For all you New York City folks, this looks like a fantastic event featuring Charles Bernstein and John Yau.
With an introduction on Futurism in China by Performa Curator Defne Ayas. Introduction by Chris Alexander and Kristen Gallagher. Organized by Tan Lin.
Museum of the Chinese in America
215 Centre Street (between Grand and Howard), New York City
Saturday, November 14 4:00pm
Charles Bernstein is author of “All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, forthcoming March 2010), ”Blind Witness: Three American Operas” (Factory School, 2008); “Girly Man” (University of Chicago Press, 2006), and “My Way: Speeches and Poems” (Chicago, 1999). He is Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. More info at epc.buffalo.edu.
John Yau is a poet, critic, editor, and publisher. His most recent book is ”A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns” (D.A.P., 2008). He is the Arts Editor of the Brooklyn Rail and teaches at Mason Gross School of The Arts (Rutgers University).
Sponsored by the Asian American Writers Workshop, Museum of the Chinese in America, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, and the Chinese American Association for Poetry and Poetics.
Arg! Yet another awesome reason to lament the fact that I a live so far away from NYC.
I would love to learn about Futurism in China – did it happen in the same period as Russian/Italian Futurism? Were the concerns similar/different — in what ways? Man that sounds freaking interesting! I have to go google that right now!
ps – has anyone written a book on it?
I don’t know anything about this topic but I’ll definitely report back after the event!
The introductory talk on Futurism in China was actually quite brief– apparently the Futurist Manifesto hit China in 1921 via Japan and influenced a variety of art forms… if there’s not a book on this, there should be!
But the readings themselves were worth the price of admission. Bernstein read a long parodic prose piece called “Recantorium” and Yau began his set with a great list poem (with a clever nod to Frank O’Hara) called “Why I am not Futurist Painter.”
Ah, here’s the post I was talking about!
And so nice to finally meet you, Michael. I really enjoyed our conversations.
Same here, John. Hopefully more to come!