dOCUMENTA 13 : Featuring Publications by Post-Apollo Authors: Etel Adnan & Jalal Toufic

“100 Notes – 100 Thoughts.” Now available: The first 17 notebooks in both printed and e-book editions

As a prelude to the 2012 exhibition, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz have initiated a series of publications driven by the logic of the mind-at-work, presenting, writing, and drawing scenarios that point outside the normative bounds of academic text production. In the form of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations between artists and writers, and conversations, they present models of connection-making between the private and the public, between the pre-stage of intuitions, the naming of ideas, and the key-chain of arguments that provide the reader with a singular insight into working methods. The series is formed through interconnections, so that the notebooks could be described as an “interregnum,” a temporary rupture in discursive intelligence; they do not direct us towards reason as such, but towards a different understanding of the role of consciousness. They appear in three different formats (A6, A5, B5) and they are between 16 to 48 pages long. The contributors come from various fields such as art, science, philosophy and psychology, anthropology, political theory, literature studies, and poetry.

They include Etel Adnan, Kenneth Goldsmith, Péter György, Emily Jacir, Susan Buck-Morss, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge, Peter L. Galison, Erkki Kurenniemi, Lars Bang Larsen, György Lukács, Christoph Menke, Paul Ryan, Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri, Vandana Shiva, G. M. Tamás, Michael Taussig, Jalal Toufic, Ian Wallace, and Lawrence Weiner. Commissioned by dOCUMENTA (13)’s Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev together with Agent, Member of Core Group, and Head of Department Chus Martínez, this series is edited by Head of Publications, Bettina Funcke. The “100 Notes – 100 Thoughts” series will be launched at various places and in various moments, each accompanied by a discussion on the nature and the aim of this publishing project.



006: Etel Adnan : The Cost for Love We Are not Willing to Pay

In her poetic reflection, artist, poet, and essayist Etel Adnan (*1925) describes various forms of love: the love for ideas, for God, for things, and for nature. However, today we have distanced ourselves from a higher form of love that drove Nietzsche into madness and the Islamic mystic al-Hallaj into martyrdom. The love for nature, which Adnan describes through her own experience, even seems to have given way to contempt—how else could the ecological catastrophe toward which we are steering be explained? The price to stop it would be too high, as it would involve a radical change in our way of life—similar to the experience of conventional love between two people, which involves such intensity only a few are ready to endure it.

English/German
20 pp., 1 ill.,
14,8 x 21 cm, paperback
€ 6,– [D], CHF 9,90
ISBN 978-3-7757-2855-3
E-Book
c. € 4,99 [D]
ISBN 978-3-7757-3035-8

Etel was born in 1925 in Beirut and lives in Sausalito, Cal., and Paris. She studied literature at the Sorbonne, Paris, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., and Berkeley University. In 1984, she worked with Robert Wilson on his opera CIVILwarS and has exhibited internationally. Her recent publications include Master of the Eclipse (2009), Seasons (2008), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and In/somnia (2002). 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts No. 006: The Cost for Love We Are Not Willing to Pay photo: Franck Guérin, 2011



Jalal Toufic: Reading, Rewriting Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”—Angelically

In the second edition of his book (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (2003), Jalal Toufic notes: “I was for years concerned with schizophrenia and with schizophrenics, who appeared in my Credits Included: A Video in Red and Green, 1995; and I am now interested in ‘the little girl,’ whom I expect to appear in my coming vampire film. . . . At one level, the Thirteenth Series in Gilles Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense, 1969, ‘The Schizophrenic and the Little Girl,’ can thus be retrospectively viewed as a program for the work of a decade on my part.” In this new essay, he writes on the portrait of the pubescent girl, including in Poe’s “The Oval Portrait.” “The successful portrait of a pubescent girl is not a rite of passage but a rite of non-passage; what needs a rite is not passage, which is the natural state (at least for historical societies), but non-passage, the radical differentiation between the before, in this case a pubescent girl, and the after, a woman.” From the portrait of the pubescent girl, Toufic moves to the portrait in general and its paradigmatic relation to the angel; thus the title of this notebook: Reading, Rewriting Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”—Angelically. — Most of Jalal Toufic’s books are available for download as PDF files at his website: www.jalaltoufic.com > .

