Staircases, Poetry Trees, Ad Campaigns

*limited documentation for these series below

SUMMARY: Text Installations, Fake Ads, Poetry Campaigns, Umbrella Poetry Trees, Staircase Poems, Street Threshold Poems for Theater, live writing a room made of stories … An early fascination with the contrast between sedentary writing process and the more dynamic, observable processes of painting, sculpture and performance as well as a heightened sense of recouping advertising dystopia seeded and inspired these works.

UMBRELLA POETRY TREES

Umbrella Poetry Trees, 1999 & 2000, five installations, NYC. My old man anchored badminton net poles in paint cans filled with concrete. I adapted that weighted base anchor, added a broom stick and a large denuded umbrella. I printed poems, both mine and from my “intergalactic database” on card stock cut into 3″ x 2″ pieces and punched a hole in each. I tied a string of yarn to the umbrella limbs and to each card so they hung like fruit. Next, a sign on wood that said simply “PICK ONE.” The first of these trees appeared in Williamsburg on Hope Street. Others elsewhere in Brooklyn. Instead of a floor support, I also anchored an umbrella “tree” (more like a cloud) from the ceiling. The biggest challenge: wind led to tangling. I decided to just let this happen so long as the tree was anchored securely enough to not tip over. Sadly, documentation of people plucking these ripe poem fruits is lost to time and old tech.

AD CAMPAIGNS

Advertising uses a vast psychological, aesthetic and neurological toolkit to shape or manufacture our desires and to tether our minds to products. What if we recouperated the ad medium from these intentions? What if we advertise the path of the imagination or retakes on habitual realities?  Some influences: The Billboard Liberation Front, Marshall McLuhan, Advertising Age, Kass & Schaeffer, street muralism, pictographs in ancient caves, etc.

Orange and Yellow Line Ads,New York MTA F & Q subway Lines, December 1998, April 1999. As part of the decoration crew, I created and installed on large orange or yellow sheets of cardstock quality paper, orange & yellow ad campaigns to temporarily replace conventional ads during subway events.

Cocktail Po-mmms,at various events including Frying Pan gatherings 1999 and 2000. I magnified a dozen pieces from my Cocktail Po-mmm set to one foot by one foot, laminated them and installed them on the floors, walls and in discreet places to be found by attendees during events.

Oasis, the ad campaign and *official* sponsor of Sonar Literary Journal 2000. A fake ad campaign by the happy dystopic Office of An Imaginative Suicide that appears with varied ads in Volume 1. Created with MML, JJL, CSD.

“Fame by Reproduction” and “Survival by Satiation,” Cicada Enterprises, NOLA, NYC, PDX, Europe, etc 1996 to 1998. A seminal Cicada campaign to serve the resuscitation of mythic creative mindsets in the population. Circulated via wheatpaste bulletins and collector’s edition cards.

STAIRCASES & STREETS & SKY

“Far on the Periphery,” May 1998 for REMAIN: 5 Days of Myth & Ritual. I wrote the lines of two poems, For Farr Kynrose and When He Awoke on the vertical part of steps rising six flights to the warehouse rooms that housed the REMAIN festival.

“You Are Here,” 135 Jay Street, DUMBO Brooklyn 2014.  A document from muse Mml were source text for the lines that served as threshold mindset for those attending a rite & party at the fabled loft. You can read that full memo as a pdf here: 2muse

“Inside the Outside,” Sky Plots & Hyperbolic, NYC & European Tour1999/2000. The threshold poem, Inside the Outside was written in chalk on concrete at the entrance to the warehouse and theater spaces. The work was also read live over a wireless mic towards the end of the performance.

“Sky Poem #1,” Long Island City, NYC 2016 as part of Top to Bottom Mural Project. Painted original poem in a single band along the very top brick of one side of an industrial building.

LIVE WRITING & HABITATS

Why the Water Glistens, Live Storywriting on Walls and Storytelling, Remain Festival, Broadway & Houston, NYC 1998.Originally a writing improv creation accompanied by sax and drums, this mythic work found final form as a written story. Here is a full pdf of Why The Water Glistens

“The Story Wallpaper Room,” Mission District, San Francisco, circa 2006. A live endurance writing event within a 10′ x 10′ x 10′ room destined to be demolished. Using ladders & sharpies, the walls gradually filled with an improvised streaming story until the final unfinished sentence.