The Remains of Day: A Documentary Investigation into the Art of DIY Conceptualism
BlazeVOX Books has released a video that will go down in history alongside gems like Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams. I highly recommend it. (Click here for a larger version.)
PLUS! BlazeVOX has also released their proprietary PDF template for Day. Roll your own conceptualism!
As I said a few days ago, the great Conceptual artist is Geoffrey Gatza.
Mark Scroggins, one of the major names in Zukofsky scholarship, has already commented at his blog on all this (and you can’t blame me for posting it here!). Thanks for your nice words, Mark.
**
>I suspect much of the discussion time in my graduate workshop this evening will be devoted to Kent Johnson’s Day, his “retread” of Kenneth Goldsmith’s Day, the dogged typing-up in 836 pages of every word of a single issue of the New York Times. In an upping of the conceptual ante, Kent & the folks at BlazeVox Books have simply slapped new stickers on existing copies of Goldsmith’s book, announcing the work as Johnson’s & adding BlazeVox to the publishers’ credits. (You can watch BlazeVox’s Geoffrey Gatza actually doing this, interspersed with hits – er, “puffs” – on a handsome little pipe, on a video here.)
I’ve known Kent for maybe 15 years now; he contributed an excellent essay to the Upper Limit Music LZ collection – that was back around the time the Yasusada business was in the works – but we’ve been in only intermittent touch since. I admire gadflies, & Kent is the best gadfly contemporary American poetry has. (I don’t count William Logan, whose brand of nay-saying has little to do with Carlyle & lots in common with the teabaggers – & is light-years away from Johnson’s Wildeanism.)
Has Geoffrey ever been experienced? It would seem so.
Don’t know why everyone has to pile on Logan all the time—as if he weren’t a) a terrific stylist & b) right more often than he’s wrong.
WL is complicated. More of a button-pusher than a gadfly, I think. If he is a gadfly, what’s his argument? I’ve stated my guess elsewhere — poets don’t say enough worth saying, and are too easily satisfied with what amounts to serving as cartoon mascots for some aspect of their identities. (Forgive the plural confusion there.)
I wouldn’t presume to summarize Kent’s general argument. I mean, I know he’s been vocal about poets’ relative complacency when international crimes are committed in their country’s name, and I also know he’s concerned with the author position as the basis for what he characterizes as collusion to accumulate cultural capital. But I feel as though there is a larger point at work, that there’s a special meaning to the project that I haven’t yet seen clarified. Just talking here, trying to make something of all this experience and misreading I’ve been doing all these years.
I would put Eliot Weinberger up there among the gadflies, but I may not be enough of a gadfly-collector to say.
Re gadflies: you all remember this from Moody’s Pound bio? Pretty terrific…
Anyone able to translate this, just roughly? Please back-channel, if so.
Kent
*
29 Sep
De oneindig zich herhalende Dag
Artikel geschreven door: Jeroen Nieuwland (0) Reacties
Een imitatie van een imitatie van een fictief verhaal. Oftewel, (in dit geval) zou men met Oscar Wilde kunnen zeggen, ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.’
In een bekend verhaal van Jorge Borges, schrijft een fictieve Pierre Menard de gehele Don Quichote woord voor woord foutloos over. Menard’s versie is natuurlijk veel rijker aan verwijzingen, omdat het uit bijna vierhonderd jaar meer geschiedenis kan putten dan het origineel.
Kenneth Goldsmith deed er voor Day een jaar over om een dag uit een krant over te typen (en hij scande ook grote delen).
Nu heeft Kent Johnson, meester van de literaire zwendel (een sortement literaire Sokal) Day, de al nageschreven krant, in zijn volledigheid nageschreven. Het boek is te koop voor $30 (redelijke prijs; Goldsmith’s Day kost $20), compleet met gefabriceerde blurbs (niet)geschreven door Juliana Spahr:
If the 836-pp. Day established Kenny Goldsmith as without a doubt the leading conceptual poet of his time, the 836-pp. Day by Kent Johnson may well be remembered for nudging the politics of Conceptual Poetry out of blithely affirmative, institutional framings, and into truly negational, critical spaces.
