Poems, Molecules, Research

George Oppen's "Forms of Love"

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:40:25 -0400

Parked in the fields 
All night 
So many years ago, 
We saw 
A lake beside us 
When the moon rose. 
I remember 

Leaving that ancient car 
Together. I remember 
Standing in the white grass 
Beside it. We groped 
Our way together 
Downhill in the bright 
Incredible light 

Beginning to wonder 
Whether it could be lake 
Or fog 
We saw, our heads 
Ringing under the stars we walked 
To where it would have wet our feet 
Had it been water

Roland Barthes On mourning his mother, Henriette.

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:57:00 -0400

How strange: her voice, which I knew so well, and which is said to be the very texture of memory (“the dear inflection…”), I no longer hear. Like a localized deafness…

In the sentence “She’s not longer suffering,” to what, to whom does “she” refer? What does that present tense mean?

Eleni Sikelianos' "A Radiant Countess of What's It"

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:40:00 -0400

I love it

when women eat sweet ribbon, sweet

rabbit, sweet meat, when women

are the scene

of several utopias

when the body melts back into shadow

beginning with the feet

Anne Carson again:

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:32:00 -0400

XVI: Geryon’s End

The red world And corresponding red breezes

Went on Geryon did not

From Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red:

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:30:36 -0400

Moon gone. Sky shut. Night had delved deep. Somewhere (he thought) beneath
the strip of sleeping pavement
the enormous solid globe is spinning on its way— pistons thumping, lava pouring
from shelf to shelf,
evidence and time lignifying into their traces. At what point does one say of a man
that he has become unreal?
He hugged his overcoat closer and tried to assemble in his mind Heidegger’s
argument about the use of moods.
We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods (98).

He had dreamed of thorns. A forest of huge blackish-brown thorn trees
where creatures that looked
like young dinosaurs (yet they were strangely lovely) went crashing
through underbrush and tore
their hides which fell behind them in long red strips. He would call
the photography “Human Valentines. (131)

Outside a bitten moon rode fast over a tableland of snow. Staring at the vast black
and silver nonworld moving
and not moving incomprehensibly past this dangling fragment of humans
he felt its indifference roar over
his brain box. An idea glazed along the edge of the box and whipped back
down into the canal behind his wings
and it was gone… (80-81).

Once Geryon had gone
wit his fourth-grade class to view a pair of beluga whales newly captured
from the upper rapids of the Churchhill River.
Afterwards at nights he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of
the whales afloat
in the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall— as alive as he was
on their side
of the terrible slopes of time… (90).

A healthy volcano is an exercise in the uses of pressure.

Geryon sat on his bed in the hotel room pondering the cracks and fissures
of his inner life. It may happen
that the exit of the volcanic bent is blocked by a plug of rock, forcing
molten matter sideways along
lateral fissures called fire lips by volvanologists. Yet Geryon did not want
to become one of those people
who think of nothing but their stores of pain. He bent over the book on his kneees.
Philosophical Problems.
“I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it.
But this separation of consciousness
is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is
to believe in an undivded being between us…”
As he read Geryon could feel something like tons of black magma boiling up
from the deeper regions of him.
He moved his eyes back to the beginning of the page and started again.
“To deny the existence of red
is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad.”
A church bell rang across the page
and the house of six P.M. flowed through the hotel like a wave. Lamps snapped on
and white bedspreads sprang forward,
water rushed in the walls, the elevator crashed like a mastodon within its hollow cage.
I am not the one who is crazy here,
said Geryon closing the book. (105).

Anniversary by Forrest Gander

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 01:07:00 -0400

Not to be known always by my wounds,
I buried melancholy’s larvae

And cleaved the air behind you.
Myself I gathered

Like the middle dusk
To the black tulips of your nipples.

For seven days we shut the door,
We scoured the room with birds’ blood.

And for a little while,
In the hollow where your throat rose

From between your splendid clavicles,
Our only rival was music,

The piano of bonewhiteness.
Nor did the light subside,

But deepeningly contracted.
The rawness of the looking.

The quiver.

