This Blog is Done

My database got corrupted (I'm hand-coding this entry) and so I had to start a new blog, called for the moment Free Space Comix II. Change your links accordingly! It's not quite decorated yet but give me time, I've been quite busy. (This incarnation of Free Space Comix will stay up, all of the links and pages are still good, I just can't add to it. Bloggers, don't forget to export!)

For those of you who like personal details, I'll be moving to Providence in September to be a student in the MFA program in electronic writing at Brown Perversity. I mean University. I mean Culver City. I mean, the concentration is under the auspices of the Creative Writing department, traditionally associated with poetry, fiction and drama. I'll be the third ever student accepted for "electronic writing" -- they take one a year -- after Talan Memmott and William Gillespie, who was last year's candidate.

Wish me pluck! I mean luck. I mean f... I mean, I'll miss New York. But I'll be black! I mean back! I mean, stop reading this and look at the other blog.

Death of a Disco Dancer (Flash Polaroid)

A new one, with a theme song by The Smiths (turn your sound on), using for the first time elements from different shoots and some groovy abstract color. So perhaps this is not much like a Polaroid at all, but I can't think of a good name for these things:

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/guy_cat_pan_disco.html

Two Lasting Impressions of My Recent Evening at Galapagos

Drew Gardner and Marianne Shaneen and I stumbled into Galapagos last Sunday to witness the destruction of their front pool by this Japanese performance artist named Teruyuki Tanaka. Even better was the duo smashing rocks in one of the huge mayonnaise vats that are suspended on girders above the main drinking area (the building was a mayonnaise factory). Dressed in white shirts, black slacks, the duo (Tanaka and Tadashi Watanabe) bashed away rocks and bags of cement for over an hour, surprisingly not shaking the whole building to its foundations but providing a fine ambient backdrop to what became an increasingly disinterested (but not uninterested) crowd. There was a video projection of the two of them on a screen toward the front of the bar (which helped keep the fish smell away from the clientele), which I photographed several times and which will probably feature in a future "Flash Polaroid." Get your tickets now!

I'll Take It: A benefit to support CompanyAmyCox

I'll Take It
A benefit to support CompanyAmyCox

Date: Saturday, June 5th
Time: Party 9pm-12midnight, performances begin @ 9:30pm
Location: 304 Boerum St., Buzzer 11, Apt. 23 (2nd Fl), Bushwick, Brooklyn
(see directions below)
Tickets: $50 (Artists & Students $25)
For advance ticket purchase and information call 718-813-8110

Amy Cox, artistic director of CompanyAmyCox, will perform ten short solos using objects, costumes, music and written themes donated by ten
exceptional thinkers.

These thinkers include:
Alba Clemente (artist - mother)
Rosie Perez (actress)
Kiki Smith (artist)
Amy Sedaris (writer, actress)
Sally Silvers (choreographer)
Jonathan Rosen (graphic artist)
Dean Moss (choreographer media artist)
DD Dorvillier & Daria Fain (choreographers)
Judy Casey (photo rep) & Shay Ashual (hair stylist)
Douglas Dunn (choreographer)

Revised Flash Polaroid

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/weird.html

/UBU lanches: May 19th at Pierogi Gallery, June 3rd at LFL Gallery

Launch number doo this Thursday...

http://www.ubu.com/ubu

Stan Brakhage Lectures

More free things... I scanned and formatted this one in for Kenny. I'm sure we'll hear from the estate soon, so get it while it's hot. Some really excellent stuff that can be hard going at times due to SB's distinctive and excessive digressions, but if you can't get enough poetic prose of the Objectivist tradition you won't mind this at all. And look at the rosebuds ye gathers: George Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, and Sergei Eisenstein. With an foreword by the Creeley man himself. How can you go wrong!

U B U W E B :: Stan Brakhage

Gary and Nada's Wedding Reception Photos

My new cheap Canon digital was behaving badly at the party last Sunday to celebrate Nada and Gary's wedding, but it lasted long enough to get off a few good ones. You in blogland will recognize many of these faces -- in fact, I tended to stick to the smoking patio and the immediate environs given the heat in the restaurant. Have fun.

(Isn't there more than a faint resemblance between the Madame (to the right) and Nada below? Now if I could only find that picture of Maureen Dowd...)

Gary and Nada's Wedding 5/23/04

I've been blogged by FSG

Who would have thought Farrar Straus & Giroux would have to lean on Arras to help move a few copies of their new book by Jeff Clark.

Music and Suicide: Poems, Jeff Clark

From the site:

"Jeff Clark's first collection, The Little Door Slides Back, was hailed as an unclassifiable classic in underground American writing: "Remarkable for its liveliness and intelligence" (Chicago Review), "Amazing and ambitious" (Rain Taxi), "a 120-page spell" (American Letters & Commentary), "A happy sadomasochism, a luxuriance of prurience" (Boston Review), "Devoted to the idea of possibility in the poet who operates as free agent, looking to the weather not for the springs of dailiness but for some message from the aether" (Arras), "[Clark's work] creates . . . our own precursors, precursors who behave differently than our supposed avant-garde" (Rhizome)."

Though I liked his book, I didn't hail it as an "unclassifiable classic" -- who would want to buy one of those anyway (well, me, I guess) -- and since there's no underground American writing, I don't know what that means. But heigh-ho Jeff, congrats on the new pub!

Two More Flash Polaroids

These actually use a little programming. Still the same basic principle, though less than flattering pictures of Rachel in the first one:

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/weird.html

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/subwaywoman.html

I'm working on a much longer, more complicated one based on photos of Times Square at night -- it will be more like a film, though just using 20 or so images. Fun!

Flash Polaroids

I've created a directory for the "Flash Polaroids" and have fixed some glitches in the original file. The files are largish, don't look at it if you have a slow connection. The first one stars my favorite plant. The others were mostly shot in England and Williamsburg.

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/plant_dance.html

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/heathrow.html

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/countryside.html

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/racquelli.html

http://www.arras.net/polaroids/wburg_bridge.html