Christian Bök:
With Day, Kent Johnson claims his place as one of the major figures of this new writing, showing, in single move, how Conceptual Poetry has been nearly forty years behind the politics of Institutional Critique.
en Kenneth Goldsmith zelf:
Indeed, Kent Johnson’s Day stands as the first Conceptual gesture of its kind in the history of American poetry: An open, literal theft of an entire “book,” exhibited without shame, as a new and strange Work of Art in our Museum of Modern Poetry. I can only tip my hat.
The last part says:
and Kenneth Goldsmith says:
Indeed, Kent Johnson’s Day stands as the first Conceptual gesture of its kind in the history of American poetry: An open, literal theft of an entire “book,” exhibited without shame, as a new and strange Work of Art in our Museum of Modern Poetry. I can only tip my hat.
No point in watching video. Just skip to the end to witness the smug grin for a laugh.
Considering how boring and unworthy of commentary this whole affair really is (forget the idea of the revolutionary poet, the post-avant has rigorously superseded this in their new discovery of clumsy Martha-Stewart level arts and crafts), at least it demonstrates as contrast, quite brilliantly, how worthless and uninteresting Goldsmith’s work truly is.
But seriously, these are uninteresting conceptual gestures. There is no edge. There is nothing subversive. Nothing has happened here. What is this really about beyond dueling celebrities and air time? Hopefully, beyond satirizing talentless “conceptualism”, that is part of the anorexic point.
I mean, it’s nothing but a name (a signature) attached to a talentless piece of shit. Never mind this pundit banter, the only interesting question is: how did the name, as capital, weasel its way in to making people believe it was worthy of attention and thievery of life? Or perhaps the parlor tricks involved aren’t that interesting either.
*smug laughter, instead of disgust, resounds across the universe*
*humor is forty years behind capital*
how did the name, as capital, weasel its way in to making people believe it was worthy of attention and thievery of life?
Galatea, since the thought seems not to have occurred to you yet, let me spell it out: getting you to ask that question is one of the major points of Kent’s project.
Robert, the thought did occur to me, but Kent is a god damn Lokian prankster and an aggressive self-aggrandizer in terms of wanting his name (as capital) out there. I know there are multiple intents at play, and that the question I asked is related to one of them, but it’s just hard to decipher (or to estimate) the magnitude and intensity of those ambivalent intents, or to figure out which of them are dominant. It should be especially noted that the gesture in question isn’t at all required to get anyone to ask the question I did, which I have been asking for a long time anyway. There’s just a certain sadness at play, surrounding the seeming fact that it takes innocuous gestures like these to get people to be reminded of such questions to begin with, especially when merely asking the question is almost meaningless. It’s on the level of some star struck grad student happily chirping on about how Lihn Dihn’s poetry makes him “uncomfortable” or something, and how that’s such a good thing, the mere same old state of a happy discomfort in stasis without the generation of an akathisia that exploded elsewhere. If Kent wants the question I asked to be asked, it is also clear that he has taken on the role, in full vigor, that he aims to critique, and he seems to be complacent in basking in the sunlight of it all. Let me pose a different question, then: Is it necessary to reproduce in oneself what one is critiquing in order to critique it? How effective is the critique in this sense? I am looking for something that moves, as pantomime, beyond satire.
I guess there is also a sadness in that although the act is tame, it isn’t at the same time because its main thrust takes on the hallowed out valley, the banal success story that is Goldsmith’s ego… and all the psychological bullshit that will rain down from its repulsively elevated position. It’s sad that it is considering daring to confront his ego in such a way — not sad that Kent did it to be clear, but sad that the bar is so pathetically low, i.e. that no one else has really done it yet; that it is considered somewhat verboten by the ubiquitous mean-spirited politeness of idiot apologists; that this mode of defacing capital is not more commonplace and that it takes ironic rising celebrity status to achieve it (and on and on). To what extent is the urgency and sincerity in the gesture, as a blow against capital, utterly neutered here?
Of course, the whole thing is funny as hell too.
Onward Loki!
This was fun to get from Geoffrey Gatza today:
>Wanted to let you know I brought a copy of the book to the rare books room at SUNY/Buffalo. They have that great poetry library that has collections of all the poetry books from the 20th and 21st century. So Mike Basinski (the famous curator/librarian) was thrilled to get a copy. He is friends with Goldsmith and he laughed out loud. Also, while bringing the book into the library I was met by two students who knew about the book and were thrilled to see it! This is big when it is celebrated on it’s way to it’s new home! Happy day!
