Look! See! Read! An Evening of Word and Image in Chicago
On Friday, March 2, at 7:30 p.m. Stop Smiling hosts a multi-media evening of performance, readings, and visual presentations by four artists and writers who are not only dissolving the boundaries between the visual and literary but re-envisioning the form of “the book” itself. From uncanny poems made by folding the pages of old paperbacks to an epistolary romance that can only be read in augmented reality, these highly original works are, by turns, playful
and provocative. Come be astonished.
The Stop Smiling Storefront is located at 1371 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622. Blue line: Division or Damen-O’Hare. This event is free and open to the public. Organized in conjunction with the Associated Writing Programs conference. Between Page and Screen by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse (Siglio, 2012)
Coupling the physicality of the printed page with the electric liquidity of the computer screen, Between Page and Screen chronicles a love affair between the characters P and S while taking the reader into a wondrous, augmented reality. The book has no words, only inscrutable black and white geometric patterns that—when seen by a computer webcam—conjure the written word. Reflected on screen, the reader sees himself with open book in hand, language springing alive and shape-shifting with each turn of the page. Merging concrete poetry with conceptual art, “technotext” with epistolary romance, and the tradition of the artist’s book with the digital future, Between Page and Screen expands the possibilities of what a book can be.
S P R AW L by Danielle Dutton (Siglio, 2010)
In the long line of novels about the vapidity of suburbia, Dutton’s has a narrator who may be one of the most likable. Aloof and hilarious, she dissects their lives with the casualness of a cynical scientist. —Jonathan Messinger, TimeOut Chicago
Absurdly comic and decidedly digressive, S P R A W L chronicles the mercurial inner life of one suburban woman. With vertiginous energy and a deadpan eye, the narrator records the seeming uniformity of her world as she rearranges the banalities and small wonders of suburban life. As the abundance and debris accumulate, the sameness of suburbia gives way to enthralling strangeness. Inspired by a series of domestic still life photographs by Chicago artist Laura Letinsky, Dutton creates her own trenchant series of tableaux, attentive to the surfaces of the suburbs and the ways in which life there is willfully, almost desperately, on display. In locating the language of sprawl itself—engrossing, unremitting, ever expansive—Dutton has written an astonishing work of fiction that takes us deep into the familiar and to its very edge. Short-listed for The Believer Book Award in 2011.
CHICAGO EVENT
Stop Smiling, Siglio, and Ugly Duckling Presse present LOOK! SEE! READ! An Evening of Word and Image with AMARANTH BORSUK, DANIELLE DUTTON, JILL MAGI, AND ERICA BAUM SLOT by Jill Magi (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012) An experiential investigation of how we move through cultural landmarks and institutions, SLOT presents a lyrical and thinking response to official, landscaped memory. In the book, a person slips in and out of highly designed museums and memorials, looks for a mentor who is more than a tour guide, rebels during the official tour, and occasionally finds the lament she is looking for: in comparisons across history, in ambiguous photo sequences, and in poetry. The resulting text stages a quiet argument between the persistent urge to “slot” things—into narratives, frames, archives—and a clear view of what, by resisting, remains.
Dog Ear by Erica Baum (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011)
The concept of Dog Ear is simple and straightforward: dog-eared pages of mass-market paperbacks are photographed to isolate the small diagonally bisected squares or rectangles of text. The photographs are formally quite neutral and sedate—cursorily reminiscent of Alber’s “Homage to the Square” series of prints, paintings and tapestries—but the text also demands attention and it is what allows or coaxes the viewer to linger. As Kenny Goldsmith says in his introduction: “The idea that there’s no one correct way to engage with an artwork is at the heart of Erica Baum’s Dog Ear series. Do we see them or do we read them? If we choose to read them, how should we read? Across the fold? Through it? Around it? If we choose to look at Baum’s pictures, how should we see them? As artistic photographs? Documentation? Text art?”
