NEW ISSUES OF XEROLAGE FROM MEXICO, US, SCOTLAND & CANADA
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X E R O L A G E 5 9
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Xerolage 59 — "my favorite martian comics" by Lin Tarczynski
http://xexoxial.org/is/xerolage59/by/lin_tarczynski
"Authentic Martian comics are harder to come by now that war has
everyone living like coyotes in coyote-wartime. A joyous wartime
coyote is about as common as a mint condition Martian comic, in fact.
I’ve kept all of the Martian comics that my granny bought for me as a
child, and if Martian comics have taught me anything, it’s that
anything printed on paper can be printed under the skin by thinking
through any particular landscape. Some of my favorite Martian comics
are in my favorite martian comics by lin tarczynski. I wonder if it’s
the same for you? In my favorite martian comics, figures become ground
when you blink, and the story starts over, loop, loop, loop. The
ground of course figures, and the count is right on. The speech bubble
turns out to be a mode of transportation for those inside and outside
the exoskeleton. The scale is weightless. We all fit, so there is no
way to escape unchanged. Tarczynski does a masterful job of
translating us into the text. All there is to say is WELCOME."
—Michael Sikemma
"Within the context of celestial graphic forms, the linearity inherent
in this merely two dimensional paper based work provokes much
discussion between us multidimensional beings. Tarczynski manages to
evoke a sense of complex nostalgia for a time when we might imagine
ourselves an ancient lowly flesh based being. I implore all of my
multi-D comrades to thoroughly absorb this toner embellished dry wood
particle paste. The feeling one gets after studying the
non-semantically inclined lines within Tarczynski's work positively
stirs the spine (If I may use such an antiquated metaphor.) For beings
such as my good friend ◼◼◼◼◼◼◼, who just can't intermingle with carbon
based media these days, I would recommend taking one copy of this
terrestrial collection and interfacing it with a crémtoculatur
photoelectron hemostatic reader. It absorbs much smoother that way."
—Anreoh Benkect
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X E R O L A G E 6 0
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Xerolage 60 — "alula" by Mara Patricia Hernández
http://xexoxial.org/is/xerolage60/by/mara_patricia_hernandez
“El trabajo de Mara Patricia Hernández manifiesta las posibilidades de
experimentación de la literatura a la que hemos estado expuestos –y
casi forzados- a leer tradicionalmente, en una actitud en la que la
objetividad y la racionalización van más allá de los criterios de
textualidad en sí. La adecuación del sentido literario visual en un
enfoque de materia tipográfica, nos devela la exquisitez del
concretismo en el que Hernández hace de su poesía visual.”
“The work of Mara Patricia Hernández displays the possibilities of
experimental literature, which we have been almost forced to read
traditionally, to be read with an attitude in which objectivity and
rationalization go beyond the criteria of textuality itself. The
realization of a visual literary sensibility in a context of
typographic material exposes the exquisiteness of the concretism in
which Hernández makes her visual poetry.”
—Bibiana Padilla Maltos
“El palíndromo, o estructuras palindrómicas, como nos dice Mara
Patricia Hernández en su prefacio, están en el meollo de estos poemas,
lo que destaca su naturaleza mandálica, o sea, objetos de
contemplación intensa para crear una idea de la forma del universo y
de nuestro lugar allí. Esa naturaleza también se crea por la cualidad
brumosa, de ensueño, y líquida, que se ve más vívida por estar en
blanco y negro y gris. Esa brumosidad visual está en balance con la
presencia aguda de palabras y letras enigmáticas, para crear una
dinámica que nos agarra tanto visualmente como conceptualmente.”
“Palindromes, or palindromic structures, as Mara Patricia Hernández
tells us in her preface, are at the core of these poems, which
suggests their nature as mandalas, or objects of intense contemplation
in order to create a sense of how the universe might be formed and
what our place in it is. That nature is also created by the poems'
misty, otherworldly and liquid qualities, which is made more vivid by
their being in black and white and grey. That visual mistiness is
balanced against the sharp presence of enigmatic words and letters,
creating a dynamic that is both visually and conceptually compelling.”
