The Fortress of Jason Grote

New Basement Tape of the Mole Cabal!

2009-07-11T09:19:00.002-04:00

This is one of my favorite things ever: radio plays/audio art by the amazing Karinne Keithley of Joyce Cho (and my WFMU cohost, currently host, until I return). Actually these are why I asked her to cohost. And the best part is, they're free!

SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS

2009-07-10T09:39:00.007-04:00

I was invited to participate in this awesome project with a bunch of big-shot writers (see below), conducted by the NYT's Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn of The Boston Globe, The Baffler, Hermenaut, Taking Things Seriously, and The Idler's Glossary, among many other cool projects. The project is based on something called "cathexis;" as I understand it, the value of an object being determined by the narrative surrounding said object. By involving authors and eBay, they take this notion to its logical extremes. See below for Rob and Josh's explanation for the project.

So far it's been written up in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Wired, The Christian Science Monitor, MediaBistro's GalleyCat, the SF blog io9, and the design blogs PSFK and Core77.

Here's the full list of writers (pretty cool, eh?):

Adam Davies
Annie Nocenti
Ben Greenman
Bruce Sterling
Cintra Wilson
Claire Zulkey
Curtis Sittenfeld
James Parker
Jason Grote
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jenny Davidson
Jonathan Goldstein
Kasper Hauer
Kurt Andersen
Lizzie Skurnick
Luc Sante
Lucinda Rosenfeld
Lydia Millet
Mark Frauenfelder
Matthew Battles
Matthew De Abaitua
Matthew Sharpe
Michelle Tea
Mimi Lipson
Rebecca Wolff
Rob Baedeker
Sara Ryan
Sarah Rainone
Sheila Heti
Stewart O'Nan
Susannah Breslin
Todd Pruzan

And, from the website:

About the Significant Objects project

THE IDEA
A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

THE PROJECT
The project’s curators purchase objects — for no more than a few dollars — from thrift stores and garage sales.

A participating writer is paired with an object. He or she then writes a fictional story, in any style or voice, about the object. Voila! An unremarkable, castoff thingamajig has suddenly become a “significant” object!

Each significant object is listed for sale on eBay. The s.o. is pictured, but instead of a factual description the s.o.’s newly written fictional story is used. However, care is taken to avoid the impression that the story is a true one; the intent of the project is not to hoax eBay customers. (Doing so would void our test.) The author’s byline will appear with his or her story.

The winning bidder is mailed the significant object, along with a printout of the object’s fictional story. Net proceeds from the sale are given to the respective author. Authors retain all rights to their stories.

The test’s results — photos, original prices and final sale prices, stories — are cataloged on this website. The project’s curators retain the right to use these materials in other venues and media. For example: Maybe we’ll publish a book.

THE CURATORS
Rob Walker’s 2008 book, Buying In, and Joshua Glenn’s 2007 book, Taking Things Seriously, examined — using very different approaches — the manifold ways in which all of us, whether we realize it or not, invest inanimate objects with significance. But “significance” is such a hazy concept… so they agreed that it would be both interesting and fun to set up an experiment in which significance was artificially cooked up under controlled conditions and applied to insignificant objects.

Episode 36 of The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU

2009-07-09T11:46:00.000-04:00

Call-in community theater! I contribute from Virginia with an original piece. Also featuring Kate Ryan, Yoko Ono, Scott Adkins, Amber Reed, Kenneth Koch, Jean Baudrillard, and many more.

Hilobrow Heroes: Robert A. Heinlein

2009-07-08T09:41:00.002-04:00

I wish SF's greatest dirty old fascist a happy birthday here.

New from YETI -- "The Art of Touring" book + DVD

2009-07-07T12:16:00.000-04:00

Dear friend of YETI

Following on the heels of YETI SEVEN, published in early May, we now have a new book to tell you about:

Edited by Sara Jaffe (Erase Errata) and Mia Clarke (Electrelane), THE ART OF TOURING is a book of art, photographs, and writing reflecting life on the road. Beautifully printed on glossy paper, this 7-inch-square, 156-page book also includes a DVD of documentary and live footage.

