December 2008
Selected by Julian Cowley
1. Robert Ashley - Music with Roots in the Aether
2. Joe Jones/ Chicken to Kitchen Fluxus Meditation from Fluxsaints (1992)
3. Robert Wilson - Christopher Knowles The Sundance Kid Is Beautiful (1975) from Giorno Poetry Systems, Big Ego
4. Wolf Vostell - De/Collage [LP] (1980)
5. John Cage and Raahsan Roland Kirk - Sound?? (1966)
6. Nicholas Moore, Spleen (Ubu Editions, 2004)
7. Pina Bausch Documentary (directed by Anne Linsel) (2006)
8. David Behrman, Long Throw (Roulette, 2008)
9. Derek Bailey, Interview by Henry Kaiser (1987)
10. Vito Acconci, The Bristol Project (2001)
Julian Cowley contributes regularly to The Wire and occasionally to other music magazines. He has also lectured and written extensively on literature. During the 1980s he had the good fortune to work closely for several years with poet and critic Eric Mottram, whose inexhaustible conversation was, in effect, a foretaste of the UbuWeb experience.
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November 2008
Selected by Neville Wakefield
1. Willoughby Sharp Interviews Vito Acconci (1973)
2. Bas Jan Ader - Selected Works (1970-71)
3. Pipilotti Rist - Video Works (1986-2003)
4. Chris Burden - Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74
5. Johan Grimonprez - Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997)
6. The Films of Jack Goldstein (1974-1978)
7. Gordon Matta-Clark - Splitting, Bingo/Ninths, Substrait (Underground Dailies) (1974-1976)
8. Lawrence Weiner - WATER IN MILK EXISTS (2008)
9. Psychic TV - “Unclean”
10. Robert Smithson - Bootleg of Hotel Palenque by Alex Hubbard (1969 / 2004)
Neville Wakefield is a writer and curator living in NYC. Recent film projects include ‘destricted‘ a compilation of commissioned films by Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla, Larry Clark, Gaspar Noe, Richard Prince and Sam Taylor Wood. Senior curatorial advisor to PS1 and curator of Frieze he is also creative director of ‘tar’ magazine.
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October 2008
Selected by Gary Sullivan
1. Jaap Blonk’s sound files
2. Dada Magazine
3. Drew Gardner’s sound files
4. Kenneth Goldsmith, editor, “Publishing the Unpublishable” series
5. George Kuchar’s films (especially “Corruption of the Damned”)
6. Anders Lundgerg, Jonas Magnusson and Jesper Olsson, editors, “After Language Poetry” papers
7. Paper Rad’s “P-Unit Mixtape”
8. Bern Porter’s page
9. Jerome Rothenberg’s Ethnopoetics : Soundings page (especially “Ca Dao, Vietnamese Folk Poems”)
10. Survival Research Laboratories, “Virtues of Negative Fascination”
Poet and cartoonist Gary Sullivan lives in Brooklyn with Nada Gordon. Together, they wrote the book Swoon. Gary’s most recent book is PPL in a Depot. He has published three issues of a comic book, Elsewhere, and maintains a blog by the same name at http://garysullivan.blogspot.com.
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September 2008
Selected by Rick Moody
1. Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier, “The Most Unwanted Song”
2. Jacques Derrida, “On Religion” Part 1, Part 2
3. Assorted Street Posters
4. William Carlos Williams, “Danse Russe.”
5. Beth B., “Stigmata”
6. James Joyce, “Anna Livia Plurabelle”
7. Tellus #14, “Just Intonation”
8. Hugo Ball, “Karawane,” performed by Marie Osmond
9. Gregory Whitehead, “We All Scream Alone”
10. John Cage Meets Sun Ra
Rick Moody is the author of four novels, three collections of stories, and a memoir, THE BLACK VEIL. He also plays music with The Wingdale Community Singers.
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August 2008
Selected by Ben Rubin
1. Erik Saite - A Day in the Life of a Musician
2. Richard Leacock - For an Uncontrolled Cinema
3. William S. Burroughs - The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin
4. Claude Cloksy - The first thousand numbers classified in alphabetical order
5. Robert Smithson - A Heap of Language
6. Vito Acconci - RE
7. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage, Side A , Side B
8. Raphael Rubinstein - A Brief History of Appropriative Writing
9. Marjorie Perloff - The Music of Verbal Space
10. Steve Reich - Pendulum Music (score)
Ben Rubin is a media artist based in New York City. He has been a frequent collaborator with artists and performers including Laurie Anderson, Diller+Scofidio, Ann Hamilton, Arto Lindsay, Steve Reich, and Beryl Korot.
