original invite Livrerie Pharmacie

 came across the origial invite for the evening of readings at the Livrerie Pharmacie way back when...

 though this was the official version, a lot more people read stuff that evening, including bernd Lohaus and Wout Vercammen, who did an explaiation of the speed of light on the retina with a chalk diagram-drawing on a 1m square board, of which I have only half left...

("that's really fifty-fifty!" he would say... ) 

 

somewhere I should have a recording - part of it was used for a record by UltraExceema... and should have some left overs - Ph. Bertel's mirror for instance...  

Printroom graphics

 While still not really on track to get the printroom up and running, we did have a small acrchival reference that keeps us going: returned material includes things for press/impression as well as freehand drawing and such/ so get to it

 

 (skirting the archives - this is a double-take, on the one hande azart-archive as well as JL archive, and of course fifty-fifty to boot... more soon)

Books backing up

 There is such a backlog of books that keep on resisting a move towards the rational - especially in P (the small store in the quiet street near the border) I have a real difficulty in preparing a set of books to leave, get out, move, jettison or otherwise...

just can't do it!

 

re-visit backdrop

 had a good look at a re-visitation of sixties-influence by the now octagenial Yoshio Nakajima and was made (even more) aware of how uch of today's goings-on are due to and because of and copies of what went on before re repro as it were;

 

 

very nice performance in Kiosk Ghent

 

Golden Times

 

L'age d'Or

well those golden have seen better times – as have we, but not to fret and stay the course... along with an archive-exhibition in Charleroi (may-sept) we will combine investigations, one in the framework of a series concerning the 'Borinage' former coal-mining area south-west of Mons, the cradle of the industrial revolution on the continent, and then the resurgence of the 'submersible' series... which has been dormant for quite some time...

 

There will be a publication made, but it is not yet clear if this might be in the guise of a catalogue, a travellogue or pure fiction, free associative bits floating simultaneously... possibly in a LJA format but more likely a RVR... and then the question arises whether to combine the different strands or to separate them:

...one for the series of interventions in the Borinage (being a fifty-fifty intervention at Le Grande Hornu and one at Maubeuge (though this is a bit borderline when it comes to considering what/where the Borinage is... and then one at the two houses where Vincent van Gogh stayed during his sojourn in the area as an evangelist... part of the archive exhibition mentioned...

in any case it's all about by-gones, and as such the RVR (rear view review) lends itself ideally, and who knows, this disappearing bookstore might be it(s last major publisher, seeing as how we are dealing in counterfit anyways...

backing up again

 

Decembrist nicolaean

Considering the autocrat now housing in the Kremlin, it seems that time, its expansion and contraction, is as it was opted by that single stone, flexible...
Flexible, stretchable, rubberized or just plain formless, power distorting any sort of recognizable soul as Gogol might have noted... The revolt did not emmenate from the peasants however, but was an attempt at modernizing and reforming by the upper middling classes and young officers from good homes... Inspired no doubt by the American Revolution, with its notion of equality... 
But translated to the Russian Steppes, there was not much to go on, and it was a bit of a feeble revolt soon quashed by the Tsars army... Nicholas I ... Himself a bit of a reformer, but of a very superficial and diluted sort... The sort we don't even consider nowadays, being weened on hard-hitting breaking fake news and short-cut reasoning if at all... Reason seems to be the least of anyone's worries..
( the sleep of reason)
Producing monsters from one generation to the next, even the bolsheviks could not muster an even-handed redistribution... And in the end were no better than Nicholas II, who, given half the chance might have been a better bet for most of the populace... As it is, history repeats itself and even now, with a useless bloody war being supported by the main body of the population... Why is unclear... We see ourselves forced to admit that progress does not always take place...
So saint Nick has another letter this year yearning for betterment... Peace of earth and all that, piece of mind, Eye and Ear departments...

refurb publications

 soon to be refurbished look-back publications (rear view review) soon to be gathered here...

(been delayed again... bear with us

here a quick look at a reading of spinach during the summer...

 

 

RhoK show

I had already mentioned the pleasant presentation surprise in the circuit of the showcase circuit in Liège, where I found some sumptuous works of Vered Ben-Kiki in a fitting (if it had not been for roadworks) setting – but now we were treated to two presentations in which one could get up close and personal to her work...

At the R.Ho.K. In Brussels in two of their buildings: Etterbeek and Woluwe. Upon entering the somewhat brutish 70's pavilion in Etterbeek one could only not that it fit – Vered Ben-Kiki's works fit the space well, being of large human dimensions, from detail to arms-length, in a space that has a strong presence of it's own but caters well to the multi-level view from different aspects: The notion that there is not only one reading of the work, or better said, avoiding a single interpretation and always leaning towards another... Encompassing various points of view without becoming muddled or obtuse, Vered manages to keep complacency at bay and remind us that it could be either this way or that, equally valid.