Contents:

ART by Beth Murphy (Times New Viking), Julianna Bright (The Golden Bears), Devendra Banhart, Tara Jane ONeil, Nathan Jerde (The Ponys), Hannah Mae Blair, Jason Sanford (Neptune), Erika Spring Forster (Au Revoir Simone), Tony Lazzara (Atombombpocketknife), Fay Davis-Jeffers (Pit Er Pat), & more.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Emma Gaze (Electrelane), Andy Moor (The Ex), Munaf Rayani (Explosions In The Sky), Rebecca Gates, Elizabeth Sharp (Ill Ease), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Lynne Angel (Tartufi), Alissa Anderson (Vetiver), Veronique (Lesbians On Ecstasy), Buck 65, Annie Hart (Au Revoir Simone), & more.

WRITING by Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre), Drew Daniel (Matmos), Carla Bozulich, Everett True, Sharon Cheslow, Jean Smith (Mecca Normal), Sara Jaffe, Sara Marcus, Cynthia Nelson, Brian Case (The Ponys), Mia Clarke, Noah Leger (Milemarker), Bobo Boutin (Les Georges Leningrad), Sons & Daughters, Miranda Mellis (My Invisible), & more.

ON THE DVD: Tara Jane ONeil; The Ex on tour, filmed by Jem Cohen; Mecca Normal live; Erase Errata’s video tour diary; The Jeffrey Lewis Band, by Jasmin Steigler; Electrelane, live at la Route du Rock; Andy Moor’s video collage art; Neptune, shot by Adrianne Jorge, Sharon Cheslow and Bromp Trev, live at Wow Cool, filmed by Andrew Kesin.

See http://yetipublishing.com/Art-of-Touring.html for sample pages and ordering information.

Next up: a new LUC SANTE book in September, followed by YETI EIGHT some time around Halloween.

Best wishes for the summer,

Mike McGonigal and Steve Connell

I Have Been Interviewed by Adam Szymkowicz

2009-07-06T09:16:00.001-04:00

And the results are on his blog.

Episode 35 of The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU

2009-07-05T11:13:00.000-04:00

Our last Sunday night show, sans me! Super spacey, with Beckett, Scanner, and more.

Scott Campbell: "In Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz orders the assassination of a leader of CODEP"

2009-07-04T12:08:00.000-04:00

http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog/2009/06/in-oaxaca-ulises-ruiz-orders-the-assassination-of-a-leader-of-codep.html

In Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz orders the assassination of a leader of CODEP

June 8, 2009
By CODEP
Translated by Scott Campbell
Spanish original: http://codepappo.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/en-oaxaca-ulises-ruiz-manda-asesinar-a-dirigente-del-codep/

For several weeks, from the highest levels of the government of [Oaxaca governor] Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, a state-wide campaign of defamation, harassment and persecution has been orchestrated and unleashed against the Committee in Defense of the Rights of the People (CODEP-APPO), a campaign that brings as one of its first consequences the assassination of Sergio Martínez Vásquez, member of the State Council of CODEP. It is important to mention that this calculated murder was preceded by the police surveillance and tracking of our offices and of veiled and open threats against different members of CODEP.

Comrade Sergio worked as a taxi driver and according to initial reports, yesterday, June 7, he made a trip to the Pino Suarez agency in the district of Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca, was assassinated last night with high-powered weapons, and his body was found today, June 8, around seven in the morning. The way in which it was done and due to some information gathered everything points to the fact that the material actors of this assassination were paramilitary groups that Ulises Ruiz has operating in the region.

It is clear that the campaign against CODEP, orchestrated by the government and carried out by different individuals and groups in the state, is trying to destroy one of the oldest and most important organizations in the state (this year we turn 28), made up of indigenous Mixtec, Triqui, Zapotec and Mazatec communities, now that we have been denouncing groups that in brazen or hidden ways have acted on behalf of state or federal government interests, dividing movements, taking control of them, or completely surrendering them in exchange for group or personal benefits and cushy positions. It is a situation that has intensified as a result of CODEP’s work against the mines in the Ocotlán Valley communities, work which has extended to other regions in the state and has linked up with other ecological struggles on a national level.

