Nancy Dwyer
Larry Johnson
Kay Rosen
Jack Pierson
Joseph Kosuth
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Nancy Dwyer
‘Dwyer’s use of words as images, which took over her work exclusively by the summer of 1985, has prompted many observers to draw analogies between her and other contemporary artists who use words in their work. But this is somewhat beside the point. Words have been part of a visual vocabulary from earliest times, and though the focus on words as images is relatively new, it seems limiting and reductive to deal with this phenomenon as a homogeneous idiom. For Dwyer in particular, the use of language derives from her interests in its colloquial quality, and in ways of reinventing it in order to produce an expressive and personal kind of “reporting.” Dwyer sees language as a living thing, intrinsic to specific times and places. And when she states, “We’re to the point where words are a new version of pictures,”2 she’s referring to the way in which words are commonly altered pictorially, through computer graphics, to create dramatic, three-dimensional titles for films and television. Dwyer then characterizes her own labor-intensive, non mechanical working method (she draws the letters by hand, photographs and projects them, and takes Polaroids of these projections from various angles in order to render them three-dimensional) as ”making originals of something that there never was an original for.“ These images are highly charged and dramatic, yet are so deeply imbedded in everyday life that they are scarcely noticeable. Television has inured us to a varied diet of constant drama—the news, films, commercials, ”true-life“ and fictional narratives, and the drama of presentation itself. Dwyer uses the drama of the sales pitch in her work to try to ”make poetry out of selling by forgetting that there’s something to sell.”‘
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Larry Johnson
‘Larry Johnson has influenced an entire generation of artists who use photography not to ‘capture’ images but to make pictures that reveal the underlying social strata of contemporary culture. His work represents an idiosyncratic amalgam of popular history, text-based narrative, graphic design, and class awareness; even as it maps the physical and mental geographies of Los Angeles, it establishes a broader critique of the ways in which culture defines itself. Johnson often looks to the production of cartoon illustration, for instance, as a way of channeling the repressed libidinal energies of Hollywood. He hijacks pre-existing cultural forms and bends—or queers—them according to his own ends, appropriating signs and symbols through a kind of camp-inflected haunting, all the while locating vulnerability and humor in some of the darkest recesses of the social landscape.’
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Kay Rosen
‘In an increasingly digital age, words and sentences are moving in the direction of shorthand through the use of brevity and abbreviation. Some linguists have predicted the demise of traditional punctuation and spelling before the middle of the century because of the quickly evolving nature of text messaging. It is of no small consequence that for much of our personal communication we are giving up voice for text, and much texting is taking on graphic, visual attributes through the use of acronyms and emoticons. In this brave new world, Rosen’s work gains an added significance because of its emphasis on visuality and content in equal measure. The artist’s works are part of the continuum that includes the early Renaissance animism of Geofroy Tory, the Modernist sensibility of the Bauhaus, the formal structure found in Post-Modern choreographers such as Trisha Brown, and the abridged, often humorous nature of text messaging. As with the truism that sometimes one plus one doesn’t equal two, a work like Rosen’s Two Times Four proves that language, when looked at in a certain light, can be greater than the sum of its parts.’
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Jack Pierson
‘Jack Pierson employs photography, collage, sculptural assemblage and installation in pursuit of love, longing, kinship, poetry, celebration, youth, fantasy and identity. The artist’s mode of non-hierarchical cultural compilation and a process of impulse-led editing allows Pierson to create personal and universal narratives across his multidisciplinary practice. Emerging from the 1980s milieu of the Boston School of documentarian photographers, Pierson was instead drawn into a world of gendered, punk-influenced performativity, and was greatly influenced by the more tactile work of his friend, Mark Morrisroe.’
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Joseph Kosuth
‘Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of installation art and conceptual art, a movement which emerged during the 1960s and 1970s and redefined the notion of the art object. Kosuth was among the first artists to employ appropriation strategies, language-based works, photography, installations and public media. He also wrote some of the earliest theoretical texts supporting these approaches. Throughout his career, Kosuth has continually explored the production and role of language and meaning in art.’
