Christian Peet Releases New Novel 'Big American Trip'

Assuming the form of postcards authored by an "alien" of unknown nationality, ethnicity, and gender, addressing a variety of people and organizations (political figures, multinational corporations, people in public toilets, John Barr, et al), Big American Trip is a startling document of fear and loneliness in the 21st century U.S. Whether deconstructing road signs, a failed relationship, or the state of contemporary poetry, the voice behind these texts is at once familiar and strange, determined to be free, and desperate to communicate with anyone who has ever felt at odds with the Language of a Nation.

Also: The companion YouTube project, involving a diverse group of activists, actors, artists, musicians, and writers performing video readings / interpretations of individual postcards, may be seen here: http://bigamericantrip.blogspot.com/

Some responses to Big American Trip:

In Big American Trip, Christian Peet rejects the idyllic dream of a post-national freedom, instead going back to those two archaic, fundamental tools of American nation building—the highway system and the postcard—not to find an imagined national community but to reveal the strangeness, violence and noise that results from the U.S. clashing with other cultures, languages and nations, and—just as importantly—clashing with itself.

—Johannes Göransson, author of A New Quarantine Will Take My Place and Pilot, co-editor of Action Books and Action, Yes

The complexities of alienation hybridize the mouth, double the tongue. Derrida writes, “What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible? Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are…instead of reaching you it divides you…it leaves you, it gives you.” Christian Peet’s Big American Trip embodies the enigma of the postcard—writing that is at once private and public—and like all letters, these maintain a sense of internal drifting that requires us to question our own sense of identity and location. The logic of Peet’s syntax and juxtapositions gives us the poetry of the divided tongue: in the space between multiple languages, we are invited to trespass our own borders that we might hear (and learn to speak) radical loss. A whole new spin on the classic postcard message: “wish you were here,” Big American Trip is a remarkable, necessary book, and a wonderful achievement.

—Selah Saterstrom, author of The Meat & Spirit Plan and The Pink Institution

Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela is a sad and hilarious book full of devastating social commentary about money, power, sex and British social mores. A couple centuries later, Christian Peet has updated poor Pamela's well behaved letters into blistering postcards dashed off by a nervy, distraught human being of indeterminate gender who is both losing and finding him/herself in and across a terrifying pre-Obama America. Stamp this one with approval.

—Rebecca Brown, author of The Last Time I Saw You, The End of Youth, Excerpts From A Family Medical Dictionary The Gifts of the Body, The Terrible Girls, and others

The author of these postcards has transcribed this alien’s heart. Peet drives through the US landscape (circa early 21st century), offers us the hijacked language of a nation, and through this text asks: and what words have been left for you to use, honestly?

—Elena Georgiou, author of Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrant and mercy mercy me

Big American Trip
Christian Peet
Shearsman Books,
March 2009
Paperback, 80 pp.,
9x6ins, $15 / £8.95
ISBN 9781848610156

...........................................................

Nobel Laurette Paul Krugman Left With Feeling of "Despair" Over Obama's Economic Measures





-------------------------------------------

9 Reasons Obama's Fiscal Plan Fails Both Markets and Taxpayers. By Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate. Posted March 26, 2009.



The real failings in the Obama recovery program lie not in the stimulus package, but in its efforts to revive financial markets.



Let's be clear: President Barack Obama inherited an economy in freefall and could not possibly have turned things around in the short time since his election. Unfortunately, what he is doing is not enough.


The real failings in the Obama recovery program lie not in the stimulus package -- though it is too heavily weighted toward tax cuts, and much of it merely offsets cutbacks by states -- but in its efforts to revive financial markets. America's failures provide important lessons to countries around the world that are or will be facing increasing problems with their banks:


1. Delaying bank restructuring is costly, in terms of both the eventual bailout costs and the damage to the overall economy in the interim.


2. Governments do not like to admit the full costs of the problem, so they give the banking system just enough to survive, but not enough to return it to health.


3. Confidence is important, but it must rest on sound fundamentals. Policies must not be based on the fiction that good loans were made, and that the business acumen of financial-market leaders and regulators will be validated once confidence is restored.


4. Bankers can be expected to act in their self-interest on the basis of incentives. Perverse incentives fueled excessive risk-taking, and banks that are near collapse but are too big to fail will engage in even more of it. Knowing that the government will pick up the pieces if necessary, they will postpone resolving mortgages and pay out billions in bonuses and dividends.


5. Socializing losses while privatizing gains is more worrisome than the consequences of nationalizing banks. American taxpayers are getting an increasingly bad deal. In the first round of cash infusions, they got about 67 cents in assets for every dollar they gave (though the assets were almost surely overvalued, and quickly fell in value). But in the recent cash infusions, it is estimated that Americans are getting 25 cents, or less, for every dollar. Bad terms mean a large national debt in the future.


6. Don't confuse saving bankers and shareholders with saving banks. America could have saved its banks, but let the shareholders go, for far less than it has spent.


