implicit art

One of the most fascinating discussions that emerged from the iCommons iSummit, at least for me, came out of the presentation by Israeli rock stars RHYTHM BEATING SILENCE aka RBS. Their fascinating story is of a band who "made it," but in a small scene driven by virtually one label and one radio station, were completely taken advantage of. Instead of sitting idly, the band went on their own, and gave their music away for free (now all under Creative Commons licences), making money by playing gigs and archiving their albums. Everything is available for re-mix use and non-commercial distribution through their web site.  We went on to discuss revenue generation for lesser known artists, various production modes, DIY art and the importance of collaboration. RBS’s frontman, Nimrod Lev, is quite an interesting activist - here’s a translation of a recent speech he gave at the University of Haifa. Money quote (speaking of criminalizing the downloading of music):

Personally, I was never willing to think of my audience as criminals or to turn the people for whom I create music into criminals, just because the music industry is in a crisis. …
 
I would like to begin with the opening lines of the announcement we attached to the song "Vegas" which was played here earlier:

It does not matter when and how the music and all that is related to it became only a matter of business and commerce. It happened. The love of music became marginal, and in most cases it is not part of the considerations of music products, marketed to the public.

You probably know what greenbaiting is, right? Like when they put hybrid engines in an SUV?  Or when they put 20% post-consumer content in paper plates and call them "eco-plates?" Tonight, I think I experienced the same thing in technology and entertainment. I went and saw Superman Returns at the Tuttleman IMAX in Philadelphia.

The movie was great, but I wasn’t so hot on the IMAX. This wasn’t my first IMAX experience, but it was the first time I’d seen a traditional movie on one, as opposed to some nature film or whatever.

I’m not really sure the movie was shot on IMAX tape. It definitely, definitely warped at the edges throughout the movie. This distracted me the whole time.

The lower corners noticeably did not fit on the screen. They had it too wide. No one would have objected if they would have pulled it in a few degrees. it still would have been huge.

I also found that during some of the really chaotic scenes where a lot is happening yet the director shoots in close so you can hardly tell what, you really couldn’t tell what with the IMAX. In fact, the screen almost seemed to black out during the really chaotic close stuff. Again, distracting. I will also be interested to see it in a regular theater and see if anyone ever looks blurred. Many parts of the scene often appeared blurred at times. Again, possibly another effect of projecting at a level the original film had not been meant for.

The biggest problem, though, was that there really was hardly a good seat in the house. The seats were far too close to the enormous screen. I was turning my head through the whole thing and I could never see take in the whole screen at once. And my seat was roughly in middle. I feel very badly for anyone further down.

At the start of the movie, they run a little text across the screen and everyone laughed because no one could really read it. It was too big and we were all too close.

In the end, I wish I would have seen it at a normal theater. I feel like I was suckered in to see it on the super-high-tech screen.

Overall, though, it was a great film. Then again, I know I’m a sucker for big heroes and heroics. I like being a sucker for that, though.

I know that most of the folks who read this aren’t American… but if any of you follow American literature for what ever reason and find it wanting… it’s worth knowing that there is a group that is resisting the mainstream not just by producing its own work, but by doing the occassional protest and bellicose hollering at the tyrants of American lit.

We’re a bit grumpy.

Anyway, I’m one of the 30-something members around the states… recently inducted. Go me. We are working on kicking up a few particular storms in coming days, but I thought I’d promote a little something I’ve started doing on the site in South Africa before I really start talking about it in the states too much. I’m going to start running a weekly homily, or public prayer, on the site. These homilies will be humorous commentaries, but they are genuine prayers as well. They are audio files recorded with an old Compaq Ipaq.

Here’s the first.
And the second.

The third will be out next Wednesday. I promise it will make you laugh… though it will also be rather crass. The fourth is already recorded… in it, I’ll actually touch on literature for the first time.

I also highly recommend checking out the ULA’s Monday Report Box and other fine ULA writing.

The ULA’s leader and founder, King Wenclas, has the fine distinction of running the most threatening and hated blog in literature. Check it out! Get scared!

