Craig Dworkin Livres

Part art history essay, part experimental fiction, part theoretical manifesto on the politics of equivalence, Helicography examines questions of scale in relation to Robert Smithson’s iconic 1970 artwork Spiral Jetty. In an essay and film made to accompany the earthwork, Smithson invites us to imagine the stone helix of his structure at various orders of magnitude, from microscopic molecules to entire galaxies. Taking up this invitation with an unrelenting and literal enthusiasm, Helicography pursues the implications of such transformations all the way to the limits of logic. If other spirals, from the natural to the man-made, were expanded or condensed to the size of Spiral Jetty, what are the consequences of their physical metamorphoses? What other equivalences follow in turn, and where do their surprising historical, cultural, and mechanical connections lead? This book considers a number of forms in order to find out: the fluid vortices of whirlpools, hurricanes, and galaxies; the delicate shells of snails and the threatening pose of rattlesnakes; prehistoric ferns and the turns of the inner ear; the monstrous jaws of ancient sharks; a baroque finial scroll on a bass viol; a 19th-century watch spring; phonograph discs and spooled film; the largest open-pit mine on the planet. The result is a narrative laboratory for the “science of imaginary solutions" proposed by Alfred Jarry (whose King Ubu also plays a central role in the story told here), a work of fictocriticism blurring form and content, and the story of a single instant in time lost in the deserts of the intermountain west

In this text, Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent, writing critically and substantively about works for which there would seem to be not only nothing to see but nothing to say

A taut thriller set in Tokyo s criminal underworld

The collection features six distinct works that explore diverse themes, including two evocative desert pastorals inspired by the Great Salt Lake's landscape and minimalist experiments pushing typographic boundaries. It also includes a reinterpretation of Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text and a lyrical essay examining the nuances of falling in French modernism. Each piece aims to create a dense, impersonal text, challenging conventional expressive poetics and avoiding the clichés prevalent in contemporary Conceptualism.

Poetry. READING THE REMOVE OF LITERATURE is a reading of Maurice Blanchot's seminal book The Space of Literature, performed on the page as an annotative writing that encircles the should-be space of print. Through the progressive appropriation and then erasure of Blanchot's text, and through a processual transposition of hand-writing into formal typography, Thurston addresses the very question of the possibility of literature that obsessed Blanchot. The meaning of the candid reflections and meditations which form the incisive marginalia is founded in a tension with the suggestions of the absent text. Floating alone these annotations may have little worth or make little sense, but between these covers they do not deny the history of their They are constantly anchored by that which is missing, in a creative erring, in a process of over-coming, which in this book asserts an equality of presence between the read and the written; the reading and the writing.

Focusing on the interplay between language and structure, this analysis explores how various poets utilize specific dictionary editions to shape their book-length poems. Featuring works from notable authors such as Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, and Bernadette Mayer, the study delves into the creative processes and thematic explorations that arise from this unique approach to poetry, highlighting the significance of language as a foundational element in their artistic expression.

"Coup de dés (Collection): Books and Ideas after Mallarmé brings together a vast number of editions of Mallarmé's chef d'œuvre as well as many of its historical and contemporary editions and appropriations by other authors .... The richly illustrated book contextualizes the perception and appropriations of Mallarmé's masterpiece through critical essays written by the editor and leading scholars such as Annette Gilbert, Craig Dworkin, Luc Boltanski/Arnaud Esquerre, and Ryoko Sekiguchi" -- publisher's website.