As part of the aggressions against CODEP it is pertinent to mention that during the removal of the blockade of the mine in San José del Progreso, Ocotlán, after almost beating to death comrade Agustín Ríos, when the effects of the beating began to appear, the government issued arrest warrants for this comrade and several other comrades, including those who were not in the state, such as Professor Jaquelina López Almazán, which is evidence of URO’s discretionary and perverse application of the law.

As a result of the assassination of comrade Sergio Martínez Vásquez, and the attacks and assaults that aim to isolate and destroy CODEP, we call for the broadest solidarity from individuals and organizations, nationally and internationally, to participate and call widespread attention to the denunciations and information about the activities we will be carrying out.

AS A RESULT OF THE ABOVE, WE DEMAND:

1. AN IMMEDIATE EXPLANATION REGRADING THE MURDER OF COMRADE SERGIO MARTINEZ VASQUEZ.
2. AN END TO THE AGGRESSION AND HARASSMENT UNLEASHED AGAINST CODEP.
3. THE JAILING OF ULISES RUIZ ORTIZ FOR CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF OAXACA.

• WE HOLD THE GOVERNMENT OF ULISES RUIZ ORTIZ RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THAT MAY HAPPEN TO MEMBERS OF CODEP.
• WE REPUDIATE THE DEFAMATION, HARASSMENT AND AGGRESSIONS AGAINST CODEP

THREE YEARS SINCE THE ATTEMPTED DISPLACEMENT,

FOR OUR DEAD, DISAPPEARED, AND POLITICAL PRISONERS,

NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET!

COMMITTEE IN DEFENSE OF THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE - POPULAR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLE OF OAXACA

COMITÉ DE DEFENSA DE LOS DERECHOS DEL PUEBLO-ASAMBLEA POPULAR DE LOS PUEBLOS DE OAXACA

CODEP-APPO

YOU CAN CONTACT US AT: codep_cnpp_oax@yahoo.com.mx

------------

EN OAXACA, ULISES RUIZ MANDA ASESINAR A DIRIGENTE DEL CODEP

Desde hace varias semanas, desde los más altos mandos del gobierno de Ulises Ruiz Ortiz se orquestó y desató una intensa campaña estatal de difamación, hostigamiento y persecución en contra del Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (CODEP-APPO), campaña que trae como una de sus primeras consecuencias el asesinato de Sergio Martínez Vásquez, integrante del Consejo Estatal del CODEP. Cabe mencionar que este artero asesinato ha estado precedido de vigilancia y seguimiento policiaco en nuestras oficinas, y de amenazas veladas y abiertas a distintos miembros del CODEP.

El compañero Sergio trabajaba como taxista y según los primeros informes, el día de ayer, 7 de junio, realizó un viaje a la agencia de Pino Suarez, distrito de Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca siendo asesinado en la noche de ayer con armas de alto poder, encontrándose el cuerpo el día de hoy, 8 de junio, alrededor de las 7 de la mañana. Por el modo de operar y alguna información recabada, todo apunta a confirmar que los actores materiales de este asesinato fueron los grupos paramilitares que Ulises Ruiz mantiene operando en la región.

Es claro que la campaña orquestada por el gobierno y operada por distintos personajes y grupos en el estado en contra del CODEP, pretende destruir a una de las organizaciones más antiguas y de mayor consecuencia en el estado (este año cumpliremos 28 años), integrada por comunidades indígenas mixtecas, triquis, zapotecas y mazatecas, mas ahora que hemos estado denunciando a los grupos que de manera cínica o encubierta se han puesto al servicio de los intereses del gobierno estatal y federal, dividiendo a los movimientos, mediatizándolos o de plano entregándolos a cambio de beneficios y canonjías personales o de grupo. Situación que se agudiza a raíz del trabajo contra las minas que el CODEP viene realizando con las comunidades del Valle de Ocotlán, Oaxaca y que ha estado extendiéndose a otras regiones del estado y vinculándose a otras luchas ecologistas a nivel nacional.