English/German
24 pp., 1 ill.,
14,8 x 21 cm, paperback
€ 6,– [D], CHF 9,90
ISBN 978-3-7757-2860-7
E-Book
c. € 4,99 [D]
ISBN 978-3-7757-3040-2

Jalal Toufic, writer, artist Born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad, Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He is the author of, among other books, Graziella: The Corrected Edition (2009), The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster
(2009), Undeserving Lebanon (2007), Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell
You (2005), Forthcoming (2000), (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), and Distracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003). Most of his books are available for download as PDF files at his website www.jalaltoufic.com. He is a guest of the 2011 Artists-in-Berlin Program of the DAAD. 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts No. 011: Reading, Rewriting Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”—Angelically Welcome to the info section of the dOCUMENTA (13) website. ... http://d13.documenta.de/panorama/#participants/participants/jala...
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For more information about dOCUMENTA 13 visit their website.

PEN Oakland Award: Etel Adnan's Acceptance Speech & Sharon Doubiago on Etel Adnan's "Master of the Eclipse"

Info about the PEN Oakland Award and PEN Oakland: http://www.penoakland.org/history-of-penoakland.html

Etel Adnan's Acceptance speech:

"I am extremely pleaSED TO RECEIVE THIS AWARD and thank the committee who decided to give it to me, and particularly Sharon Doubiago whose friendship I value, and whose work I particularly appreciate. I am not the recipient of many awards, but this one touches me particularly, as it comes from the Bay Area, which is home, and a place that is a major part of my thinking, and my work. I wish I were present to receive this award, but I am these times weary of airplanes, and it would have been difficult for me to travel. But I am extremely thankful, and am sending you my most friendly thoughts, ETEL ADNAN"

Etel Adnan’s Master of the Eclipse
by Sharon Doubiago

Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925 of a Christian Greek mother and a Muslim Syrian father. “Beirut in the thirties was itself a preadolescent city: newly installed as the capital for a nation carved out by the Allies from Syria. It smelled of jasmine and orange blossoms, and you could look at the sea from almost any street.” Master of the Eclipse is a collection of memoir stories ranging from girlhood in Beirut to adulthood in Paris and the Bay Area. (For many years Adnan taught Philosophy of Art at Dominican College in San Rafael.) The mysterious, near-omniscient narrator chronicles, in breathtaking, heartbreaking, metaphorical stories, the eclipse of not just the Arab world but of the Western one also. She has been chronicling the apocalypse (The Arab Apocalypse is one of her booklength poems) for much of her life in poetry, painting, criticism and fiction. Her novel, Sitt Marie Rose (1978) is considered a feminist classic of the Lebanese Civil War.
“What are poets for in these destitute times?” “The storyteller as poet as vigilant angel” tells us. The title story, brilliant and stunning both poetically and politically, is of the Kurdish Iraqi poet, Buland al-Haidari, and the poetry festivals at which she encountered him in Baghdad and Sicily, and his death from alcoholism in London in 1996. It is the story of the downward spiral of the poet in exile from his beloved country as it is both self-destructing and being destroyed. “I’m a living wound because I know they’re setting fire to my country because they envy its immemorial mystic power.” Credited with having brought free verse to Arab poetry in the 40s, Buland’s greatest shame is that he loved Sadam Hussein who in turn loved poetry. Who is the Master? On first reading I assumed Sadam but on subsequent readings I’ve seen Buland, then his scholar, the University of Virginia “professor-Agent…the Big Eye, the guardian of a supreme power,” the exact equivalent of the military, the bombers, the movie directors and journalists, all of us (except those going righteously mad) in our bullet proof jackets.

The ironic symbolism and metaphors, if those literary terms work here, are profound. Ibn Arabi, Walter Benjamin, the angel of history, Paul Klee’s angels (the painter who in WWI painted airplane wings), prostitutes, suitcases in Syria of counterfeit money from California, lovers driven mad for the Muse they cannot touch, and the narrator’s love of women. “American Malady” is surely one of the most ironic but lyrical pieces written in recent history: refugees trying to get to the America that’s destroying their country. “Better to be in the tornado’s eye than in its path.” The making of the movies, the making of the news: the boy who digs up, washes and delivers real corpses for the Hollywood movie mogul who refuses to pay him the small asking wage. “‘Love me,’” Um Kulthum was singing, ‘even if you have to curse me.’” “They ended up in Lebanon with only their clothes on, and Father’s black little radio.” A son dead and a father insane because of that radio, those voices in all their different languages penetrating their souls. “All the shelling and the dying…they announced everything except the sorrow.” That’s what Adnan’s stories are about most of all, the sorrow. The eclipse yes, yet: “They say ‘Palestine smells good. She’s worth our lives.’ But I’m not going to die. How can I? I’m not yet born. I will be born over there, on the road to Haifa, as in the days of my grandparents.”