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I haven’t read it yet because it’s still in the post to me, but she’s very good. You must be excited about tomorrow. I recommend hitting the little amusement park Prater if you have nothing to do for an afternoon or evening. Yes, let’s gather an arsenal and pretend the Putin voodoo doll is some kind of violent board game. It would not even be possible to be less interested in that ‘Barbie’ movie than I am. Since Zac and I start editing our film today, all I request from love at the moment is to wish us luck, G. ** Tea, Hi. I’m awaiting my copy too. And the Thomas Moore as well. It’s true, Disneyland can get irksomely crowded. It was built for hugely less people at a time back in the 50s, and it has become a very tight squeeze sadly. Troy Baker, don’t know him. I’ll look him up and try to avoid his actual music while I do, ha ha, thanks. ** Lawrence Patti, Hello there! Thanks a lot for coming in. Philip at AS keeps promising to do an AS event here in Paris, but, so far, … alas. How are you? What’s up? ** A, I don’t roll my eyes, I just smile and nod and try to switch subjects. Oh, so Zac and I need to organise the whole King Kong thing? Might be tough. Well, can you tell Derek that if he really does want to interview us to write to me so we can set that up? I don’t know any Paris photographers who do that kind of thing, but I’ll see if Zac does. ** Misanthrope, Well, that will make it easier somehow. I like voices that curdle concrete. Give me that over Adele, et. al. any old day. Did you have the anticipated fun or I guess are you continuing to? I like the Mario Party games too. I hope your kidney has gone back to ghosting you. ** Sypha, Ange is also one of the stars of Zac’s and my new film in addition to his fine poetry. ** Charalampos, Anybody who’s made happy by a GbV song is a pal of mine. The rest of the album is that good. My favorite songs on ‘Propellor’ are ‘On the Tundra’, ‘Exit Flagger’, ’14 Cheerleader Coldfront’, ‘Lethargy’, and ‘Weed King’. Mm, no, I don’t think that exact thing has ever happened to me. Interesting. Is there no good bio of Kenneth Anger? How very strange indeed. ** Bill, Hi. Thanks. Well, Oursler pieces tend to blur together, at least in my head. Whit Monday? Is that what it is? What in the world does that mean? I’m just hoping the tabacs are open today, otherwise I’m cooked. ** Nick., Hi. Um, I looked at a bunch of art and ate macarons and drank a lot of coffee and made a bunch of blog posts because I start editing the film today and will have much less time to do that for a while. I think your day wins. That affirmation sounds cool and more than sorta sweet to me. Ah, ha, Charli XCX is the pick. Gotcha. Makes sense. And your A+ on ‘Face Eraser’ has done my heart a lot of good. How did you organise your Monday? ** David Ehrenstein, I personally didn’t forget it. ** Mark, Oh, I quite liked that Jessica Yu film. I even like the animations, and usually the animated bits in docs drive me crazy. Cool that a friend of yours produced it. Kudos to her. Little Caesar #10. I think that was a pretty good issue. Lita Hornick was so funny. I never could figure out if she intended to be. 826LA sounds like a great thing. I’ve never heard if it. What is it exactly? Lovely that you volunteer there. That’s supremely admirable. Awesome! Thank you! ** Steve Erickson, Ha ha. I think the only Dead album I ever bought was ‘Aoxomoxoa’ when I was a teen. I saw the Grateful live twice, first in the ‘Live/Dead’ era when they were still a psychedelic blues band, and I quite liked them, and the second time some years later once they’d become what they became and I was very bored and left very early. Re: the editing, I’ll know better once we start today, but, if it’s like with our earlier films, we’ll edit from morning ’til evening every weekday and maybe on Saturdays. This weekend you could feel summer coming in the weather here, and I didn’t like that one little bit. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Sorry and not surprised about Leeds. Hugs. On our side, PSG just won the Ligue 1 title for the billionth or something time and Messi broke Ronaldo’s all time scoring record. Maybe move to Paris? ** Minet, Hi! My weekend was alright, not bad. Saw art, friends, worked, Zoomed, wrote. Eek, about the food poisoning. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 15 and have never had food poisoning, I think for that reason? Glad you righted yourself in time for LDR. Flowers strangely help everything. I wonder why that is. That you loved the GbV song makes me very happy, them being my gods and all. Uh, I haven’t been listening to a lot. I’m going to see Sparks soon, and I got their new album, and it’s wonderful. I need to go on a downloading spree. You recommend anything? ** Jamie, Hey, J! My weekend was fine: see above. I tried to chill mostly because I’ll be swamped with film editing for the upcoming portion of forever starting today. Cool about the Luther Price shebang. Yeah, they’re better projected, for sure, and opportunities are few and far between. The Gaitskill story is called ‘This Is Pleasure’. Not hugely recommended. I’m trying to figure out if today would be ideal if it was a kindly stick of dynamite, and I think it would be. Dunce cap cornucopia love, Dennis. ** Jack, Hi, Jack! I will scour about and try to find/see ‘Darkness, Darkness Burning Bright’. Thanks so much! That Prismatic Ground Festival sounds pretty enviable. There’s a thought of doing a book of Zac’s and my three (so far) screenplays, but nothing concrete yet. I like the idea. A great book that takes place in the woods … huh. Mm, I think Max Frisch’s ‘The Man in the Holocene’ takes place mostly in the woods? I’ll have to think. How are you? What’s going on other than your festival attendance? ** Right. I decided to curate a little show about words in my galerie, and there you go. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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I might try to push Disneyland despite being a little asocial myself. It just feels like something I should see, though I don’t think this will be my last trip to LA. I was actually writing something about Disneyland not that long ago despite having never been, but Disney fans put crazy extensive information and videos out there.