7. Trickle-down economics almost never works. Throwing money at the banks hasn't helped homeowners: foreclosures continue to increase. Letting AIG fail might have hurt some systemically important institutions, but dealing with that would have been better than to gamble upwards of $150 billion and hope that some of it might stick where it is important. One of the reasons we may be getting bad terms is that if we got fair value for our money, we would by now be the dominant shareholder in at least one of the major banks.


8. Lack of transparency got America's financial system into this trouble. Lack of transparency will not get it out. The Obama administration is promising to pick up losses to persuade hedge funds and other private investors to buy out banks' bad assets. But this will not establish ''market prices,'' as the administration claims. Banks' losses have already occurred, and their gains must now come at taxpayers' expense. Bringing in hedge funds as third parties will simply increase the cost.


9. Better to be forward looking than backward looking, focusing on reducing the risk of new loans and ensuring that funds create new lending capacity.


There is no ''mystique'' in finance: The era of believing that something can be created out of nothing should be over. Short-sighted responses by politicians -- who hope to get by with a deal that is small enough to please taxpayers and large enough to please the banks -- will merely prolong the problem.


An impasse is looming. More money will be needed, but Americans are in no mood to provide it -- certainly not on the terms that we have seen. The well of money may be running dry, and so, too, may be America's legendary optimism and hope.

From Project Syndicate: http://www.project-syndicate.org/

De La Soul To Play Wellington's San Francisco Bath House

2009 sees hip hop pioneers De La Soul mark the 20th anniversary of their career, and to celebrate the group are undertaking their most comprehensive NZ tour to date. The groups vibe is to perform the classic tracks live, but more importantly, and more than ever, De la Soul are stamping the presence and truth that's defined their sound across two decades. The trio from Long Island, formed De La Soul in the 80s, quickly etching themselves into the psyche of global hip hop culture with their seminal debut, 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) and the dance floor addiction ‘The Magic Number’ Since the groups last tour to NZ in 2006 the the group have won a Grammy for their collaboration with the Gorillaz on the single "Feel Good Inc"

There will be an exclusive and invite only media workshop with De la Soul to be held at the mighty Red Bull studios in Auckland on May 15. Details TBC. Punctuating their enduring career is an impressive list of collaborators feeling the De La Soul tip: Mos Def, Beastie Boys, Common, Chaka Khan, Busta Rhymes and Redman among others. And we know that De La Soul's peace and positivity can be heard in the music of many other artists.

MAY 12 - WELLINGTON - SFBH
MAY 13 - WANAKA – LAKE WANAKA CENTRE
MAY 14 - CHRISTCHURCH - THE BEDFORD
MAY 15 - AUCKLAND- THE POWERSTATION

---------------------------------------------------------

Billy Apple, Negative condition situation: cleaning: windowpane, 28 April 1973161 West 23rd St , New York (photo: David Troy)


Billy Apple at Adam Art Gallery

Billy AppleNew York
1969-197328 March – 17 May 2009

Opening 28 March, a new Adam Art Gallery exhibition documents activities undertaken by artist Billy Apple in New York between 1969 and 1973, including works never before seen in New Zealand .

The exhibition focuses on a short but intense period in the artist's career, when he operated a small not-for-profit gallery at 161 West 23rd Street . Over the course of four years he created a venue for artists to produce works that tested and re-defined the nature of sculpture, at a time when the art scene in New York was beginning to be galvanised by such radical gestures.



Curator Christina Barton says the exhibition documents an important period in Apple’s career and recognises the vital contribution he made to the history of art in New York .

“It also addresses the relation between ‘live’ action and documentation, setting out to offer various solutions to the problem of how to re-present ephemeral, site-specific work at the same time as exploring how this was already a concern of the artist at the time of his work’s production,” says Christina.

Significant works on show will include a re-staging of an iconic window cleaning action originally undertaken with the assistance of Geoff Hendricks at 112 Greene St in 1971, the 1968 film Gaseous discharge phenomena with soundtrack by artist Nam June Paik, and a large-scale installation of arranged coloured neon tubes reconstructed to address the remarkable architecture of the Adam Art Gallery .

These works will be shown alongside other reconstructions, artefacts, photo-documentation and archival material relating to the Apple space and its programmes.

The exhibition opening is timed to coincide with a major international symposium organised in conjunction with One Day Sculpture, a New Zealand-wide series of temporary public art works, conceived by British curator Claire Doherty for the Litmus Initiative at Massey University.

It also provides the context for Apple’s contribution to the One Day Sculpture series. The Adam Art Gallery has commissioned Apple to undertake a new work over one 24-hour period on Saturday 28 March 2009. This will translate his 70s’ activities to a new time and place, enabling Apple’s conceptual practice to confront an iconic work of public sculpture: Henry Moore’s Bronze Form (1985-6) which is located on Salamanca Lawn in Wellington ’s Botanic Gardens.

Billy Apple studied graphic design in London and made a contribution to early pop art in Britain before leaving for New York in 1964. He lived in New York between 1964 and 1990 before returning to New Zealand where he continues to work and exhibit internationally. He has consistently devoted himself to testing the boundaries between art and life, exploring the social, economic and architectural contexts within which art is made and circulates.

