The seventh entry in an ongoing series of anthologies, this book features rare poems alongside new essays and interviews that engage the artists and themes explored elsewhere in Blank Forms' public programming.
Where most of prior entries, including
Aspirations of Madness (2020),
Intelligent Life (2019), and
Music From The World Tomorrow (2018), have foregrounded little-seen or newly translated archival materials, this iteration privileges new texts produced specifically for the publication. These include an in-depth retrospective interview with the idiosyncratic Texan singer-songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen conducted by ICA Philadelphia chief curator Anthony Elms; a conversation between multidisciplinary writers—and longtime friends—
Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn on the occasion of Davis's latest poetry collection,
Nothing but the Music, recently published by Blank Forms Editions; a recent discussion between composer Sarah Hennies and cellist
Judith Hamann about their recent collaboration, which is included on Hamann's
Music for Cello and Humming; and a conversation with composer-performers Tashi Wada and
Charles Curtis, on the heels of a recent compilation of Curtis's work,
Performances & Recordings 1998– 2018, produced by Wada. Each of these interviews shed light on the particularities of the artists' careers and methods in terms both formal and casual, practical and theoretical.
In addition to these dialogues, this book features new critical reflections on three artists whose work Blank Forms has presented: the legendary jazz percussionist and healer Milford Graves, by
Ciarán Finlayson; English multimedia artist Graham Lambkin and his beguiling 2011 album
Amateur Doubles, by
Alan Licht; and the UK-based experimental music trio Still House Plants, by Joe Bucciero. These articles mine historical, social, and theoretical contexts, filling gaps in the existing literature on the given artist-subjects. New and archival poems and writing about poetry complement these interviews and essays, including rare texts by Davis, Hagedorn, and René Daumal—the latter translated by Louise Landes Levi—and a suite of Auto-Mythological writings commissioned from Chicago-based composer and musician Angel Bat Dawid.
Blank Forms' journal brings together a combination of never-before published, lost, and new materials that supplement Blank Forms' live programs. It is envisioned as a platform for critical reflection and extended dialogue between scholars, artists, and other figures working within the world of
experimental music and art.