Lisbon, Madrid, Asprières...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:54:00 -0400

Last night, I had one of my few recurring dreams… no, not the one about water and tsunamis (thought some internet genius insists that this has something to do with emotional instability…), but the one about a small plane I once took with my family from Tanga to Pemba, Pemba to Zanzibar. In the dream, I am a grown woman with my head in my mothers lap, crying and insisting that the plane will crash. My sister and Tom are in the seat in front. My mother is yelling at the pilot who is occupied with a tall European woman sitting co-pilot, as she snaps shots of him carelessly navigating us through the sky.

There are two people behind us. I don’t turn around. I know we don’t know them, but I sense they are there and that one of them, at least, is a young woman. And then I hear this voice….

and it’s Robert Pinsky….

and he’s asking me why I have not updated my blog…

Sooooo the Pinsky part is a new addition to my ongoing dream anxieties. But he does have an excellent plane voice, I will say. And it’s getting me to write what I have being thinking about in Lisbon… in no particular order.

1. Went to Cascais and met Luis D’Sousa, a wonderful Portuguese writer and dear friend of the late poet, Alberto de Lacerda. Luis kept us for hours in hysterics, holding our attention with stories about Eliot and Auden, Lorca and Proust. He had some incredible art by the Portuguese artist, Paula Rego, and books owned by such celebrated writers that my hands shook to hold them. “You better take these back,” I would say to him, and he would smile, re-shelve them gingerly, and then come to me with some other treasure. He likes Whitman. And photography. And talking about his life as a BBC liaison in Washington for years. Weeks later, I met Luis and his familyagain at a party at the US Embassy. More stories and laughter. Here is an art piece by Paulo Rego, an artist who has also been commissioned to do these haunting wine labels:

2. We scootered up the coast to Cabo da Roca, the western-most point in continental Europe. It looked like big sur, but Icouldn’t see any dolphins or whales (California has spoilt me). Nevertheless, it was beautiful, and I sat for a long time on the wooden barrier with my shoes off, kicking my legs towards Boston. Scootering with Camille:

3. Carpe Diem is a phenomenal art space and residency here in Lisbon with an unfortunately un-ironic, somewhat ridiculous name. Don’t hold it against them. They did something heroic here in Lisbon. They took one of the city’s beautiful abandoned estate houses (belle epoch era, I believe) and converted it into an art installation space where the pieces are built into the rooms. They hosted everything from video and sound installations to painting and basement sculptures, and finally, an awesome garden party with fresh lemonade and peacocks… that’s right. Peacocks chilling in the yard.

Some photos of the installations and space:

4. Madrid. I went there for 48 hours. I spent a whole day in the Prado. The queen of Spain was there. I did not see her…. but I could feel her (not really, but someone did tell me she was about that day). What can I say about Madrid? I saw a Gaudi building, ate cured meat, strolled a rose garden, stood before a Don Quixote fountain, and took a gondola ride and then realized, too late, that it was stupid to take a gondola ride as I am clearly terrified of heights. Very clearly… hence my bad dreams about planes.

Photos of bizarre confrontational ads in Madrid, gondolas, Gaudi, and the Prado:

5. I travelled up to France for a few days, visited my sister, an artist, in the south of France. I met my niece, Indigo. They live in Asprières, a small village in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southern France. It is essentially made up of four streets: Rue du Midi, Rue du Centre, Rue du Rouergue, and Rue Belle Vue. There is a small market, a restaurant, a church, and a bed and breakfast inn/pub, but most of the socialization occurs in the narrow paths in the village overlooking fields of sheep, horses, and cows. Asprières is surrounded by meadows, woodland, wild poppies and cornflowers, and is home to over 400 species of butterflies. My sister and I have decided we are going to start a small art collective there, once she can install a kiln. She is going to teach ceramics and drawing. I am going to teach poetry. Summer 2013.

I was very moved by my time in the town… and my sister and I, in an attempt to put the baby to sleep, would walk the village late at night with the baby in her stroller. Under a low moon, we caught up. I asked her what she painted when she was pregnant, curious if it had changed anything about her artistic sensibility. And we had such a nice chance to talk about our developing crafts… and occasionally, of course, to make sure Indigo was tucked in well with her Peppa Pig stuffed animal, dozing off to the sounds of the French countryside. I pretty sure all she dreams of are horses and bunnies.

Also… children’s shows look like the afterlife. They are terrifying. Don’t ever watch them, Judith.

