DC's

* (restored)

________________
‘The Titanic resort, 885 feet long, 11 stories high, weighing over 46,000 tons, and containing 1,200 rooms, would have been one of the most heavily themed fantasy resorts in Las Vegas. Our guests could have enjoyed the experience of staying aboard one of the ship’s 800 state-rooms or at the adjoined Iceberg Hotel, which was to have included Ice Cave tunnels and an underwater glass people-mover to see the Iceberg’s underbelly and shops. The concept was rejected by the Las Vegas City Council. This was proposed for the big lot across the strip from the Sahara.’ — collaged

 

___________________
‘There’s no skimping on details of how the luxurious $5-billion, 10,000-room, five-star, five-diamond, 250-acre Moon resort would have looked. The complex included the Moon Casino, replete with multiple levels of gaming floors that culminate in the all-night party that is the Metropolis Discotheque. At the center of the Resort complex there was the Crater Wave Pool, with its surrounding private pools and spas. The 500-foot pool was to have lapped gently to the rhythm of a true ocean tide. Guests could have frolicked in the Sea of Serenity Aquatic Center then pour themselves directly into the Crater Pool via waterslides. The Lunar Lander Lounge at the center of the Pool would have been accessible via glass underwater walkways beneath the Pool’s surface.’ — collaged

 

____________________
‘Jethro’s Beverly Hillbillies Mansion & Casino is envisioned in this artist’s rendering. Max Baer Jr., who played Jethro Bodine in the “Beverly Hillbillies” television series, proposed the casino/hotel complex in the 90s and wanted to build a 240-foot-high oil derrick with a 70-foot shooting flame to lure customers. After years of being in the works, the project never got off the ground and kind of sputtered out. On August 15, 2003, Max Baer Jr. was back. He announced that he and his partners had purchased a building to relaunch the project. The building they chose was formerly a Wal*Mart department store that had been abandoned.’ — collaged

 

_____________________
‘The 3000-room The Palace of the Sea Resort and Casino looked very intriguing. The yachts in the harbor were to be high-roller suites. The Sky Wheel, would have been over 600 feet tall (another world record for Vegas). The casino/lobby building resembled the Sydney Opera House. The hotel weighed in at 60-floors and had a sail-like shape.’ — collaged

 

________________
‘The London Eye has proved to be an iconic structure on the English capital city’s sky-line. If plans had gone through, Las Vegas may very well have had its own giant wheel. Voyager were behind two attempts to bring the design to the Strip. The first came in 2003 when the Rio proposed the $86 million plans to include the wheel with a nightclub in the hub. Not long after this first failed proposal, a second giant wheel idea was put forward by Voyager. This time it was on the site of the vacant 27-acre large Wet and Wild water park. It would have been part of a new Palace of the Sea Resort and Casino. Unfortunately, that project also failed to get off the ground.’ — casino.org

 

___________________
‘Aimed directly at the baby-boomer demographic, The Addams Family Resort and Casino, a hotel that would look like the Addams family mansion and whose employees would be made up to look like Lurch the butler or Cousin It, never became a reality.’ — collaged

 

_____________________
‘Although Vegas is known for its surreal architecture and mega-resorts, this hotel would have brought a fresh new look to a thriving city. JDS/Julien de Smedt Architects in collaboration with artist Olafur Eliasson designed the Mondri and Elano Hotel in Las Vegas. They wanted to create a genuine experience while extracting the identity of the Mondrian and the Delano Hotels without producing copycat versions. Another goal was to balance the project’s large scale with the need for intimacy on a smaller scale. The project was cancelled in 2012.’ — collaged

 

_______________________
‘There have been two locations for the London Resort and Casino, and both of them have had a giant observation wheel (from the Giant Wheel Co.) The resort was to have included a Harrod’s department store, Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, a Piccadilly Square shopping area and many other London themed attractions.’ — collaged

 

________________
‘ITT/Sheraton’s second plan for the Desert Inn land (now under the Wynn complex) struck a deal with the dudes from Planet Hollywood and came up with some crazy plans for a Planet Hollywood Resort on the property. The first (very conceptual) rendering was pretty wild, gravity defying, and ugly. This was later refined in to a more plausible plan with a 20-story sphere. Neither was built’ — Vegas Today and Tomorrow

 

____________________
‘In 1993, the Desert Inn was purchased by ITT/Sheraton. The Desert Inn had a large surface parking lot to the south of the resort (which now holds Wynn Las Vegas). Their first plans were a Balinese Resort called Desert Kingdom. The concept of Desert Kingdom was to mix African and Asian elements to make the perfect tropical resort. The concept design was a recreation of a resort in Bali, Indonesia. At night, guests would see a water and light show as they sat outdoors surrounded by tiki torches.’ — collaged

 

___________________
‘Protests from nearby neighbors helped to block construction of the original 800-foot ride at the Stratosphere. This Dream was proposed back in 2002. If it had been built, I’m sure that the Ivana, Allure and Liberty Towers would have chosen a different neighborhood. The roller coaster would have dropped passengers from the hotel’s tower and across Las Vegas Boulevard at top speeds of 93 mph. Residents said the roller coaster would discourage new residents from moving in and contributing to the revitalization of the area.’ — collaged

 

