2012 DISINHIBITIONS: ADAM FAGIN

Nilling, Lisa Robertson

A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon, CAConrad

Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner

The Book of a Thousand Eyes, Lyn Hejinian

Threshold Songs, Peter Gizzi

The Yet to be Pronounced Pronouns, j/j hastain

Fledge: A Phenomenology of Spirit, Stacy Doris

Conversities, Srikanth Reddy & Dan Beachy-Quick

Ventifacts, Christine Hume

The Invention of Glass, Emmanuel Hocquard translated by Cole Swensen and Rod Smith

l.b.; or, catenaries, Judith Goldman

Mercury, Ariana Reines

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: STEPHEN NOVOTNY

:::::: FOR 2012 IN ORDER OF MEMORY ::::::::::::


1 BIG SHOUT OUT to all of my friends who spent free time with me during 2012

my two younger brothers both claimed to have grown their first pubic hairs

dancing when LIGHTNING BOLT was in town

taking BIG SUR private beaches

my friends and i built a wall so i now have a room and can survive off a part time job

The Master

http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area

Chris Marker (RIP)

i met so many cool people this year i liked all the CONVERSATIONS and i never felt disappointed

driving up 101 to be with my family when the world ended

BIFO BERARDI lecture and BOB GRENIER reading back-to-back

COMPLINE prints and Ezra Thomas Cross existing

figured out my breathing problem!

The Hole

fell in love a few times

my parents gifting me Deleuze From A to Z

when the giants won the world series i liked watching the streets light up in fire

all things BLACK METAL: seeing Wolves in the Throne Room and Earth and Mount Eerie's two new albums

looking fwd to 2013

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: ANNE LESLEY SELCER

Silvia Federici's Bay Area lectures and her new book Revolution Point Zero

Silvia's book, Caliban and the Witch, which I first heard of at a Nonsite Collective meeting, reframes the utter insanity and failure of the nuclear family (for the woman, that is) within a historical story of primitive capitalist accumulation. It made so much sense to me (upon having a child) that the transformation of world into resource ran concurrent with the subjugation of woman into the same. It's one of those connective frameworks that hovers experimentally around one's mind, then suddenly appears as a book, complexly argued. When she spoke in San Francisco this past Fall, Silvia asserted a strong and searing series of connections between the daily life of reproductive work and global financial mechanisms. Reproductive work here is every act involved in the reproduction of the self, i.e. everyday life—and that is what has been enclosed and financialized. Revolution at Point Zero collects her "Wages for Housework" essays from the 7'0s with newer works concerning globalization. Secretly, I am feeling or thinking that what's coming will be more like getting back to something, that it will come by necessity, in a cascade, that it may appear as dissolution, but will uncover connection. The depth of the connections in Federici's work sound out this potential.             

Claire Fontaine

I knew French collective Claire Fontaine more for its concept (art collective as fake art star) and its writing than its art production. I was told (incorrectly) that one of its artists had authored the Theory of the Young-Girl, a text which held me in its problematic thrall during early 2011, and since have been told that that same artist did author Tiqqun's Sonogram of a Potential, an account of the current potential of feminism (highly influenced by the writings Silvia Federici helped to produce in Italy in the 70's). The collective reworks the readymade and appropriative practices against privatization and state repression. At their lecture at the California College of the Arts this past Fall, I liked everything about the artist representing the collective, who I now know was Fulvia Carnevale, but I think I liked it best when, after a complex lecture on the history of the readymade, she responded to curator Jens Hoffmann, who had just chastised her for presenting too complex a paper, with bemused incredulity—then backed her annoyance with a complex institutional critique. It's weird that it seemed punk for a woman to defend herself with a casual flick of dignity, it should seem normal.

Nights later, I arrived with my three year old to Claire Fontaine's smaller, in-gallery talk at the Wattis, and during the question/answer period, asked about the collective's writing practice—I wanted to talk to Fulvia about everything, anything. When she was answering my question to a hushed and attentive audience of 25 people, my child turned to face me directly and began to loudly demand, “SNACK! SNACK!” As I had not come prepared with a snack, I backed awkwardly out of the gallery. So when, nights later, I found myself running across Market Street at night with a stroller to Green Arcade Bookstore to catch what was left of a Franco Berardi lecture, I ran smack into Fulvia at the back of the crowd straining to calm her 10 month old, I thought, “yes.” I thought, “this makes sense because we are living it, we are reading it and we are writing it.” I thought, “I'll have my girl show her boy her light up halloween necklace, perhaps that will help.” And together, we calmed and amused our children for the rest of the lecture. This is what intellectuals who are also writers, who are also artists do, this is what intellectuals do. They raise people.  

I'll Drown My Book

Why do women write experimentally? Because the law is not on their side. In the introduction to Sexual Difference, or Don't Believe You Have Rights, a document from the Milan Woman's Bookstore Collective in 1970's Italy, entrustment is chosen to describe the relationship between women which is not exactly fostering, but more of passing along of energy or power, one that happens between men all the time, that drives patriarchal culture with its underlaying homosociality. Entrustment is a female mediation of the world; it happens between the pages of this book.