2 Pieces of Great News for 2 Post-Apollo Poets!

GOOD BIT OF NEWS #1
Etel Adnan, author of 11 books from The Post-Apollo Press (including "Sitt Marie Rose", "The Arab Apocalypse" and most recently, "Seasons"), has won a PEN Oakland award for her latest book, "Master of the Eclipse", published by Interlink Books this past year.


The award ceremony will take place:

Sunday December 11
@ The Oakland Public Library
Rockridge Branch
5366 College Avenue, Oakland 94168
from 2-5 pm

CONGRATULATIONS, ETEL!

GOOD BIT OF NEWS #2

Brian Unger has published a very insightful and well written review of Denise Newman's "The New Make Believe" in the latest issue (Dec/Jan) of The Poetry Project Newsletter. We hope to post the review here soon!

CONGRATULATIONS, DENISE!

2 Events & 2 Post-Apollo Poets Next week!

N E X T T U E S D A Y 10/12:
Denis Newman (Post-Apollo Poet Extraorinaire) & Aaron Belz
READING @ 7pm
BookShop West Portal
80 West Portal Ave
San Francisco, CA 94127-1304











Denise Newman is a San Francisco poet and translator whose two previous collections are Wild Goods and Human Forest. Her latest book, The New Make Believe, is, according to poet Norman Fischer, "more haunting than ever, and as needful of contemplation." Newman, who teaches creative writing at the California College of the Arts, is a staff editor at Five Fingers Review, and has been a Djerassi Resident Artist. Her translation of The Painted Room by the Danish poet Inger Christensen was published in 2000 by The Harvill Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Denver Quarterly, Volt, apex of the M, New American Writing, and ZYZZYVA. For the past decade, she has been collaborating with composers, providing lyrics for choral works.


N E X T W E E K E N D : 10/16-17

Etel Adnan & Serpentine Map Marathon
Saturday and Sunday
16 – 17 October

In London: Etel Adnan will give a reading as part of the Serpentine Gallery's "Serpentine Maps Marathon" :
Maps for the 21st Century is an ambitious two-day event bringing together over 50 extraordinary artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists to showcase possible maps for the coming decade. Read more about the event here.

Etel Adnan's Paintings at Frieze Art Fair 14-17 October 2010

Semler Sfeir Gallery will exhibit paintings by Etel Adnan at the Frieze Art Fair this October (14-17) in London. (See below for more info).

Etel also wrote to let us know that she will participate in a poetry marathon in London on the 16th & 17th of that October as well.

The eighth edition of the leading international contemporary art fair, sponsored by Deutshce Bank, takes place in London's Regent's Park from 14-17 October 2010.

World's top contemporary art galleries
173 of the world's most exciting contemporary art galleries, representing 29 countries, will present new work by over 1,000 of the world's most innovative artists at Frieze Art Fair.

Galleries new to the main section of the fair include: Bortolami, New York (USA); Pilar Corrias, London (UK); Elizabeth Dee, New York (USA); Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (Belgium); Michael Lett, Auckland (New Zealand).

The successful introduction of Frame, dedicated to galleries under six years old showing solo artist presentations, sees its return in 2010. Frame is supported by Cos. The Frame galleries' selection has been advised by curators Cecilia Alemani and Daniel Baumann.

A listing of all the galleries with work that they are showing at the fair will be online in a new 'Art Finder' section of the Frieze Art Fair website. friezeartfair.com

Exciting News from Paris!

Simone and Etel have been based in Paris for the past several months, excepting jaunts to Beirut, Berlin and most recently, London where Etel gave a reading at The Serpentine gallery of which we hope to have photos to share soon. The most recent big news from Paris however, is that The Despalles Editions, based in Meinz and Paris will publish an excerpt of Etel Adnan's "Seasons". The section "Spring" will be published as a special de luxe edition with wood engravings by german artist, Johannes Strugalla, and the book will be presented at the upcoming Frankfurt Bookfair.


Johannes Strugalla working on the engravings for Seasons:




























Here is an excerpt from a critical essay by Mark Grimes on Seasons titled "Listen to Etel Adnan", published in a 2009 issue of Al Jadid Magazine:

Imagine a movie screen larger than her native country of Lebanon, positioned in the sky above those timeless cedars, and revealing in anguishing replay the war of 1982. Shatila? Sabra? Again, perhaps. but, we do want a sense of logic, a sense of continuity, in what we read. And this is not to be the case with Etel Adnan's Seasons. No. We are to enter an exquisitely imagined and private world, where "The oak tree is growing with anxiety," and "No object can compete with a sound's intimacy."

Stay tuned for more news from Sausalito, Paris, New York, Beirut and beyond.