Revisiting an early, formative segment with Adrian Rew (Ergot Records) and Carol Parkinson who co-produced Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine from 1983-1993. A subscription to Tellus would get you a bi-monthly cassette in the mail with recordings featuring poets, artists, no wave punks, and new music composers, mostly downtown NYC (though sometimes issues were made up of entirely China-based contributors). ➚Every issue of tellus is online at Harvestworks here. 

A favorite work in Tellus is from issue #22 from 1988 where Gretchen Bender's Artificial Treatment layers multiple outtakes of a television news anchor reporting a gruesome scene, leaving a listener to imagine it. The anchor's well-rehearsed takes synch robotically until each gives way to some all too human mistake. The result is a terrifying and uncanny revelation of the fairly banal process of mediating reality. Bender was not only a great artist, she also worked in mainstream media producing things like Megadeath music videos and the intro to the TV hit America's Most Wanted. 

 

➚Listen to the conversation with Carol and Adrian here.

➚

 

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Considered one of the most influential contemporary artists, Dieter Roth produced artworks in various media, from graphics, drawings, and sculptures, to assemblages / ready-made, sound and music recordings. Dieter Roth's Verlag was founded in 1974.

Featuring: Colette Roper “Piano Pieces” / Dieter Roth “Thy Quatsch Est Min Castello" / Nam June Paik "My Jubilee Ist Unverhemmet"

Colette Roper’s “Piano Pieces”, which was released in 1979, was one of the hardest to find albums among Dieter Roth's Verlag catalogues. Much is unknown about Colette Roper and “Piano Pieces” was her only album. Remastered by Jos Smolder in 2022 and released March 3, 2023 as a split between Art Into Life and Tochnit Aleph/Rumpsti Pumsti (Musik).

From 1977 to 1979 Dieter Roth and Nam June Paik made artistic interventions that manipulated the speed of Arnold Schoenberg's play "Verklärte Nacht, opus 4". Titled "My Jubilee Ist Unverhemmet", Paik's version played the record 4 times slower (on 16 RPM) in a Merce Cunningham dance event. When Roth heard Paik's version, he played "Verklärte Nacht, opus 4" at four times the original speed and recorded this accelerated version as his own piece of music on vinyl. The title of his version is: "THY QUATSCH est min Castello"

From the sleave of Colette Roper “Piano Pieces”:

 

 Nam June Paik’s "My Jubilee Ist Unverhemmet", is slowed up Schoenberg to match a classic immigrant’s tale of great hope followed by disappointment and absurd levels of persistence. I love this story, in his words a pic I took at the Nam Jun Paik museum outside of Seoul:

 

➚Listen to the whole segment here on MPR ---->

➚

 

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As do prayers to a god
Not from faith but desire 
I color these words
With vulgar sacrament
In my devotion to you

신에게 기도하는 대부분이 그러하듯
신앙에서 나온 것이 아닌 
욕망에서 시작된 상스러운 기도문에 
성스러운 음색을 담아 당신께 보냅니다

Go on and reap me, don’t you

거두어 가지 않으시나요, 저를

Born in the birthplace of sin
And here at its furthest reach

죄가 시작된 곳에서 태어나
죄의 끝이 닿아있는 이곳에서

While the season which began with ending my own
Goes on streaming 

스스로 끊어낸 생의 계절이 계속 흘러가는데

Lamentation sinks into travesty
Like smoke trapped in glass flourishes 
In this moment
As I turn only to you 

허망하게 내려앉은 비탄의 울음만이
유리 속에 갇혀 버린 연기처럼 흐드러지는 지금
당신만을 바라봅니다

For what sin or matter
Do I try for death as I live on 
In the fetters of contradictions
In search of you if you ask

무슨 죄로 무슨 일로
죽으려 하면서도 살아가는 모순의 굴레에 갇혀
당신을 찾느냐고 물으신다면

No answer can be given
아무런 대답도 하지 못합니다

Poor days
Unfinished and 
Rested on is yesterday falling
As today I wait on wordlessness
And tomorrow that won’t be met

