Dear Friends,
Greetings! I hope that if you're in NYC, you can drop by for a symposium on Dennis Cooper's work and transgressive writing at New York University on March 1, at 6:30. Reception to follow! I'll be moderating a discussion with the inimitable Wayne Koestenbaum, Brandon Stosuy, Marvin J. Taylor, and Alex Kasavin. Below is the NYU press release for our event. Please join us!
I also want to mention the amazing cultural event orchestrated on allied topics last spring, by Danny Kennedy and Dr. Paul Hegarty of Cork College University, Cork, Ireland, which is a blood relation to the NYU symposium. This international confluence of artistic, scholarly, musical, and performance art forces included brilliant papers by Pierre-Louis Patoine, Danny Kennedy, Martin Hines, and Timothy Baker, as well as the breathtakingly beautiful and original artwork by Alex Rose and gorgeous music by Nick Hudson, a stunning film based on the Cooper quintology by Steve Hanley, and Noise innovations by
Paul Hegarty and Brian O'Shaughnessy of Safe, Seth Ayyaz of HaQ and other groups, all culminating with the DJ-genie-work of performance artist Franko B. I've pasted in the events and names below the NYU symposium because each and every participant is a serious name to watch out for!! I'll expand the thumbnail pics to something better soon.
Last but not least, I include a wee mention of the anthology
Enter at Your Own Risk: The Dangerous Art of Dennis Cooper. For a bit more about the volume, here's the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press description:
http://inside.fdu.edu/fdupress/06033102.html
Hope to see you at NYU!
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Monday, Feb 12, 2007
N-273, 2006-07
A panel discussion entitled “Entering at One’s Own Risk: Dennis Cooper and Transgressive Writing, Fin de Millennium” will take place on Thursday, March 1, at 6:30 p.m. at New York University’s Fales Collection (3rd floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South). The event is free and open to the public; for information, call 212.992.9018.
The discussion is moderated by Leora Lev, editor of Enter at Your Own Risk: The Transgressive Art of Dennis Cooper, the first anthology of criticism about one of America’s more notorious and most important contemporary writers. Panelists include: Wayne Koestenbaum, professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Best-selling Jewish Porn Films and Andy Warhol; Alex Kasavin, publisher, Void Press, who published Cooper’s The Sluts; Brandon Stosuy, author of Up Is Up But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992; and Marvin Taylor, director of Fales and editor of The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984.
The Dennis Cooper Papers are held in Fales’ Downtown Collection and contain books, manuscripts, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, and other materials that document Cooper’s creative process.
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The symposium "On. Dennis Cooper", organized by Dr. Paul Hegarty and Danny Kennedy, proffered a plethora of multidisciplinary exchanges, encompassing scholarship, film, artwork, and music. Pierre-Louis Patoine, Martin Dines, Danny Kennedy, and Timothy C. Baker read brilliant papers ; Steven Hanley’s amazing film “Hands Away” and a videotaped performance of “I Apologize,” directed by Gisele Vienne, were shown; Paul Hegarty and Brian O'Shaughnessy of Safe, Seth Ayyaz of HaQ, and Nick Hudson proffered memorable, provocative musical offerings ; and renowned performance artist Franko B. bid farewell to the day with poetic DJ spins. Alex Rose’s beautiful, ethereal art adorned the walls, signalling toward a nebulous transcendence.
ON: Dennis Cooper
Granary Theater, April 8th. 10:30 am - 12 midnight
10:30 Coffee, registration
11
Pierre-Louis Patoine, "This Text is Fucking with my Brain ... Reading as Neuro-Motor Simulation in Cooper's 'George Miles Cycle'"
Martin Dines, "Wasteland of the Free: Suburbia and Autonomy in Cooper's 'Try'"
Leora Lev, "Next: Vampiric Epistolarity, Haunted Cyberspace, and Dennis Cooper's neo-Gothic Offspring"
1-2 Lunch
2
Danny Kennedy, "The Immature Narrative: Cooper, Gombrowicz and the Heterological Analysis of Form"
Mick Wilson, "The Sluts"
Timothy C. Baker, "The Whole is the Untrue: Individual Consciousness in 'The Sluts'"
3:30
Coffee
4
Steven Hanley, "Hands Away" (film)
4:30
Roundtable discussion with Dennis Cooper, Mick Wilson, Leora Lev, Danny Kennedy
6
Launch of Leora Lev's "Enter at Your Own Risk: The Dangerous Art of Dennis Cooper," reception buffet
7:45
"I Apologize" (screening of filmed play)
9
Safe
haQ
Nick Hudson
11
Franko B dj/performance
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Enter at Your Own Risk
“Dennis Cooper’s sublime novels, poems, and stories have long been misunderstood and underexposed. Now Leora Lev has compiled a long overdue collection of essays—all written by an amazing bunch of Cooper’s contemporary novelists and critics—that show the writer as he truly is: one of the planet’s most original, devastating, visionary, and crucial literary icons. Enter at Your Own Risk is a knockout book.”
--Scott Heim,
Author of Mysterious Skin (made into a 2005 film by Gregg Araki), In Awe, and We Disappear
Contributors: James Annesley, Dodie Bellamy, Lawrence Brose, William S. Burroughs (edited by James Grauerholz), Michael Cunningham, Robert Glück, Earl Jackson, Jr., Kevin Killian, Leora Lev, Matthew Stadler, Brandon Stosuy, Marvin Taylor, John Waters, and Elizabeth Young