Jackqueline Frost at the BAM Re@ds series

David Brazil and Suzanne Stein were invited to curate a series of younger writers for a Berkeley Art Museum Friday night series in a little project room off to the side of the lobby where you can take a book and leave a book. It is a diminutive space and very alive; the spirit of the space invites permission. Jackqueline, who is one of my favorite writers in the area, opened the series. When her complex and lovely reading concluded, her friend joined her and they positioned themselves behind a mixer and circuit board. With ethereal phrases sung and looped, turning pages of books mic'ed and looped, a lightbulb crushed inside a garbage can—they raised the spirit of 4AD, they reminded me of Magik Markers, they paid back the hours of boring boy noise shows I've sat through, they produced what art often gestures towards but does not have the courage to produce: catharsis.

Iduna: an opera in one act

Kari Edwards' book was post-posthumously arranged into an opera and presented at Artist Access Television’s tiny, roughhewn space on Valencia Street. I walked late into the thickness of a gentle cacophony of voices, and took my seat in one of the crooked rows. Nearly everybody I know in the Bay Area was simultaneously reading a different line of text. I do not believe Cageian avant garde listening practices are sufficient for our current political moment—I've been told to listen quite enough, thanks. But here was an insistent collective intoning. But here was variation, overlap, confusion, swimming language. The artist was gone and so was the piece. I kept wishing to be able to hear the sound from above.  Everybody's face looked beautiful, and my synesthesia returned. If revolution happens through resonance, here was a sweet, swirling try.

Dance party after Ariana and Ronaldo reading

John Coletti had this weird squat-like style of dancing that I am sure has a name and that Lauren Shufran also knew how to do. The piano shook. There had been a fight and also a declaration of love. My conversation with Olive began intellectually and ended in giggling. I'm sure all this could have only happened within an arena paced by Ariana's work and bookended with Ronaldo's. My work lately aims less at counter-sense and more at an ascension to the sensory, an amplification of sense, of the senses: I believe that requires more dance parties.        

The Alphabet Effect by Robert K. Logan and The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance by Franco Berardi

There are parts of each of these books that are hokey, untenable, exaggerated or irresponsible. Both however, get me a step or so closer in a set of questions I've had over the past several years about writing versus image—about abstraction and its casualties—about the representation (or absence) versus presence. Lately, I just want to raise something up, to transgress against secondariness, to actually make the object. 

“Every time a word is read, a match between a visual sign and a spoken sound is made. Matching forms the basis of rationality or logic ” (L).

“The alphabet by separating the sound, meaning and appearance of a word separated the eye from the rest of the senses, especially the ear” (L.)

“Neoliberal ideology pretends to be a liberating force that emancipates capital from state regulation, but it in fact submits production and social life to the most ferocious regulation, the mathematization of language” (B).

If both books fail for being overbearing or overreaching, the myriad of quotable lines are what's valuable about both—little nodes of highly enriched thought, and at least their failures are predictable.

  

RGB Colorspace Atlas by Tauba Auerbach

Tauba's work is always linked with language somehow. Here is my absolute favorite as of yet (every color  imaginable is represented therein)—

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: JESS HEANEY

Music:
Rocky Rivera, Bambu, and 6Fingers and Topkat. Badass artists on the Beatrock Music label. Beatrock shares loads of free downloads here, which are icing on the cake. Favorite albums of the year are Bambu’s …one rifle per family and 6 Fingers and Topkat’s Mercury Retrograde.


Best shows of the year:
- Beatrock Music 3rd Anniversary at Brick & Mortar in SF (Dec 20), where all the label’s artists and bay area lovers threw down til 2am. favorite moments…Rocky Rivera rockapella version of GIRLS (yep, riffing off the Beastie Boys) and Bambu cutting it up with Prometheus Brown of the Blue Scholars). Sharpest 3rd world left politics alive and burning bright into 2013. hell yea.
- Xandra Ibarra (AKA La Chica Boom)’s Fuck My Life (FML) burlesque performance at CounterPulse. “In an era rife with rampant Mexiphobia, a foul-mouthed cockroach maps the journey of a queer burlesque performer named La Chica Boom. After 10 years of performing Spic-tacles on and off stage, La Chica Boom is forced to interrogate her method for insurrection. Inspired by the original Mexican spitfire Lupe Velez who purportedly died with her head in the toilet, Chica spends night after night pacing her bathroom floor and staring into the porcelain bowl.”


Graphic novels:
- Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
- Maus by Art Speigelman. finally read it. couldn’t put it down.


Favorite political reads:
- Revolution at Point Zero, an essay collection by Sylvia Federici. Spanning from the Wages for Housework Movement to what she terms the “New International Division of Labor” between the “first” and “third worlds” at this moment in global capitalism
- Capital by Karl Marx. Thanks feminist materialist anarchist Mills College reading group. COuldn’t have got through it alone.
- The Long 20th Century by Giovanni Arrighi. Not yet finished, but I’m loving the shaping of the history of capitalism into the waves of accumulation and overlapping, successive hegemonies.
- Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. Always good to reread the discourses around violence/non-violence and remind oneself of the political efficacy, necessity and historical theories around violence as an anti-colonial/imperial tactic. and why ‘non-violence’ is an impossible framework [of resistance, of power] in the trajectory of capitalist imperialisms.
- Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth by Yaki Sayles
- Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland by Allen Feldman