___________________
‘A knockoff of New York City’s East Village in Las Vegas — with its own version of the city’s Meatpacking District and Washington Square was planned for 44 acres at the northwest corner of Tropicana Avenue and Paradise Road, converting the conspicuously idle acreage into a 1-million sq. ft. hotel-office-and-retail project. The 27-building, 959,645-square-foot, entertainment complex was being developed by Mark Advent, a developer of the New York-New York hotel-casino. “I’ve been hand-picking our tenants. I don’t want it to look like a regional mall or life-style center that you’d see somewhere else”, said Advent in 2007. The project was cancelled in 2011.’ — collaged

 

______________________
‘In 1982 architect Martin Stern Jr. (the designer of the International and Xanadu) was commissioned to design a huge expansion for the Landmark. However, Landmark’s owner Ed Wolfram was convicted of embezzling $47 million from his brokerage firm, Bell & Beckwith. The Hotel was seized and put up for sale and we all know the rest (in peace).’ — collaged

 

____________________
‘A giant exhaust pipe shaped hotel. This rendering of the Harley Davidson Hotel and Casino uses the site directly east of The Palms on Flamingo Road.’ — collaged

 

________________
‘The Excalibur Hotel already exists in Las Vegas. It looks like a white medieval castle inspired by the Sword and the Stone, but there could be so much more. At one point in time, Gary Goddard planned to install a massive fire-breathing dragon in front of the hotel. The idea turned out to be far too expensive, and the attraction was never built.’ — collaged

 

________________
‘When Fontainebleau was purchased and The Drew was announced I immediately went to Vegas TAT for some information about the original plans for the big blue monstrosity. The website has renderings, videos, and specs about the failed casino project. The initial concept of Fontainebleau was exciting and unlike anything in Las Vegas at the time. The Drew plans piggybacked on this but work never started.’ — collaged

 

____________________
‘Montreux Las Vegas was Phil Ruffin’s proposed replacement for the soon to be demolished New Frontier. The project was expected to open in early 2009. Montreux would have been a 2,750-room “Swiss-themed” hotel with a 104,000-square-foot casino and massive shopping mall linked directly to the Fashion Show Mall. It would have hosted an array of restaurants, bars and nightclubs, and a 465-foot-tall observation wheel (similar to the London Eye), that scooped riders from the floor above the casino.’ — collaged

 

______________________
‘A massive, $5+ billion project—including what would be the largest casino on the Strip—bearing the Plaza‘s name was supposed to open in 2011, but there’s been no construction on the massive lot since the hotel was put on hold in 2008. The plans include: Seven towers containing 6,700 keys (4,100 hotel rooms and 2,600 resort condominium units), 175,900 square feet of casino area (making it the largest casino on the strip), 134,500 square feet of restaurant area, 347,887 square feet of retail area, 539,607 square feet of convention space, a 50,000-square foot health club, a 1,500-seat theater, and 227,038 square feet of open space on the roof top of the podium that includes gardens and pool areas. The grand total for the project includes 3,317,400 square feet of parking garages and a total area of 15,080,846 square feet.’ — collaged

 

_______________________
‘Entertainment designer Gary Goddard submitted an idea to the Las Vegas downtown redevelopment competition back in 1992 to build a full-scale USS Enterprise Resort. “My concept was to do something so large and so epic, it would fire the imaginations of people around the world,” Goddard wrote. If it had actually happened, the Enterprise would have been immense. Goddard claims the $150 million attraction would have been made at full scale, and would have included all the “rooms, chambers, decks and corridors that we knew from the movie.” People would have gotten to dine in Starfleet comfort in its dining area, and some ideas for “interesting ride elements” were kicked around including “a high speed travelator that would whisk you from deck to deck.” Goddard put about five months of effort into the project and had the backing of the Paramount licensing team and the Las Vegas mayor and redevelopment crew, but ultimately it was studio chairman Stanley Jaffe who shot it down. “I don’t want to be the guy that approved this and then it’s a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever,” Jaffe allegedly said.’ — collaged

 

________________
‘In 1975 Martin Stern Jr. proposed the Xanadu, an ultra luxury resort and casino, for the site now occupied by Excalibur. Stern was the designer of the International (now the L V Hilton) and the original MGM Grand (now Bally’s). Xanadu was to have a soaring atrium (like the Luxor’s), 1,730 rooms and many features which were then revolutionary (today’s standard fare). The project was approved by the county. The construction plans were then halted when it was discovered that the sewer lines in the area would not handle the output from such a large project.’ — Vegas Today and Tomorrow

 

______________
‘At a projected cost of $4 billion and covering an eventual 21 million square feet, China, the Chinese-themed Resorts World Las Vegas was originally scheduled for a 2016 debut. Set to be built in stages on the North Strip, and promising a panda exhibit as well as an indoor water-park, might also one day arrive in the far future. Stage one is now estimated to cover 10 million square feet. The “Great Wall Passageway” was to include a “24 hour Chicken N’ Dumplings” spot. Thirty restaurants and bars were ultimately promised. Las Vegas visitation and room demand weren’t exactly booming in those, so if Resorts World had brought its 3,000-plus rooms to fruition, it could have been disastrous.’

