The Reading List, 2nd Edition

I decided to start keeping track of my rambling reading and to read list on this blog. You can see my first post, here: The Reading List, 1st Edition.

• An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’, “The spectacle can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser”, by Tiernan Morgan & Lauren Purje, August 10, 2016. https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/

“Being is replaced by having, and having is replaced by appearing.” I’m mashing this up in my head with the MariKondo method, haha. And also Alonzo Bodden on Jan 19th’s episode of Wait, Wait …Don’t Tell Me! saying MariKondo method is another reason black people think white people are crazy–getting rid of perfectly good stuff. Sorry I can’t quote it directly, but I heard it on air and don’t see a transcript posted for that episode yet. This points out the privilege inherent in consumerism, for sure. More thoughts on that at a future date.

“The proliferation of images and desires alienates us, not only from ourselves, but from each other. Debord references the phrase “lonely crowds,” a term coined by the American sociologist David Riesman, to describe our atomization.”

I remember reading The Society of the Spectacle in school. Refreshing it in my mind now, 10+ years later, I see how much the Spectacle has evolved. The film They Live (1988) also comes to mind, with its OBEY billboards that certainly inspired Shepard Fairey. It’s a ridiculous movie, but fun.

“At the heart of Debord’s critique is his belief that capitalism is an inherently uncreative system. The obsession with profit demonstrably works against human interest, especially when it comes to the protection of the environment. In Comments, Debord quotes Daniel Verilhe, a representative of Elf-Aquitaine’s chemicals subsidiary, who, at a conference regarding a ban of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) argued that it would take at ‘least three years to develop substitutes and the costs will be quadrupled.’ ‘As we know, this fugitive ozone layer, so high up, belongs to no one and has no market value,’ scoffs Debord.”

• Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, Ed. by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, Open Humanities Press, London, 2015.

This is an actual book I’ve been very slowly reading, looking up a lot of words, and digesting. I was particularly struck by the Dear Climate Project posters, however, any of which you can download and maybe not print (for the environment) yourself.

Others, to Be Explored

The readings below are drawn from looking back through the Facebook Group, The Printmaking Professors Network, on posts where various printmakers are requesting readings for students on print-related topics. Phyllis McGibbon is usually killin’ it in the comments with many great suggestions, so props to her and the folks of this group!

• http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/11292018/do-copiers-dream-electrostatic-sheep?fbclid=IwAR3iw_jrXGK-itRQ_TzcOoatgItoFyHwpI54OXCabb2VglLgj_0nZDouFeI
• MIT/Whitechapel book, “Failure”, from Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (I own this but want to refresh myself on it)
• Agnes Martin, http://www.artnews.com/2015/07/31/what-we-make-is-what-we-feel-agnes-martin-on-her-meditative-practice-in-1976/?fbclid=IwAR0YiwyBGW3_taIhI-fAuWK0aa0ukl5jTJ_-H6J94zlWBuIQQSNeWjxnSPo
• Sherry Turkles anthology Evocative Objects:Things we think with, from MIT press
• Wolfgang Laib, on repetition
• Walter de Maria’s short passage “Meaningless Work” from 1960
• ”Unfinished Business: The Problem of Resolution in Printmaking” from The Unfinished Print, (National Gallery of Art Catalogue) Peter Parshall, 2001
• Comment from P. McGibbon, “And how can I resist recommending a chapter from poet Jane Hirshfield’s ‘Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry’? The one that I most love to re-read with print students is, ‘The Question of Originality’ but I also love the intro chapter also talks about the process of concentration and distillation, which you can connect to the state/proofing process as well.”
• And I believe I did order some Hirshfield (above) and this for our library at Southeast, Lia Purpura (“On Looking” has an essay, “Recurrence/Concurrences”)
• And I did actually read this one! But my memory is so bad… “‘Practical Epistomology, Life in the Studio’ by Wm Kentridge in his book, Six Drawing Lessons. He links early cinema, printing and his process of walking / working in the studio.”, comment by Susan Schmidt
• Chapter 2, “Original Copies” from Martha Buskirk’s book “The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art (McGibbon)
• “Printmaking: Editions as Artworks”, by Timothy Van Laar, 1980, on JStor
• “…Aberdeen based social anthropologist Tim Ingold? His book, “The Life of Lines” (Routledge) 2015″ (McGibbon)
• June Wayne, “Broken stones and Whooping Cranes”, The Tamarind Papers
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/science/louis-pasteur-chirality-chemistry.html?fbclid=IwAR0zCKt32JrWkbT-i7U7TIjybzag2fKADovqF22Qbov6R5vEzYODR6WFDzs
• Ruth Weisberg’s 1986 essay “Syntax of the Print”, The Tamarind Papers (Beauvais Lyons)
• Jennifer L Roberts, namely, “Jasper Johns/in Press : The Crosshatch works and the logic of prints” (McGibbon)
• Mokoshop, a wiki for the fine arts and humanities, https://monoskop.org/Monoskop?fbclid=IwAR00_70ibONmHjwf3R5YanRichDn85xoDcsn7v-iP8NvoJ0pozwn5gNlbN0
• Barthes ‘Death of the Author’ (Swainston)
• The first chapter of Deleuze and Guattari ‘1000Plateaus’ (Swainston)
• Collaorative Woodcut Prints: https://www.pineferoda.co.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0Y0fxpNdIpEwNXec8ZajvtRFhL7Wn4ZoXVy19928Ik61IFst286d3T8BY (Lenny Lane)
• Jane Hirshfield’s book, “Ten Windows” (McGibbon)