Cabe mencionar que como parte de las agresiones en contra del CODEP, durante el desalojo de la mina de San José del Progreso, Ocotlán y después de casi matar a golpes al compañero Agustín Ríos cuyas secuelas por la paliza empiezan a aparecer, el gobierno liberó ordenes de aprehensión contra de este compañero y de varios compañeros mas, incluyendo a quienes no se encuentra en el estado, como la profra. Jaquelina López Almazán, lo que evidencia el manejo discrecional y perverso que de las leyes hace URO.

Ante el asesinato del compañero Sergio Martínez Vásquez, y los ataques y atentados con que pretenden aislar y destruir al CODEP, convocamos a la más amplia solidaridad de las organizaciones y personalidades nacionales e internacionales, difundiendo y participando generosamente en las denuncias y la información sobre las actividades que habremos de realizar.

POR LO ANTERIOR EXIGIMOS:

1. ESCLARECIMIENTO INMEDIATO DEL ASESINATO DEL COMPAÑERO SEGIO MARTINEZ VASQUEZ.
2. ALTO A LAS AGRESIONES Y HOSTIGAMIENTO DESATADO EN CONTRA DEL CODEP.
3. CARCEL A ULISES RUIZ ORTIZ, POR LOS CRIMENES COMETIDOS CONTRA EL PUEBLO DE OAXACA.

• RESPONSABILIZAMOS AL GOBIERNO DE ULISES RUIZ ORTIZ, DE LO QUE PUEDA OCURRIR CONTRA INTEGRANTES DEL CODEP.
• REPUDIAMOS LA DIFAMACION, HOSTIGAMIENTO Y AGRESIONES EN CONTRA DEL CODEP

¡A TRES AÑOS DEL INTENTO DE DESALOJO,

POR NUESTROS MUERTOS DESAPARECIDOS Y PRESOS POLITICOS,

NI PERDON, NI OLVIDO!

COMITÉ DE DEFENSA DE LOS DERECHOS DEL PUEBLO-ASAMBLEA POPULAR DE LOS PUEBLOS DE OAXACA

CODEP-APPO

PUEDES CONTACTARNOS EN: codep_cnpp_oax@yahoo.com.mx

On The Honduras Coup

2009-07-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

From Democracy Now:

Zelaya Vows Return as UN, OAS Condemn Coup

Honduras is facing growing regional and international pressure to restore the overthrown President Manuel Zelaya. Earlier today, the thirty-five-member Organization of American States said it would suspend Honduras unless Zelaya is returned to office within three days. The ultimatum follows Tuesday’s unanimous decision by the UN General Assembly to condemn the coup. Addressing the UN, Zelaya stuck by his vow to return to Honduras on Thursday despite threats of arrest.
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya: “A crime has been committed, a crime against humanity, a crime which we all regret. I am going to return on Thursday, because they expelled me by force, and I’m going to return the same way I always return: as a citizen and as the president.”
Zelaya is expected to meet with US officials in Washington today, but not President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile in Honduras, protests against the coup continued with traffic blockades in various parts of the country and the teachers’ union announcing an indefinite strike. There were also reports of the brief jailing of at least seven journalists.

Click for full story.

Buzzine Interview

2009-07-02T09:04:00.000-04:00

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for Ben Kharakh's "Seriously Funny" column at Buzzine:

"Rutgers University is a massive institution, but when taking a class with Jason Grote, one forgets that there’s nearly 30,000 Scarlett Knights dispersed among the school’s various campuses. One should expect no less from the critically lauded playwright behind 1001 and Maria/Stuart, not that Grote needs to mention his rave reviews to win the class over — his quick wits and wealth of knowledge take care of that. And whatever the subject Grote’s teaching — be it composition, screenwriting, or otherwise — his students, like the audiences who attend his plays, will leave having laughed, been entertained, and gained some valuable insights.

Ben Kharakh: When did your interest in writing develop?

