from Transfer

∞

if spoken open hands of those who are watching

will pass on and therefore remains 

and order actions left behind      enscripted or

piety of mannered love    to be tied    graced upon

bequeath addendum 

SG: Many of your poems are ungrammatical in a traditional sense. How do you conceive of the relationship between grammar and meaning?

JS: For a writer, I think the use of grammar is similar to the way in which any kind of language or syntax choices are made, in that those choices are used to support the work, whether that is done through a more traditional plot structure, or narrative, or through the breaking up or questioning of more standard scaffoldings. In my own writing, I’m often thinking about the ways that stories are re-told or re-remembered and I feel like my use of grammar or language is done with that kind of re-construction in mind. In a very simple way, though, the choices of structure and language come about unconsciously, and while I revisit and edit the writing, often what comes through in the initial process winds up being supported.

SG: One theory goes that a person’s art isn’t an extension of their known personality but a counterpoint or an exploration beyond what life otherwise offers. I.e. a voluble writer is quiet among people, or vice versa. (There are other theories, of course.) What do you see as being the relationship between the phenomenon of personality and the space of a person’s art?

(more…)

SG: Materiality is one quality more often evident in old analog photography than in the hyperreal ephemerality of the digital print. Though digital, your photos have a rich material—almost mineral—quality to them. Could you explain the techniques you used to create these photos and their rich layered sense of material life?

NM: An integral part of my approach to photography is creating a tactile sense from a two-dimensional space, whether working in digital or analog media. I agree that traditional/analog photography does have a more material, or tactile, feeling. There are some physical factors that contribute to this, such as film grain and color depth, and these can be borrowed or mimicked to a certain extent with digital photography. In this series, I have scanned, at very high resolution, textures created from manual photography processes and layered them into my work, effectively reproducing some of the more esoteric characteristics of analog imagery. This begins the process of subtly tricking the mind into reading the picture as something other than a digital representation of reality. Another way I have achieved this effect is taking prints and manually distressing them with chemicals. Next, because the subjects are presented with a great amount of detail, the viewer is physically drawn closer to the image. The creatures, though apparently fantastic, have the kind of rich depth that the mind automatically associates with reality. When layered with the analog textures, the illusion is nearly complete. So I’m intentionally making choices that trick the brain on a subconscious level, and that’s fun.

(more…)

Staging Ground launches its first issue into the world! Come join us to celebrate on Saturday, October 13^th from 4 at Bar Reis in Park Slope.

(Bar Reis is located at 375 5^th Avenue, between 5^th and 6^th Streets. The party will be downstairs, so don’t be shy.)

There will be magazines for sale at a discounted price of $10. Poets Emily Beall, Travis Macdonald, Pam Dick, Alex Cuff, Joanna Sondheim, Lewis Warsh and Lou Asekoff will read. Filmmaker and poet Stephanie Gray will show her silent 8mm films. Liquor will be available, conversation will be unlimited.