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Brady Russell
Underground Literary Alliance
Rank-and-file

it seems that heads are heading to cape town this weekend for the sessions ekapa.
will be coming out from my hide out to join the masses this summer and will try to get some pics whilst there.
i don’t know about the Jozi dudes but cape town seems to be getting a lot of slices of the art world of mzantsi.
is cape town the new big thing and are cape town artist now the big deal? Are cape town artists and galleries in?all eyes on ekapa!!

Are we losing our edge? I’m sitting here working and struggling with something that has never been a problem before: I want to listen to music, but it is definitely distracting me.

Once upon a time, I could listen to music and write with no problem. In fact, it was better that way. Now I find that I write much better in silence. This makes me feel lame. Is my brain losing its power? Or am I gaining focus?

I feel like this is a question that will primarily concern writers, but maybe not? I’d be interested to hear what other artists say about music and other distractions. How do you feel about them when you are trying to work? Helpful? Harmful? Neutral?

REVIEWS! REVIEWS! REVIEWS!
So, I’ve been so busy that I’ve hardly had any time to read all the comics and mini comics I bought at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland at the end of last September.

But I am finally getting started. I thought I would review all the comics I read on here, but I think I will just review the ones I like.

“Lightbulb” < - no actual title
by Linda Medley
mini-comic from One Percent Press

This comic is visually charming. It’s an experimental representation of a young artist wrestling with an idea until he is ready to work with it. The pages are dark (literally, not metaphorically), until the artist finally settles on what he wants to do with his idea, then he gets to it. Charming.

“Driving South”
by JP Coovert
One Percent Press

I really enjoyed this comic. It’s very cartoony drawings of normal looking people (stripped down to the simplest lines). It’s the story of a boy who goes home for his grandfather’s funeral. I don’t want to say what happens at the end, but let’s say this: he’s very busy through the whole funeral process.

We buried my grandfather not so long ago, and I saw a lot of truth in this story. It’s elegantly done and the drawing is really solid throughout. It once again demonstrates for me that the best artists leave out more than they put in. Not always true, but there’s a lot to say for economy.

“Onion Jack”
by Joel Priddy
from Ad House Books

This was really just the cover story for Ad House Books’s Free Comic Book Day offering, Issue Zero!!! Superior Showcase. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, here, but for all of Coovert’s economy above, he’s a morass of crosshatching compared to Priddy’s beautiful bio of the inestimable superhero, Onion Head Jack. Priddy reduces heroes and villains down to their most iconic with remarkable effectiveness. Many fools will look at these drawings and say, “anyone could draw that.”

Yeah?

Try it, then. Try to draw a readable story with drawings as simple as this. Hell, try to even come up with one character that looks at all unique using the same economy he uses.

You’ll be surprised. I know some other artists out there that can do it, but simplicity is deceptive. I’ve always said that in almost all things it is much harder to be easy to understand than it is to be mysterious.

Plus, the Onion Head Jack story is a great one - if you love heroes - and ends fantastically, surprisingly and satisfyingly. Find it. Love it. I have to check out more of this guy’s work.

“Monday” part 1
mini-comic by Andy Hartzel

This is the story of Adam and Eve after the first week of creation have ended. Many liberties are taken with the story. Hartzell has a lot of talent and his drawings are pretty. His representation of God is adorable and his Eve has a very cute butt. I hope I see Part 2 at some point.

“Keeping Two” part 1
by Jordan Crane

Jordan Crane is the youngest old-hand out there. I picked this up because Jordan Crane is famous, the cover price was low and the screen printed cover was very pretty. Also because he was standing next to Brian Ralph. This helped Jordan’s sales a lot, I’m sure, as Ralph is the closest thing the comics world has to a pop star (sorry, James K., but I thought of you when I wrote that… you are still a SUPERSTAR!).

At first I thought this story would bore the shit out of me. It’s very much a slice of life story, but it turns out to include high drama. A woman encourages her husband to go on a trip. Because he goes, he misses the birth of their child.

It gets worse. You feel for them.

Crane’s story is told with enough little details to make it feel true and you develop a definite sympathy for the stars of this show in only a few pages.