 

_______________
‘Conceived in 1998, the idea was to make the WWF Hotel & Casino an immersive shrine to sports-entertainment: not just a place to gamble and sleep, but a full-fledged “Wrestling Disneyland” for adult fans. As WWF CEO (and Vince’s wife & currently heading the US Department of Education) Linda McMahon put it, they wanted to provide their brand of entertainment on the right scale – essentially bringing the action and attitude of Monday Night RAW into a Las Vegas resort.

‘The hotel tower itself was designed as a striking modern slab emblazoned with the WWF’s logo from top to bottom. Early renderings showed a silvery, faceted high-rise with the blocky letters “WWF” stretching stories high – essentially turning the entire building into a giant billboard for wrestling. Plans called for these letters to double as high-tech video screens projecting footage of WWF matches, so that even from afar onlookers could see Stone Cold Steve Austin stomping a mudhole or The Rock delivering a People’s Elbow. Massive branding was the order of the day.

‘The WWF Hotel would not only house static memorabilia (though certainly a Hall of Fame exhibit or wrestling museum was likely in mind), but also feature live entertainment integrated into the experience. In fact, a host of outrageous ideas were floated to make the casino a nonstop wrestling carnival. According to WWF insiders, some proposed attractions included: Live wrestling matches daily in a dedicated arena on the premises (so guests might catch a bout any day of the week). Retired wrestlers as greeters and dealers lending their larger-than-life personalities to the hospitality side – imagine being checked into your room by Captain Lou Albano or having your blackjack dealt by Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart! Even the casino chips and slot machines would carry WWF iconography. One idea was collectible chips featuring the faces of stars like Stone Cold, The Undertaker, etc., turning poker night into a mini wrestling memorabilia show.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ka-ching! Yay, your season is starting. I can feel your excitement. Does that mean our season is starting? I would assume so? Maybe this year I’ll try to peek in more on the goings on. ** Adem Berbic, Big up. Well, the format of those posts necessitates a video extra, so you just better get more ‘you’ videos out there, I guess. I’m fairly good at spotting ‘you-isms’, so we’ll see. Well, the blog having that effect is what it wishes. Well, maybe not on days when I throw up a post like the one today. But everything is fuel, right? ** Steeqhen, Okay, will do. I’m kind of in a noise mood at the moment, but I’ll seek to curtail it. Interesting observations, natch. ** Arno, Arno! Hey, pal! So great to see you! I know Hugo Claus. I’m not sure if I’d know him if I hadn’t lived up there, sadly. Interesting. That short story book is excellent. I don’t know her poetry so well, but I’ve begun an investigation. All’s okay here, especially as of yesterday. You could feel the fall in the background yesterday. It was almost hard to believe. So nice that the poetry is flooding out. I reminder how that felt. Obviously, always chase where the excitement is situated and let the form catch it. Luck with getting the book readied. And take care, and do visit Paris one of these days. xo. ** James Bennett, Well, of course, my, you know, honor and pleasure. Everything that isn’t needed to type what I’m typing right now is crossed. And I type with one finger, so that leaves most of the possibilities. I don’t think I ever think about what a novel is about. Although I guess I must. But it feels like I just trust my impulse and try to stay attentive while I’m typing or something. I think starting to type it is definitely the way to go. Trust your nitpickiness when and if it’s needed. The rain was heavenly. And it’s been almost sort of vaguely heavenly since. Gulp. ** Sarah Palmer, Hi. Oh, okay you’re close by. I saw all of those exhibitions except the Lee Miller. Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature is my favorite thing in Paris, I think. Not sure I can get to Basel, but that’s tempting. As I’m sure you know, Paris is pretty dead art-wise at the moment. The best shows I can remember seeing before the city went on vacation were, let’s see, the Lutz Bacher retrospective in Brussels, Henry Taylor at Musee Picasso, the Fujiko Nakaya fog sculpture at Pinault, and, oh, the tour you can take of Serge Gainsbourg’s house is surprisingly great. I recommend that if that’s all at appealing. We should have a coffee next time you’re here (and I’m here) maybe? ** Tosh Berman, Thanks a bunch, Tosh. ** Bill, The Mansour story collection is pretty wild and terrific. Ah, Philadelphia. ‘Miasma’ still isn’t here yet. Enjoy! ** Thom, The blog gets weird sometimes about comments it’ll ingest. I don’t know if it’s a length thing. Maybe. Sorry. Enjoy being home, and what’s happening? ** Carsten, LA is the best at city + nature combining to my experience. Paris seems alright on that front, but I’m probably easier than you are. I rarely trust critics who use ‘oblique and elliptical’ as negatives. And ‘pretentious’. That’s another clue to a critic’s drawbacks. ** politekid, Well, well, of course, sir, and my nothing but pleasure. Compared to 85% of the fiction going around, it is stylistically precise, etc., and thank fucking god. That makes sense to me. Internal looseness is a value, or, wait, can be. I like Schoenbrun’s films, but I certainly wouldn’t expect that fiction by them would be up my alley. I do think or suspect that their film work is going to get more and more conventional, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I’ll skip the book for now. Thanks. Every director who wants to make a musical out of an interesting book or text or whatever should be tied to a chair and forced to listen to Brecht-Weill until their aesthetics are rewritten. Maybe. Oh, we’re going to show ‘RT’ in London on Halloween. You have to come (if you can/want)! ** laura w., I liked Alex G from ‘Winner’ -> ‘DSU’. That was kind of the endpoint for me. Built to Spill …. no strong feelings. I remember liking them okay but never passionately. Maybe I’ll try them again. In my experience playing ‘Animal Crossing’ kind of eats up everything else, so that seems like it could work. ** Regina, Hi! Your approach to film school sounds very right on. More Arthur J Bressan … interesting. Narrative can be kind of exciting to work with just so long as you don’t let it become your film’s dictator, which of course I know you would never do. Exciting! All the luck and cheerleading you might need. ** Diesel Clementine, Yeah, my life became weirdly full and rather uncontrollable, which it sometimes does. I’m happy you had a great time and lucked out on the weather. Safe trip back. ** HaRpEr //, The Halloween screening is pretty much locked down. We want to do a second screening the next day, but that’s still in question. Wave Books do rule, yep. In my experience, when interesting filmmakers decide to write fiction it’s almost always a huge let down. They surrender their ambitions, and you realise that their idea of what a novel is very conventional and usual. The only exceptions that spring to mind are Eric Rohmer’s novel, which is very interesting, and Korine’s ‘Crack Up at the Race Riots’. ** Steve, Figured. There are pretty good humane mice catching ‘traps’. We have to use them here, and they don’t harm the little fellas at all. Hm, I wonder if a Schoenbrun ‘Nightmare …’ reboot would be a good fit. Not sure. What do you think? ** Uday, There aren’t enough bookshelves in the world to house the books I keep accumulating. It’s kind of a disaster. Weekend? Catch up, work, see whatever stuff is around. We’re talking with a potential producer for our new film this evening, and that will effect my mood which will effect the weekend, no doubt. Dig deep into yours. ** Right. I don’t know exactly why I’ve decided to restore this very easy-peasy old post for you guys today, but I have. Sit back and poke around and relax, I guess? See you tomorrow.

