…not once, but twice this week!

First up, on Art Threat, where I speak to Rob Maguire about Imaging Apartheid: the Poster Project for Palestine. We’ve extended the deadline, so go submit some work!

And then, alongside partner in crime John W. Stuart, on the Kitchen Bang Bang Law on CKUT. We talk to Vincent Tinguely about the ideas behind Four Minutes to Midnight, the latest issue and our upcoming event (!!!). It’s actually rather insightful! Download the mp3 audio archive here, the interview starts about ten minutes in.

Thanks Rob, Vince!

As I was going through my archives tonight, I realised I had never properly posted about this small pamphlet we produced and distributed back in 2008. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the new directions I want to take the magazine in (and the 2356 project generally), and this is a telling touchstone from the past to some of these ideas.

The pamphlet is a transcript of the speech delivered by cultural critic Brian Holmes at the Democracy in America exhibition, presented by Creative Time in New York in 2008. In it he compellingly argues for artists to engage with the radical opportunities presented by the financial crisis. A message as relevant today as it was then.

I first met Brian as part of the Declarations of Interdependence and the Immediacy of Design conference at Concordia University almost ten years ago. It was a heady time for me, with a lot of thinking about the relationship between design, art and activism. As a decade since then rounds out, I find myself thinking deeply about this again, and the position I’m now in to enact those ideas. So, many thanks Brian, for inspiring me in the first place, and allowing us to publish this important work!

Download Financial Crimes by Brian Holmes.

I designed this typographic poster at the request of my good friend Sarah Boris, for SoUp (East London) and Joiners Arms “Make Soup Not War” exhibition/event at Cordy House. Given the theme, I was inspired by the revolutions happening in North Africa and the Middle East and decided to pay tribute with this design.

I’d been looking for an occasion to use Non-format’s Otto typeface for a while, and it does most of the work here, paired with a few well chosen words and a heart-felt sentiment. The A3 posters were beautifully Risograph printed by London’s Ditto Press.

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After posting the video below and thinking of Vic Chestnutt’s life and death, and independent music and culture generally, I think it’s about time I write a few words on the passing of FA Nettelbeck. Please don’t read this as any sort of obituary (Stephen Kessler has us covered on that front) or anything official from our press acting as the publisher of his last printed work. It’s just a personal reaction, having had a few weeks for the news to settle in.

Fred’s death hit me hard, it shocked, confused and angered me. I honestly didn’t know how to feel, or how MUCH to feel… Who was this person to me? Could I call him a friend? I never had the chance to meet him, though I’d been in correspondence with him for the last three years.

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It is with deep sadness that I have to announce the passing of poet F.A. Nettelbeck. Fred passed away on January 20th, 2011 in Bend, Oregon. He was 60 years old.

For now, John and I have got no words. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

“Throw down a few
against the darkness
brother”

from Kevin Opstedal’s remembrance poem.

[UPDATE] Obituary by Stephen Kessler.

Quick and dirty (literally) illustration for Ezra Winton’s article on Walrus magazine’s greenwashing of the tar sands on Artthreat.

The early view from our table

Another great Expozine weekend is in the books, and as tiring, stressful and hectic as it was, I’m pretty sad it’s over and we’re going to have to wait a whole year for the next opportunity to see so many amazing independent creators and creations.

As a member of the illustrious board, headed by the indefatiguable Louis Rastelli (with big shoutouts to Billy Mavreas, Genevieve Boyer, Pascal-Angelo Fioramore, Michelle Lacombe and Graham Hall) I spent Friday setting up hundreds of tables and chairs while hoping that issue XI of Four Minutes to Midnight would be printed and bound in time by my printers Kata Soho (kids, remember, don’t leave printing to the last minute!). Everything worked out in the end, and I was able to enjoy the opening event at Sala with some good friends and great performances by Sherwin Tija (reading from his collection of Pseudo-Haikus and new zine, “The Little Cancer that could”) and Super Fossil Power. There was a nice turnout, but unfortunately, as was to be expected, a lot of zinesters I was hoping to meet were MIA as they frantically finished their wares.

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by Greg Hall 1946-2009
(to whom FA Nettelbeck has dedicated our next issue)

In most of these pages
the only thing left even vaguely gold
continues as a careful harmony
my fingers and the searchings of my heart
describing the unheard answers
a man who answers
questions like yours…
Much has vanished—
The clamor and the poison,
the usefulness of further transfusions,
the possibility of self-defined grace…
Still, a certain connection
to those who were injured
falling from horses
and to those who were compelled to sing
because the world was suddenly taken over
by robbers and thieves—
And because the ocean
answered every question
left unsolved by the wind and the night.
Although in page after page
my losses grew
something else also grew—
Now I can feel
what I was trying to say
and from these failures
something green and unbroken
is rising and running towards the shore—
Inside these shards of feeling
lost nations and lost wars
that which was deathless inside you
was addressed by what was deathless in me
and for those who can’t believe in death
I recommend you go find
some American poet
who can be
ironic
about
Love

…I was trying to draw out a comment by you about what you think poetry does? Or what is poetry for?

Poetry done right stops time.

As follow up to the above, with the cultural landscape so crowded with everyone, uhhh, doing their own thing how can a writer be heard?

Take hostages.

F.A. Nettelbeck interviewed by Mr. Jim Hayes. Four Minutes to Midnight Issue XI, featuring Nettelbeck’s Happy Hour, is coming very very soon!