Born and raised in Haifa, where she studied philosophy to begin with, she opted for the art academy in Antwerp as a next step rather than one of the ivy-league universities in the States she was originally planning to use her scholarship for... Already influenced by the interaction of languages, in her care Hebrew, English and some Arabic, the immersion into another split culture such as Belgium, with its French and Flemish interactions (...being married to the French-speaking artist Serge De Taeye in a Flemish-speaking town) must have been an interesting challenge. One that perhaps led her to re-visit her first school exercise books in which the basics, vowels consonants, word fragments and short phrases and visual transcription – illustrative drawings – mingle to form a kaleidoscopic world which is then ordered into lists, groups, schemes, categories and sorts...

This ordering however, is essentially arbitrary... we use it for practical purposes, but are not sure if we can trust it: Vered Ben-Kiki questioned the didactic order from an early age – her critical slant led her to investigate why something could not be such, or thus, or perhaps even something else entirely... Simple concepts of, 'here', 'there', 'yesterday' 'now' are redistributed in an unstable landscape in which the search for the truth become philosophical: 'Now is already gone...' friend an fellow 50/50er Wout Vercammen liked to propose... But here one must also hark back to Vered's study of Wittgenstein, and his own multifarious views on 'ordinary language' in his 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophico' and then the later 'Über Gewißheit' in which a hand might be resting on a table or....

What at first glance is 'absurdist' (not to say surreal) playfulness clothed in a sort of comic-strip format or table of consonants, vocabulary lists, abstract formula's, rules and exceptions – imagery of simple day-tot-day objects that begin to waver by nature of their representation, their identification and/or their juxtaposition with others and the relations formed... Tough at first glance I can not perceive a direct link to any specific theorem (which I imagine was also to be avoided at all cost) I do suspect that a reading of (for instance) E. Gellner's 'Words and Things, an examination, and an attack on Liguisic Philosophy' would open up various new avenues in which to view this work.

The show is in two locations, quite different but at the same time fitting for this endeavor to show different aspects of Vered Ben-Kiki's work years after it had been rolled up an put away... She herself did not show any more for quite a while, having taken up other projects, one quite closely related, being children's books, in which her work reverberates, and music, where the graphics of her productions are also apparent... In both of R.Ho.K.'s spaces there is a selection of works from divers periods and styles – which make both sites interesting to visit, and personally I find taking a bit of time to consider the works is essential... at this point there are no extensive texts or references to aid the viewer, but that is also a good thing: to view the work unfettered by theory is to enjoy it in it's most pure and playful – no doubt there will be quite a bit said and discussed afterwards... and that is the point: to begin to (re-)consider her work after so many years of absence.

 

here Vered at the bookstand of Gruzemayer during HAB with one of her first books

shorter days light night

 the days are growing (garden resting)

(but still darkened...)  noted:

Finnis Terrae

Though intriguing this sort of circuit has the problem of being outflanked by it's locations – we've been here before, which is not really a problem, but to then see it as something completely new does not work – and so one finds oneself asking if the work shown is strong enough to withstand the location, and in most instances, not.

 

So there we stand at the edge of the world – best go back at this point. It was not entirely without merit to come this far, and along the way found some bits and pieces to interest, but on the whole it were the elements we already knew that caught our eyes afresh, not really the interventions withing – one may laud the effort to get one to see the known again, and it is true that one would not have come because one has seen it before – were it not for these interventions, but that's about it: conduit towards understanding the world afresh: a good exercise and glad to have taken part, but more than that I have not to say.

 

 

shorter again, time for lights

from display in Plantin Moretus Museum / Finis Terrae

Refurbish and reboot

 time to refurbish and reboot, 

winter installations still hanging on, but soon to be augmented...

some elements from the AK-37 (image) still in use... more soon

for instance this batik by Laetitia Yalon from the time...

2022 away

 all the best for the coming year, and a good read too!

Season's readings....

 Well with the on-and-off cultural offereings I felt like a fireman, getting called out of the couch just when the book became interesting - and then some, to also produce in theses circumstances, wondering if anyone will ready anyhow... but here is a (partial) rundown of some catalogs leaving imprssions...

carrier bag fiction, with essays on theory but also an interesting cover concept...DNA/HKW

 

 Münters photographs, had it for a while but got it out of the shelf again for a project and rediscovered again how important it is... (Lembachhaus)

Lizène trew us for a loop again by disappearing so - his first tome follows or does not the inexistent first, or third or whichever... (Yellow Now)

Having tried to stay out of sight for ages we now take the opportunity to be amazed at the productivity we always suspected but never knew... LGP

Also an eye-opener cancerning a well-known name, but even now, a new slant - nice exhibition catalogeue by the Gulbranson Museum in Tegernsee...