Jason Grote: I used to write my own comics as a kid, which were generally incomprehensible to anyone but me. I would also “direct” other kids in stage productions that were based on stuff that already existed, like Star Wars or the musical Sweeney Todd. In high school, I studied acting at a performing arts school and attempted some playwriting and sketch writing there — none of it very fruitful. Around the same time, I wrote an embarrassingly bad sci-fi novel about werewolves in a post-global-warming world, heavily derivative of the Frank Miller comic The Dark Knight Returns. A popular girl who sat next to me borrowed it and started reading it. She liked it and started circulating it among a bunch of other popular girls, and when they were done, they would give it back to me and I would keep hand-writing it in this little journal in serialized form. I never knew where it was going and I never finished it. I studied acting and directing in college in the early ’90s, and therein wrote my first real play, which was entirely derivative of John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story. It won an award and was produced, and seemed more successful and fulfilling than my acting work, so I set out to become a playwright. I had no idea what I was doing, practically or artistically, for a long time, but eventually I wrote some odd short plays and produced them in Equity showcases throughout my 20s. I also did some film writing with a DIY indie director, but that never really went anywhere. Eventually, I decided to get an MFA and formalize my education."

Click here for the full piece.

Hilobrow Heroes: Gilda Radner

2009-07-01T12:00:00.003-04:00

Click here for my tribute, plus more great pieces by Joshua Glenn, Franklin Bruno, Luc Sante, Ingrid Schorr, Patrick Cates, and Joe Alterio.

Episode 34 of The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU

2009-07-01T11:12:00.000-04:00

Radioland Theater, a radio play presented by students of the Hudson School in Hoboken, NJ.

R.I.P. Sky Saxon, Michael Jackson, and Pina Bausch

2009-06-30T12:14:00.004-04:00

A fond farewell to three brilliant artists, of varying degrees of weirdness. What frequently gets missed in discussions of MJ is his uncanny skill as a choreographer; he was possibly America's greatest pop choreographer since Jerome Robbins. All will be missed.

Saxon's band The Seeds performing their 1966 hit "Pushing Too Hard" (immortalized on the Nuggets compilation) on a sitcom whose name I don't have on hand:

Pina Bausch's Wuppertal Tanztheater performing the Rite of Spring:

MJ Performing "Thriller" live in 1987:

Episode 33 of The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU

2009-06-27T10:31:00.000-04:00

The Megapolis Audio Festival.

Hilobrow Heroes: Octavia E. Butler

2009-06-26T11:06:00.002-04:00

I say happy birthday to the great SF writer Octavia E. Butler over at Hilobrow.com.

1001 is Extending

2009-06-25T11:00:00.001-04:00

Until July 3. If you're in Washington, go see it! If you're not, then go there and then see it.

All Artists Played By The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU

2009-06-23T09:07:00.001-04:00

Because I'm pretty OCD, I love lists. And what better list would there be than the artists played by Karinne and myself for the first nine months of our radio show? This is an automatic feature of wfmu.org that I am totally obsessed with:

31 Down
Aliza Simons
Amber Reed
Amber Reed/Kenneth Koch
Andre Breton
Anne Carson
Antonin Artaud
Arcanium
Banana Bag and Bodice
Bernard Herrmann
Bertolt Brecht
Caroline Bergvall
Caroline Bervall and Zahra Mani
Christoph Mayer
Darren L. Sherman
David Neumann
Denise Levertov
Dial A Song
Dimitri the Lover
DJ Spooky
Dunya Mikhail
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ephraim Lopez
Faust
Fiona Templeton
Gil Ott
Glenn Gould
Gregory Whitehead
Gregory Whitehead + room full of people
Hoi Polloi
Ira Cohen/ DJ Cheb I Sabbah
Jason Grote
Jason, Andrea & Karinne
Jean Baudrillard and the Chance Band
Jean-Philippe Renoult
Jim Roche
Joe Frank
Karen Randall
Karinne Keithley
Karinne Keithley/Joyce Cho
Kate Ryan
Kathy Kosmider
Kelly Copper
Ken Nordine
Kenneth Koch
Kenny G
Khlebnikov
Ladio
Laibach
Laura Kwrel
Laurie Anderson
Liz Margree/Unlimited Theatre
Lumberob
Madlib
Mahmoud Darwish
Mando Alvorado
Maria Alexandra Beech
Marilyn Chin
Meredith Monk
MF Doom
Moondog
Muriel Rukheyser
Mutable Sound
Nick van der Kolk
NTUSA
NTUSA/Edgar Oliver
NTUSA/Zoe Rosenfeld
Object Collection
Pablo Neruda
Pete Comley
Phil George
Reggie Watts & Tommy Smith
Rich from my building
Richard Foreman
Rob Erickson
Rodrigo Toscano
Samuel Beckett
Sara Smith
Scanner
Scott Adkins
Shelley Jackson
Stephanie Fleischmann/Christina Campanella
Susanna Cook
Terence Degnan
The Apologists
The Olivia Tremor Control
The Residents
Trav S.D.
Visored Burgeonette
Will Eno
Wole Soyinka
Yehuda Amichai
Yoko Ono