가렶은 시절
끝내지 못한 바람에
기대어 쓰러지는 어제와
무언을 기다리는 오늘
그리고 마주치지 않을 내일

Do they tremor because the sun hasn’t risen 
Do they tremor because the moon hasn’t risen 

태양이 뜨지 않아 흔들리는 것인지
달이 뜨지 않아 흔들리는 것인지

Between stomping and darkness
I dance hanged by the neck
And ask you

밟음과 어둠 그 사이에서 
목을 매고 춤을 추며
당신께 묻습니다

For I’m childless
If I instead burn my soul in Gehenna
Do I get what I want

나는 아이가 없으니
대신 영혼을 게헨나에서 불태우면
원하는 것을 얻을 수 있나요

Could life be on my terms

내가 원하는 삶을 살 수 있나요

I will forsake/betray my god
And come to you

내가 모시던 신을 버리고
당신께 가겠습니다

For it is already bent and raveled here
Where I can neither live nor die with an innocent mind

이미 어긋나 뒤엉켜버린 이곳에서 
순수한 마음을 지키며 살지도 죽지도 못하기에

As in to go extinct for the end never arrived
종말 하지 않아 멸종되는 것처럼

 

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Listen ➚here to the whole poetry reading, from under votive statue of the Gangnam Style Hands at The Gangnam Mall, organized by ➚Fuckery Poetry Group  ➚-->

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Games are sculpted experiences of practicality. What’s interesting about games is that if they are sculpted practicality, ➚then the beauty emerges in the practical action. So when you play a game, it’s not the game that’s beautiful, it’s YOU that’s beautiful!

Listen to ➚Ficus Interfaith reading about The Royal Game of Ur, the ➚oldest gameboard we know of (but don't entirely know the rules of). You hear them playing few rounds on the terrazo gameboard they made too. And then go see their ➚show up now at Deli Gallery

Segment ➚here and transcript here -->

Read More

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We're rethinking standards of all kinds with Nicky Harris' new regular show 'Dive Lounge'. Listen to the ➚first episode with Bianca Wilson aka Island Girl playing and talking about diasporic folk tunes like ➚When I Was in My Prime and an Appalachian standard about hens laying eggs for railroad men (sometimes one sometimes ten). And then On May 18th, 'Dive Lounge' is ➚LIVE at Ormside Projects with Isabel Muñoz-Newsome, Cassandra, and special guests covering the classic lounge standard inspired by Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face' cover . For the Anglo-illiterate, the project is, of course, a play on BBC's ‘Live Lounge’ format but gayer and an altogether more fun in homage to South East London's queer cabarets. Get your tickets and deets ➚here.

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The most recent episode of The Harry Tafoya Show is with ➚Drew Sawyer, curator of ➚Jimmy DeSana: Submission, currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, and writer/curator ➚Jerret Earnest. They talk about coming to DeSana's work through kink, ➚Ray Johnson, ➚Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, and what we can learn from these artists lives today as New York reconfigures our relationships around commerce, scarcity, and competition.

Drew also wrote ➚a book of the same title with this in it's desciption: 

DeSana’s first major project was 101 Nudes, made in Atlanta during the city’s gay liberation movement. After moving to New York in 1973, DeSana became immersed in queer networks, collaborating with General Idea and ➚Ray Johnson on zines and mail art, and documenting the genderqueer street performances of Stephen Varble.

By the mid-1970s, DeSana was a fixture in New York’s ➚No Wave music and film scenes, serving as portraitist for much of the period’s central figures and producing album covers for Talking Heads, James Chance and others. His book Submission, made with William S. Burroughs, humorously staged scenes out of a S&M manual that explored the body as object and the performance of desire. DeSana was also an early adopter of color photography, creating his best-known series, Suburban, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This body of work explores relationships between gender, sexuality and consumer capitalism in often humorous, surreal ways. After DeSana became sick as a result of contracting HIV, he turned to abstraction, using experimental photographic techniques to continue to push against photographic norms."

 

➚Listen in the archive here --->

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