Thursday, February 14, 2008

Saturday 2/16 launch for Area Sneaks



Area Sneaks, a new journal edited by Joseph Mosconi and Rita Gonzalez, is another in the list of excellent publications coming out of the Los Angeles poetry community these days. The first issue is quite a treat, with visual art and poetry in equal mixes. One of the goals of the editors is to create further contact between the worlds of visual art and poetry, which as we all know can tend to keep to their own little corners of production.

This weekend I'll be at the Area Sneaks Launch Party for issue #1 in Los Angeles, and if you're anywhere nearby, come on out and join us for what should be a fun event. If you can't make it, I hope you're doing something similarly enjoyable. Here are the details just in case you don't have them:

From the swell mob, we diverge to the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, public-house dancers,
area-sneaks, designing young people who go out 'gonophing,' and other 'schools.'
—Charles Dickens

Launch party for ISSUE ONE of AREA SNEAKS magazine

Saturday February 16, 2008
7 - 9pm

LAXART
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034

www.laxart.org

Featuring readings and performances by:
artist STEPHANIE TAYLOR
poet ANDREW MAXWELL
musician PETER KOLOVOS

The historical relationship between art and language has often occasioned lively and compelling work. AREA SNEAKS, a new print and online journal, seeks to touch the live wire where language and visual art meet.

Gertrude Stein's Paris artist salon, Velemir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Tatlin's constructive collaboration, Bernadette Mayer and Vito Acconci's editorial partnership, Augusto de Campos's concrete engagement with Brazilian modernism and Mike Kelley's interest in systems of literary knowledge have each provided potential models of positive exchange between artists and writers. AREA SNEAKS hopes to maintain this dialogue by creating a fellowship of discourse within an open community of contemporary artists and writers.

ISSUE ONE Contents

Essays by Stan Apps on "social art" and Daniel Tiffany on "infidel culture and the politics of nightlife"

Interviews with artists Stephanie Taylor (conducted by Kathryn Andrews and Michael Ned Holte) and Scoli Acosta (conducted by Joseph Mosconi and Rita Gonzalez)

Artist projects by Marie Jager, William E. Jones and Christopher Russell

Poetry by Sawako Nakayasu, Mark Wallace, Andrew Maxwell, Therese Bachand, K. Lorraine Graham and Ian Monk

The first appearance in English of Emmanuel Hocquard's long prose poem "The Cape of Good Hope"

Visual poems by Ben & Sandra Doller

Stephanie Taylor received her M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 2000. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally and is represented by Galerie Christian Nagel, Germany and by Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles. Her book, "Chop Shop" was published by Les Figues Press in 2007.

Andrew Maxwell is a poet, linguist, translator, lexicographer and former bullfight promoter. From 1997-2004 he co-edited seven issues of the occasional poetry journal The Germ, directed the Poetic Research reading series out of Dawson's Bookstore in central LA, and was drummer for the experimental music ensembles The Curtains and Open City. He currently DJs the show "The Dream of Harry Lime" Wednesday nights on KXLU. His poems, essays and translations can be found in Fence, Jubilat, The Hat, Arsenal and Poésie.

Peter Kolovos is a free sound artist from Los Angeles, CA. Over the last decade he has developed an intensely personal sound vocabulary based on raw texture, volume, and duration. The result has been physical, abstract work that constantly shifts and evolves in real time. The mechanisms of impulse, memory, intent, restraint laid bear. He has performed throughout the United States both individually and as part of the group Open City. He has also released vinyl as well as CD recordings through his Thin Wrist imprint. His first solo LP will be released later this year by the Belgian Ultra Eczema label.

www.areasneaks.com

Editors: Rita Gonzalez and Joseph Mosconi



5 comments:

Sandra Simonds said...

thanks for posting this, Mark. I'm always thrilled about what comes out of my native megapolis. great stuff.

mark wallace said...

I didn't realize you were from L.A., Sandra. What made you decide to leave?

Sandra Simonds said...

Yup. I went to UCLA for my undergraduate degree and then got into the University of Montana for my MFA--so that's the major reason for leaving. I miss everything that surrounds LA (mountains, desert, ocean) and sometimes, the city itself.

Are you from LA?

mark wallace said...

I've just lived in southern California about two and a half years now. Came here because of a job. I grew up in the Washington DC area and lived there in the city until summer 2005. My father grew up in the California desert in the town of Thousand Palms, so I often spent summers in California as a boy.

I'm sure L.A. would love to have you back, Sandra. There's a lot of great poetry activity there these days.

Sandra Simonds said...

hahaha. that city tried to kill me multiple times! if i return, what's to say she won't succeed?