Archive for the ‘Other’ Category
‘I’ve never read her’ book club reading The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
Wednesday 6 August 2014, 7pm
‘I’ve never read her’ book club reading short fiction and essays by women.
Reading: The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
In describing English literature I have explained that the twentieth century was the century not of sentences as was the eighteenth not of phrases as was the nineteenth but of paragraphs. And as I explained paragraphs were inevitable because as the nineteenth century came to its ending, phrases were no longer full of any meaning and the time had come when a whole thing was all there was of anything. Series immediately before and after made everybody clearly understand this thing. And so it was natural that in writing The Making of Americans I had proceeded to enlarge my paragraphs so as to include everything. What else could I do. In fact inevitably I made my sentences and my paragraphs do the same thing, made them be one and the same thing. This was inevitably because the nineteenth century having lived by phrases really had lost the feeling of sentences, and before this in English literature paragraphs had never been an end in themselves and now in the beginning of the twentieth century a whole thing, being what was assembled from its parts was a whole thing and so it was a paragraph. You will see that in The Making of Americans I did this thing, I made a paragraph so much a whole thing that it included in itself as a whole thing a whole sentence. That makes something clear to you does it not.
Gertrude Stein
The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress is a modernist novel by Gertrude Stein. The novel traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the fictional Hersland and Dehning families. Stein also includes frequentmetafictional meditations on the process of writing the text that periodically overtake the main narrative.
Stein wrote the bulk of the novel between 1903 and 1911, and evidence from her manuscripts suggests three major periods of revision during that time. The manuscript remained mostly hidden from public view until 1924 when, at the urging of Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford agreed to publish excerpts in the transatlantic review. In 1925, the Paris-based Contact Press published a limited run of the novel consisting of 500 copies. A much-abridged edition was published by Harcourt Brace in 1934, but the full version remained out of print until Something Else Press republished it in 1966. In 1995, a new, definitive edition was published by Dalkey Archive Press with a foreword by William Gass.
The Making of Americans is a 926 page novel. An extract from the start of the novel is attachedwhich we will be reading and discussing at the reading group. The Dalkey Archive Press edition is available to buy here: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/the-making-of-americans/
Artist Lizzie Hughes is proposing a complete reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans on Saturday 23 August 3 – 6pm in X Marks the Bökship at Matt’s Gallery. The near1,000 page novel will be divided into approximately twenty sections which will be read out loud, concurrently by volunteers.
I’VE NEVER READ HER is a literature project, based in East London. We read short fiction & essays by women, every second Wednesday of the month. Bring a bottle (or not), something to nibble and your thoughts. Everybody is welcome. We also host screenings and events around the texts that we read. http://iveneverreadher.wordpress.com/
X Marks the Bökship
^ Matt’s Gallery
42 – 44 Copperfield Road
Mile End
London E3 4RR
Goldsmiths Art Writing Library
I’ve put together a selection of books and a stamp for the Goldsmiths Art Writing Library.
Unsettled By And Open To , Shady Dealings with Language, London
Sunday 6 July 2014, 4 – 8pm
Unsettled By And Open To
Shady Dealings with Language
Shady Dealings With Language is a touring guest-curated event around art writing programmed by Claire Potter.
Unsettled By and Open To is the second event in the Shady Dealings With Language series and takes place at X Marks the Bökship this Sunday. It has been devised and produced with writer and publisher David Berridge of VerySmallKitchen. It gestures toward research led arts practice and celebrates the emergent, unexpected and the unruly by inviting presentations from artist writers; Emma Bolland, Neil Chapman, Linda Stupart and Nathan Walker. Read more on the performers here: http://www.shadydealingswithlanguage.org/london
In her book Pure Means (Copy Press 2013), Yve Lomax considers the moment an action is somehow interrupted and the possibility of experiencing pure means arises – the very gesture of gesture. To illustrate, Lomax invites the reader to imagine an actor whose acting is doing everything to show the means of acting, and moreover, to show it is the means that are being shown. Pure Means demonstrates and explores these philosophical potentials through a poetry of terminology, ideas of subjectification and forms of government, and the figure of the author.
We too want our effect and affect tight together. We seek a writing that affirms the affective, the somatic, while accounting for the analytic, a writing that moves toward a true politic.
The event is free and open to the public, space is limited so make sure you reserve your place at: http://unsettledbyandopento.eventbrite.co.ukwww.shadydealingswithlanguage.org.uk
Pure Means
Yve Lomax
Copy Press, 2013
Format: 160mm x 215mm
Paperback Extent: 112pp
Photography: 6 B&W
Prices: £15
ISBN: 978-0-9553792-9-1
X Marks the Bökship at Matt’s Gallery
X Marks the Bökship is moving to Matt’s Gallery for 6 months opening a small bookshop and project space in the gallery foyer. The Bökship will be open on Thursdays and Fridays and evenings for events over the summer and throughout the autumn REVOLVER II exhibition.
REVOLVER II is a curatorial collaboration between Robin Klassnik and Professor Michael Newman. Beginning in September 2014, the exhibition will comprise a three-part show to investigate the manifestation of knowledge in relation to artists who work with or reference text and publishing.
Bökship Boxing
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Nick Balmforth’s writing on X Marks the Bökship for his online journal A Submersible. http://www.asubmersible.net/writing-and-reviews.html
Margaret, Out Today!
I edited Margaret, a parasitic publication, with students from BA Art and Design at BCU. It is designed by An Endless Supply and Published by Article Press. Available from today as part of the exhibition at Margaret Street, Birmingham.
Bokship's Blog 