_______________

‘Oscar Nearly’s Fragile July is a photo album in words, recalled mental snapshots of a seemingly endless summer when, aged ten or eleven, they haunted their own suburban house on the edge of an unnamed town, in orbit around their parents, sometimes accompanied by their friend Marcus.

‘Originally written for performance as part of a collaborative art installation event, the book length prose poem is in short, intense, fragments, each self-consciously honing in on a specific incident or place, interspersed with occasional photographs that do not always seem to match the descriptions in the text. There is a similar gentle slippage of memory or construction between parts of the work, where actions produce differing narratives. Behind it all, the sound of the motorway, an ambient background drone.

‘There are layers of memory here. Later on in the book the speaker tells us that ‘It was the summer I started trying to hold onto things. I mean in my mind.’ They didn’t take notes, just concentrated and ‘paid attention to things with a kind of energy and pressure’. It seems to me they are also undertaking this deliberate act of attention in relation to the memories they retain, but are also totally aware of contemporary interpretations and understanding overlaid on said memories.

‘The contemporary narrator is, of course, always present in the text which considers the past. If you pay attention, the book contains omens and signs of what came next – something the reader is not privvy to except being informed that ‘It was the summer before a number of events forced me to move to a smaller house on the other side of the country.’ Notice, the ‘me’ there, not the expected familial us.

‘So we have a long childhood summer, background noise, small omens and a gradual accumulation of events seen through an interpretative web spun from later events, often only hinted at here. Sometimes, however, they are immediately strange. Scarecrows hold bizarre signs – WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN? and HAVE YOU SEEN MUM AND DAD – whilst the narrator’s father is in recovery from drinking and expends energy digging a pit. There is a room in the speaker’s memory where there cannot be one if they believe their recall or photos of the outside of the house, there are dead birds decomposing on the roads, and strange processions of insects carrying their dead.

‘Although presented as cool reportage there are moments of violent action. Toys are destroyed in their father’s fits of anger; Marcus hits his friend in the stomach, calls them a weasel fuck and runs off from their ‘secret place’ behind the coal bunker; and one poem mentions that it is set before their father threw a bowl of spaghetti at them. Perhaps the strangest part of the book is an obsessive list of the songs the neighbours played at one of their loud parties that summer, which spills over several pages, then simply stops.’ — Rupert Loydell

 

Oscar Nearly Site
poltergeist journal of literary and cultural studies
Oscar Nearly @ instagram
Tom Hart’s Bones by Oscar Nearly
Buy ‘Fragile July’

 

Oscar Nearly Fragile July
Broken Sleep Books

‘Fragile July by Oscar Nearly is a prose-poem of obsessive reconstruction, circling a single childhood summer in which the ordinary textures of suburbia, garden games, disposable-camera snapshots, pop songs, and family rituals begin to feel charged with threat. Built from repetition, incremental shifts, and documentary attention to objects and photographs, the text tests how memory hardens into narrative, how evidence both clarifies and corrupts, and how dread can arrive retrospectively as a structure imposed on the past. Its atmosphere is uncanny rather than overtly surreal, with domestic scenes tightening around pits, locked spaces, missing rooms, and half-seen figures at windows, while the book’s origin in performance and installation gives its visual material a parallel weight, making image and recollection contend for authority.’ — BSB

‘Memory is as wilful as weather in Oscar Nearly’s Fragile July, a beautiful, beguiling remembrance of a childhood summer and the storms that circled it. This book swept me up and away.’ — Derek McCormack

Excerpts

Extra

ELECTROPOLIS: Ten Dreams from Bethnal House | Trailer

 

 

______________

‘Sotère Torregian, a self-identified French surrealist, perhaps the only such macédoine extant in North America today, grew up in “No Man’s Land with lots of machine gun bullets flying all over the place,” a place known also as Newark, New Jersey, where he was born in 1941. He lived in a multilingual home where he learned French, Italian, Greek, and Arabic, among other languages. Identifying at an early age with the Africanized Mediterranean, he learned English with difficulty. He received instruction in handwriting and manners at St. Anne’s School in Newark, where he was expelled for kicking a nun.