Another thing I appreciate about Crane is his willingness to show you around the world his characters find themselves in, to take some time with the story and give you the wide view. This is rare in American comics, but Crane does it. It makes the book feel different, in a great way.

Again, I hope I find the second part when it comes out.

“The Intruder”
by Mark Burrier

The art in this story bridges the gap between all the work above and the last one I will write about today, below. The lines in this book are clean, but not quite so clean. He has a lot more edge in his drawings. A lot more motion lines and more more shading. Some very splattery shadowing at parts.

This is all done for a purpose and intentionally. Burrier keeps his lines under control, unless he doesn’t want to. And that’s good. This is a story about completely unnecessary anger and completely unnecessary machismo. It’s about the way men with their women can just be dicks sometimes.

It’s a simple story, about a young boy who finds people making out in the back of his office who don’t work there, aren’t customers and who he’s never seen before. All he asks is that they leave and they won’t. It’s bizarre, but you can see it happening. Some men really would pull that shit with their blood up in the wrong spot/part.

The only crticism I would make of this book is that Burrier probably turns to the panel’less page a little more often than I’d like. Stripping panel borders away from pages can be the right thing to do, but I like it to happen in a way that makes so much sense that I don’t even really notice it. I was very, very conscious of the pages that didn’t have panel borders, and didn’t really see what point there was in leaving them off.

Still, art is about emotion and this one was emotionally evocative in a wonderfully effective way. More importantly, I think Burrier evokes a combination of emotions - uncertain power, anger and righteousness - that we don’t often see in comics. It’s always nice to see an artist try to break into new emotional ground with their work, and I think the field of comics is richer for it. Comic artists tend to rely on a certain limited pallette of emotions too often. Maybe someday when I have more philosophical time I will try to delineate what those are. Anyway, Burrier definitely isn’t in the comic book cliche category with this one, and bravo for it.

“Sea-Man Lamprey”
mini-comic by Mollie Goldstrom

All the rest of the comics I have reviewed so far had nice, clean lines with a strong consciousness of the figure and how it interacts with other figures and objects. Very little shading and unneccessary line work appear in the pages of the comics previously listed (maybe “Monday” is a little busy).

Throw everything I said about how great economy is OUT when you get ready to read Goldstrom’s 4″ x 4″ offering. This one is a mess. A very rich mess. A delicious mess. I like that I have this review in the mix because it shows there is more than one way to do things in the land of art and comics. In fact, Mollie’s work is a lot of fun even though she completely stands in contrast to all the compliments I gave the other artists above.

From the very first page (you really just have to see it), Goldstrom achieves something in drawing what I think must be the most nonsensical sea monster in the history of visual depictions of sea monsters. I mean, if the creature had a larger place in the story, you could entitle the work “Intestines from the Deep.” Go, Mollie!

This is the story of Erasmus Lamprey, mythical seafarer, wanderer. Erasmus has strange friends, strange abilities and strange adventures (all in about 16 pages). Goldstrom’s book definitely falls into the camp of Jennifer Daydreamer in that she tells stories that have the logic of dreams. That is, very little logic at all - but you understand anyway.

Erasmus, as a character, is pretty flat. That doesn’t matter. You’re here to see the world of Goldstrom’s imagination, and you do it by following Erasmus around. The point is Goldstrom’s drawings and trying to figure out how her mind works.

Goldstrom is part of a vein of comics that I think make the comics world one of the richest art scenes you’ll find (if you aren’t a closed minded fuck who dismisses comics out of hand). She has a lot of limitations, technically, as a draughtsman. You can see in reading these pages that she has tested the limits of her limitations and learned to work around them, even with them, creating environments and images that are within her power, technically, and, artistically, up there with any artist of her age and experience out there (and quite a few who’ve been at it longer and ought to be able to accomplish more by now).

I know this sounds like backhanded praise, but I don’t want it to. This is a hard point for me to get across, but let me try to restate it: most art forms put too much stock in technical ability. If art is, in the end, about self-expression, then there might be some people who learn to express themselves extremely well despite the fact that their fundamentals are weak.