Prose and poetry (not new things, but new to me…):
- Rosy Medallions by Camille Roy. Bought this from her after the lovely Steve Orth, Lindsay Boldt, Camille reading at the Long Haul back in February. I just fell into Camille’s smooth prose, hearing her voice release every lovely phrase into the atmosphere with perfectly sealed paragraphs: “It tasted like clouds.”
- One With Others by CD Wright
- Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. Just devoured this novel while on vacation. Science fiction, fantasy, capitalist US slavery and parallel colony development. Shape shifting, race, desire, and bodies. Can’t wait to read more by her.
- VIA soundpiece by Caroline Bergvall. Stephanie Young called out to this piece at the December Long Haul reading, which sent me on the search. Beautiful.
- (dis)Orient by James Thomas Stevens


Calling out gentrification:
- “NOBE: Neighbors Outing Blatant Exploitation” video from Phat Beets and allies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JneAYdmDGCE. A well-organized response to structural gentrification that generated a lot of news articles and stifled the real estate agent to take down their insane video and be publically roasted. A conversation starter.
- Hitler Gentrifies Oakland (youtube). The sharpest meme.

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: DAVID JAMES MILLER

writing
not all from 2012, in no particular order…

Anja Utler / Engulf--Enkindle
Samuel Beckett / The Unnameable
Jill Magi / Slot
Jamie Townsend / Strap/Halo
Thom Donovan / The Hegemon Say
Brenda Iijima / from UNTIMELY DEATH IS DRIVEN BEYOND THE HORIZON
Michael Cross / Haecceities
Aase Berg (tr. Johannes Gorrannson) / Transfer Fat
Laura Walker / Follow-Haswed
Mary Austin Speaker / 20 Love Poems for 10 Months
Gracie Leavitt / Gap Gardening
Gustaf Sobin / Collected Poems (this has been a staple since its printing)
Pseudo-Dionysius / The Mystical Theology

also, i just got both Laura Elrick's 'Propagation' and Sara Wintz's
'WALKING ACROSS A FIELD WE ARE FOCUSED ON AT THIS TIME NOW'--looking
forward to reading them in the new year!

musics
i think these are all from 2012, in no particular order…

Evan Caminiti / Dreamless Sleep
Basic House / I'm Not a Heaven Man
Vatican Shadow / Ghosts of Chechnya
Ian Hawgood / The Shattered Light
Raime / Quarter Turns Over a Living Line
Container / LP
EN & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma / Split
Naomi Punk / The Feeling
Hiss Golden Messenger / Poor Moon
Godspeed You! Black Emperor / 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Swans / The Seer
Demdike Stare / Elemental

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: MARY BURGER

Some Books I Read and Events I Experienced in 2012, in Mostly Chronological Order

1. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes. Anita Berrizbeita.

2. Botany for Gardners: An Introduction and Guide, Brian Capon.

3. Experimental screenprinting class, Kala Art Institute.

4. Litmus Press, An Evening of New Poetry. Old Stone House, Brooklyn, June 30. My first chance to read from Then Go On.

5. Exhibit of my print series ‘Branches’ at Collector gallery, Berkeley.

6. Screenprinting: The Complete Water-Based System. Robert Adam, Carol Robertson.

7. Joined the Compound Gallery & Studios as a studio artist.

8. Marfa, Texas. Donald Judd, Chinati Foundation. Visit with Julie.

9. Are You My Mother?, Allison Bechdel.

10. Lucia Lodge, Big Sur.

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: AARON COHICK

Here's my list for The Disinhibitor, a little late, as usual:

This is by no means a "best of" list, just what comes to mind when I think back on things that I was excited about in 2012. In fact, not all of these are from 2012, but they are all things that I got around to this, I mean last, year. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.


Books with mostly words:

Two novels by Justin Sirois: Falcons on the Floor and So Say the Waiters

Two books from Ugly Duckling Presse (both from 2011 I think): Uselysses by Noel Black and Pro Magenta/Be met by Corina Copp (for writing & design)


Books & Bookish thing with lots of pictures:

WWYD? by the incredible Emily Larned (the prints that came from that project are great too)

The Vista Sans Wood Type Project, which is a prime example of how artists are using new technology to push old technology


Things from "the world" that made me happy/give me hope:

The Rolling Jubilee

& more people helping people 


Those are the few things that come to mind right now. I will probably think of about 20 more a minute or so after I click on "send." But here's looking forward to another good year....

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: SUEYUEN JULIETTE LEE

 
Here is my list of favorites for the year:
Open Letter Books!! Run by SUNY Rochester, this press publishes twelve books in translation (poetry and prose) each year. I was floored by work from Can Xue, Jakov Lind, and Juan Gelman, who surprised, terrified, and moved me. I feel too US-centered in my reading interests. The rest of the world is up to awesome things!

Gaston Bachelard's Air and Dreams, which my ex-husband gifted me last year. I finally sat down with it and it is SO UTTERLY GORGEOUS! I will never look at wings the same. He's a philosopher who tries to be a poet, I think. I'm a little in love with Bachelard's spirit.

Visiting Michelle Kishita's studios. She's a visual artist based in Philadelphia and I can't wait to see her new show at the Painted Bride this spring. Gorgeous gorgeous textures and colors.

One of my students got me into jazz pianist Robert Glasper, whose album Black Radio may be perfect.