Troy’s the top video game actor out there. He played the main character in the Last of Us before it became a (middling) TV show. He’s absolutely terrific at what he does, but outside of that, he’s kind of just airheaded and pretty. I saw a picture of him around when I was first hitting puberty and that made a big impression on me. Throughout the years I have expressed many, many a violent sex fantasy about him.
Hi!!
I’m in love with words; I could spend hours digging through this post. Thank you for sharing!
Prater is definitely on our list! I don’t know if we’ll have enough time these next couple of days, but we’re planning to settle in by mid-June at the latest, so… hopefully soon.
Same – about the Barbie movie.
Oh! How was the first day of editing? This is so exciting! Or I don’t know – editing always seems like the most exciting part to me in the case of books. I don’t know if it’s the same when it comes to films.
Love transforming into Luck and sitting on your shoulder all day today, Od.
P.S. I don’t know exactly which day I’ll be back, but I’ll check in as soon as I can!
Dennis, You know I love the Galerie posts. Ace!
I got lucky and the kidney pain did indeed ghost me. It never got any worse and then subsided. Whew.
Well, game night didn’t happen. Seems Kayla had something else she’d promised to do with her housemate and had forgotten. Oh, well. We ended up watching a lot of sports this weekend, tennis (primarily), golf, and the NBA playoffs.
The French Open has started! Should be a fun two weeks.
I do like unique voices myself. Hence my Brett Anderson love. Most of my friends think he’s too whiny. Not me. He can do some interesting things vocally…or used to be able to. Same with a lot of others that people don’t like but I do.
So yeah, off work today for Memorial Day. I’m a hit the gym and do some empty-stomach cardio in a bit. Then probably talk to Mieze and Rigby. And then guitar and some short story proofreading. Oh, and eat and wash and all that.
Hope your day goes well.
<A HREF="https://masterworksbroadway.com/music/the-nervous-set-original-broadway-cast-1959/"?The Nervous Set
Blog Man of Alacazam: HOpe the editing is starting off well. Hey, These are a blast. No Ruscha and those others (HOlzer, Kruger), but they get enuf attention. Benjamin turned me on to artist Kathrine Kesey who incorporates wordz into her paintings. Quite good! I believe we successfully launched our “process” convo on the Zoom machine! Very interesting to hear George Miles novel structure. OK so here’s QA I did with Hobart mag about Fear of Kathy Acker etc. You and Disneyland are in there. Plus a slice of one of my new “theories.” https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/foka The writer reached out to me out of the blue, which is always nice. Your faithful blog eater, Jack
No, of course I’m not going to put that pressure on you. I want the magazine and us to organize it for you, but maybe that’ll happen at end of June and more into July and I’ll message Mccormack then. No rush. I want to give you space and not be writing everyday. I was only giving you and Zac first option for the photographers, cause I thought you guys knew some out there but again, this isn’t that pressing, we can discuss then. August is some time away. James Nulick reached out to my team about receiving an ARC for NMB. Let’s see how that goes… Are you behind this or is it the town chatter?
I love some of Nancy Dwyer’s pieces, so simple and clever. And Larry Johnson’s gay porn palm lines are hilarious! Wonder how mine stack up, hmm.
