Echo Alternators
by Tom La Farge
To be published in 2010
This third pamphlet of 13 Writhing Machines extends that series’ exploration of constrained writing. Here the topic is homophonism, where the same sounds generate more than one meaning. Procedures explained include “holorhyme,” two lines that rhyme exactly, with an extended discussion of its use as a compositional principle by novelist and poet Raymond Roussel; “homophonic translation,” as practiced by writers from Jonathan Swift to Louis and Celia Zukofsky; and “Poetry for Dogs.” As in the earlier pamphlets (Administrative Assemblages and Homomorphic Converters — (see our Books page), a list of writing exercises is suggested.
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Museum of Matches
by Sasha Chavchavadze
To be published in 2010
The author, a visual artist and founder of Proteus Gowanus, explores her father’s career as a Cold War CIA operative in an interdisciplinary memoir, a non-linear compilation of visual art, narrative prose, documents, photographs and memorabilia. The body of work has been presented in exhibitions, in interdisciplinary publications and as a “one-room Cold War Museum” called The Museum of Matches, a permanent installation located at Proteus Gowanus. The work was inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s description of a match game in Speak, Memory and by Nabokov’s passion for finding symmetries between past and present.
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Libraries and Danger
Creative Director: Sasha Chavchavadze
Editors: Andrew Beccone, Wendy Walker
To be published in 2010
A compilation of text and images that grew out of the 2006/2007 “Library” exhibit and programs at Proteus Gowanus, this two-volume set will explore two of the many topics surrounding the evolution of libraries. The first, edited by Andrew Beccone of Reanimation Library, explores a flowering of small alternative libraries that have appeared around the country as the role of the library, and the book itself, is questioned. Shelley Jackson’s Interstitial Library, the collections of Jeffrey Schiff and David Gatten, Julia Weist’s Deaccession.org, Public Collectors/Temporary Services will all be represented in text and images, as well as the Prelinger Library, the Chicago Underground Library, Reanimation Library, and the Morbid Anatomy Library.
The second volume examines the life and death of libraries and the healing they bring us. It will explore such topics as language-death, book thieves and biblioklasts, the Cotton Library fire, the restoration of the incinerated papyri from Herculaneum, the incarceration of dangerous books and the chaining-up of irreplaceable ones, the shelling of the university library at Leuven and the Vijecnica in Sarajevo, and the looting of the Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad. This volume will include images of burned, bombed, rotting, and neglected libraries around the world, as well as of beautiful living, life-giving libraries.
Proteotypes invites you to support the publication of this beautiful, innovative, illustrated book by an advance donation. We are offering three levels of participation, at $50 +, $100 +, and $150 +. Donors at every level will be thanked by name in the books. Those giving $100 or more will receive a free copy of one volume, of their choosing, and those giving $150 or more will receive both. Donations are not yet tax-deductible, but we hope you’ll still want to help us midwife our important books. To donate, please click on the red button.
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Chamaeleomancy
by Tom La Farge
To be published in 2010
This travel memoir recalls the months that an American couple spent in Essaouira, Morocco. It sets their experiences by putting them in parallel with the experiences of two young chameleons, Tetta and Haha, given to them by a spice-merchant as a means of warding off the Evil Eye. In remembering the courageous lives of these two small reptiles, the author teaches himself the arts of adaptation and exploration, following the directions of “chameleons of the mind.” Illustrated with photographs.
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