The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme of discussion, performance and a film screening. For a full programme please check the gallery’s website: www.victoria.ac.nz/adamartgallery

OPENING Friday 27 March 2009, 6-8pm All welcome

ONE DAY SCULPTUREBilly Apple®LESS IS MOORESaturday 28 March 2009, 00.00–23.59Salamanca Lawn, Botanic Gardens, Wellingtonhttp://www.onedaysculpture.org.nz/


........................................................................................

Magazine Library in Tokyo Finishes

http://www.magazinelibrary.jp

--

--

--

--

-

-

-

.

.

.

Evil Ocean Performing at the White Fungus Issue 10 Launch Party at ARTSPACE, Auckland



--------

THE BORDERLINE BALLROOM
in association with the Audio Foundation

celebrates the release of Dirt Beneath the Daydream
with performances by

Greg Malcolm & Bruce Russell
Grunge Genesis
Stanier Black-Five

with DJ I-Rory
Saturday March 14th - 8pm - $5
at Neibelheim (under SoFA Gallery, South Quad of the Arts Centre)

Christchurch artists featured on Dirt Beneath the Daydream CD celebrate its release with an evening of performances that include collaborations between local legends Bruce Russell and Greg Malcolm, folk noise alchemists Richard Neave, Adam Willetts and LA Lakers as Grunge Genesis, plus solo work from audio trainspotter Stanier Black-Five.

Dirt Beneath the Daydream is a New Zealand compilation given away to subscribers of the internationally respected experimental music magazine, The Wire, as well as with the current edition of New Zealand’s White Fungus magazine, which will be available at the event. Christchurch artists have a strong presence on the CD, with tracks from LA Lakers, Demarnia Lloyd (with Stuart Harris), Greg Malcolm, Richard Neave (with Lee Noyes), Bruce Russell, Stanier Black-Five and Adam Willetts.

Greg Malcolm

Greg Malcolm is has established an international reputation for his work with “solo simultaneously played multiple guitar performances” (SSPMGP) and his critically acclaimed releases. In his SSMGP, Greg uses no processing or effects (except a fuzz box occasionally), just a selection of guitars. Some are contact miked, some have extra strings and springs and things: one of these is at his side, one is played with his feet and one lies in his lap.

Richard Neave

Richard Neave plays a noise guitar… or at least he plays the guitar in a noisily fashion, as well as an array of Japanese instruments. His work includes the solo album release You're Not Welcome, on the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, as well as collaborations as part of the legendary James Last Appreciation Squad, CM Ensemble, Grunge Genesis and with Dunedin percussionist Lee Noyes, with whom he has recently finished an as yet unreleased album, UnRepent. Neave describes his approach as “trying to create an intensity of genuine expression that tries to circumvent or consume and override the contrivance and meekness of self-satisfied and staid song structures… although the gap between the intention and the result is often bathetic”.

Bruce Russell

Bruce Russell is an improvising sound artist, who since 1987 has been a member of the Dead C. This genre-dissolving New Zealand trio mixes rock, electro-acoustics and noise. He has also been active as a solo artist, and directed two independent labels, Xpressway and Corpus Hermeticum. He writes essays and criticism for The Wire, artists’ catalogues, and other publications. He is currently studying at RMIT towards a doctorate in sound in the School of Fine Art.

Stanier Black-Five

Stanier Black-Five’s audio work regularly fuses electronics with environmental recordings and found sounds: from mesmerising aircraft drones to the pounding rhythms of trains. As well as playing in New Zealand, she has performed across the UK and Europe, taking part in events such as the London Musicians’ Collective’s annual festival of experimental music and makes sporadic releases that include those on her self-run Argot Records label. She also writes on music and sound art for various publications worldwide.

Adam Willetts

Adam Willetts plays blissed-out noise pop using synthesizers to create rich, expansive fields of sound with a fragile yet propulsive sense of momentum, and through the sparseness of his approach allows space for subtle details and blemishes to drift into the foreground. Well known in the New Zealand noise and sound art community for his highly conceptual improvised work with self-sampling laptop, electromagnetic fields, wii remotes and other gamepads, Adam has been steadily transforming his practice since relocating from Auckland to Christchurch early last year, ditching his computer, picking up his soldering iron and building a less conceptual, more musical foundation for his work.

The Borderline Ballroom is a Christchurch-based voluntary collective aiming to provide a relaxed space for challenging listening, and a regular live venue for performative audio experimentation that supports local practitioners working on the peripheries of music and sound, while offering a resource for national and international performers touring New Zealand's South Island.

Forthcoming Borderline Ballroom events:
20th March – Mr Sterile Assembly (Wtgn) & AS AT (Chc) @ The Wunderbar
30th March – PITS (Australia), Tim Coster (Akl), Alex MacKinnon (Dun) @ The Physics Room

For more information, contact the Borderline Ballroom at: http://nz.mc1113.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=borderlineballroom@gmail.com

-----------------------------------------

----------------------------------