*purchases a large tub of Ativan brand popcorn and sits down for the show*
[let's stick to a single pseudo, can we? --rpb]
Galatea wrote:
>I know there are multiple intents at play, and that the question I asked is related to one of them, but it’s just hard to decipher (or to estimate) the magnitude and intensity of those ambivalent intents, or to figure out which of them are dominant.
Good. I’d ask why this represents some kind of “lack,” in your estimation.
Galatea further down, writes:
>If Kent wants the question I asked to be asked, it is also clear that he has taken on the role, in full vigor, that he aims to critique, and he seems to be complacent in basking in the sunlight of it all. Let me pose a different question, then: Is it necessary to reproduce in oneself what one is critiquing in order to critique it? How effective is the critique in this sense? I am looking for something that moves, as pantomime, beyond satire.
I’m sympathetic to your questions. They’re good ones. I would say that, yes, this specific gesture is very much partly about “reproducing in oneself what one is critiquing.” That doesn’t mean, of course, that there aren’t other ways to confront the problems and ironies and hypocrisies and such that inform the larger matter you are addressing! I’ve spoken about that larger matter quite a bit myself, in articles and interviews here and there. And I’ve been involved in a few works that attempt to push related issues forward. It’s a multifaceted issue and there are different angles of approach. Ultimately, things are going to have to move beyond isolated, individual gestures and into collective activity to make a difference. If such subversive “authorial” work comes to be taken up in expanded, collective fashion (and there are multiple, still unsuspected paths in that regard), some interesting things may begin to happen– at dimensions of poetic production proper as well as (though always-already relatedly!) at the bigger ones that shape the ideologies and legislations of literary culture.
> Good. I’d ask why this represents some kind of “lack,” in your
> estimation.
Since there are multiple intents, some latent, some beyond our imaginations, what is lacking, at least for those of which we are speculatively aware of, is their lucidity.
As an aesthetic gambit, I also enjoy a certain amount of ‘blur’ and indecipherability, but in this case there could be some pressing questions which ask us to move beyond this state. However, these kinds of discussions about the work seem to most often take place behind the scenes, in private or intimate settings. Revealing certain intentions as strong intensities can make it easier for opponents to pounce. What is lacking, though, is transparency, although if we are given this, it may conflict with or diminish the ostensible level of satire at play. Frankly, my main interest here is celebrityism. To what extent is the drive toward it ____________________________________? And how does that relate to ____________________________________?
> I’m sympathetic to your questions. They’re good ones. I would say
> that, yes, this specific gesture is very much partly about
> “reproducing in oneself what one is critiquing.” That doesn’t mean,
> of course, that there aren’t other ways to confront the problems
> and ironies and hypocrisies and such that inform the larger matter
> you are addressing! I’ve spoken about that larger matter quite a
> bit myself, in articles and interviews here and there.
If this is somehow accessible to me, I would be delighted to read whatever it is you’re talking about here!
> And I’ve been involved in a few works that attempt to push related
> issues forward.
Same for this!
Just received this email from a friend:
> [...]
>
> But tell me, when is poetry not a private joke? If the writer’s
> thinking comes across to everyone, and only the writer’s meaning,
> isn’t it failed poetry? Why should my association be more valid
> than your interpretation? If the poetry succeeds in distribution of
> meaning, how can that be a source of frustration (like, “they just
> don’t get it!”)?
>
> Of course, there is also the muse to consider (or blame), whether
> ectoplasmic influence or freudian slip, the effect is the same.
>
> [...]
>
> Ps., Kent J. sounds like my brother, adequately critical but
> defensive of his own involvement with capital and the celeb culture.
Good. The P.S. at the end of last comment above(from another commentator) is perfectly fair and true. The conflict and hypocrisy noted there is actually a pretty prominent theme in my poetry…
May there be younger, stronger poets who emerge to take things in cleaner and more radical directions!
I noticed just now that the fine critic Alan Golding sent a query to Jeffrey Side’s blog, asking if my Day was a re-scanning of the work that was then put into a new print run, or if the book was produced directly, via re-tagging, from actual copies of KG’s Day. My reply below, in case anyone else might have had the same question.
>No, Jeffrey (and Alan), in fact, copies of KG’s Day have been purchased and are then reconfigured into their new nature via the paratext stickers.
Kent