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July 2008
Selected by Zach Feuer
1. Paul McCarthy - Painter (1995)
2. Pipilotti Rist - Video Works (1986-1999)
3. Richard Kern - My Nightmare (1993)
4. Bas Jan Ader - Fall I & II (1970)
5. Lynda Benglis - Female Sensibility (1974)
6. Sophie Calle & Greg Shepard - No Sex Last Night aka Double-Blind (1992)
7. Kembra Pfahler - Cornella; The Story of a Burning Bush (1985)
8. Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek - Site (excerpt) (1964, .mov)
9. Carolee Schneeman - Meat Joy (1964)
10. Dan Graham - Rock My Religion (1982-84)
Zach Feuer owns the creatively named Zach Feuer Gallery in New York City.
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June 2008
Selected by Ron Silliman
1. Frank Film (1973), Frank and Caroline Mouris
2. The Name (1973), Robert Creeley
3. Recollections of Grande Apachería (1973), Edward Dorn
4. Reading at Goddard College (1973), Robert Creeley
5. Carnival The First Panel: 1967-1970 (1973), Steve McCaffery
6. Black Tarantula Crossword Gathas (excerpt) (1973), Jackson Mac Low
7. A Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Matlin (1973), Jackson Mac Low
8. Heavy Aspirations (1973), Charles Amirkhanian
9. Armand Schwerner (1973), Phil Niblock (real video .rm file)
10. High Kukus (1973), James Broughton
Ron Silliman was once a slow left-handed second baseman. Now he lives in a faux forest in what was once the Biddle Estate.
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May 2008
Selected by Christian Bök
1. Claude Closky: “The First Thousand Numbers Classified in Alphabetical Order” (1989) [PDF]
2. Derek Beaulieu: “Flatland” (2007) [PDF]
3. Darren Wershler-Henry: “The Tapeworm Foundry” (2002)
4. Claude Simon: “Properties of Several Geometric and Non-Geometric Figures” (1971)
5. F. T. Marinetti: “Dune, Parole in Libertà” (1914)
6. Survival Research Laboratories: “Virtues of Negative Fascination” (1985-86)
7. Seth Price: “Video Game Soundtracks 1983-1987″ (2001)
8. Trek Bloopers
9. Anton Bruhin: “Rotomotor” (1976-77)
10. RACTER: “The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed” (1984)
BONUS TRACK:
IBM 7090: “Music from Mathematics” (1962)
Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia.
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April 2008
Selected by Laura Beiles
1. Anita Feldman and Michael Kowalski, Riffle (1985)
2. MoMA: Writing in Time (2007)
3. Piotr Kamler, Films (1960s-90s)
4. Fortunato Depero, Verbalizzazione astratta di signora (1916)
5. Penelope Umbrico, All the Dishes on Ebay (2002-03)
6. Catherine Jauniaux & Ikue Mori, ‘Smell’ (1992)
7. Abbie Hoffman Makes Gefilte Fish (1973)
8. Mary Lou Green on Andy Warhol’s Hair (1963)
9. Sophie Calle and Gregory Shephard, Double Blind (1992)
10. Cioni Carpi, Three Short Films (1960-62)
Laura Beiles is an associate educator in the Department of Education (Adult and Academic Programs) at The Museum of Modern Art, where she has organized programs with artists, poets, scholars, architects, and designers for seven years. In May of 2007, she received her MA in Art History from Hunter College, and received the Shuster Award for her thesis, “Creating National and International Identities: The Futurist Exhibitions at the Venice Biennale under Fascism, 1928-1942″. Prior to coming to MoMA, she worked at NYU’s La Pietra in Florence and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
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March 2008
Selected by Seth Price
1. Tessa Hughes-Freeland “Baby Doll” (1982)
2. Marie Menken “Glimpse of the Garden” (1957)
3. Robert Barry “Interview (1969)”
4. Ethyl Eichelberger “Jocasta (Boy Crazy) or “She Married Her Son” (1986)
5. Lytle Shaw “Low-Level Bureaucratic Structures: Principles of the Emeryville Shellmound
6. Taj Mahal Travellers “Taj Mahal Travellers on Tour” (1973)
7. Asger Jorn “Pataphysics: A Religion in the Making”
8. Racter “The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed” (1984)
9. Tristan Tzara “A Note on Negro Poetry” (1918)
10. I.B.M. 7090 “Music From Mathematics” (1962)
Seth Price is an artist.