‘Over the years of his youth he invented himself as a poet, attending readings at New York’s Café Le Metro with Paul Blackburn, Joseph Ceravolo, and David Shapiro and publishing his first poems with Art and Literature (Isere, France), Paris Review, and Ted Berrigan’s magazine “C.” He left the East Coast for California in the late 1960s and taught in the nascent African-American Studies program at Stanford.

‘While attending public schools, Torregian experienced his first taste of racism and the uncomfortable disassociation this can cause. White kids often attacked him because of his mixed African ancestry, while blacks, confused by his identification with Mediterranean cultural traditions, targeted him for trying to pass as white. He took refuge in the library to escape these displays of ethnic hostility. Compelled by his alienation from North American racial roles and performative expectations, he pursued through careful study the traditions and stories bestowed on him at home. But despite his studious nature, he “failed” at poetry, so he says, “for not writing in iambic pentameter. [As happened to] Rimbaud, my teachers claimed I was a dunce.”

‘Perhaps an astrological accident in the house of Cancer preserved Torregian for the muses, despite his teacher’s claim of early poetic failure. Sharing a birthday with one of the great poets of the Negritude movement—Aimé Césaire—Torregian early on identified with the Martinique native. Through such associations, Torregian imagines an interpenetrating world of forms, where personal identification registers across ethnic and racial lines to correspond more intriguingly with dispositions of the soul. His identification with the French surrealist poets also led him toward a path where personal vision, intellectual pursuit, and international movements of art crossed personal boundaries to create a broad and influential current of artistic activity. As this was inflected through Torregian’s imagination, he was able to enter a community of fellow authors, and such imaginative, if hermetic, participation prepared him for his introduction, in the 1960s, to the New York School of poets.

‘In those days many poets congregated at the café Le Metro coffee house on the Lower East Side. There, Torregian met Paul Blackburn and Ted Berrigan, who, he says, taught him more than anybody else. “Ted one day was walking with me,” he recalls, “and he said, ‘Sotère, you’re a great poet but you have one problem: you’re too serious. I love your work, but you’re too serious.’” According to Torregian, “this changed everything. The French,” he continued, “were talking about the pain of love. Ted said, ‘You’ve got to get out of that. Put some laughter in your writing.’ The absurd became more important.”’ — Dale Smith

 

Sotère Torregian @ The Poetry Foundation
Way with Words
Sotere Torregian @ Facebook
Sotère Torregian @ Armenian Poetry Project
Buy ‘Fragmentae’

 

Sotère Torregian Fragmentae
Wave Books

‘Published in the form of a facsimile manuscript, this collection of poems and ephemera by Sotère Torregian invites the reader into the experience of a multiyear correspondence. Employing a variety of languages, scripts, and forms, the diverse materials compose a work that moves deftly across time. Contained in envelopes and presented to reflect the chronology of the making process, Torregian’s poems are interspersed with collages, newspaper clippings, and drawings. An exciting reminder of the material possibilities of poetry, Fragmentae presents an unfolding dialogue that stirs us toward a unique and generous experience of reading.’ — Wave Books

Excerpts

Extra

SOTERE TORREGIAN | 26 MAY 2010

 

 

______________

‘A good art critic can be hard to find. That’s certainly true of Bruce Hainley, one of the most big-brained, stylish and principled practitioners of the discipline to emerge – and, it appears, withdraw – over the last three decades. In the previous collection of his writings, the (also) small-press Pep Talk 5: Bruce Hainley Pep Talk (2011), its editor notes that said volume was her idea, not his, desirous as she was to have a clutch of the American critic/poet’s writings in one pocketable place. Correctomundo, which is being published by a German gallery, concludes with Hainley’s acknowledgement that gallery owner ‘Yvo Cho asked for this book and without him it would not exist’. Related, perhaps: interviewed in Bruce Hainley Pep Talk, Hainley notes that he pivoted towards academia because he didn’t want to support himself writing about art he didn’t like. As time has gone on, Hainley has apparently found less and less art to like and the artworld that surrounds it increasingly dismal. His output, unless I’m missing something, has shrunk, while not infrequently focusing on figures who are elusive or at least tricky themselves: see his last book-length statement, 2014’s vivacious experimental monograph for Semiotext(e), Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face.

