![Photo of Erik Lopes by Ben Schot [Rotterdam, 2013].](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/rotterdam-dress-code560.jpg)
Ben Schot, Straight Up’s man in Rotterdam, sent the photo. He noted in an email message: “I met the kid in the street on my way to the post office exactly in the spot where the graffiti was. Spooky figure, especially at night when the skeleton print on this suit lights up in the headlights […]
A Great One Died Today
![Norman O. Mustill and 'OU,' one of his large collages from the 1960s. [Photo: JH, 2007]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/mustill-and-OU-400.jpg)
Click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click again.
‘Every Crumb Can Become a Piece of Cake’
Here are a couple of Hanne Lippard’s vocal tone poems. She combines a voice and accent to kill for with a witty, whimsical sense of humor. The words and the way she says them are a kick.
A Thanksgiving Team: Burroughs & Mustill, Redux
A Straight Up tradition continues. William S. Burroughs’s words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day paired with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. Look and listen. It’s delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts — thanks for a Continent […]
Antwerp Public Linguistic Poem
“It doesn’t matter what happens. I like it when there are accidents. If anybody starts to argue that’s OK. … This is a public poem. This is the work I do for 45 years. I am completely meshuga. I do one every year.” — Alain Arias-Misson
Prick Up Your Ears for Hanne Lippard
Click to listen.
Paris Bookfair Focuses on New Practices in Art
14 Rue Bonaparte, from Nov. 14 to 17. Open to the general public. Free admission. Postscript: Nov. 23 — The bookfair was jammed. Very impressive. The lecture hall was a19th-century amphitheater in back of the main hall.
Einstein’s Brain
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.
Some Notes Toward ‘Death in Paris’
Not long ago Walter Hartmann sent me photos of several Moleskin notebooks that our cherished friend Carl Weissner left behind when he died. They’re captivating. Many of the handwritten notes made their way into Death in Paris, Carl’s bravura novel about a serial killer. “It is not quite natural for a guy around 50 who’s […]
Harold Norse: ‘Take a Chance In The Void’
Via sloowtapes: During the early ’60s Harold Norse was living in Paris at 9 rue Git-le-Coeur, later known as the Beat Hotel. Also living there were William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Gregory Corso, and Sinclair Beiles. All of them experimented with cut prose, a form of collage applied to texts and audiotapes. Norse made the technique […]
Gay ‘Kit’ Marlowe: Poet, Spy, Elizabethan Proto-punk
LATEST UPDATE: Sept. 1 — “Killing Kit” is to be staged in a London try out. The production opens at The Cockpit on Sept. 21. FURTHER UPDATE: Feb. 15 — The reading came off well, I’m told. Somebody in The Cockpit audience tweeted: “Beautiful, meaty, dangerous Elizabethan play for today’s Elizabethans. Real writing. Great night.” […]
New From Cold Turkey: ‘Pricelessly Outrageous’
!['Le Regard d'Autrui' by Carl Weissner [Cold Turkey Press, 2013]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Le-Regard-DAutruifrontcover360.jpg)
When Carl Weissner died, unexpectedly, he was only 71. “Le Regard d’Autrui,” now published for the first time, posthumously, by Cold Turkey Press, was written in English. Why in English and why with a French title are unclear. What is clear, however, is that the tale shows him to have been a master storyteller as […]
Algren Actually Had Some Hope for Kerouac, at First
![Nelson Algren's review of 'On the Road' [Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 8,1957]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ALGREN-on-ON-THE-ROAD240.jpg)
Anyone interested in Nelson Algren’s opinion of Jack Kerouac would get the impression from an item I posted several years ago that he was less than enamoured of him. Which would be accurate. After all, the item — about Algren’s indelible review of Kerouac’s 1965 novel Desolation Angels — was titled “The Beats Left Algren […]
Chris Burden Saved From the ‘Clutches of History’
![“America” featuring 625 painted-cardboard submarines [1987]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Burden-Navy-Ships.jpg)
Roberta Smith really digs the Chris Burden show at the New Museum. “Extreme Measures” is not only “a superb survey, but also a kind of transfiguration,” she writes in her NY Times review. “It liberates the Los Angeles-based Mr. Burden from the clutches of history.” I’m uncertain of what she means by the “clutches of […]
Two Poe Shows — One at the Morgan, One on Paper
Not being a Poe man myself, I asked a friend who happens to be an avid Poe man, how he would describe him. His reply — “The best writer, the best bad writer, America ever produced” — was pretty much a capsule preview of Charles McGrath’s excellent feature in this morning’s NY Times about the […]
Heathcote Williams: ‘My Dad and My Uncle’
![Royal Artillery gun crews and Howitzers WWI at Lydd [Bill Hyde collection].](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/My-Dad-and-My-Uncle-howitzer-1-.jpg)
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. Written upon learning that WWI centenary Remembrance plans are to be given £50 million by the UK government.— BBC News, 11 October 2012 My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One. At least they were in it, but not in it: Conscripted but […]
Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’
2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014.