I am obsessed with traditional Korean flute music, particularly the daegeum ("big flute"). The daegeum is one of the few bamboo flutes that feature a vibrating reed membrane, which creates a haunting wail and richness in its tone. I've been teaching myself how to play, since I wanted to learn how to feel an instrument through my body. My cousin from Korea, who also plays this instrument (which is a rarity, frankly) just sent me an incredible collection of albums and traditional musical scores. The scores are composed in a native notational system that imagines time, duration, and tonal relationships completely differently than western scores do. It blows my mind looking at them...especially because I am functionally illiterate in Korean, not to mention Hanja (Korean use of classical Chinese, which is like Latin for east Asia). I'll send some pictures of these scores so you can see how incredible they are.

LOVE and HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you, Sir Cross!

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: PAUL EBENKAMP

MY 2012

Music:
Recollection GRM reissues!: Bernard Parmegani, l'Oeil Ecoute; Luc Ferrari, Presque Rien.
Scott Walker, The Drift.
Morton Subotnick, The Wild Bull.
AMM, AMMmusic, Generative Themes & Newfoundland.
Polwechsel, 2 & Field.
Carter Tutti Void, Transverse.
The Dead C, Patience & "Shaft/Factory" 7".
Vatican Shadow, Kneel Before Religious Icons.
Sleep, Dopesmoker finally issued properly.
The Spinners, "I'll Be Around" 45rpm single played at 38rpm.
Madonna, "Into The Groove" 45rpm single played at 33rpm.
Loose Ends, "Hanging on a String (Contemplating") 45rpm single played at 38rpm.
Excepter, "Stream 40".
Cecil Taylor, Conquistador.
Viodre, Interpol Alchemi.
Neo Matisse, "Dream's Dream".
Libido, "Motionless".

Film:
The Master.
Blood Simple.
Rashomon.

Books:
Cyrus Console, The Odicy.
Thom Donovan, The Hole.
Laura Riding, Gertrude Stein, HD, Marianne Moore, Djuna Barnes, Lola Ridge, and other early women modernist poets for a book project that may never be.
Wallace Stevens, "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together".
War and Peace.
Dead Souls.

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: kathryn l. pringle

1. Discovering aggregate space and Steffi Drewes's Featherboard Writing Series: probably my most favorite space and people in Oakland. so happy they exist.

2. Fragile at YBCA. Eiko & Koma and Kronos Quartet. stayed as long as i could on the very uncomfortable not-chairs provided for this hours-long installation piece back in March 2012.

3. julian talamantez brolaski's book party at stephanie young's. variety show awesomeness plus a very distinguished cat named Zenith.

4. james meetze's reading at Featherboard: PERFECTION.

5. chris vitiello and brent cunningham reading for the Poetry Center. such talented, smarty-pants goofballs.

6. the Oakland A's and SF Giants kicking ass.

7. Mary Burger's paintings.

8. curating the BAPM and loving all my readers.

9. Erin Morrill and Ted Rees at Manifest Reading Series: another night of poetry bliss.

10. Megan Breiseth's Zia. a great chapbook that you should find and read and love.

11. Christian Marclay's The Clock at LACMA with Samantha Giles, Brent Armendinger, and Joseph Gallucci.

12. ALICE NOTLEY.

13. Touring with Andrea Rexilius, Resident Evil marathon, Disco Volante, exhaustion testing, Gualala, writing a novel, new book tour, and conquering trigonometry.

bio: kathryn l. pringle lives in Oakland, Ca. She is the author of fault tree (winner of Omindawn’s 1st/2nd book prize selected by CD Wright), RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (Heretical Texts/Factory School), The Stills (Duration Press), and Temper and Felicity are lovers.(TAXT). Poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, Fence, Phoebe, horse less review, and other journals. Her work can also be found in Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: A Decade of War (WODV Press), I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues), and forthcoming in The Sonnets: Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books).

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: ERICA LEWIS

in no particular order:

- Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism – this exhibit at the legion of honor had me spellbound. it was the first time i had ever seen ray’s work in person. a reminder about his being a filmmaker and fashion photographer and his ready-mades. to be close to such innovative works, to sit and watch some of his films, and to put it all into context with history. in terms of collaboration, i had no idea about lee miller and her contribution, conscious or unconscious (after all, ray continued to be quite obsessed with her after their split), to surrealism and photography, and war reportage. a really great afternoon at the museum.

- i was so moved by the man ray/lee miller exhibit that i went out and bought books on both ray and miller and the exhibition. the ray biography, Man Ray: American Artist by Neil Baldwin, is one of my favorite books this year. art and artist viewed through the lens of history. art and ownership. how an artist views art and politics and the changing world around them. this was a pivotal read for me.

- Dan Thomas-Glass – The Great American Beatjack Volume 1 – generosity. love. family. music. dan is one of the most sincere poets out there. and you can feel him putting it all out there. each and every poem. makes you want to believe in something.

- Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – second best museum show i’ve seen this year. i was particularly drawn to her painting, large scale assemblages of depth and color and texture. and i’m not talking about The Rose, which i found to be much less interesting than some of the paintings that pre-dated it. i found myself wanting to live in a room filled with her art, wanting to live with those paintings. i found myself trying to avoid The Rose and its weight. we went to SFMOMA to see this exhibit and the jasper johns retrospective; we couldn’t stop talking about defeo’s work as we walked through the johns galleries – she was so much more diverse, so much more impressive.

- Chris Martin – i rarely leave readings wanting to run right out and purchase every book ever written by the reader, but this was the experience i had upon hearing chris give a mid-day sf reading at books and bookshelves. American Music and Becoming Weather became two beacons of genuine language for me this year.

- Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present – i could go on and on about this movie. i’ve never been a huge fan of performance art, but this film goes so far beyond documentary and performance art. it’s about process and the role of the artist, but more than anything, it’s about how much of oneself an artist is willing to invest in their art. profound. moving. i walked away with so much from this film.

- The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye - i approached this film thinking it was going to be about one thing and walked away appreciating it for so much more. the extremity of art imitating life and life as living art. this film is crazy and beautiful and entertaining and just plain crazy. crazy. love.

- Frank Ocean, Channel Orange; Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dream – these two artists/albums rekindled my faith in modern r&b. just listen.

- Chromatics, Ceremony - johnny jewel and co. put out one of the coolest cover songs this year. their take on new order’s Ceremony is hauntingly good. and that guitar. electronic tears.

- Nite Jewel, P.Y.T.- there are some artists that should never be covered. i think michael jackson is one of them. really. nite jewel does the king of pop justice on this stripped down slow jam. really. second best cover this year.

- Bruno Mars, Unorthodox Jukebox – ok pop music, i’m in. i’m not sure what’s going on with the new “look” bruno mars, at last sighting an homage to erik estrada via 70s coke pimp, but there is definitely something interesting going on in this album. there’s songwriting. but also, there’s a duality, a sense of “these are the songs for radio” and “these are the songs for me” coming from mars; there’s some pop “artistry” here. and it’s good. and a little wrong (seriously, just listen to “Gorrillas”). i feel a little guilty when i listen to this album. but not so guilty that i won’t listen to it again.

- there is something about the end of this year that made me sonically retreat to classic rock. an overwhelming feeling of really needing to be comforted and surrounded by something familiar, something that’s endured, something with history. steely dan. (early) fleetwood mac. doobie brothers, you too. december’s been difficult. thanks for getting me through.

SPT's Poets Theater This Weekend!!

We, at Small Press Traffic, are so excited to invite you to the 12th annual Poets Theater festival - this year again at CounterPULSE!

This year’s boundary-breaking, genre-bending collaborations between writers, filmmakers, and visual artists will offer serious fun, combining premieres of innovative work by nationally-known writers such as Whiting Fellowship for Poetry winner Will Alexander with abundant humor, a carnival atmosphere, and plenty of audience participation. AND IT'S THIS WEEKEND: Friday, January 18th and Saturday, January 19th!!

Join us Friday January 18th at 7:30pm for:
+Of Our Lives written and directed by Jen Currin
+Teenage Kicks written and directed by Zoe Tuck and Amy Berkowitz
+The Edict of Nancy written by Dorothy Trujillo Lusk and directed by Dillon Westbrook
+A Day at the Races written by Julie Lythcott-Haims and directed by Brandon Jackson
+ Poets Therapy written and directed by Kate Robinson
+Conduction in the Catacombs written by Will Alexander and directed by Sara Larsen

And then come back on Saturday January 19th at 7:30pm for :
+Perscriptive Love written by Stan Apps
+Chorus of Plants written and directed by Mary Burger and Yedda Morrison
+Escape from Century Hills written and directed by Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth
+In a Word, Faust written by Ish Klein and directed by Kevin Killian
+The Voice Reconfigured as Event as Spacial written and directed by Avra Spector
+Three Standard Stoppages written and directed by Brent Cunningham

TICKETS: $20 online
$25 at the door
To buy tickets in advance visit CounterPULSE.

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: DAVID BUUCK

50 things that pushed me in 2012

---5 nonficion books---

Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, Minnesota, 1988

Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Arts, Supporting Publics, Routledge, 2011

Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Verso, 2012

Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reencactment, Routledge, 2011

Gillian Rose, Love's Work, 1985

---5 novels---

Lauen Beukes, Moxyland, Angry Robot, 2010,

Laurie Weeks, Zippermouth, Feminist Press, 2011

Kirsten Kaschock, Sleight, Coffee House, 2011

Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to our Hillbrow, Ohio, 2001

Nicole Brossard, Mauve Desert, trans Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood, 1987

---5 poetry books---

Sean Bonney, The Commons, Openned Press, 2011 &  Happiness: poems after Rimbaud, Unkant, 2011

Sachiko Murakami, Rebuild, Talonbooks, 2011

Kim Hyesoon, All the Garbage of the World, Unite, trans Don Mee Choi, Action Books, 2011

Justin Katko, Death of Pringle, Flim Forum, 2011

----10 chaps----

Lara Durback, Projectiles, NoNo, 2012

Ya-Wen Ho, last edited [insert time here], tinfish, 2012

Holly Pester, Katrina Sequence, Intercapillary Editions, 2012

Leon Baham, Ponyboy, Sigh: a word problem, Birds of Lace Press, 2011

Keston Sutherland, Stress Positions, Barque, 2009

Jasper Bernes, We are Nothing and So Can You, Tenured Ninja, 2012

Manuel Maples Acre, City: Bolshevik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos, trans Brandon Jolmquest, UDP, 1924/2010

Kate Durbin, E! Entertainment, Insert Press, 2011

Sophie Robinson, lovesic, self-pub, 2006

The Mary Nardini Gang, Toward the Queerist Insurrecton, 2011

---5 plays/scripts---

Dario Fo, Abducting Diana, adapt. Stephen Stenning, 1986 &  We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay, trans. Ron Jenkins, 1974