“One of the penalties and graces of consciousness is waking each day to the awareness that the future cannot be predicted, that the universe’s foundation rests on an incomprehensible receding, that bewilderment, caprice and the unknowable are among the most faithful companions of any life. Mostly, its sees we go on by inventing a story…..[ ] For those will to let themselves feel it, any story leaves behind an uneasiness, sometimes at the center, other times at the edges of perception, and like the remainder left over in a problem in long division, it must be carried.”

• Borges is often suggested, “Circular Ruin” and “Garden of Forking Paths,” which I have read as a part of his Collected Short Fiction, but this was back around 2010, so I need some refreshing.
• https://indianareview.org/2015/06/what-is-comics-poetry-by-alexander-rothman/?fbclid=IwAR213-_r6gckT-v-Ak_5AcmIH0m-z1hRYeOJsB58cj9yA0imFqGoAkRKcwk (Kathleen Hudspeth)
• http://www.philobiblon.com/isitabook/literature/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1rVbe-1iq_lGRBhS1cepj7CwjaS-WFXKMSLpLQ363IM6nfc-B4l59PFhc (Arron Foster)
• Ruben Castillo wrote on the group page, “Sara Ahmed’s book, The Promise of Happiness. It’s her chapter titled ‘Happy Futures’ in which she tries to answer how we can envision a future for queers to be happy when the present looks bleak and the future looks bleaker. She establishes a definition of Happiness rooted in chance and ambiguity and analyzes the film Children of Men for its depiction of a bleak future and the narrative strategies in that film that we could implement in our own lives. Her definitions of happiness and analysis on the symbolisms and actions in the film could be helpful for students to see how their own symbolisms and subject matter could provide ambiguous potentials for viewers.

  “This essay is also included in the anthology Queer Times, Queer Becomings.”

• The Object (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art, by Antony Hudek (Editor), Iwona Blazwick (Series Editor), (Matthew T McLaughlin)
• And Beauvais Lyons put together this great page, “An Annotated Bibliography for Contemporary Printmaking”, http://art.utk.edu/printmaking/resources/print_bibliography/?fbclid=IwAR3OzdjlcNh8HsbCPcYVsTroVVHFP8Iqt7ze3ZiA5-AvnTFw-2iHT4ATgu8
• Charles Cohan’s essay “The Net of Irrationality: The Variant Matrix and the Tyranny of the Edition,” Contemporary Impressions, Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 1993, pp. 9-11. also Hillel Swartz’ book from 1998: The Culture of The Copy. (Beth Grabowski)
• Nicholas de Warren, “Ad infinitum: boredom and the play of imagination”. 2004 essay from the catalogue, ” Infinite possibilities : serial imagery in 20th-century drawings” edited by Chavez. Davis Museum and Cultural Center (Wellesley, Mass.) (Phyllis McGibbon)
• “Original copies” Chapter 2 from Martha Buskirk’s MIT press book, “the Contingent Object of Contemporary Art” (McGibbon)
• https://justseeds.org/product/paper-politics-socially-engaged-printmaking-today/?fbclid=IwAR1rVbe-1iq_lGRBhS1cepj7CwjaS-WFXKMSLpLQ363IM6nfc-B4l59PFhc (Corinne Teed)

To Be Continued!