‘PATHETIC ACADEMIC’ / Thursday 24 May 2012, 6 – 9pm

A celebration of books from artists and writers associated with The Centre for Useless Splendour and Kingston University Contemporary Art Research Centre.

Dolce Havana’s and Margarita’s served at 7pm

The title ‘PATHETIC ACADEMIC’ comes from several different sources – ‘Just Pathetic’ – curated by Ralph Rugoff in Los Angeles 1990, that included artists Mike Kelley, Cady Noland etc – artists prominent in their field, as artists-who-teach and in the words of Robert Storr ‘Just Pathetic’ embodied – ‘an art-school-savvy rebuke to the pretensions of Schnabelists and October-ists… ‘.In 2001 the exhibition and accompanying lecture ‘Pathetic Academic Art in Los Angeles’, by Ray Brown – an artist who taught at UCLA late 80’s through 90’s with Charles Ray, Paul McCarthy, Chris Burden et al., was staged at Artlab, Imperial College, London, by Cullinan Richards.

‘PATHETIC ACADEMIC 2012’ launches several publications, hosts several events and celebrates many successes from a group of artists involved in teaching and studying in the School of Fine Art at Kingston. An unconventional title to treat a highly respected field that is so full of paradoxes, is meant to inspire creativity and is a quest to champion as well as challenge our centre for research – CARC. ‘PATHETIC ACADEMIC 2012’ wants to be bad and good at the same time, just as we would like to have the pathetic fail, only to succeed.

“There is an old feud boiling, painters versus conceptual artists. The doctrine of painting and beauty versus the doctrine of Michael Asher. It’s all locked up in this age-old flickering. Then there is technology — the Unabomber, theory, fear of theory. The artists affect theory versus theory affects the artists. Who controls the castle? It’s a laugh a minute.” Excerpt from interview with Paul McCarthy 2003, Bomb Magazine.

Cullinan Richards

X Marks the Bökship
210 / Unit 3 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9NQ

eShelf / Friday 18 May, 7pm

This Friday, 18^th of May please join us for the launch a small publication which was produced for the eShelf project,  documenting  the events at X Marks the Bökship and the index of online publishers included in the eShelf. We will also show a selection of publications from produced by the A-Z contributors that we have collected over this time period.

The collection will be showcased at the shop until the 27^th of May.

eShelf is a collection of artists’ online publishing activities and a series of events introducing digital publishing projects, initiatives and resources.

Our aim was to showcase a selection of online independent publishing activities, showing examples of creative and experimental uses of online publishing, and also to bring together publishers working across similar digital platforms.

We wanted to create a platform where we could demonstrate and share a variety of different projects that were happening in such an exciting and diverse field, one that is undergoing a substantial redefinition and having to adapt to so many cultural changes.

eShelf is meant to be a snapshot, or observation, of the here and now. We compiled an A – Z of online publishing activities into the eShelf, which is indexed online at http://www.eshelf.info. We first began posting a countdown from A-Z on the eShelf on the 18^th of April, beginning with A, and ending with Z on the 18^th of May 2012.

We invited publishers and individuals to introduce their publishing activities at a series of talks held at X Marks the Bökship. The first set of talks took place on the 1^st May 2012, where we invited contributors to come discuss their work that were listed in the A-M of the online index. This event was followed by another series of talks on the 9^th May 2012, where a selection from the remaining N-Z eShelf contributors came to talk about their publications.

http://www.eshelf.info

Launch of F.R.DAVID, “This is not new, of course” / Thursday 17 May, 7pm

Launch of the ninth issue of F.R.DAVID, “This is not new, of course”

With bread & butter, a few words from editor Will Holder and a screening of
Chris Mann’s “the art of the diff” (D.S. al Coda #3, dvd, 2011)

F.R.DAVID is published by de Appel, Amsterdam, and is concerned with the position of reading and writing in the arts.

“This is not new, of course”, the ninth issue of F.R.DAVID, finds ‘poetry’ – the word and the product – NOT sacred, IS mutable, and SHOULD be replaced with “politics”, “art”, “baking”, “film” and “cabinet-making” as one possible means to record life.

Edited by Will Holder, with contributions by Stan Brakhage, Adam Chodzko, Cid Corman, Maya Deren, Robert Duncan, Anja Kirschner / David Panos, Hilary Koob Sassen, Jackson Mac Low, Chris Mann, Charles Olson, Marjorie Perloff, C.H. Sisson, H.G. Widdowson and more
–
“Chris Mann specialises in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, described by [himself] as ‘the mechanism whereby you understand what I’m thinking better than I do.’” In his word-perfect performances the nature of such co-productions is demonstrated and enabled – through the use of con­structivist terms such as “i mean” and “you know”. After seeing repeated performances of a previous work, it becomes clear that these (“i think”) are as determined as the words on the page, which Mann, incidentally waves about and occasionally pretends to refer to.

X Marks the Bökship
210 / Unit 3 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9NQ

Propeller Island 9 – Crossing the Line / Friday 11th May 2012, 6 -9pm

eShelf N – Z / Wednesday 9 May 2012, 7pm

The evening will be the second part of the eShelf A – Z talks and we are inviting online publishers whose projects are listed in the N-Z index of the eShelf to talk about their publications.

Or-bits / Publication Studio / Preston is my Paris / Self Publish, Be Happy / Triple Canopy / Very Small Kitchen
It will be part of the current eShelf program, which is a collection of artists’ online publishing activities and a series of events introducing digital publishing projects, initiatives and resources.

eShelf A – M / Wednesday 2 May 2012, 7pm