Maria Irene Fones, Fefu and Her Friends, PAJ, 1980

Griselda Gambaro, Information for Foreigners, trans Marguerite Feitlowitz, Northwestern, 1987

Laura Kipnis, Ecstasy Unlimited: The Interpenetrations of Sex and Capital, 1985

---5 oldies---

Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye, 1941,

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook, 1962

Ursula le Guin, The Dispossessed, 1974

Cecilia Vicuña, Sabormi, Chainlinks, 1973/2011

Stephen Wright, Meditations in Green, 1983

---5 films---

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years without Images, d. Eric Baudelaire, 2011, @ SFIFF

Fig Trees, d. John Greyson, 2009, @ PFA

I am Furious Yellow, d. Kidlat Tahimik, 1980-94, @ PFA

Hail the New Puritan, d. Charles Atlas, 1985, @ SFMoma

Heart of Darkness, d. Fiona Banner, @ a Room for London

---5 exhibits---

Clifford Owens @ PS1

Gillian Wearing @ Whitechapel

Zoe Strauss @ Philadelphia Museum

Yayoi Kusama @ Tate Modern

"The Cornfield" @ Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

---5 events---

CA Conrad & Eileen Myles impromptu reading @ Mission Laundromat

Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, & Lucinda Childs, Einstein on the Beach, @ Zellerbach

John Adams, Alice Goodman, & Peter Sellars, Nixon in China, @ SF Opera

Ronaldo Wilson freestyle reading @ my place

Ralph Lemon @ BAM

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: CRAIG DWORKIN

A dozen discs on heavy rotation this year:

Bon Iver: For Emma (forever ago) [Jagjaguwar, 2008]. The poetics of falling. The soundtrack to the book I've been writing.

Anthony Braxton: Willisau (Quartet) [hatART, 1991]. Long promised as a re-release, ridiculously scarce and dear, I'd never heard these until I chanced on an affordable copy in a Toronto record store. I'd always figured the four discs could never actually live up to my imagination of how great they were, but they exceed dreams: tight and exploded all at once. Everyone — Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway — are working together, in a particular creative situation that they seem to know is transient. The document should be an inspiration to the possibilities of "le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps [the passage of a few persons through a rather brief unity of time]," as Guy Debord would say.

Death Cab for Cutie: "Summer Skin," Plans [Barsuk, 2005]. Is to U2s "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as Steely Dan's "FM" is to the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter." No static at all.

Marco Eneidi Coalition: st [Botticelli, 1994]. All out. With the stupendous Raphe Malik, plus Jackson Krall, William Parker and Glenn Spearman.

Foton Quartet: Zomo Hall [Not Two, 2010]. Jakub Cywinski, Gerard Lebik, Artur Majewski, and Wojciech Romanowski. Atmospheric, yes, but in the sense that the music might be inseparable from the fabric of the world: inevitable, necessary, natural, about — at any moment — to collapse in ruin.

Darius Jones: Grass Roots [Aum Fidelity, 2012]. From 2009 to 2012, Jones released a trilogy (Man'ish Boy; Big Gurl; and Book of Mæ'bul) that has some kind of autobiographical epic trajectory about the history of music which to be honest I don't really understand, but they're all absolutely solid. This may or may not be part of that project (?), but it's really solid too.

Mbira (Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet and flugelhorn, Pheeroan AkLaff on percussion, and Min Xiao-Fen on pipa): Dark Lady Of The Sonnets [Tum, 2011]. This is the one disc I've gone back to most often in the last year. Chthonic solidity and cosmic ethereality set the poles between which alert intellectualism and soulful spirituality converse. Like safely hearing pure structure — Kali's skeleton — dance.

Eve Risser, Benjamin Duboc and Edward Perraud: En Corps [Dark Tree, 2012]. Game changing.

Trespass Trio [Martin Küchen, Raymond Strid, Per Zanussi]: two discs, "...was there to illuminate the night sky" [Clean Feed, 2009] and Bruder Beda [Clean Feed, 2012]: anxiety, rage, threat, sustain — but all without a moment of histrionics. Maximum emotion with minimal noise, as if a kind of existential sorrow had hypnotized itself.

Rosa Luxembourg New Quintet: Night Asylum [Not Two, 2010]. Uncontainable energy, unclassifiable idioms, unidentifiable instruments — in other words, pure anarchism. Plus erudite musicology. But wait: what was the old quartet?? There's clearly research to be done....

Wadada Leo Smith: 10 Freedom Summers [Cuneiform, 2012]. Most important jazz project of the decade: recorded here as a four-disc magnum opus that manages to be as musically interesting in the particulars as its ambitions are sweeping. Truly monumental but never fatuous or pompous, I'm assuming (and hoping) it will take me the next decade to really work through it.

Nate Wooley (any number of discs — I've been into him in the way I used to be into Dave Douglas, who for a while could do no harm — but for the record I'll pick STEM [Clean Feed, 2012], where he teams up with the Red Trio: Hernâni Faustino, Gabriel Ferrandini, and Rodrigo Pinheiro). Structure, encounter and (what sets this apart from other equally cerebral, interesting, engaging and exciting improvisations) a drive to each piece that can only be utopian.

