Poetry

Wojtasik's Nine Gates explores the possibility of transcendence through sexual passion: averting the gaze from the objectification of the other, the female body or the obscure enemy, to the vast and microscopic details of the body unknown to the viewer, becoming a meditation on love beyond definition.

Sections 31-60 of an incomplete extended poem describing the artist's connection to the radical black tradition. The completed poem will be formed of 180 sections.

This video is staged as a reading of the great Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's famous poem A Cloud in Trousers, written 1914-15. It was an attempt to go beyond the autobiographical mode of Fast Trip, Long Drop by appropriating the allegorical potential of another artist's work. Mayakovsky's poem is lyrical and didactic, romantic and materialist.

A pair of de-iced dove wings are on the floor next to his bed, states the poet who is deeply in love, and falling deeper, in this pictoral poem.

Part Two of Secret Spaces. A sensitive soul with skin receptive to the World's natural elements and who has a mind open for expansive contemplation, embarks on an 'inner journey' towar the New Age of awareness.

A mirror reflects voiceless eyes with stories to tell, ‘stories’ about feet attempting to climb steps to "perfection"....."stories" about canvasses that are traps for a caged artist who’s paint brush needs colors that will be at peace with itself.

This title comprises Angels We (2015), Feathered Hearts (2015), and Flesh and the Stars (2018) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

One's 'softest parts' are 'scooped out and eaten alive'.

The dog in dreamland? Or at least one of us is…

–– Ken Kobland

Nurit Sharett visited the city of Hebron over the course of a year, teaching video art to a group of young Palestinian women. Over time the artist established firm relationships with three of her students and their families. The video documents everyday life in that microcosm, dissimilar to any other city.

The fourth collaboration between Jessie Mott and Steve Reinke continues its melancholic musings on desire and mourning, this time with more twerking. Hypnotic backgrounds and eccentric animals lend to its psychedelic children's cartoon vibe, and the signature Madonna and Stockhausen soundtrack enhances the desperation for paradise among those extra long tongues and snake-y bodies.

Matt Wolf returns to Joe Brainard's iconic poem I Remember (1970) in this videowork. His archival montage combines audio recordings of Brainard reading from the poem, as well as an interview with his lifelong friend and collaborator, the poet Ron Padgett. The result is an inventive biography of Joe Brainard, and an elliptical dialog about friendship, nostalgia, and the strange wonders of memory.

In the early 1990s, I went to a reading by Leslie Scalapino at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. I could not understand the writing, which can seem difficult and unwieldy to a reader unaccustomed to language poetry, and understood less the more I tried. After a certain point in the reading I stopped trying to figure it out and I let the words seep in. My reward was an effortless understanding of how her poetry works.

Masked men prowling in the bushes and not touching anything but satin, dandelions and flesh.

A young man recovering from emotional wounds, defiantly re-enters the outside world that welcomes his return with all its abundant miracles.

Revelers at a masquerade ball enter an UnderWorld of guilt, vice, pain, chaos and redemption.

-- Mike Kuchar

In a fragrant garden warmed by the sun, a young man inhales the atoms of the world and exhales thoughts that probe the very essence of his existence. 

Embraced by a gentle breeze in that tranquil place kissed by the sun, he embarks on a journey inward to that spiritual and sensual state best described as the "cosmic consciousness", - the "quest" to "understand" and "accept".....to have "peace of mind".

...As the Moth is lured to the candle's flame, so it is that a group of misfits enter a dark house to converse with shadows amid the dust of Time.

—Mike Kuchar

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was a leading American poet who gained notoriety in the 1950s and ’60s through his association with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance.  One of the most controversial poets of his time, his book Howl and Other Poems faced an obscenity trial in 1957 and became one of the most widely read poems of the 20th Century. In the '60s and '70s, Ginsberg studied under gurus and Zen masters.

See a boy turn into a tiger. See the lad vomit colors of the rainbow. Watch him toss marbles onto wet bathroom tiles while holding up a green skull. See him squirm on warm bedsheets, wearing only soiled socks on his feet…… This kid has a mouthful of flowery words to spit out to you !

This title comprises Witchery (2008), The Tiger (2009), Swan Song (2009), Medusa's Gaze (2010) and Opal Essence (2010) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

The fourth collaboration between Jessie Mott and Steve Reinke continues its melancholic musings on desire and mourning, this time with more twerking. Hypnotic backgrounds and eccentric animals lend to its psychedelic children's cartoon vibe, and the signature Madonna and Stockhausen soundtrack enhances the desperation for paradise among those extra long tongues and snake-y bodies.

Flesh and blood souls breathe forth the colors of doubt, guilt and a hope for "peace of mind" in a world without moral directions... This video is about strength and weakness, done with human forms assembled and lovingly digitized.

This title comprises The Poet's Battle (2016), NightSchool (2015), Ascension (2013), Lost Blues (2014), and A Rented Space (2015) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

‘ODDS AND ENDS’ is a dazzling patchwork of moods, lost and found, for the eye to savor.

Here are two short movies with one tall boy who is sometimes happy, sometimes sad and always reflective… He has something to share with you…..Watch and you’ll understand.

This title comprises The Boy Upstairs (2019) and The Guy Next Door (2019) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

Breder painted the words of Donald Kuspit’s poem in white on scraps of paper and then floated them down Old Man’s Creek, the site of many legendary Intermedia performances near Iowa City. As the water soaked through the paper, the words became legible.

Ripe fruit in sweaty socks; soft eyes, stained and suffering in the origin of consciousness, and a soul needing refrigeration, for it has nearly gone bad!