Kind of an awesome mix of contemporary theater artists, radio freaks, archival work, amateur home recordings, historical avant-garde, and contemporary audio artists. Most FMU shows have lists way too long to absorb (as they've been playing music three hours a week for many years), but as we usually devote our hour to a single artist, our list is shorter and more manageable.

There are a number of artists I'd love to get on here: I have or am looking for lots of archival stuff from Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Gil Scott-Heron, James Joyce, Dennis Potter, Tom Stoppard, and Lydia Lunch, plus experimental music that borders on performance, like The Velvet Underground or Nurse With Wound. And show tunes or covers of show tunes by Sparks, Tom Waits, and Lotte Lenya. Plus I've got lots of non-musical material (interviews, radio ads, stage banter) from The Nazz, Lou Reed, Black Flag, and (hilariously) Paul Stanley of Kiss. Plus we've got loads of listener submissions, and someday I'd like to include The Wooster Group, Radiohole, Theater of the Two-Headed Calf, Young Jean Lee, Sybil Kempson, Mac Wellman, and Jeffrey M. Jones. And you, dear reader, you! Send me your mp3s!

I've also got some great tracks of Klaus Kinski's "Jesus Tour," though on the radio it just sounds like a madman screaming in German (which is, in fact, exactly what it is). And someday I'd like to do an entire show of mid-90's rap skits, if I can find ones that are clean enough. There's just too much good stuff out there!

More Hilobrow Heroes

2009-06-20T09:18:00.002-04:00

Yet another happy birthday, this time to the tiresome-but-I'll-always-love-him Jello Biafra.

Five Questions on Culturebot

2009-06-19T09:16:00.002-04:00

Click here for the answers you've always wanted.

Episode 32 of The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU

2009-06-18T10:29:00.000-04:00

RADIO PLAY, by Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith.

Thoughts on Mark Kingwell's Concrete Reveries

2009-06-17T09:00:00.007-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, except for a couple of quick hits on the invaluable Parabasis, I've largely lost interest in the "does-theater-have-a-future" debate. It would be more salient, in my opinion, to ask if theater has a present. But, to the extent that the art form is going to keep developing, it will probably be by following the lead of art-forms that are not generally characterized as theater, per se: popular music, performance art, comedy, neo-Vaudevillians like Tyler Perry, theater as social work, big festival events like Burning Man, and so on. These events, unlike much of what currently gets produced in theaters large and small, often take advantage of the liveness of theater, the fact that it exists in four dimensions, the fact that it is finite and local, executed by live humans for other live humans, with minimal (or at least peripheral) technological mediation. For decades now (or at least since the American Right won this relatively insignificant battle in the culture wars), the institutional wing of the art form has been mired in the 19th century, a time in which certain conventions ("realism," the "fourth wall") mainly existed because their superior technological antecedents hadn't been invented yet.