Think, for example, of the illiterate storyteller. There have doubtless been countless storytellers and bards over the centuries who couln’t read, spoke only in vernacular and had embarassing grammar. Yet, if they got on a stump and started telling stories you’d be hypnotized. This is the perfect example of the less technically proficient artist performing brilliantly.

I mean, people dismiss punk rock, but it changed music forever and for the better. When punk started, half those guys couldn’t even really play their instruments - yet they changed music forever. I can’t overemphasize this enough. Technical ability is not all that, and I’ve certainly seen some people who draw really well - and everything they draw bores the living hell out of me. Seriously. I’m like: spare me, mofo.

Goldstrom will never be able to, I don’t think, draw a world with both the exquisite realism and cartoony simplicity of, say, a Jason Lutes. It doesn’t matter. Read “Sea Man Lamprey” and you’ll feel like you know something about Goldstrom’s mind, and you’ll want to meet her. Much as a lot of people feel about Lutes’s work.

So there, that’s my point. The comics scene makes more space and opens its arms more widely to the artistically gifted but technically limited among us. I definitely fall into this category, and I appreciate the fact that I feel comfortable making and sending out comics, because I know people into this medium understand that looks aren’t everything.

Lots more comics in my satchel o’ fun. I’ll let you know the next time I read through a stack. In the meantime, be a dear and visit some of these websites and buy some of these comics. Make a young artist’s day!

“Future Me”
by Jesse Moynihan
Mini-comic - $3.00

This mini-comic is beautiful. Fellow Philadelphian, Jesse Moynihan, really has a handle on the whole simple yet beautiful line style thing. You aren’t going to look at thise pages and say, “Wow! What detail!” This is actual art, so you’ll just say “wow.” With no exclamation point. Partly because you aren’t quite sure what’s so captivating.

But it is, baby. It is. One of my favorite elements is his use of patterned materials to fill up spaces. The pages look more intimate than if he had left off that detail, but since it’s a pattern it sort of disappears in a way, like white space does. Making it a sort of alternative-negative-space, that I like to see a good amount of on a page. At least for this sort of meditative story. Meditative it is.

On the other hand, it doesn’t entirely make sense. You’ve got to have the same patience with this book that you bring to a museum when you look at paintings that are really impressive but you don’t quite understand. In fact, Jesse’s work is easier to understand than a lot of really great paintings I’ve seen, but it’s also narrative so you sort of expect to understand everything or nearly-everything. That’s not going to be the case with “Future Me.”

That said, I’ve communicated with Jesse about this and he says that the more of his work you read the more it all makes sense. So that’s promising. “Future Me” definitely made me want to see more.

“_______ Are Always Fun to Draw”
by a lot of people (mostly in New York, I think)

This book is not really a comic. It’s a collection of drawings that a bunch of friends made after compiling a list of a billion things that are “always fun to draw.” They had a master list of like 30 things that EVERYONE had to draw and another much longer list that everyone had to pick ten more things from. The only rule, I think, was to get all of the things onto one page.

So everyone did it and then they printed it up. The result is a great little book with great pictures in wildly diverse drawing styles. Some of them are really inspired.

The list of fun stuff to draw includes earthworms, explosions, ducks, cats, fish, space aliens, etc. It’s pretty wide open. My favorite was, arguably, Isaac Cates’s alphabet (incidentally, he organized the project). A lot of them are really good, though. Karen Sneider uses an interesting device in her page. If she doesn’t think the thing she has to draw is fun, it’s being killed or destroyed in her drawing. She pointed this out to me herself at SPX when I was looking at the book. I was amazed to see that she doesn’t like to draw robots.

Who doesn’t like to draw robots?

I wish I could tell you how to get your hands on it, but I can’t. You might try contacting Karen Sneider directly, because her bio says she’s working on a sequel. Which implies she might know something about the original.

Midnight Creep
by Frederick Noland
Mini-comic, Post-Apocalyptic Funhouse

I think this might be a comic version of a southern fable. Anyway, it’s the story of a poor black working man in the South who’s telling a stranger in a boxcar about murders he committed as a result of his wife’s infidelity. He’s been on the run ever since.

He gets his come-uppance. Boy howdy.