—John M. Bennett
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X E R O L A G E 6 1
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Xerolage 61 — "Arcturian Punctuation" by Stephen Nelson
http://xexoxial.org/is/xerolage61/by/stephen_nelson
“In astroglyphysicist Stephen Nelson’s re(:)markable Arcturian
Punctuation, grammar has supernovaed and language has continued to
expand. By the time these vispo transmissions have reached us, the
alphabet is no longer the singularity but a wormhole to
multifreeverses. We are beguiled by strange coincidences where symbols
seem to mean, where communication is inferred by a slight bending of
light around the gravity of textual marks which seem familiar but yet
are actually interstellasemic iconstellations from an otherwordly
codex transcribed either as a result of Nelson’s visionary tinfoil
hativistics or because the centre of his brain is radiant with
Arcturian light. We don't need to wait for signs of marvellous
extraterrestrial intelligence. We have them right here. We is another
and they is us.”
—Gary Barwin
Stephen Nelson’s Arcturian Punctuation, named after extraterrestrials
thought to be from the fifth dimension, reconfigures language in
visual poems of movement, beauty, and depth. In one poem, the @ sign,
the quintessential typographical device of the information age, radios
out from a planetary body, signaling into the cosmos for a new kind of
reader. Asterisks drip from a faucet instead of drops of water,
Earthly punctuation transforms into otherworldly word problems, and an
alternative logo stands defiantly against the empire of branding.
Geometric forms appear. In these poems, natural and mathematical
languages are no longer ruled by the proscriptive axioms of normative
communication. This is a hyperdimensional poetry for the age of The
New Spacetime.
—Amy Catanzano
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X E R O L A G E 6 2
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Xerolage 62 — “SEE LEX IONS“ by Judith Copthorne
http://xexoxial.org/is/xerolage62/by/judith_copithorne
Not all of these strongly feminist works has a title – some do, along
with a date, tucked away in tiny print. They aren’t quite arranged in
chronological order, though most seem to be from 2014 and 2015.
Nevertheless you can trace the artistic gains from 1968 to 2015, the
polish, the increasing skill with the computer, the certainty of what
I might call voice — or vision, or touch. And of course mind. There’s
a lot of design, and the drawings demand close attention, but most of
the time resist you, especially if you look with a reader’s eye, or
expect “art” (the graphic) to evoke or create the sublime. Copithorne
isn’t trying to please, but to help each work achieve and please
itself. The drawings redefine reading, just as through a versatile
use of the machine they redefine drawing, and they do so through great
frugality. The words in “Night” (p. 11; 2014) are not “really” words
at all, though they struggle (or the reader does) toward
intelligibility; the letters are figures against a layered,
indeterminate, and almost monochrome ground. It took quite a few
visits for me to notice that “Night” is not just black and white
(that’s purple, not grey) in its turbulent explosion. It’s not
figurative at all, yet its very activity imitates and even constitutes
its subject. “Night”’s unobtrusiveness is quite unlike, yet still
like, the drawing on page 18 – which might or might not be called
“Awake” as its reds oranges and yellows leap to the eye. Apparently
purposeless. And at the same time, as Copithorne says on the final
page, purposeful, “gnomic gristle.”
—Peter Quartermain
SEE LEX IONS is a wild display of words and lettered ingredients that
unravel our thinking about how we read and see. Copithorne is a master
at creating and finessing alphabetic happenstance. It is a book of
words placed alongside exploded fragments and so a visual party
ensues. Look for how shapes, sounds, ideas and emotions coalesce on
every page. Copithorne is a treasure of possibilities.
—Nico Vassilakis
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The primary investigation of Xerolage is how collage technique of 20th
century art, typography, computer graphics, visual & concrete poetry
movements & the art of the copier have been combined. Each issue is
devoted to the work of one artist.
24 pages, 8.5 x 11, $6.
Subscriptions: 4 issues/$24 (US rate, inquire for outside the US)
www.xexoxial.org
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