‘But now there’s Correctomundo, a suite of 15 scattered essays from the last quarter-century, evidence of Hainley’s aslant, rangy take on what might broadly pass as art crit, or crowbar the discipline open. The opener, ‘In a Year of 13 Moons’ (2024), orbits around the eponymous Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie in a dense, prosodic, allusion scattering way that feels written for the handful of people who’ll get it. 2016’s ‘Dear Vince,’ (assumedly American sculptor Vincent Fecteau) is an epistle-as-essay that floats towards the latter’s art practice on a cloud of shared references, from interior design to gay bars to, perhaps more formally, ‘the sleazy potential of tubes and holes’. So no, you’re not going to miss that Hainley has long literalised Susan Sontag’s call for an erotics of art: he regularly views art through the prismatic of the male body, twisting artistic practices kaleidoscopically. ‘Urine Sample’ (2002) is a quietly polemical essay about Andy Warhol’s Oxidation paintings (1977–78) that, neatly interspersing sections from the artist’s Diaries, pushes back on sombre October-style readings of Warhol’s art as death-fixated to focus on flowing life, to read piss as the vital body in absentia (‘urine is rich in DNA’), gold transmuted: ‘Warhol spent his whole life figuring out how to represent it, the body there and not there, his own, others. Gang bang vs. come on the Ultrasuede’.

‘Yet consider this a peephole glimpse, because Hainley’s writing doesn’t really lend itself to extraction. It at once effervesces and asks to be taken in slowly, sometimes even decoded. Sentences depend strongly on those around them and on the conspiratorial, refusing-to-pander way his essays flow. (So, look some up online.) The creators he hymns in Correctomundo have that resistant integrity too, whether quietly, as in Maureen Gallace’s beautifully stubborn landscapes and obscurant facades of houses, or loudly, in an elegy for the writer Gary Indiana. That slipperiness makes sense, because Hainley is that rare art scribe who often appears not to be looking up at his subjects but across at them: the critic, so Oscar Wilde had it, as artist.’ — Martin Herbert

 

CTMS Studio
GARY INDIANA (1950–2024) BY BRUCE HAINLEY
Bruce Hainley’s 2004 Artforum Top Ten
Book: ‘UNDER THE SIGN OF [ SIC]: STURTEVANT’S VOLTE-FACE’
Buy ‘Correctomundo’

 

Bruce Hainley Correctomundo. Selected Writings 2001-2026
Clementin Seedorf

‘Finally the collection we have been drooling for ! The book brings together fifteen of Bruce Hainley’s luminous essays on artists including André Cadere, Julie Becker, Trisha Donnelly, Vincent Fecteau, Gary Indiana, Monica Majoli, David Hammons, and Andy Warhol, among others. To mark the release of the book, an exhibition opened at Clementin Seedorf in Cologne, featuring works and ephemera by artists on whom Hainley has written, alongside works by Devin T. Mays and Christine Pichini. And the cover is a caress.’ — After8

Excerpts

Extra

Sturtevant – Ephemera from the collection of Bruce Hainley

 

 

______________

‘Powerful, transgressive, and obscene, Mansour’s stories spin an elaborate dance between death and sex, disemboweling the patriarchy (and every other authority figure) in the process. These stories, though written decades ago, are still beautifully unsettling today. This is the path surrealist prose could have taken, if it hadn’t balked.’ –- Brian Evenson

‘Vividly translated by C. Francis Fischer, Joyce Mansour’s prose is erotic, funny, scary, intensive, and grotesque, sometimes all at once. It follows the inclinations of a mind operating in utter inventiveness. Every sentence is unpredictable, every image startling. This must be why there has been such an explosion of interest in her work–as in the work of fellow woman surrealist Leonora Carrington. In extreme times, we need extreme measures, convulsive beauty.’ — Johannes Göransson

‘The new English translation published by City Lights Books of one of her idiosyncratic masterpieces, Satisfied Sarcophagi, once again rightfully draws our rapt attention not only to the often quieter and less recognized place of women amongst the surrealist canon, but also to the writer who I place at the apex of that pantheon. . . . the quintessential literary provocateur and the most daring of all surrealist authors: Joyce Mansour.’ –- Donald Brackett

‘Only recently did English find out that Joyce Mansour was one of the 20th century’s most uncanny and transformative poets, and now comes the revelation that she was also quite the raconteur. Her narrations feel both enigmatic and fated–each word, each image, lashed to the next by libidinous and mortal sinew. C. Francis Fisher’s translation is limpid and fragrant, like a vapor rising over a cauldron of boiling blood. I suspect this collection will soon be recognized as a classic of Modernist fiction–in the Surrealist tradition and beyond. May it be read widely.’ — Kit Schluter

 

Joyce Mansour @ Wikipedia
“Yet Another Dagger Pulsing Under the Rain”: Why We Need Joyce Mansour—and Surrealism
Translating Desire: The Erotic-Macabre Poetry of Joyce Mansour
Excessive Bodies, Shifting Subjects and Voice
Buy ‘Satisfied Sarcophagi’

 

Joyce Mansour Satisfied Sarcophagi: Collected Short Stories
City Lights

‘Mansour portrays a universe of constant transformation and constant violence, weaving an eroticized surrealist texture from unsettling areas of the psyche, replete with Sadean excess, incestuous relations, and her usual complement of bodily fluids. In “Mary, or the Honor of Serving,” the protagonist endures a series of grotesque events, deciding to remain with her murderous lover rather than escape to a banal bourgeois life. “Cancer” depicts a boy’s obsession with an old woman’s hump, which threatens to subsume her. “The Tip” and “Infinitely . . . on the Lawn” explore oedipal struggles, the one featuring a gender-switching protagonist caught between the family maid and his mother, the other a woman and her mother sharing the same lover. Other stories like “Dolman the Evil” and “Sunday Shakes” concern demonic beings of uncertain origin. With Satisfied Sarcophagi–brought into English by noted Mansour translator C. Francis Fisher–Joyce Mansour rightly claims her place as a take-no-prisoners bad-girl progenitor of a growing body of women’s writing known in the 21st century as “fantastic/erotic horror.”’ — City Lights

