i've been very bad about posting here, I know, but it's because I've been busy with a bunch of things. One of these is a chapbook being published by Aqueduct Press, which is out now!
(Although someone pointed out that, because it's perfect bound, it's not technically a chapbook.)
Yay! My little book, called Slightly Behind and to the Left: Four Stories and Three Drabbles, and is available NOW at Aqueduct Press' website! (Click on the "orders" button and scroll down.)
Right
now, for the holidays, the book, usually $12, is $9, so get it now!
Also, the book is part of a series called "Conversation Pieces," which
you can subscribe to at $80 for 10 consecutive subscriptions (and you
can choose which title to start with.) I've read a handful of these
titles and they're all worth it, so you might consider a subscription,
or make it a gift for the feminist or progressive geek in your life.
I've been working with Kaya Press for about a year now, and we've produced two book trailers, each one for a book that it's really difficult to describe in words. The one above is for our new title -- available next week -- HYPERART: THOMASSON by Genpei Akasegawa. Akasegawa is a Japanese conceptual artist -- a contemporary and colleague of Yoko Ono -- who came up with the concept of "Thomassons" in the late seventies, early eighties.
When an urban structure loses its usage, but remains standing, attached to the property it used to serve, and still being aesthetically maintained, then it is a "Thomasson." We're talking about staircases that lead to nowhere, bricked up ticket windows, outside doors in the third story of a building, etc. Akasegawa contends that these things are not stairs, windows, and doors, but rather art shaped like stairs, windows, and doors: unintentional art created by the city; hyperart.
He and his colleagues refined the name to "Thomasson" because at that time, 1982, American baseball player Gary Thomasson was playing for the Japanese team the Yomiuri Giants ... or rather, NOT playing, because he couldn't seem to manage to hit a ball. Yet they still paid him to be there. Akasegawa thought him the perfect, living hyperart, and named the whole phenomenon after him.
In the mid-eighties, Akasegawa had a column in a Japanese photo magazine about Thomassons, where he accepted submissions of thomassons: photographs, and descriptions. He published these and discussed whether or not they were thomassons, why, and what kind. These columns were eventually collected into a book in the 80's which quickly became a cult classic among Japan's youth.
This publication is the first time that Hyperart: Thomasson has been translated. To mark the occasion, translator Matt Fargo created a Thomassons website where people can submit their own thomassons, as well as vote on whether or not submissions are thomassons, and discuss these.
And I'm working with Kearny Street Workshop to develop a guided performance tour of local San Francisco thomassons. The project is called "SF Thomassons" and there's a special page on Matt's Thomassons website for local exemplars from our stable of photographers.
And finally, Kaya and KSW are having a book launch partay on December 18 in San Francisco, where you can get a free preview of the tour. Yay!
i think I've found my new favorite blog (sorry Pruned!):
I've been working with Kaya Press (I'm doing publicity for them, freelance) an awesome, high-quality indie book press for Asian/Pacific Islander/API diaspora books. They published poet/novelist Sesshu Foster's first collection of poems, City Terrace Field Manual, an amazing work of landscape writing about the people and stories that inhabit a particular piece of L.A.
Sesshu's also been on my hit list for a long time because his second book was the novel Atomik Aztex, an alternate history which switched a Latino L.A. meatpacker back and forth between two parallel universes: this one, and one in which he was an Aztec prince in a world in which the Aztecs had beaten the conquistadores and ended up an atomic power. So up my alley.
I supposed someone could make a book or zine out of this, but then you'd have to fuss with permissions, and expenses, and stuff. I think this is exactly the sort of art/writing that blogs enable, and I want to see more more more! I kiss it!
i'm genuinely uncertain of the purpose of the article, but the BBC News reported recently on a nonfiction prize given to a Brit research fellow for a book she's writing on the history of the UK's Ordnance Survey, the body that mapped the Isles. The article is actually the fellow's (Rachel Hewitt's) thoughts on the book and why she wrote it.
Founded in 1791, it was the product of a very different type of
revolution: the French Revolution and its threat to English's south
coast.
A military survey became essential, and the Ordnance Survey was born.
It was also a revolution in itself. The OS was the very first
complete, accurate map of the British Isles conducted on a uniform
scale. The story of its birth and progress is therefore a story of the
history and identity of the United Kingdom and its landscape.
... British writers found themselves enamoured with Ordnance Survey maps
from the start. William Wordsworth befriended the early surveyors; Jane
Austen adored the sense of order that the maps gave to the nation in an
otherwise disorderly, revolutionary period; and, more recently, Brian
Friel has considered the OS's Irish map to encapsulate the brutal,
imperial nature of England's rule.
I am writing a 'biography' of this iconic national institution.
Her whole article is weirdly fragmented and nonlinear, and it's hard to figure out why they asked her to publish the piece, rather than just interviewing her and writing a more coherent -- and cohesive -- article.
But I'm still interested in the book, and may request a review copy when it comes out next year.
Speaking of reviews, up next is a review of Experimental Geography as soon as I get some room in my schedule to breathe.
My undergrad thesis argued that world-building wasn’t just for
fantasy and sci-fi writers—every tale has a setting, every tale creates
a world in the reader’s mind—and it explored ways that drawing that
world (visual thinking!) can lead to better fiction.
Some of my favorite “lit’ry” books are accompanied by maps.
I'vetalkedbeforeonthissubject and have nothing new to say at this time, but check out the post for images and links to other maps, especially in Kleon's previous posts, and in the comments section.
i'm back, but I'm bad. Tired, fighting off a bug, catching up on work, etc.
What's coming up: I've finished (finally) The Death and Life of Great American Cities and plan on putting a cap on that, blogging-wise.
Also, the Princeton Architectural Press was silly enough to send me some free books (dere beeyootiful!) and I need to do right by them. (I started getting sent a few books over a year ago by folks and never got around to posting about those and I feel extra guilty, so I'm correcting the error. I think ...) They asked me if I wanted the two below and I said yes, and they threw in another one gratuitously, which I reviewed here. (Bet they're regretting that now, huh?)
Right now I'm in the middle of Hyper-Border: The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and its Future by Fernando Romero/LAR. "LAR" is not a verbal ejaculation, much as I would like to do that to my name ("Claire Light/Arrrhhh!"), but rather the architectural firm he founded. And yes, the book required a design firm as co-author; if they offer you a review copy, say yes, is all I'm sayin'.
This book review will be followed by a couple of posts on the theme of the Mexico/US border and art, which have been waiting for me to get my azz in gear.
After that, dunno. I have some aging ideas about transportation I finally want to get to, but I might get distracted by shiny baubles. Plus, I never keep my blogging promises.
"... and he evenutally created this map, which is where the title of the book comes from, that showed, in a sense, all the deaths in this neighborhood radiating out from this single point on the map ... and so at this moment of great terror and death and destruction, a new clarity emerges ..."
The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.
-- George Orwell
Geography and space are always gendered, always raced, always economical and always sexual. The textures that bind them together are daily re-written through a word, a gaze, a gesture.
-- Irit Rogoff
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