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: SARA MUMOLO

2012 Favs in no particular order

= The reprint of Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency

= Michael Zapruder's Pink Thunder

= Kermit Lynch wine

= The latest season of Breaking Bad

= Jarnot's Duncan biography 

= Rick Meier's In the Pure Block of the Whole Imaginary

= SF Moma's Cindy Sherman exhibit

= Francesca Woodman's SF Moma exhibit

= finding Hiroshi Sugimoto's Seascapes from the 80's

= pregnancy

= blood oranges

= Three Poets from Minus A Press (Ashbery, Donnelly, O'Brien)

= finding Jenny Saville's nudes

= Vashon Island

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: DAVID HADBAWNIK

Disinhibitor List 2012

This is in no particular order of awesomeness, just a list of things and people I’ve been amazed and inspired by this year.

1) Sonny and the Sunsets’ Longtime Companion. Sonny Smith has been a Bay Area stalwart for many years, and his band keeps getting better and better. He began 2012 by staging a solo performance piece at the Lost Church, and continued with this album release and numerous tours.

2) Fiona Apple and Cat Power. Both released new albums I’ve found inspiring in different ways. Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel… is an idiosyncratic bit of raw emotion, with live performances to match. Cat Power’s Sun puts autotune and dance beats to amazingly fresh use, reinvigorating her whole sound.

3) Feist’s guitar playing. I’ll be the first to admit that Feist’s Metals (actually released in late 2011) is probably not her best work. But I was totally unprepared for the way Ms. Feist absolutely shredded on lead guitar during her concert in Buffalo in summer 2012.

4) Hoa Nguyen, As Long as Trees Last (Wave). In addition to being a great friend, Hoa Nguyen continues to be one of our generation's most important and adventurous poets, with each new work pushing her experiments with Olsonian line and persona further.

5) Kathryn Pringle, fault tree. (Omnidawn). Kathryn Pringle writes deep, research-oriented, language-inquisitive books that strike off into breathtakingly original territory.

6) Kim Gek Lin Short, China Cowboy (Tarpaulin Sky). Wildly funny yet thought-provoking and genre-bending take on the long narrative-style poem.

7) Rich Owens, Ballads (habenicht press). If I’m permitted to mention a book my own press published this year, I want to call attention to this one—indeed, my relationship to the poems therein began as one of open admiration. Rich Owens hearkens back to the ballad form in creating taut, dense lyrics that interweave his strong interest in Marxism and capital.

8) Thomas Meyer, Beowulf (punctum books). Quite simply the most adventurous and readable translation of Beowulf to come along in years, displaying all of Meyer's lyric gifts with humor and visual style.

9) Eileen Joy, lead force behind punctum books, postmedieval, and the BABEL Working Group; general life inspiration. Eileen Joy is a medievalist whose courage and creativity apparently know no bounds. In addition to starting a new and exciting open-access experimental press, continuing to publish an award-winning academic journal, and growing an insurgent cross-genre medievalist organization, she blogs (on “In the Middle”) and seemingly travels nonstop, giving talks and spreading lightness and hope to academics everywhere.

10) Running. This year I transformed my relationship with exercise from one of grudging habit to active pursuit, trained seriously for a number of races, massively upped my mileage and pace, and overall felt healthier and more energetic than I had in years. I have to thank my wife and friends, whose own fitness craze and enthusiasm rubbed off on me.

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: PATTIE MCCARTHY

 
My end-of-year reading list :

Shanna Compton, Brink
Jen Currin, The Inquisition Yours
Bhanu Kapil, Schizophrene
Bill Luoma, Some Math
Elizabeth Robinson, Counterpart
Andrzej Stasiuk's novel about light, Dukla
Karen Weiser, Dear Pierre
Colm Toibin, The Testament of Mary

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: LAURA WOLTAG

Happenings:
Bay Area Public School!
& Listening Class!
& all of the learning & gathering & listening that happened through the public school & at zack houston's gallery space on Broadway that is now becoming a high-end denim store
M. NourbeSe Phillip reading at UCB
Jalal Toufic @ SPT
Alice Notley solo reading in SF (& introducing ALICE NOTLEY- OMG!!!)
Cynthia Sailers, Julian Talamentez Brolaski & Dana Ward @ SPT
Sara Larsen, Thom Donovan & Suzanne Stein @ SPT
CA Conrad, Eileen Myles & David Buuck @ SPT
Craig Dworkin & Myung Mi Kim @ SPT pop-up
basically, the whole year at SPT rocked
as did the whole year at Manifest Reading Series!
Keston Sutherland & Jack Frost @ Buuck's
Anne Boyer & Wendy Trevino @ Buuck's
Jack Smith's Normal Love @ PS1
3 Nights with Nathaniel Dorsky @ PFA
This World is Not My Home: Photographs by Danny Lyon @ the de Young
Gautam Tejas Ganeshan @ Subterranean Arthouse/ Yosefa's living room
Fibershed Seaside Day of Dyes with Rebecca Burgess
quitting-ish facebook, quitting-ish ok cupid


