THE THING THAT IS NOT A THING
The Thing that is not a Thing - film on Vimeo
To understand the destroyed art object, or any object, we need to learn what is portended. The art object burns with its own fire, self-immolating—strikes match, held to vestures, negating the action that seeks to make a changing world seem fixed. From inception revealing an architectural flaw: to be fixed and yet change with the moment. We wonder when art is destroyed, as if through some tethering of flux into fixed object—a thing becomes undone … or rather is shown to never be “done.” Thus what we see in the destruction of art is a circumventing of an action that attempts to make fixed. Thereby, the art object houses a negation in striving to be something it is incapable of—to leap outside of time and still inhabit the moment, while unable to sidestep attempting. The compulsion is a human bid to inoculate and make fixed the moment, yet to be outside—but through this it ravages. Here is the legacy of the destroyed art object, to be a thing that is not a thing, to be both house, ruin, and fire. Art makes and undoes, and yet we must wonder at what point the thing becomes destroyed?
Jared Pappas-Kelley is an artist and writer. His newest book Solvent Form: Art and destruction was published by Manchester University Press and his art has exhibited internationally at places such as San Francisco MoMA, Mass MoCA, Five Years in London, Islington Mill, and Glasgow International as part of the National Review of Live Art.
Jared's Solvent Form Art and Destruction book
Spontaneous Poetics is a magazine about “the weirdness of everyday life”: poetry, prose, interviews, and images. It contains adult themes and the odd paraphilia. It is edited by Tom Bland, whose book, The Death of a Clown, is out with Bad Betty Press.
Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Poetisch-Forensische Studie by Alistair McCartney
PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS: EINE POETISCH-FORENSISCHE STUDIE
When I woke up from my nap, I heard singing. I drowsily tip-toed downstairs and went
outside to find my father had tied my younger brother to the pear tree and was whipping
him senseless; it was clear from the precision of his whipping, father had done this
before. I saw the pear tree was flowering and my father was singing and tearing my
brother's favorite Ben Sherman shirt to shreds, along with his petal-soft skin. Sensing
my presence, my brother looked at me and laughed, and my father paused for a
moment. Son, he sang, there are complexes we still have no names for, then resumed
his whipping. My heart was flooded with envy, like the banks of a river in a derelict but
picturesque town, very much like the town we live in, yet I was not certain who or what I
was envious of: my father, my brother, or the whip.
Alistair McCartney is the author of two novels, The End of the World Book (2008) and The Disintegrations (2017), which won The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. He is currently working on his first book of poetry and hybrid texts. Originally from Australia, he lives in Los Angeles.
Check out Alistair's website
When I woke up from my nap, I heard singing. I drowsily tip-toed downstairs and went
outside to find my father had tied my younger brother to the pear tree and was whipping
him senseless; it was clear from the precision of his whipping, father had done this
before. I saw the pear tree was flowering and my father was singing and tearing my
brother's favorite Ben Sherman shirt to shreds, along with his petal-soft skin. Sensing
my presence, my brother looked at me and laughed, and my father paused for a
moment. Son, he sang, there are complexes we still have no names for, then resumed
his whipping. My heart was flooded with envy, like the banks of a river in a derelict but
picturesque town, very much like the town we live in, yet I was not certain who or what I
was envious of: my father, my brother, or the whip.
Alistair McCartney is the author of two novels, The End of the World Book (2008) and The Disintegrations (2017), which won The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. He is currently working on his first book of poetry and hybrid texts. Originally from Australia, he lives in Los Angeles.
Check out Alistair's website
Genet's Pen by R J Dent
GENET'S PEN
The worlds you create implode when
you’re free to wander through the streets…
inside a cell you find your voice
for it’s an endless universe
and you have pushed its wall apart
threading the bars with red roses
transforming men with cold, hard eyes
into gentle and loving souls
infused with femininity
with tattered animas restored…
Dipping a strand of rusty barbed
wire into a pot of red ink
you write your missives to yourself
explaining how you are contained
within your imagination
and have become a theatre…
a lily grows out of your pen
and you bite its orange stamen…
R J Dent is a novelist, poet, translator, essayist and short story writer. He has translated Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (2009), and Le Comte de Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror (illustrated by Salvadore Dali) (2011) to critical acclaim. His poems, short stories, novellas and essays continue to appear in numerous magazines and journals.
Check out R J's website
The worlds you create implode when
you’re free to wander through the streets…
inside a cell you find your voice
for it’s an endless universe
and you have pushed its wall apart
threading the bars with red roses
transforming men with cold, hard eyes
into gentle and loving souls
infused with femininity
with tattered animas restored…
Dipping a strand of rusty barbed
wire into a pot of red ink
you write your missives to yourself
explaining how you are contained
within your imagination
and have become a theatre…
a lily grows out of your pen
and you bite its orange stamen…
R J Dent is a novelist, poet, translator, essayist and short story writer. He has translated Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (2009), and Le Comte de Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror (illustrated by Salvadore Dali) (2011) to critical acclaim. His poems, short stories, novellas and essays continue to appear in numerous magazines and journals.
Check out R J's website
Duty-Free Ayahuasca by Tim Kiely
DUTY-FREE AYAHUASCA
Use one sachet to one mugful
of boiling water each, and be
envisioned
as slipperiness
as process as coagulate.
Imagine this being on a beam of light –
the liana of the soul - afloat
overglowing the whole world
before breakfast (do not consume
with coffee or The Financial Times);
imagine returning to the office machine
reawakened, re-seen as meat
becoming motion becoming unbound
becoming brilliant becoming
maggots becoming the best damn story
that ever graced the employee café;
imagine guilt-free business class
all the way back your boots clean
of rivermud and creeper yours
all for a very reasonable price.
Tim Kiely's poetry has appeared in South Bank Poetry, The Morning Star, Under the Radar and Ink, Sweat & Tears. He is a member of the Poets Versus collective.
Use one sachet to one mugful
of boiling water each, and be
envisioned
as slipperiness
as process as coagulate.
Imagine this being on a beam of light –
the liana of the soul - afloat
overglowing the whole world
before breakfast (do not consume
with coffee or The Financial Times);
imagine returning to the office machine
reawakened, re-seen as meat
becoming motion becoming unbound
becoming brilliant becoming
maggots becoming the best damn story
that ever graced the employee café;
imagine guilt-free business class
all the way back your boots clean
of rivermud and creeper yours
all for a very reasonable price.
Photo by Tyrone Lewis
Tim Kiely's poetry has appeared in South Bank Poetry, The Morning Star, Under the Radar and Ink, Sweat & Tears. He is a member of the Poets Versus collective.
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