Some photos of Asprières and the surrounding area, the River Lot:

6. The Disquiet Writing Festival has started and it’s 2 weeks long. It deserves it’s own post, so I will write again when it’s closer to finishing. Until then,

poems and dissertation,

poems and dissertations….

Reading Irish poets in Lisbon

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 11:56:48 -0400

The Most Emily of All

When you dream wood I dream water.
When you dream boards, or cupboard,
I dream a lake of rain, a race sprung
From the sea. If you call out ‘house’ to me
And I answer ‘library’, you answer me
By the very terms of your asking,
As a sentence clings tighter
Because it makes no sense.

Your light hat with the dark band
Keeps turning up; you pull it right
Down over your head and run the fingers
Of your right hand up and down
In a groove on the door panel. A finger
Going like this into my closed hand
Feels how my line of life turns back
Upon itself, in the kind of twilight
Before the moon is seen.

A verse from a poem by Lermentov
Continually goes round
In my head. A full ten days
Has elapsed since I started my
‘You can go or stay’ letter, increasingly
Without lips like the moon that night,
A repercussive mouth made for nothing,
And used for nothing.
Just let me moisten your dreamwork
With the lower half of the letter,
Till my clove-brown eyes beget a taller blue.

-Medbh McGuckian

Jardim Botânico da Universidade de Lisboa

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:23:00 -0400

Butterflies:

Etc.

Food

Mon, 28 May 2012 12:12:00 -0400

The best part of my day is food shopping. I like food. I used to cook all the time in France and in California, but hardly at all in Boston (I blame Allston). Anyways, I am committed to cooking here using Portuguese staple ingredients and for this week, mostly vegetarian. This means a variety of beans, peas, vegetables, fruit, and honey.

First, the Mercado da Ribeira, is one of the best markets in the city. It’s in this gorgeous glass and steel structure. I took these photos around closing time so most of it’s all packed up, but you get the idea.

They also have an excellent assortment of fresh cut flowers. I brought some home to replace the plastic flowers that were currently “adorning” my apartment.

My first night I made peppers stuffed with white beans, onions, garlic, and red chillies. The next night I made a ratatouille using eggplants, heirloom tomatoes, garlic, chick peas, arugula, squash, and some cheese.

By the mid-week, I decided that I needed to tackle some of this giant Portuguese cabbage I had heard so much about.

Cabbage:

I made a traditional Portuguese soup called caldo verde, a peasant dish that originated in the province of Minho. Potatoes, cabbage, garlic, onions, lemon, and some herbs. It doesn’t look like much, but it was delicious and filling.

Caldo Verde:

Then, the Juliana soup, a popular vegetable soup in Portugal. More cabbage, onins, potatoes, turnips, carrots, mint, cilantro, olive oil.

Last night, I broke my vegetarian streak. My cousin and his friends took me to this restaurant called Zapata in Santa Catarina. Mostly everyone at the table ordered octopus and breaded porridge.

Cobblestones and Yellow Houses

Mon, 28 May 2012 11:49:00 -0400

“Sometimes I think Portugal is what the sea does not want.”- Antonio Lobo Antunes, writer.

(Let’s just pretend I didn’t steal that quote from the most recent Anthony Bourdain episode on Lisbon).

I’ve been walking Lisbon. It’s a small city and I am amazed how quickly I can get from one vista point to another, hill after hill after hill. I’m not tired of it yet. I’ve also met some of the people who live here. One of them is a cousin and a fantastic Goan intellectual doing his PhD here in Lisbon. I don’t have a lot of academic allies in my family so it’s been really meaningful to be in touch with him here. He just gave a paper at a conference in the city: Goa Portuguesa e Pós-Colonial: Literatura, Cultura e Sociedade. Another friend of a friend here, an actor, told me the whole city is made of white limestone from the south and that’s why it is so beautiful. He told me that Porto is made of limestone from the north and that’s why it looks like a Hitchcock film, birds circling the grey cityscape. I’ll have to take his word on that.