Whit Monday is some Pentecost thing. I wouldn’t have known, but a big chess tournament starts today and they mentioned it. When I was spending months in Germany, it seemed that they observed a lot of Catholic holidays, but as excuses to not work and go drinking. I support that attitude.
I’m reading Claire Louise Bennett’s Checkout 19. I was nervous about the multi-page paragraphs (philistine, I know), but got sucked in by the voice and the ruminations on books and reading, quite enjoying it.
Bill
I think this is the first time I’ve ever spotted Dilbert on this blog ha ha.
Speaking of words I recently got a reference book called SHAKESPEARE’S WORDS: A GLOSSARY & LANGUAGE COMPANION. It contains over 14,000 words that appear in all of Shakespeare’s plays, along with helpful appendices with encyclopedic lists of all his characters, all his references to biblical/historical/mythological figures, even lists of every single reference to plants/flora that appear in his plays. I’ve kind of been on a bit of a Shakespeare kick recently so obviously this book is of interest to me.
Oh, that’s cool about Ange being in your and Zac’s new film, yeah I was really impressed with his acting and I enjoyed his poetry as well.
Hi! Great day really productive sounding and great snack choices sounds really fun and simple. Hum I’m sorta starting to feel maybe a bit placated?? Possibly like maybe all my excitement is shifting to worry I’ll just never even get to see if this like new mode or better behavior won’t get to be exposed even a lil to passive behind my brain boy I wanna hang with but I’m not that worried either so I’m not gonna feed it whatever will be will be I guess! Monday was simple I stayed in a played video games for most of the day and ended up spending a nice solo couple of hours with a friend who normally we have a bunch of sorta close or even just straight up randoms around us when we’re orbiting around each other so I really appreciated it. We watched succession and then sort of coasted through this going away party that was being hosted at his place. I also like that I’m kinda pushing myself in different ways that while short and relatively simple don’t scare me and are are just not how I would’ve done things before so that’s nice too. The waiting for results is still something I’ll probably struggle with for a min. Otherwise really calm cool day full of laughing and being dumb and enjoying a good life with my friends. Look around whatever room you’re in and tell me something about it? I’m my bedroom and I have a huge possession poster from when I worked at this crazy movie theater and I honestly need to clean my closet up a bit so that’s mine! Wish you well and talk soon!
Oh wait not Monday that’s today. Everything I said was about Sunday!if anything cool happens today I’ll be sure to let you know!
Up in Glasgow there’s a huge art space called the Tramway. Back in 2001, a pair of artists named Tatham and O’Sullivan installed a monumental-sized sculpture in there. HK used the slogan Heroin Kills and re-presented it as six-metre high black letters, causing quite a stir. Definitely up there with my fave text artworks.
This link should allow viewing.
When did the Dead turn into the literal cult band we know and don’t love? Their music, especially in the studio, really took a downward turn after 1970.
How’d your first day of editing go?
I’ve always loved the way Godard used text onscreen. It’s obviously intended to function as an image, far beyond the word’s literal meaning, while most intertitles are merely functional. Michael Snow’s all-text film SO IS THIS is a favorite too.
Hey back for a day because the pigeon thing you asked sent me down a rabbithole. or a pigeon hole idk. Oh btw I always enjoy when people ask me things cuz its like a mission and it distracts me. So if you have any more animal questions! So I found out that during ww2 the inventor/psychologist B.F Skinner would train Pigeons to guide missiles by putting metal conductors on them and having them peck at the target to direct it. They never went went that idea and used electronic directors instead but I think that makes them super badass.
Oh! To answer your question, or at least try to, my personal opinion is because they are really hyper-alert creatures and were being weird and observing sounds? They have 90% accurate perception compared to humans. Idk! they could have been sensing missiles!
Be careful o. –
I was actually really interested in pigeons a while ago. Some part in my book a pigeon crashes through the boys apartment and it upsets him so he tries to taxidermy it back to life. It ends up rotting because he has no idea what he’s doing. Ah taxidermy it comes full circle how funny.
Oh yeah btw the person isnt into me anymore because the age gap. I just found that out now so i think i’ll say bye and be alone again.
OH WAIT just so im not too sulky here’s a pigeon playing ping pong!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4 it might not work idk
ok update because I totally was overreacting over the “ordeal” but I made it! No scratches bruises or holes to refill and I am now realizing how unbothered I am by the whole thing. JUNE is going to be my month I think (〜￣▽￣)〜