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)