One of the key aspects of the future of the art (again, assuming there is one), is space: not the grand black void outside the atmosphere, but design in three dimensions, in architecture and psychogeography. I've always been a huge fan of the O'Neill Playwrights' Conference's "dream design" meetings, in which playwrights and designers get to discuss the play, and I've always wanted to develop a piece with a designer. I also had a great time writing text for the site-specific We Give Up, which incidentally used quite a bit of Concrete Reveries as inspiration. In the Pataphysics Lab I took with him, Mac Wellman recommended we all read Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, not incidentally also referred to by audio auteur Gregory Whitehead and by philosopher-of-architecture Mark Kingwell, in his book Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City. Kingwell is a contributing editor to Harper's, where he regularly writes about architecture and city planning (and where I first read earlier iterations of a few of this book's chapters).

This book is a vital read to anyone concerned about space, about architecture, and what it does do us. I've long been obsessed with the idea of the Baudelarian flanêur who wanders around the city looking for inspiration, Henry David Thoreau's treatise on walking, and Walter Benjamin's Marxist/kabbalistic vision of the city as a living being with a language that can be read. I've been obsessed with the wanderlust and psychogeography of the Beat writers, the paranoid soulessness of the late-capitalist landscape as described by J.G. Ballard, the spectacular aspects of the modern city as described by the Situationists. Kingwell covers all of these, as well as the 20th/21st century starchitect system in which celebrity architects, stoned on Ayn Rand, build epic buildings and skylines that are largely indifferent to the people living in and around them. One of my favorite sections of the book is a travelogue from Shanghai, appropriately titled, "The City of Tomorrow":

"Ask anyone here and he or she will tell you: Shanghai is the future. But that is not so. Shanghai is not the future; it is every future, a palimpsest of urban visions, a history of what is to come. Visiting Shanghai is a journey to the very near future by way of the very near past, a fact that contributes to a strange form of urban vertigo. You may never have been here before, but you are always already here... To call the city science-fictional is correct but too general. Yes, there are geodesic domes and massive cantilevers and huge expanses of neon and glass. But the landscape offers a full spectrum of sci-fi echoes and allusions. There are Buck Rogers ray-gun finials on the China Life building in Pudong. Portholed Jetsons-style flying saucers hovering atop the Lan Shang Building and the JJ Oriental Tower in Pudong. The knifing faceted slash of Tomorrow Tower is like Darth Vader's headquarters designed by Japanese toy freaks... Down at street lever, it is impossible to view the city in anything other than cinematic terms: the Blade Runner globalization jumble, with some Terminator 2 overtones, of rickshaws and noodle stands washed in rain-softened neon or the Technicolor sunsets of pollution-- all dwarfed by slabs of steel and glass stretching eight or nine hundred feet into the night sky above...

Pudong skyline at night

"The press of humanity here is multidimensional, omniolfactory, inescapable and loud. Like its citizens, Shanghai's sights, smells, and sounds crowd in form every direction, thick walls of sensory noise that snap out signals as fast as your learning-curve brain can take them: an English sign in purple neon, the mingled scents of frying pork dumplings and rotting watermelon rind, the unmistakable hrnfft... hrnfft of a businessman in gangster-cut suit and broken-down leatherette loafers voiding his nostrils onto the sidewalk, thumb pressed to either side in turn. Dirty water and fish guts spill into the street from sidewalk stalls that cluster under spaceship high-rises and five-star hotel ballrooms, all washed in KFC and McDonald's neon, Prada and Gucci signage, everywhere in the inevitable green of that globally ubiquitous coffee chain. A tiny man with the weathered face of an ancient god under a Nike toque huddles in a corner selling seven mismatched batteries and a bundle of wilted scallions."

Kingwell's description makes the reader both want to go to Shanghai immediately and to avoid the place like the plague.

While the first half of the book consists largely of philosophical travelogues to Shanghai and New York City, the second half consists of a series of literary and philosophical meditations on space and the city. One of my favorites, from Chapter 6, "The Thought of Limits":

"There is an inside, so there is an outside, and even if the outside means danger or risk or the unknowable, we long to explore it, to spill out. (Samuel Beckett: "The whisky bears a grudge against the decanter.")"