Author/Artist Bios
AMARANTH BORSUK recently won the Slope Poetry prize for her collection Handiwork. She is also the author of the chapbook Tonal Saw (The Song Cave, 2010), and a collaborative work Excess Exhibit (ZG Press). Her poems, essays, and translations have been published widely in journals such as the New American Writing, Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, FIELD, Black Warrior Review, Aufgabe, and ZYZZYVA, among many others. She has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at MIT where she works on and teaches digital poetry, visual poetry, and creative writing workshops.
DANIELLE DUTTON is also the author of the short story collection Attempts at a Life (Tarpaulin Sky) and editor of Dorothy, a publishing project. Her work has appeared in Bomb, Harper’s, Fence, The Brooklyn Rail, Noon, jubilat, among other journals and magazines. She holds degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UC-Santa Cruz, and the University of Denver where she was Associate Editor of the Denver Quarterly. Born and raised in California, she is now an assistant professor in the English Department at Washington University in St. Louis.
JILL MAGI works in text and image and is also the author of Cadastral Map (Shearsman), Torchwood (Shearsman), Threads (Futurepoem), the chapbooks Die for love, furlough (In Edit Mode Press), Poetry Barn Barn! (2nd Avenue), Confidence and Autonomy (Ink Press), Cadastral Map (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and numerous handmade books. Her visual works have been exhibited at the Textile Arts Center, the Brooklyn Arts Council, apexart, AC Institute, and Pace University. Jill runs Sona Books from her apartment in Chicago and teaches at Goddard College.
ERICA BAUM received a B.A. in Anthropology from Barnard College, Columbia University, and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Yale School of Art. She has exhibited in New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Kansas City, Berlin (Germany), Italy, and Mälmo (Sweden). Her work was included in the book Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography (Phaidon Press, 2006). She was a 2008 fellow in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include Shuffled Glances at Bureau, NYC, and Erica Baum: The Public Imagination at Circuit in Lausanne, Switzerland.
siglio is an independent press in Los Angeles dedicated to publishing uncommon books that live at the intersection of art and literature. Siglio books defy categorization and ignite conversation: they are cross-disciplinary, hybrid works that subvert paradigms, reveal unexpected connections, rethink narrative forms, and thoroughly engage a reader’s imagination and intellect. We believe that challenging work can be immensely appealing: our books are beautiful, affordable, and as much a pleasure to touch and hold as they are to read.
and provocative. Come be astonished.
The Stop Smiling Storefront is located at 1371 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622. Blue line: Division or Damen-O’Hare. This event is free and open to the public. Organized in conjunction with the Associated Writing Programs conference. Between Page and Screen by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse (Siglio, 2012)
Coupling the physicality of the printed page with the electric liquidity of the computer screen, Between Page and Screen chronicles a love affair between the characters P and S while taking the reader into a wondrous, augmented reality. The book has no words, only inscrutable black and white geometric patterns that—when seen by a computer webcam—conjure the written word. Reflected on screen, the reader sees himself with open book in hand, language springing alive and shape-shifting with each turn of the page. Merging concrete poetry with conceptual art, “technotext” with epistolary romance, and the tradition of the artist’s book with the digital future, Between Page and Screen expands the possibilities of what a book can be.
S P R AW L by Danielle Dutton (Siglio, 2010)
In the long line of novels about the vapidity of suburbia, Dutton’s has a narrator who may be one of the most likable. Aloof and hilarious, she dissects their lives with the casualness of a cynical scientist. —Jonathan Messinger, TimeOut Chicago
Absurdly comic and decidedly digressive, S P R A W L chronicles the mercurial inner life of one suburban woman. With vertiginous energy and a deadpan eye, the narrator records the seeming uniformity of her world as she rearranges the banalities and small wonders of suburban life. As the abundance and debris accumulate, the sameness of suburbia gives way to enthralling strangeness. Inspired by a series of domestic still life photographs by Chicago artist Laura Letinsky, Dutton creates her own trenchant series of tableaux, attentive to the surfaces of the suburbs and the ways in which life there is willfully, almost desperately, on display. In locating the language of sprawl itself—engrossing, unremitting, ever expansive—Dutton has written an astonishing work of fiction that takes us deep into the familiar and to its very edge. Short-listed for The Believer Book Award in 2011.