The design and draughtsmanship falls somewhere in between realistic and cartoony - and nicely so. The pages are laid out well and the overall design shows a real eye for the importance of a well planned page.

The sequence that reveals the true identity of the narrator’s companion in the boxcar can be described as controlled, steady cinema.

Check this shit out, brother.

RHYTHM
Anthology by Turk Street Projects

This is a nice anthology that I have no memory of buying, who I got it from or how you can get your hands on it. I can say this: it introduced me to Joe Sayers who has a t-shirt (the gold one) on his website that I am definitely going to have to buy.

This anthology is different stories about rhythm. The stand out is probably the story about murdering Jimi Hendrix is probably the stand out, by Geoff Vasile. The one pagers at the beginning and the end are pretty great, too.

Out of Water
by Matthew Bernier
tinglyelectriceelunderpants@hotmail.com

This is probably the best drawn book, over all, in today’s collection of reviews. Very, very Craig Thompson’ish. In fact, he’s probably technically a little more powerful than Thompson, though we’ll see if he has the emotional range of Thompson. This work is too short to really weight it against Goodbye, Chunky Rice.

He seems to be a little fixated on gonads, I gotta say. And anatomy. Not external anatomy. For some reason he periodially shows cut-aways of his characters so that you can see their guts.

It’s funny, just yesterday I was thinking about how much I love my skeleton and yet I hope never, ever to lay my eyes on even one fraction of one inch of any of my bones. Ever. Funny, that.

Not so sure I want to see the guts of my comic book characters either. It reminds me of the Paul Pope comic where no one is interested in seeing strippers naked anymore… they have machines that allow you to see their guts bobbing around as they dance.

I cannot imagine this ever actually being a turn-on, but I could be wrong.

“Out of Water” is a sweet story about an awkward boy that develops a great friendship with a dolphin. This is, of course, in some ways a dangerous friend to have. Dolphins do not play in an environment that’s wholly convenable to boys, but the environment of boys is not at all hospitable to dolphins. This point is one that Bernier does an excellent job, in ways both overt, subtle and so subtle that you will realize it later, of conveying.

The story, in the end, is about solving the problem of environments. You should definitely email him and order a copy. One of these days I’ll get around to ordering some of his other work.
I also have one other much longer review of a longer book, “Top Secret Summer,” here

DISCLAIMER: I have a feeling that Nat is going to hate this post.

If you know me (and if you’re reading this then you probably don’t), you know I am no flag-waving patriot. That said, there is no debate that bores me more than the ongoing one about the cultural supremacy of the USA, like it’s some big freaking crisis that everyone loves our movies.

In the latest sortie by the cultural has-beens of Europe and the also-rans of everywhere else, UNESCO voted just shy of unanimously for an exception to international trade accords (”accord” - n. - def. we freaking agreed to this already!) in order to allow for protection of domestic cultural content against a preponderance of outside (read: U.S.) material. Naturally, the US strenuously objected on the grounds of free trade agreements of various forms the world over.

I am going to mock and deride the UNESCO decision on two fronts: economic and cultural.

First, Economic. Look, the US may be the biggest economy in the world and we may be gigantic slimeballs in a lot of ways, but the simple fact of the matter is that we keep the rest of the world in business. We are net importers of, well, just about everything. Industry planetwide (that is, jobs) gets paid for by the US hunger for… umm… everything. That said, one of the few areas in which we do export more than we import (and we export a lot more) is cultural content. Movies, TV shows, music and even a fair number of books. We make a lot of money around the world on our cultural works. Cut us some slack! We need to be a net exporter of

something

for God’s sake!

Second, cultural. I’m sorry, but any culture that has to protect itself might as well just throw in the towel. It is the nature of history for cultures to rise and fall. For cultures to lead, to matter and for other cultures (that once led) to go gently into that good night, crying a little feebly as they disappear because people once cared - really. Well, they don’t any more. So sorry. Now hush.

Take heart! Someday, the US won’t make the movies everyone wants to see anymore, but, for now, we do. Deal with it. If people in your country like our stuff better than yours, its for a simple reason: our stuff is more interesting. Our artists are better.