Some random photos of the city, cobblestones, yellow houses, stately things, fires:

Things I have run into on my walks:

1. The Museu Teatro Romano

A recent and partially excavated roman theater in Lisbon, once holding between 3,000-5,000 spectators in the first half of the first century AD. It was conceived as a half-finished space… and it was bizarre just “running” into it. Apparently the amphitheaters were an important part of “Romanization”, but most impressive was the “backstage” sloping towards the Tagus river.

View from the theater:

Excavation site:

2. The Castle in Alfama

Gorgeous. Some Moorish architecture in the medieval part of the city that was severely damaged by the infamous 1755 earthquake “terremoto”. I can see the castle from my balcony and I’d like to think I can see my balcony from the castle (I can’t, but if I gesture widely, I’m pretty sure I have an accurate radius).

Views from the castle:

3. My FAVORITE place is Lisbon so far is right around the corner from my apartment. The Jardim Botânico da Universidade de Lisboa is part of the science museum and it’s only a euro for students to enter (well worth it). They have trees from parts of Africa and East Asia, but most impressive is their butterfly garden fully equipped with wild mint and strawberries everywhere.

An aerial view:

Arriving in Lisbon: May 21st, 2012

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:49:00 -0400

So it’s been a while, but the most important thing you need to know is that I am currently in Lisbon on a Global Pinsky Fellowship in Poetry. I’ll also be here through the Disquiet Writing Festival in July. And because I have been lucky enough to have these opportunities, I am sharing some of my experiences here.

Driving into Lisbon from the airport had me in a state of befuddled nostalgia. The architecture looks SO MUCH like Panjim or just Goa in general. It was like experiencing something backwards (hooray EMPIRE!). I kept smelling Goan food all over the city, and I wasn’t sure if it was my sensory imagination playing tricks on me or not. I also realized that I am going to really need to learn some basic Portuguese. This is because people here seem to already think I speak and look Portuguese. I’d go into more first impressions, but first impressions are usually lacking so I’ll ponder on them for a bit … except I will say that in my travel delirium, Lisbon looks like a sleepy capital. The houses are either colorfully tiled or a variation pink, yellow, and blue pastel shades. They looks like clouds. Oh, and there is something that sounds slavic about the accents here. Ok, enough first impressions.

Today I did what any person would do who cannot get keys to their apartment right away after an overnight flight. And by “right away,” I mean I had 8 hours to kill after arriving in the city. So I walked the hills of Lisbon, tried the famous “pastel de nata” (egg tart), slept in a neighborhood park for an hour, struggled my way through a menu (ended up with delicious chicken lemon orzo mint soup), saw the beautiful tiled houses with their rusted wrought iron and sticky moss balconies, witnessed a surprising amount of condemned buildings boarded up in all sorts of imaginative ways, saw the golden gate bridge “twin” (photo below), saw the eiffel tower twin (which is nothing like the original), walked along the river, got a bus pass, took happy note of the abundant bookstores in Lisbon, strolled a few churches and “piazzas” and fountains, of course.

I’ve been to a lot of churches, cathedrals, terrifying edifices of different religious eras, but the one I went to today was really extraordinary and the photo below does no justice at all. It’s called the São Roque Church situated in the Bairro Alto area of Lisbon. First of all… goldsmithing… is a thing. I am sure of it now. I don’t know why I thought someone had made it up. The experience of the church’s interior is what it must be like being locked inside a jewelery box: dark, ornamental, kind of dazzling and unnerving. And like maybe somebody overdid it a bit… but to be fair, it was kind of an extraordinary feat. All the pieces were commissioned by the Portuguese king in the 16th century, but were actually made in Rome, exported to Lisbon and assembled on site (these are HUGE, detailed pieces). Anyways, the church has an unbelievable organ concert series, the next one on May 26th, I will surely be attending.

Sleep for now.

Organ Speech, etc.

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:46:00 -0500

So a few weeks ago I returned from an epic 2 week research/poetry trip to London and Paris. It was amazing to be back in Paris and to see and drink with those *oh so special* people who I have not seen for nearly 2 years. In case you care, this is how I spent my time:

London: Victoria and Albert Museum Archives, The Royal Institute Archives, The Science Museum Library Archives, dinner usually by myself in my hotel room and later, with Judith Chriqui, trying to convince her that the Indian guy (apparently, we should be best friends) at the front desk had more than one sweater and that the spirits in our room were not going to make the light fixtures come crashing down on us.