Managed to get ip out there as a extra-thick magazine, the first of a projected series on our lost Jef Lambrecht as RVR 18

interesting brochure-catalog by Merzedes Sturm-Lie, who we think will still be going palces...

earlier / much earlier (summer) theme-brochures by Roel jacobs

on how apples are vandanlized by birds, various cuts (reminding me of a work with apples & chairs from way back) and Traces of plastic (and mirco-probable -) in the garden soils of us all..

Refurbish review

... busy with the refurbishment of the rear view review as well as La Jeune Avrill, 

decided to still produce paper versions after all

so, a retroguard action is needed and underway

more soon!

 

in fact we've gone further, nr 11. 1 is out too

(this being a mock-up: we decided to try another printer and the electronics balked, 

so that we now have a 'LJA/D 11.1' instead..

but:

as is (finally) another issue of the RVR

which has been dormant for ever so long - now in new & fitness shape... way to go

High time back again

 

ReVamp ReConsider

Yes it's been a very long time – and this site has been somewhat overlooked, not being in the main stream of activities of late, even though there might be references one could easily include here – take for instance the archival activities which have churned up some old prints – lithography from way back, and yes, if I may say so, surprisingly good – along with others that have been rolled up in the dark for ever so long.. time to get them out again and have a second look (der Zweite Eindruck – a really nice poster from Vienna I used to have on my wall...)

 

And then there were more performative projects which resulted in quite some text-documentation to which I in fact need to contribute more (there is a run-down on the site of the European Theatre of Operations... and a blurb in the upcoming 'Emergency Index' put out by Ugly Duckling Presse... but I will have to elaborate – some of this stuff was slowed down or altogether halted because of the Covid crisis and such...)

bundle of writing on the project at Chicago 'what remains' collated by I. Trinks (see ETO blog)

And then there are the own production which have been languishing – making a heroic attempt to get them back up to date and viable... more on that soon...

Same Stove

Interested in what was billed as a sort of festival of art and books, poetry and stage on the Antwerpen boekenstad site, I went down to Haeken en Ooghen for a look... Curious because we too consider such an endeavor at the depinterdep... Bookstore gallery literary salon type of crossover activities... 

Sure enough, a central table with books, one bookcase and art surrounding the space... Quite a few déjà vu's, sind it was Constant Aline who had arranged it all... Some of which hung in his Godot on the Kammenstraat years ago... Ah where is the time gone to... We even had a fifty-fifty session there then... Anyway I found a water-damaged copy of Empty Bed Blues, which I bought after negotiating a signature by Aline, giving it that extra cachet... But what I really came for was a reading by Douglas Park... 

He stood at the door, neither really in or out, and proceeded to take us on that incredible journey of his string along intermittent style like a necklace of plastic pearls and bits of shiny standardised formulations being thrown into the air and expanding into a universal milky-way among the clouds before shrinking back to earth slowly.... His deliberate elocution, running staccato silences interspersed with accelerations and monotone accentuations along what seems a well beaten path of scintillating platitudes, only to juxtapose them is such a constellation to make the necklace of synthetic beading and bits of nonchalance become a glittering spiral in the void... Turning slowly on its axis to reveal colourful inclusions and eye-piercing reflections that only strike the mind for a second before dropping it into the hum-drum universe of repetitive folly which is our daily life...

A sense of recognition returns when he re-reads his initial piece "Sunbite and Frostburn" which, having this inkling to having heard it before ( before the repetition, that is)... Came across a reading of it on Oriana's FB as a new years greeting... What I had not noticed at the time was the fact that het is standing in front of my stove, or rather the same stove I have, or rather the same make and model of stove which stands in my studio... Bringing not only that impression but also this story to a conclusion more or less unexpected.

Very nice evening indeed... Standing there on the street being transported to other that other places while the younger generation loses stamina and let their minds wander into conversations while the poet is still in mid-flight and the passing cyclist lifts up his bike as to not disturb the reading with the sharp tictictic of his elaborate gear changing system... The afternoon falls into evening and I had no lights on my bike so I pedalled away into the dusk notwithstanding.

trop des arbres

gearing up towards emptying archive, paper everywhere

once trees collecting CO 

now just releasing the stuff again...

return origin

Ah de Boekerij

Onlangs nog geschriften tegen gekomen waaruit blijkt dat ik al lang een notie van een gecombineerde boekerij en diversen voor ogen had, nog lang voor ik als proefproject in de late jaren 80 de Livrerie Pharmacie startte, die, weliswaar in diverse en soms minimale vorm, tot vandaag is blijven bestaan... 

Het is mij ook weer ingevallen/opgevallen dat een van de inspiratiebronnen, de Apotheek Oey te Amsterdam was – zonder deze ooit te kennen... alleen van horen-zeggen, van enkele kaartjes geproduceerd door de Fingerpers... maar toch een essentieel invloed... hoe kan dat zijn? Juist ‘niets’ is van blijvend aard...

