the prairie. The full recording I'm going to hang onto, but I wanted to cut this audio file up and work with it. I wanted to see what I could make out of this walk with my dad.

To read & listen, click here.

Here it comes, look it's art!

Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, Texas
November 5-29, 2012

Sand in the Line:

Featuring the works of Kana Harada, Jen Hofer, John Pluecker, and Trish Ramsay, as well as Dawn Pendergast's Little Red Leaves Textile Series

Reception on Nov. 8, from 6-7 p.m.
Artist Talk: TBA
Contact: Michael Henderson, 936.294.1318

I as translator have to recognize my own privilege as an English speaker, a white person from “West” and “North,” a person formed by certain national and post-national discourses (to which I myself contributed in O Cidadán), a person with old allegiances and a settler history, all of which that can blind me to other discourses, impulses. In translating from one hemisphere to another, from South to North (or partly “North”), from East to West, I have to take care that the frames—cultural, economic, historical—which sustain my own literacy do not force themselves on the texts of others, which were uttered from and in a different frame or order, not always easily apparent at the moment of translation.

 - Erin Moure from an essay entitled "Transnational Literacies" in Jacket2

Poets of color have come to see how conventional modes of writing about race can ironically restrict and limit their own self-expression. The next step is not to “transcend” or “get beyond” race but to burrow more deeply into its structures of meaning, to see how race is embedded not just in our bodies but in our language. In such work, we cannot take comfort in our own politically righteous positions or exempt ourselves and our own language from scrutiny, for racial discourse constructs us as much as we construct it. Such writing is risky, but it may also be a place for the work of white and non-white writers to meet in a critical landscape.

- Timothy Yu at Evening Will Come: A Roundtable on Race & Poetry from October 2011

Chicana/os still lack a viable social and political self. And though Chicana/o identity is, in many ways, a question—even “up for grabs”—the culture and society in which the Chicana/o lives, works, and breathes, too easily solidifies and essentializes that identity by denying the Chicana/o a voice. Expression matters in the current social and political climate for the Chicano. To say—to express—matters. For the ethnic-racialized subject whose very subjectivity is invested in terminologies of identity (“Latino,” “Chicano,” “Hispanic,”), language is vital. Thus, to dictate a teleological aim for language, to posit that our poetries progressively move forward in a narrative that requires newness, is to offer a colonial dictation for the ethnic-racialized subject’s ontological and national status.”

- J. Michael Martínez

Thinking about last night's Poetry & Politics discussion at the University of Houston. Thinking about how actual dissent is so uncomfortable for white liberal authority figures. Thinking about how shameful it is that the UH Creative Writing Program has never had a Latino or Latina teaching poetry or fiction. Only Rubén Martínez teaching non-fiction. How in a city that is 44% Latino/a, there are no creative writing faculty members from any of the many Latina/o communities. And how this reflects wider issues, like the ones mentioned by Rey Guerra in the Houston Chronicle. :

Latinos are 44% of the population of the City of Houston, yet currently 0 of 4 County Commissioners (0%), 0 of 5 surrounding US Congresspersons (0%), 2 of 9 HISD School Board Members (22%), and only 2 of 16 Houston City Council Members (12.5%) are Latino.

 Issues indeed.

I think that's one of the reasons that some of the more libertarian aspects of the SDS and those times went down so rapidly is because people had to see change right away and when they didn't see change right away, well, might as well look out for yourself, do the best you can, and the notion that anarchism is a philosophy and it's a way of life and it's a way of interpreting what happens around you, it stays with you forever whether you're actively involved in something or not. I mean, I'm certainly not very actively involved, but

It has sustained you,

It has sustained me.

- Vivian Bonnano - Perhaps Vivian Bonnano, in any case, she is interviewed at 91:00 in Yvonne Rainer's film, Privilege (1990), available to watch for free on UbuWEb

Turn everything upside down, inside out, back to front. Rack it with radical convulsions, carry back, reimport, those crises that her "body" suffers in her impotence to say what disturbs her. Insist also and deliberately upon all the blanks in discourse which recall the places of her exclusion and which, by their silent plasticity, ensure the cohesion, the articulation, the coherent expansion of established forms. Reinscribe them hither and thither as divergencies, otherwise and elsewhere than they are expected in ellipses and eclipses that deconstruct the logical grid of the reader-writer, drive him out of his mind, trouble his vision to the point of incurable diplopia at least. Overthrow syntax by suspending its eternally teleological order, by snipping the wires, cutting the current, breaking the circuits, switching the connections, by modifying continuity, alternation, frequency, intensity. Make it impossible for a while to predict whence, whither, when, how, why . . . something goes by or goes on: will come, will spread, will cease moving. Not by means of a growing complexity of the same, of course, but by the irruption of other circuits, by the intervention at times of short-circuits that will disperse, diffract, deflect endlessly, making energy explode sometimes, with no possibility of returning to one single origin.

- Luce Irigaray