Books:
Fledge: A Phenomenology of Spirit -- Stacy Doris
Undying Love, or Love Dies -- Jalal Toufic
Distracted -- Jalal Toufic -- "The difficulty of becoming part of the composition of remembered things is not the ostensible immateriality of the past. It rather consists in that the time needed for remembered things to compose the past is simultaneously the span it takes the one remembering to decompose. Nostalgia is this missed meeting."
"Between Your House and Mine" - The Letters of Lorine Niedecker to Cid Corman
Honey from a Weed -- Patience Gray
Culture of One -- Alice Notley
walking across a field we are focused on at this time now -- Sara Wintz
Flowering Mall -- Brandon Brown
Tout Va Bien -- Suzanne Stein
Autobiography of Envelopes -- Sarah Riggs
Advice for Lovers -- Julian Talamentez Brolaski
Merry Hell -- Sara Larsen
Desire/Love -- Lauren Berlant
Alone with the Alone -- Corbin
The Dominion of the Dead -- Robert Harrison
Everything by Nate Mackey; Lorine Niedecker; all of Keats; The Pearl Poet
The Feeling is Mutual -- ed. Sara Wintz


Listening:
The Given & The Chosen -- Ann Lauterbach
"Concordance" -- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Music for Fragments/ Music & Birds -- Jan Jelinek
Soul Journey -- Gillian Welch
Gate wind @ Briones Park
Loons on Big Moose Lake
Mendocino mineral waters


Other:
my scarlet runner bean harvest
the many kitchen conversations with Laurel
hiking up Cascade & Porter with Matt & encountering a HUGE papa black bear on the way home
gan mai da zao wan

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: JALAL TOUFIC

Jalal Toufic, The Resurrected Brother of Mary and Martha, A Human Who Resurrected God by michaelthomascross

Jalal Toufic, The Resurrected Brother of Mary and Martha, A Human Who Lived Then Died! by michaelthomascross

Find above a text published in the current issue of E-Flux Journal, “The Resurrected Brother of Mary and Martha: A Human Who Resurrected God!” as well as its complement, “The Resurrected Brother of Mary and Martha: A Human Who Lived then Died!” which was published in an earlier issue of E-Flux Journal.

I have also added a few audio files to the section Lectures in my website:
http://www.jalaltoufic.com/lectures.htm

As for 2012 favorites:
Aleksandr Sokurov, Faust

2012 DISINHIBITIONS: CARA BENSON

A Few of My Favorite Things of 2012:

*Working with Anne Waldman and her feminist epic IOVIS for a Belladonna polyvocal/group reading from the text at Poets House in NYC featuring Anne, Ambrose Bye, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Ana Božičević, Amy King, Julie Patton, and Stacy Szymaszek. A modern moment? Someone mentioned denial of catharsis, but I was sweating gleefully.

*The UCSC conference on Emergent Communities curated by Andrea Quaid and Juliana Leslie. A thinking/talking through of becomingness by individuals together. Starring language. Supporting cast: somatics.

*Wrapping yellow Occupy tape around the Christopher Columbus statue at Columbus Circle in NYC with Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs after seeing the show. I took my partner Jon Lathrop for his birthday. We had excellent Turkish food at a restaurant on 57th St. where our waitress read our futures through the coffee grounds in our cups. It’s bearing out, sorta.

*Exploring poetry, politics, place, higher education, and capital with Marcella Durand and Pattie McCarthy at Kelly Writers House. Curated by Genji Amino. Attendees included the amazing Emily Abendroth, Asher Lewis, Hassen, Sarah Dowling, and Jessica Lowenthal, so you know the conversations were pertinent and fraught. On one of the Philly visits, the also amazing CA Conrad housed me and recorded a reading for his...

*Jupiter 88 ongoing online archive of contemporary poetry. I love the generous nature of CA’s attention to poetry community and the ACTUAL POETRY! It’s all there! Live! Performed and recorded live! Not to be believed!

*Buying Hannah Weiner’s Open House at Flying Object in Massachusetts at a Laura Goldstein reading.

*Decoding deciphering absorbing Frances Richard’s The Phonemes. (More on this to come in the form of a review.)

*Hearing of a fellow poet’s ms. acceptance! Julie Joosten’s deft work will be published by BookThug in 2013. I know the working title, but as it’s working, I won’t share it here.

*Ditto to hearing that Tim Trace Peterson via Fran Blau has more kari edwards work to release into the world. Can. Not. Wait.

*Seeing the unfolding line-up of faculty/workshops/happenings for Naropa Summer Writing Program for 2013. Very excited to be included - Jen Karmin and I co-teaching Language As Communal Action, but everything offered looks enticing.

*Observing the poetry/writing cluster/hubs geo-happening. Flying Object again and Karen Randall’s press is nearby in Western Massachusetts. The scene in Toronto that is BookThug, the recently relocated Hoa Nguyen, the Avant-Garden series by Liz Howard and Shannon Maguire. Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, run by tc tolbert and Kristen Nelson. Michigan with Gina Myers, JodiAnn Stevenson and Jeremy Benson only recently left. Of course Philly is thriving. NY/Bklyn, Bay Area, Chicago. LA with Amina Cain’s Empty Globe reading series and the Les Figues orbit. Here in my area, though I’m so often traveling when a lot of the good stuff happens, we’ve got the Yes! Reading series curated by James Belflower and Matt Klane (founders in emeritus: Douglas Rothschild and Colie Collen). Fence is here, and the SUNY program attracts poets like Anna Elena Eyre. Dan Wilcox does a Third Thursday, and Dan Nestor runs Frequency North. Of course a tremendous amount of important-to-me community is online; I need to actively continue to stoke and value the physical/actual. Even the terra temporal by design, such as the UCSC cluster of us (see also Wendy S. Walters’ work). Along these lines, I cannot enough mention the Belladonna Collaborative. So much so that I want to provide a link for further reading here.