Excerpt

from Corridors of Madness

Once on firm land, I turned to the right. I could have followed the edge of the red carpet toward the exit door, but I thought absent-mindedly of your teeth. I did not notice the progressive worsening of the decorative mural. I thought of your dentition, the real one, not the one that steeps in water at your lecturer’s desk. I imagined your damaged canines, dressed in porcelain like the Marquise of Saxe, held together by metal threads; spinning, ceremonial, without visible supports or good gums, they were dancing before my eyes and preventing me from getting my bearings. You had lost several teeth recently. Abutment teeth. Others take their shoes off quietly in the shadows of your palace like concierges in their dressing rooms. And still, even without your removable ceremonial teeth (in case of boredom one can take out a fragment without touching the rest) made with magnetized neon and well-oiled rubber, you are by far the most seductive professor.

A placard covered with beautiful writing indicated the direction toward the Room of Capillary Executions. A stitch in my side, at once both moral and physical, made me open the door without hesitation, risking your anger, dear Doctor Jan, who does not like to wait and knows how to show it. I was in absolute need of calm.

“Reason cannot always be controlled by intuition,” I thought as I entered a vast room without a visible ceiling; lumpy clouds flew so low they grazed the eyebrows (I quickly learned the rhythm and, as such, how to avoid them: a clever combination of head movements like those of a Balinese dancer mixed with one watching a tennis match) and lying spread out along the wall like poppies in a priest’s garden, twelve Waffen-SS officers in night uniforms awaited death in a joyless and frustrated silence.

“Shampoo and style,” I said to the pretty receptionist aerating her thighs on her perch. “I don’t have any chairs open at the moment,” she susurrated, gesturing to the SS with her bust and chin. “These gentlemen have priority.” She was not very amiable, but her garters blossomed gracefully on the reddish tiles of her flesh . . .

“We have priority, miss. Even in death we have priority,” said a condemned man with the softness of a muscle that gives way under the pressure of effort. I did not listen. Why resist the storm? My hair could wait. The Germans, melted into a shapeless mass, fearful and clumsy, seemed to have only one stripe on all their pajamas combined: the singularity fell like an empty hour when hope deflates. I put on my sunglasses and, in order to escape all voluptuousness, to banish any shiver of late pity, I gathered additions and multiplications, do-nots and decals. I practiced yoga, inhaled cereal through the nose, notches in the wall, and Venetian dreams.

“I was sterilized by Hitler.” A round of gunfire meant that I missed the rest of the story; the one-eyed Waffen-SS (was he like that before the volley? I will never know how old the wound was) fell at my feel foaming like a camel.

“That’s enough. To hell with flirtation.” I am no longer interested at all in the receptionist’s thighs. She clapped her knees to tell me the interview was over; I returned to the hallway at the exact spot where I left it. Soup time. (“Soup, soup, beautiful soup.”) Unconsciously at first, then more and more allured, moved, overtaken by these events, I followed the little shadow girl, who ran naked on the walls and ceiling (visible and invisible) and, incidentally, on the floor in the hallway, which, ending in a cylindrical cell, spun around itself like a fairground torpedo. The little shadow woman, chubby from the start, was thinning out: her fat, absorbed by osmosis, seemed to feed the walls and the block work of the Strong Room (a sign informed the visitor of the place’s name but not its purpose) and turned more and more quickly, spastically, with shrill little laughs and sighs of dead leaves. I left stealthily, taking care not to be snatched by unbridled tall walls.

“You . . . what do they do in the Strong Room?” I asked the man squatting behind the door.

“Make lady jam,” he told me, without taking his eyes off the newspaper.

“But . . . you. . . ?” He looked at me carefully: “Is it so obvious?”

“What?”

“Every day for twenty years I have tried to enter that room. To see. I need to know what’s at the end of the hallway. Maybe I am reckless. At first, I would dress up. I cheated. I slid between them, those who enter and do not leave. They helped me. I never succeeded but I always tried, without really believing it always; I am not a mark. No. I am trying. That’s all.”

Jan was waiting for me below. “Well, still alive?” he muttered, working on the car. I was surprised to find he did not interrupt my story: “Judging from this tale, my dear, the institution that we are leaving this instant is a madhouse.” He was laughing.

All things considered, I prefer the Sorbonne.