Tjen Sit Oey was in die tijd van ons genomen door een ongeval veroorzaakt door een monsterautomobiel... zijn dramatisch heengaan heeft er misschien mee te maken... in elk geval was ik verheugt om te zien dat zijn zoon René een mooi en informatief website heeft gemaakt... die ik hier even mee inlink...

https://oeytjengsit.com/nl/apotheek-oey/

Always was a sucker for nice books, and dismayed at the amount of books being thrown out, burnt, ripped and manhandled... even the grimy cheapo paperbacks, riddled with disease and probable infections, dog-eared and sticky with unknown substances still solicited my sympathy, for which I have been rewarded in the form of a quaint book-wall full of golden oldies... right back to the ‘pocketsized’ GI-issues to be read on board landing craft or glider bellies before the onslaught...  Not to mention the classic covers that have become iconic over the years... and here and there a title that made it into the big league, being reprinted in hardback bound & dust jacketed luxury gift wrapped... 

Of course the large tomes of serious reading and lavishly illustrated cultural monuments, also thrown on the skip in the rain without a second thought.. Rarities and even leather-bund antiquities... one could not fathom the mentality that would discard such things – yet, they were thrown out by the academy, making shelfspace for more recent publications more suited to the current syllabus... but could one help oneself? No way... they had to be destroyed... lest some enterprising passer-by might make a profit at their cost – while themselves not having the time or manpower to make the effort.

Rather destroy than give away.

This was at a time before the resurgence of artist-books and coveted book-object got back in vogue... at a time when everyone was sure the future was digital, and we would be reading noughts and crosses (or lines) all the while, paper being obsolete, as well as stories with a beginning and an end... and, with them the shelves and the housing that go with it... libraries were becoming coffee-corners and places to hob-nob about whatnot and all. Gone the rows upon rows of books, the dust, the lost tomes and forgotten letters between the pages... 

Don’t get me wrong, I (albeit reluctantly) replaced my typer with a keyboard long ago, and in the beginning also was enthused to an extent, embracing the limitless possibilities... but, and the but is getting heavier, not at the cost of the other... the old, the quaint the dusty, messy material degrading, ripped and torn lignite browned and silverfish infested book... reams of paper and rolls of parched papyrus, and all that...

Now, after having destroyed quite a bit of the old stock, the realization returns that not all is well in digi-land... that the promised stability of hardware and systems is not quite what was promised, and that all that toil has to be repeated at an ever-increasing rate of mutation just to keep up with the latest version of compatible software... it’s a trap and always has been.

So, even though getting on and my back aching more frequently than before, I refuse to throw them out – digitized yes, for practical reasons, but still based on the real thing- the musty pages, the torn cover and creased inner flap. Everything from the stencilled pamphlet to the gilt-edged coffee-table edition, the musty paperback and the leather-bound one-off... consorting amiably together in a maelstrom of incoherent natural order, by chance, by fluke, by misadventure...

(here an essay I wrote for the Van Eyck application ages ago – not convinced myself of the new book tendencies..)

ordering

vue / suspend

Timbuktu before the raids (© photos LL)

own serenity (historical)

swisch bib

ergens tussen farmacie moderne en boekerij-leeszaal...

reading during 'curtain the library' / singel 2002

...dus waar is deze ‘apobibliotheek’? zou die te vinden zijn tussen de virtuele collecties als ‘goodread’ en ‘librarything’, blogs en tweets? in tussenstadia als ‘reading rooms’ of intussen ‘reading lounges’ of, verder doorgetrokken, verplaatsbare containers (ik denk hier aan een participatie, al jaren geleden van een project van R Venlet ‘curating the library’ waarbij een haast onzichtbaar (want spiegelglas) container ronddoolde en diverse projecten ontving… of het 100 jarige bib project van K Petersen waarbij de potentiële bibliotheek wordt ontledigd… van gekapt /geplant boom, schrijfopdrachten die pas gepubliceerd zullen worden als de bomen weer gekapt en gepulpt worden. 

ergens daar tussenin

Uiteraard zullen de boekenwinkels blijven, en de boekenbeurzen zijn nog altijd god bezocht… maar van echt volksvermaak kan men misschien niet meer spreken… vraag is of dit ooit zo is geweest? Ergens tussen alfabetisering en opkomst van TV misschien…  intussen is zappen het nieuwe lezen, of swischen, want ik heb onlangs gezien hoe een kleuter zonder problemen de gewenste functies voor kinderdeuntjes op het smartenfoon van mama uitzocht, terwijl mama met andere dingen bezig was - en de foon als fopspeen achterliet… dus de toekomst is elektronisch, zolang men de lader voor dat ding kan vinden.

lost bib