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March 2008
Selected by Stephanie Strickland
1. Maya Deren, “Divine Horsemen”
2. “Concrete!” Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive
3. Jason Nelson, “Poetry Cube”
4. b. p. Nichol, “White Text Sure”
5. Yoko Ono, “Snow Is Falling All the Time”
6. Dick Higgins, “Horizons” [PDF
7. Ketjak: the Ramayana Monkey Chant
8. “Concrete Poetry: A World View” Mary Ellen Solt
9. Raphael Rubinstein, “Gathered, not Made: A Brief History of Appropriative Writing”
10. Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics
Bonus
11. Glossolalia: Speaking in Tongues
12. Caroline Bergvall, “About Face”
Stephanie Strickland is a poet. Her latest collaborative hypermedia work is slippingglimpse first shown at e-Poetry 2007 in Paris and published in hyperrhiz: new media cultures. Her latest book, Zone : Zero (with digital poetry CD) will appear from Ahsahta Press in fall 2008. She recently published “Quantum Poetics: Six Thoughts, in Media Poetry: An International Anthology,” edited by Eduardo Kac, co-edited The Iowa Review Web issue, Multi-Modal Coding: Jason Nelson, Donna Leishman, and Electronic Writing, and also co-edited the first Electronic Literature Collection, published by the Electronic Literature Organization.
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February 2008
Selected by Alan Licht
1. Derek Bailey Interview by Henry Kaiser
2. Richard Foreman MP3 loops from Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty
3. Bruce Nauman “Record”
4. bpNichol — all sound works
5. Cornelius Cardew “Stockhausen Serves Imperialism”
6. Philip Guston/Clark Coolidge “Poor Richard”
7. Lou Reed “the View from the Bandstand”
8. Jack Smith “Buzzards Over Baghdad”
9. Richard Meltzer “Barbara Mauritz: Music Box”
10. Adrian Piper “Untitled 1968″
Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who’s who of the experimental world. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. His new book Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in fall 2007.
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February 2008
Selected by Bettina Funcke
1. Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and How to Live in the German Federal Republic (1986) - Note! Films Removed by copyright holder’s request
2. UbuWeb Hall of Shame
3. Robert Frank, Energy and How to Get It (1981)
4. J. G. Ballard, Shanghai Jim (1991)
5. Pandid Pran Nath Ragas of Morning and Night (1968)
6. Hrabanus Marus De adoratione crucis ab opifice / De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis Augsburg (ca. 845)
7. Jacques Lacan, Télévision (1973)
8. Joan Jonas “The Anchor Stone” (1988)
9. Inuit Throat Singing, from Ethnopoetics
10. Assorted Street Posters (1985-present) from Outsiders
Bettina Funcke is the Senior U.S. Editor of Parkett Magazine.
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January 2008
Selected by Alex Ross
1. Robert Ashley “She Was a Visitor”
2. Kurt Schwitters “Sonata in Urlauten”
3. John Cale “Loop”
4. The Films of Mauricio Kagel
5. Charles Amirkhanian “Dog of Stravinsky”
6. Bernd Alois Zimmermann “Musique pour le soupers de Roi Ubu”
7. Pauline Oliveros “Sound Patterns”
8. Ezra Pound “Sestina: Altaforte”
9. John Cage “4′33″”
10. Robert Ashley “The Wolfman”
Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, The London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and The Guardian. From 1992 to 1996 he was a critic at The New York Times. He has received two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the field of contemporary music. He played keyboards in the noise band Miss Teen Schnauzer, which gave only one public performance, in 1991. His first book, “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,” a cultural history of music since 1900, was published in October 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
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The Rough Trade story begins more than thirty years ago on 20th February 1976. Britain was in the grip of an IRA bombing campaign; a future prime minister was beginning to make her mark on middle England, where punk was yet to run amok; and a young Cambridge graduate called Geoff Travis opened a new shop at 202 Kensington Park Road, just off Ladbroke Grove in West London. The Rough Trade shop sold obscure and challenging records by bands like American art-rockers Pere Ubu, offering an alternative to the middle-of-the-road rock music that dominated the music business.In January 1977, when a record by Manchester punk band Buzzcocks appeared in the shop, Rough Trade found itself in the right place at the right time to make an impact far beyond that of a neighbourhood music store. When Spiral Scratch was released in 1977, the idea of putting out a single without the support of an established record company was incredible. But Rough Trade was to become the headquarters of a revolt against this corporate monopoly - it was stocking records by bands inspired by the idea that they could do it themselves.
