What Sticks to the Real, front page

A new issue of News of Common Possibility has just been published featuring contributions, imitations, intimations, affectations, affirmations and reproductions by the following individuals: Dodie Bellamy (SF), James Bidgood (NYC), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Anna Craycroft (NYC), Friedrich Froebel (Germany), Jerzy Kosinski (NYC), Kevin Killian (SF), Erle Stanley Gardner (California) , Goldin+Senneby (Stockholm), Pierre Guyotat (Paris), Kim Einarsson (Berlin, Stockholm), Forrest Lewinger (SF), Jill Magid (NYC), Maria Montessori (Italy), Jason Morris (SF), Jean Piaget (Switzerland), Larry Rinder (SF), Bruce Springsteen (NJ), Jack Spicer (SF), and Gareth Spor (SF). This issue was produced in collaboration with the perceptive and sage-like artist Colter Jacobsen (SF).

“What Sticks to the Real” began when Colter introduced me to the book After Lorca, by the San Francisco poet Jack Spicer. A kind of address to the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, this book contains a selection of so-called ‘translated’ Garcia Lorca poems, odes to Lorca and a series of letters from Spicer to Lorca. But in actuality, all of its content is fabricated by Spicer; there are no full translations and Spicer’s letters were never sent because the book was published in 1957, 20 years after Federico Garcia Lorca had died.

What was interesting to both Colter and I was not any sort of deception on Spicer’s part, but rather his liberty—after all the title After Lorca clearly indicates that it is more about admiration then accurate translation. By using Lorca as a stimulant Spicer was able to play another role, permitting him the freedom to step outside his habits and comforts. It was a method, which also enabled Spicer to converse with someone he greatly admired but was never be able to talk to, i.e. Lorca. Using this book as our muse we invited several artists, writers, poets, and curators to play with the notion of an imitation, translation, embodiment, a possession or any other approach that allowed them to perform, to pretend, or to simply be someone else.

This issue is part of an ongoing series of thematic newspapers titled News of Common Possibility. I initiated the project as a way to explore the potentials for aesthetic experimentation and research, structured by an informal form of public address, a printed newspaper; and to serve as a platform to work with individuals and subjects from diverse arenas.

Though the publication is assembled on a computer, and advertised through digital media, the paper is only made available as a printed document. It is therefore distributed from hand-to-hand, through the post, or made available for free in several galleries, as these tend to be more interpersonal forms of exchange. If you would like a copy you can receive one through a number of methods. In San Francisco you can pick one up at Southern Exposure Gallery, 3030 20th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA, (415) 863-2141, www.soex.org. Or if you see/know any of the artists or writers involved they can give you copy. In a couple of weeks several copies will be available at Printed Matter in New York and again you will be able to receive copies from the artists there. If you happen to be in Goteborg, Sweden you can pick one up from me, and if you are in Berlin after February 10 copies will be left at the office of Sparwasser HQ. They are also available through the post, send $3.00 US inside the continental United States, $5 US for the rest of the world to 1118 Keith Ave, Berkeley, CA 94708

The first three issues of this paper have been made possible through an Alternative Exposure Grant from Southern Exposure gallery.