Organized space, in other words, is a metaphor for our restlessness, for our paradoxical need to contain and define our world and simultaneously to rebel against that containment and definition (NB my insistence above that the future of theater is not theater).

Another favorite, on mapping, from Chapter 7, "The Limits of Thought":

"...[A]ccuracy can... begin to control the determination of human ends rather than serve existing ones. The idea of accuracy becomes self-fertilizing and perverse. We might put the point of this way: abstract space is what happens when a logic of representation takes on a life of its own, rather than serving the projects of life. This is, to be sure, reducible at the margins to absurdity, as in the Jorge Luis Borges tale of the country so bent on accurate mapping that it commissioned a 1:1 map that, when completed, lay over the ground like a carpet. All maps, even highly accurate ones, remain fantasies of representation, and the concepts of accuracy and precision themselves subject to important limits.

"Even today, when mobile communications have more and more rendered the idea of location irrelevant, the first question most people ask of a cell-phone interlocutor is, Where are you? It doesn't matter, and yet it matters-- even as talking on the phone in the first place, that disembodied act, seems to give people a sense of their own solidity, their existence confirmed."

And on security, from Chapter 8, "The Imaginary City":

"Lately, in the form of security crackdowns of mounting desperation or violence, [the] failure [of urban projects of control and sanitation] is revealed in vivid colors. For example: In the wake of the Paris banilieue riots of 2004, Parisians began a fearful dialogue about the way the streets and districts themselves might be configured to minimize internal violence-- a direct reprise of the hausmannization project analyzed by Walter Benjamin. A century earlier, Baron Hausmann had insisted on the creation of wide boulevards inhospitable to guerilla harassment but well suited to cavalry charges: the lovely Paris we all now know. But the new version of the security project is shot through with contradictions unknown to Hausmann, not least the looming prospect of what Paul Virilio call the panic city, the city structured and premised on fear of the other. A city of portals and barriers, vertical slums and vertical gated communities, security systems and patrols. A city where we witness, in Virilio's words, the twilight of place, because there is nowhere that is not already surveilled and secured."

The book is laden with gems such as these, and should take its place beside The Poetics of Space, Benjamin's Illuminations, Peter Brook's The Empty Space, and Richard Foreman's Unbalancing Acts for anyone who wants to consider live theater as a spatial, architectural art.

Arthur Magazine: WFMU IS THE WORLDS GREATEST RADIO STATION BAR NONE FOREVER SHUT UP

2009-06-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

"When people ask me what I’m listening to I tell them, 'WFMU, never ask me again!' because WFMU is all I listen to, ever. There is nothing that WFMU can’t do. I used to be worse. If I went out of town i would be overcome with ennui, wondering what Brian Turner might play this week. The sense of loss was overwhelming, depressing even.

People always want to know how come I write so good what I tell them is: I listen to Brian Turner on Tuesday, followed by the brilliant and bizarre Dave Emory (Daves of The World Unite!) would have to be my greatest inspiration in my amazing career as a whatsit"

Click here for the whole piece by Dave Reeves.

Washington City Paper on 1001

2009-06-15T16:00:00.002-04:00

"The most intellectually ambitious of this lot [of plays] is probably 1001, Jason Grote’s dreamy, nested-narratives rethink of the Scheherazade fable, which weaves a strain of modern existential angst into the fabric of those ancient tales. Things get underway in King Shahriar’s Persia, as usual, but once the storyteller lady (a briskly assertive Yasmin Tuazon) starts spinning her endless yarns, several of them turn out to be set in climes even more exotic than Ali Baba’s cave, an island called Man Hat being one of them."

Click to read the whole piece, by NPR's Trey Graham.

Eugene Mirman Gives A High School Commencement Speech

2009-06-14T10:33:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of The Onion A/V Club. This one has been making the rounds for a while, but definitely worth watching.

Notes From Underground

2009-06-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

No, not the Dostoyevsky novel recently adapted to great effect by Robert Woodruff. I'm talking about this great blog, which makes 'zines from the golden age of 'zines (i.e., the 1980s) available for download.