Extra

Joyce MANSOUR – La femme surréaliste

 

 

______________

 

Adem Berbic @ instagram
‘The Question of Blanchot in Beckett’s Three Dialogues and The Unnamable’ by Adem Berbic
Ssnake Press
Velika. Bicikla
Buy ‘Two Stories’

 

Adem Berbic Two Stories
Ssnake Press

‘This debut fiction publication from Adem Berbic follows Nunu and David, two men living out different but related nightmares. Nunu desperately wanders the streets of London, trying to procure crack, heroin and cheap cider. David, meanwhile, is sunk in a solipsism so deep he turns the world around him into a repetitive domestic hell. But we are not merely watching it happen. Berbic’s propulsive prose implicates itself and the reader at every turn, evoking a deep and barely nameless dread.’ — Ssnake Press

Excerpt

Extra

BREATH – interactive audio-visual installation

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Look up. I guess you probably already have. Well, it’s both, isn’t it? There are the things you’re deliberately doing and the things that are hiding in you and from you and see your language skills as a safe place/way to escape. I think you have to let what you have no linguistic or conceptual control over have an equal amount of power. But that’s just me. Wow, to me that sentence doesn’t sound remotely like ‘Closer’. Fear of imitation is almost always nothing but fear. If the London ‘RT’ screening happens, which is looking good at the moment, there’ll be a screening on Halloween night and a second matinee screening the next day on Day of the Dead. At an art space. Cement coming if it gets cemented. I’ve never been very interested in Chabrol, so I don’t know. ** Sarah Palmer, You saw the Lafayette show! Do you live in Paris or were you passing through? Thanks! Best day to you. ** DonW, Hey. Well, up in here in the big P, it’s finally really nice out today, and they say that’ll stick around, so fingers crossed and hydrate repletely until then. Lake, castle … whoop. ** _Black_Acrylic, It sure seems to be so on that name coopting. Dude, that’s such great news about your body’s hanging in there. That must be such a relief. Great, Ben. And, yes, forward motion time. ** i🌙, Happy birthday! Wow, that is a big birthday, but, you know what, nothing really changes other than various things of interest becoming legal. Very cool. It’s a good step, trust me. You can still give off jailbait vibes for a few years if you want to. Hm, don’t know Ines Armand. I’ll check around. Thanks for the writing peek. For some reason my browser is making them very blurry, but I’ll try to get around that or use Chrome or something. I look forward to it. Haven’t read your writing in so long. ** Steeqhen, Big hugs about the rough days. That Phoebe Bridgers album seems to be the album du jour. I’ll try it. I’ve never listened to her for whatever reason. ** Carsten, A good city has some nice reminders of nature scattered amidst its layout. I’m sure there are pitfalls in my approach. But it’s not like I hoard what I’m thinking. Or not usually, I guess. I still run what I’m thinking by friends and so on, but in a calm, inquisitive way. I’ve only ever been in fights when bullies used to beat me up in elementary school. Might be a reason why I’m not drawn to physical outbursts. Interesting about the sacred aspect. The sacred and I don’t have much of a relationship, so that interpretation is a learning experience. ** laura w., The artist says he found the bird dead, but can artists be trusted? Good question? More Phoebe Bridgers. Like I said, I’ve never heard her that I know of. I tend to resist things that are getting very buzzed about like her new album, but I should bite the bullet because I am curious. I quite liked the very early Alex G stuff when it was lo-fi and put out on a tiny label, but not since he cleaned up his sound at all. It has cooled down here today, so I feel like the week starts now. Oh, cozy music … probably a certain strain of artful 90s indie rock — Pavement, Sebadoh, Polvo, Codeine, Superchunk, and so on. Those bands tend to plaster a welcome smile on my face. ** Regina, How is film school being for you? Are you getting the skills and support and comrades you need and want? How will the second year be different from the first? That is very exciting about your upcoming short film! Is it all written and mentally figured out? I hate summer. With a passion, even. Cannot stand it. As for winter though, bring it on! ** Diesel Clementine, Hi! I don’t read French, so no, not too much on the French graphic novel front. I do like the work of Sylvain Bordesoules, who’s the artist who’s doing the upcoming ‘God Jr.’ graphic novel. I’ve never been to a sauna here. I did go to the famous Therme Vals in Switzerland, and it was incredible. But here, no. I think I like being clothed. I’m so sorry to not get in touch. All this stuff has suddenly come up in the last couple of days, and it’s eating my time and attention. If I miss seeing you, it’s 100% my loss. ** Jay, Oh, good! My favorite is ‘Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster’, but I couldn’t find any clips or anything from it, so I couldn’t include it sadly. ‘Shin Godzilla’, wow, I’ll look for that. That sounds incredible. It has cooled down here, so I’m inherently good, I think. Wonderful about the dream piano pieces. I of course don’t know those works by name, but maybe I’ll track them down and stream them and replace the pianists’ fingers with yours. You sound good! ** HaRpEr //, Hey. Like I told Adem, if the screenings happen they’ll be on Halloween night and the next afternoon. I’ll let you know. So far so good. Nolan doesn’t have remotely enough juice to do something fun like that. Not to mention his complete lack of a sense of humor. Past or present tense … yeah, that’s another important decision. Tricky, but that choice really does change the prose. Your thinking re: that is spot on. ** Uday, There are posters all over Paris right now with Simone Weil’s face on them, but I haven’t looked close enough to know what they’re about. I guess an exhibition of her stuff or something. Great news about your friend’s top surgery! A friend of mine had bottom surgery about eight months ago, and it went well, but she’s still healing and dealing consequentially. ** Steve, Charlotte Gainsbourg enunciates her tales in an utterly sincere way, so I can only assume they’re true. That DJ Laserdisc album title is a lot to live up to. ** Okay. Today I give you five books I read of late and loved, including two by people who grace this very blog. As usual, highly recommended that you give said books a shot. See you tomorrow.