September 29, 2012
The hidden substance of absence: an interview with Brian Henry
Brian Henry’s Lessness is a book that eats itself, a catalog of wounds both festering and healing—though when they do heal, they heal to be torn open again. In Lessness, […]
September 7, 2012
‘Were there but world enough and time’: Tom Phillips on A Humument
If the un-canon exists—or the alternative canon; a trove of works treasured outside of the mainstream—then it indisputably includes Tom Phillips and A Humument, his capstone project. A painter by […]
August 31, 2012
A Humument in the age of mechanical reproduction (part v)
(This post is a continuation of a series. Italicized lines in this piece are sourced from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and each corresponds […]
August 26, 2012
Theft as art, art as theft: an interview with Austin Kleon
In a 1966 interview with The Paris Review—the same interview that would inspire artist Tom Phillips to first employ the techniques that led him to create A Humument—William S. Burroughs […]
August 19, 2012
Interrogations of the blank page: on Bern Porter (part i)
The question “Is it art?” has, beyond its usual employment by philistines, a more serious philosophical consideration behind it. Usually this question is posed in the context of an apparently […]
August 7, 2012
A Humument in the age of mechanical reproduction (iv)
(This post is a continuation of a series. Italicized lines in this piece are sourced from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and […]
July 19, 2012
A Humument in the age of mechanical reproduction (part iii)
(This post is a continuation of a series. Italicized lines in this piece are sourced from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and […]
July 18, 2012
A Humument in the age of mechanical reproduction (part ii)
(This post is a continuation of a series. Italicized lines in this piece are sourced from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and […]
July 13, 2012
A Humument in the age of mechanical reproduction (part i)
(Italicized lines in this piece are sourced from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and each corresponds to the section of the original […]
July 5, 2012
A Humument: the hierarchy of sight
The question is almost too nebulous to ask, and so grows muted in critical consciousness: How does a book’s typography—abstracted as a representative component of its materiality—affect, or effect, anything […]
June 26, 2012
A Humument: re-vision as vocation
Though unspoken, the po-biz (short for “poetry business,” as it’s jocularly called) has formulas and definitions. And it has schedules. Among them: if you’re a new poet, you publish chapbooks […]
June 22, 2012
A Humument: a lesson in un-reading (ii)
The adjective boustrophedon in Greek translates to “as an ox turns in plowing”: from right to left, from left to right, and the from right to left again. And so […]