Paris: Boat Parties on the Seine, Vegetarian Thanksgiving, Poetry readings, Walking around Pigalle until 5am with my Norwegian friend, sleeplessness, waking up in twitches from events the night prior.

I did get to launch my new chapbook, Organ Speech with Corrupt Press in both cities. Thanks to Rufo Quintavalle for hosting at Poet’s Live in Paris and Emily Critchely who held the London reading at the University of Greenwich (in this building). Ballin’

The chapbook recently got reviewed by Sabatoge Reviews (UK) by Charles Whalley. It is very well-written, generous, and overall, I was very happy and grateful to have his readership.

Of course, the critic took some issues… one really… about an elegy for a friend who passed away some years ago… which stung a bit. Especially since I don’t really write elegies, sentimental, or autobiographical poems ever.

Luckily, I had an appointment with my professor (a celebrated poet who shall remain anonymous) that day and I told him that I had a strange sensation of seeing my name in third person: “Fernandes”. He was very sweet, said “the sooner you learn that this third person ‘Fernandes’ is someone else than you, the better. She is still a part of you, but she’s different.”

Well, she sounds like a whiny bitch to me.

Next post: Archival research post about John Tyndall, 19th century molecular physicist.

Want a sneak preview? You do…. you really do.

“Here, men of science had to work their way from darkness into twilight, and from twilight into day. There is no solemn of continuity in science. This is not given to any man, to rise spontaneously into intellectual splendor without the parentage of historical antecedents. Great discoveries grow.” (1879)

Robert Herrick: A Predecessor to Peaches and Cream?

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 02:03:00 -0400

Reading the Cavalier poets this week and that means taking some cheek from Robert Herrick. Came across a website dedicated to Herrick’s work that included this lovely piece (one of his many Julia’s poem):

UPON THE NIPPLES OF JULIA’S BREAST

HAVE ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white ?
Or else a cherry, double grac’d,
Within a lily centre plac’d ?
Or ever mark’d the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half-drown’d in cream ?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl and orient too ?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast.

And then, in case you couldn’t picture it, this:

Nice. Somewhere, Julia’s father is crying.

Why Cellular Architecture is Saving Venice

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:43:27 -0400

So the part of my research that is bringing together science and design studies has led me to a new field of study called “proto-cellular” architecture. Proto-cellular engineering (it seems that an “engineer” and “architect” have become almost interchangeable these days) attempts to make inorganic matter act like biological matter. This means matter that is capable of metabolism and all those perks that go along with having metabolism (repair, reproduction, growth, movement, sensitivity). Proto-cellular technology (called “Living Architecture”) is DNA-less; instead, it is based on a chemistry of oils.

What can it do?

Save a sinking city, apparently. Researchers are saying that this technology could create an artificial reef around the decaying wood foundation of Venice by depositing limestone (or growing limestone, really, by accretion and crystallization). The project “Save Venice” is literally land reclaimation… and the marine biologists seem to think it is eco-sensitive.

If you are interested (and how could you not?!), look up Dr. Rachel Armstrong. She is TED Fellow and a professor at the University College of London in the Bartlett School of Build Environments.

Ramona, you bitch.