CHICAGO EVENT
Stop Smiling, Siglio, and Ugly Duckling Presse present LOOK! SEE! READ! An Evening of Word and Image with AMARANTH BORSUK, DANIELLE DUTTON, JILL MAGI, AND ERICA BAUM SLOT by Jill Magi (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012) An experiential investigation of how we move through cultural landmarks and institutions, SLOT presents a lyrical and thinking response to official, landscaped memory. In the book, a person slips in and out of highly designed museums and memorials, looks for a mentor who is more than a tour guide, rebels during the official tour, and occasionally finds the lament she is looking for: in comparisons across history, in ambiguous photo sequences, and in poetry. The resulting text stages a quiet argument between the persistent urge to “slot” things—into narratives, frames, archives—and a clear view of what, by resisting, remains.
Dog Ear by Erica Baum (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011)
The concept of Dog Ear is simple and straightforward: dog-eared pages of mass-market paperbacks are photographed to isolate the small diagonally bisected squares or rectangles of text. The photographs are formally quite neutral and sedate—cursorily reminiscent of Alber’s “Homage to the Square” series of prints, paintings and tapestries—but the text also demands attention and it is what allows or coaxes the viewer to linger. As Kenny Goldsmith says in his introduction: “The idea that there’s no one correct way to engage with an artwork is at the heart of Erica Baum’s Dog Ear series. Do we see them or do we read them? If we choose to read them, how should we read? Across the fold? Through it? Around it? If we choose to look at Baum’s pictures, how should we see them? As artistic photographs? Documentation? Text art?”
Author/Artist Bios
AMARANTH BORSUK recently won the Slope Poetry prize for her collection Handiwork. She is also the author of the chapbook Tonal Saw (The Song Cave, 2010), and a collaborative work Excess Exhibit (ZG Press). Her poems, essays, and translations have been published widely in journals such as the New American Writing, Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, FIELD, Black Warrior Review, Aufgabe, and ZYZZYVA, among many others. She has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at MIT where she works on and teaches digital poetry, visual poetry, and creative writing workshops.
DANIELLE DUTTON is also the author of the short story collection Attempts at a Life (Tarpaulin Sky) and editor of Dorothy, a publishing project. Her work has appeared in Bomb, Harper’s, Fence, The Brooklyn Rail, Noon, jubilat, among other journals and magazines. She holds degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UC-Santa Cruz, and the University of Denver where she was Associate Editor of the Denver Quarterly. Born and raised in California, she is now an assistant professor in the English Department at Washington University in St. Louis.
JILL MAGI works in text and image and is also the author of Cadastral Map (Shearsman), Torchwood (Shearsman), Threads (Futurepoem), the chapbooks Die for love, furlough (In Edit Mode Press), Poetry Barn Barn! (2nd Avenue), Confidence and Autonomy (Ink Press), Cadastral Map (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and numerous handmade books. Her visual works have been exhibited at the Textile Arts Center, the Brooklyn Arts Council, apexart, AC Institute, and Pace University. Jill runs Sona Books from her apartment in Chicago and teaches at Goddard College.
ERICA BAUM received a B.A. in Anthropology from Barnard College, Columbia University, and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Yale School of Art. She has exhibited in New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Kansas City, Berlin (Germany), Italy, and Mälmo (Sweden). Her work was included in the book Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography (Phaidon Press, 2006). She was a 2008 fellow in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include Shuffled Glances at Bureau, NYC, and Erica Baum: The Public Imagination at Circuit in Lausanne, Switzerland.
siglio is an independent press in Los Angeles dedicated to publishing uncommon books that live at the intersection of art and literature. Siglio books defy categorization and ignite conversation: they are cross-disciplinary, hybrid works that subvert paradigms, reveal unexpected connections, rethink narrative forms, and thoroughly engage a reader’s imagination and intellect. We believe that challenging work can be immensely appealing: our books are beautiful, affordable, and as much a pleasure to touch and hold as they are to read.