And spare me the McCulture garbage, thank you very much. Yes, this is the home of movies with Queen Latifah and Keanu Reeves. But this is also the home of Tim Burton and Marin Scorcese. Yes, we gave you Danielle Steele, but we also gave you James Baldwin, Emerson and John Steinbeck. We may be the home of the Back Street Boys, but we’re also the home of Dylan.

Yeah, that’s right: Dylan. Take that.

We also happen to be the place that came up with great ideas like comic books, blues music, rock-n-roll, cartoons, cinema itself and a little gadget you might have heard of called the World Wide Web. The Moog Synthesizer? Oh yeah, the was us, too. Try to keep up, world. We’re cooking over here.

Look, it doesn’t even matter. The market will out on this even if the WTO doesn’t take UNESCO’s proposal and use it to smack the body like the impertinent little crybaby it is (the US pays for 25% of its budget, b t w ). People like American stuff and, say what you will, snobs of the world, that’s because a lot of it is really good. Some of it is good because it is super fun eye candy. Some of it is good because it is thought provoking and engaging. Either way, it’s good.

Deal.

Post-script: just so long as we’re clear, I mock cultural whiners at home, too. There’s nothing I like more than going to a show put on by a “Preservation Society,” trying to keep people interested in some artform, language or subject that no one has any interest in anymore. I find it really funny when compulsive people waste their time on futile little efforts like that. Hey, long live puppetry, right?

So I have always wanted to be a writer. When I say always, we’re talking Grade School here. I’m not screwing around. Recently I learned about PublishAmerica, because a fellow participant in the 3-Day Novel Contest had said she’d published her book product of the previous year’s contest through them. Well, well, well, I thought. Let’s see.

It turns out that PublishAmerica is a print-on-demand company. Print-on-demand [POD] is this new technology that makes it cost effective to make exactly as many books as get ordered. Your “inventory” is blank paper, binding materials and a bunch of computer files, ready to go if anyone wants one printed out. Most POD publishing is vanity or subsidized printing. That is, the author pays to put it out. Not so with PublishAmerica. They promise never to charge you a thing, unless you want to buy a big stack of your own books to sell yourself.

Fine.

I sent two novellas I’ve written in to them. I wanted to publish them as one volume called

Fun With Cults: 2 Novellas

. Sound good? I’d buy it. My books were accepted immediately. I mean, right away. I mean, there was no way they could have read them.

So I get a contract and a pushy Acquisitions guy emailing me about joining up. I talk myself into it and think, “Well, if I’ve got hustle, I can make this happen.” I had basically decided to do it when a friend of a friend who happens to be a published writer contacted me and I asked her what she thought about the Publisher. Her view? Don’t do it. Go for the small press, but not POD. She sent me an article from the

The Washington Post

that reported a lot of unhappy writers (and a few happy ones).

Now, the two big concerns are as follows: 1) prestige. The lit world is all about prestige. If I went POD out of the box, would it follow me? 2) If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Though, in the company’s defence, one of the less esoteric objections they have raised about PublishAmerica has been corrected. At one time, their books weren’t returnable. This is sort of weird, but if a book doesn’t sell at a book store, publisher’s will refund them for the trouble of putting it out. I don’t really get it, but when everyone else is doing that, it’s hard for a non-returnable book to compete for shelf space. As of last week, though, these POD books are now returnable.

Frankly, it didn’t seem like PublishAmerica was much of a brand. What would the consumer know if they saw the PublishAmerica name on the spine? It seems like there business model is publish as many books as they can, and hope they sell enough to make money. Why not? The only cost is the production work, right? The inventory takes up no real space. In fact, once they have thousands of books on file, they can just sell them forever. Eventually they might not even need to accept new titles. See, the name sort of gives it away: we aren’t about giving you a particular sort of book - we’re about publishing people who want to get published. Publish, publish, publish - see what sticks.

OK, so it sounds like I’ve made my decision. I guess I have. I don’t think I’ll do it. After all, those novellas really aren’t ready to go, though they are fun. But I have one nagging concern.

What if I’m missing the boat? What if this new kind of printing is the way of the future and I’m scared to get in on the ground floor?