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:41:28 -0400

Poem to Line My Casket with, Ramona

Come practice your whorish gestures in the graveyard, Ramona.
Come sharpen your teeth on the tombstones.
Cough up the roots if you know what’s good for you.
When coyotes are teaching their young to howl,
ghoulies rehearse the Courtship of Wristbones.
When you hear clawing at the square of styrofoam
serving as a window in the caretaker’s shack,
then you must count each step going up to the mausoleum,
and my ghost will appear in the churchyard.
He’ll kiss the back of your knee in the moonlight.
These are not promises, but eerie enough, regardless.
You must count out loud, Ramona, the steps,
because this is the time to watch what eats you.
I used to love the way the wind whistled through your teeth
when you drove the back roads, above your legal limit.
I used to have these poses. They turned into habits.
I used to love the folks that loved me.
And they’ve been sad ones, my years since being dead.
And they’ve been coming, the folks who claim to love me.
And I hardly recognize myself. There aren’t mirrors, as such.
The drum section rattles it out, down by the high school.
I hear them, or is it the caretaker drunk in his wheelbarrow?
You used to play the wheelbarrow, I recall.
You used to wash your underwear in the sink.
Above ground, the wind whistles through the tombstones.
Below ground, the wind sleeps and has colors.
Below ground, colors are how I dream of making my comeback.
There’s a difference between a white dress and the white dress.
You used to strip off the white dress in a highly professional manner.
You used to dangle the remote, and I’d come get it.
You used to skip church. You used to skip dinner parties.
Now you’ve been seen hoisting condoms from the pharmacy.
There are twelve condoms to a pack. A pack of lovers mills outside your door.
A pack of the dead are heading toward the showers.
A pack of dead lovers is referred to as “a creep” of dead lovers.
More than one dead lover is weeping. But oh, how it was me who loved you then.
You with your cracked lips, with your love and your otherdefilements kept alive in a bucket.
When I first died, I stole a lock of your hair while you slept.
Now I dip it in ink when the mood strikes,
and the times you visit and kneel so pretty on the grass above me,
that’s not scratching you hear. It’s writing.

Originally published in the Summer 2000 issue of Boston Review

—Josh Bell

Put this on. Do things. Listen. You may find that animals will...

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:39:21 -0400

Put this on. Do things. Listen.

You may find that animals will begin to follow you, maybe they will make you a dress.

You may find yourself on the hardwood floor paralyzed.

You may find yourself making your office spaces theatrical. You may then realize that you are unemployed and have no real office space. This might help you get a job.

You may not like it, but then you’d probably be dead.

When in Rotterdam...

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 01:19:46 -0400

look up V2: The Institute of Unstable Media (http://www.v2.nl/), an interdisciplinary research center that focuses broadly on the relationship between art and technology. They are a project-oriented center (many different lab groups consisting of both academics and artists) that put on conferences, installations, and publish some wild collections in their Theory and Art/Design series. One thing I noticed: They like Ruskin. They like to talk about him. Also, Worringer.

So the good thing is that while they will write about things that were built… like…10 minutes ago (you really do feel like you are getting a pre-screening of the art/tech world when you peruse their site), they also give you a good foundation and genealogy on which they build their theories.

One of the best things about V2 is that they offer summer residencies around three different “subjects” each year and the chosen lab groups use materials (ink, wristwatches, foil) to produce the most strange and amazing art pieces (and possibly products in the future).

If you like affect theory (there are so many of us), the Heartbeats Timepiece (http://www.v2.nl/archive/works/heart-beats) and the Sentient City Survivor Kit (http://www.v2.nl/lab/projects/sentient-city-survival-kit) are pretty fun.

When I look at this, I think to myself: “I need more skills.”

but what about the molecules?

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:55:18 -0400

Here is something I am researching about…

Neri Oxmen runs the material ecology lab at the MIT Media Lab. (http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/index.html) Her research focus group is called “Mediated Matter.” The statement from her site describes their work much better than I could ever paraphrase:

The Mediated Matter group is dedicated to the development and application of novel processes that enable and support the design of physical matter, and its adaptability to environmental conditions in the creation of form. Our research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication. This enables mediating synergies between objects and environment; between humans and objects; and between humans and environment. Our goal is to enhance the relation between natural and man-made environments by achieving high degrees of design customization and versatility, environmental performance integration, and material efficiency.

Oxmen has degrees and expertise in medicine, architecture, and digital design, and when she isn’t being an MIT professor, she is exhibiting her art at the Centre Pompidou (the above image is entitled “Fatemaps”) and giving talks at the Sorbonne.

Her ideas about engineering synthetic materials to “act” more like organic matter are important in rethinking the relationship of matter to experience (old school phenomenology) but also, the ways in which organic design aesthetics actually try to address how materiality mediates interior and exterior environments.

I will never look at the skins of buildings and objects the same way after reading her work.

Steel Bananas

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:57:00 -0400

Steel Bananas, an art collective from Toronto, just released their Winter 2012 catalogue (http://www.steelbananas.com/sb28/). SB publishes chapbooks and runs several reading series including the Artichoke Revue and the monthly Eggplant (they like their produce, I guess). In particular, the work of the creative director, Karen Correia Da Silva, is worth a look.