Year: 2020

Beyond the Labyrinth

Misc. Poems by Shawn P. Wilbur

January 24, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Links: Future Synthesis: Energy and Fear (1995) “Little Infidelities” (1995) Dog Chain Girl White man Jamaican dreadlocks band, rock reggae roots less black than the coffee I’m drinking. Coffee shop crowd all pretzeled in under dim lights under fans over cheesecake and notebooks. It’s Saturday night in the kingdom of caffeine cool. Check out the berets and the trembling hands. Tonight I’m civilian–longhair bluejeans scribbling poetry eating Toblerone. I buy cappuccino from a quiet girl pretty, funny I never can remember her name. And she smiles smiles shyly smiles pleased to see me I think but who knows? And I […]
Beyond the Labyrinth

Futurism/post-Futurism: Art & Industry at the End of History & Beyond

January 23, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
This is yet another of the grad-school documents that have had some circulation online over the past twenty-five years. I’m collecting them here now largely as a matter of artistic documentation but it has certainly been interesting to dip back into the preoccupations, both political and aesthetic, of the early 90s. This is a considerably less polished production than some of the others I have archive, but it certainly has its moments. And, for those who have read my “Futurist Synthesis” poem, I suppose it may provide some glimpses into the mechanisms of that work. “Futurist Synthesis (Energy and Fear)” […]
Beyond the Labyrinth

What Means this “Art Strike”? (1994)

January 23, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
This is another grad-school artifact, from the days when Lipstick Traces and The Assault on Culture were two of the fixed points in my otherwise rapidly shifting universe of interests. It now seems a very long time ago… I have appended a set of thirteen theses “On the Use of the Situationist International,” which was a product of the same period. It is, as a rather unabashedly pro-situ production, both better and worse than I remember. It seems at least worthy of preservation as a document of the time. What Means this “Art Strike”? (Social Movement and/or “Bad Idea”?) Shawn […]
The Distributive Passions

The line at the Popular Press

January 7, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Distributive Passions: Glimpses & Fragments:   Gabe shouldered his way out into the northbound lane of Interstate, through a gap between two carts so narrow that his backpack threatened to catch. In what remained of the street, sparse traffic crawled through clusters of cyclists and pedestrians that would soon be real crowds of commuters. On the shared tracks, light-rail and trolley cars snaked by, nearly bumper to bumper. Manual switch attendants saw to it that things kept snaking by, as they sorted traffic back out to the various private service lines. He walked to the still-operating crosswalk on the […]
The Distributive Passions

Into the Lombard agora

January 6, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Distributive Passions: Glimpses & Fragments:   With the sun just coming up, Lombard Station was already a circus. Gabe hopped off the bus at the last stop before the street was swallowed by the tents—as did nearly everyone else on board. He thought that the stop was a block or two back from the last time he had been through, though it was a little hard to tell. A sort of street bazaar was sprouting up amid the strip malls, and the landmarks were constantly changing. The bus lanes narrowed and veered off the painted stripes to weave in […]
bibliographies

E. Armand: Supplements and Broadsides

January 4, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: E. Armand [main page] There were a large number of supplements, broadsides and advertising materials produced in the course of E. Armand’s various periodical publishing ventures and the existing bibliographies, perhaps understandably, incomplete and sometimes confusing with regard to these items. The first group of documents listed here come from early in Armand’s career and relate to l’Ère Nouvelle. Most can be found in the digitized archives of the IISH. [Charles Hotz papers, folder 183] There are several more known supplements to l’Ère Nouvelle, which I will add as I can confirm their particulars. And then I can […]