“Writing in the Dark”:
Graduate Center James Gallery Moves from Visual to Verbal in New Spring Series

"Writing in the Dark," a series of readings, talks and videos by poets, novelists, critics and anthropologists, kicks off the Amie and Tony James Gallery’s spring project, which opens the gallery for conversation, screenings and performance. Beginning February 12 and running through April 23, Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch have organized three events based on their Interdisciplinary Transcriptions, a 1,036-page anthology of interviews, photos, lectures, collages, drawings, diaries, scholarly articles, blogs and other writings. The James Gallery is located on the first floor of the Graduate Center (365 Fifth Avenue, between 34th and 35th Streets).

“In the spirit of exploration and experiment that inspired our recent series of artist projects, collectively titled People ‘Weekly’, this spring we will host a variety of performance events that use the James Gallery as an interactive social space,” said Linda Norden, the gallery's director. “Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch's ‘Writing in the Dark’ grew from their interest in ‘transcriptions,’ or the appropriations and translations of work from one medium to another. Cotner and Fitch have reconfigured the text-based entries they assembled for their on-line journal and invited key contributors to enact their transcriptions especially for the James Gallery.”
 
"Writing in the Dark":
 
February 12, 7:30 p.m.
Lee Ann Brown will read poems written in the dark at movie screenings, music concerts and other events. Elaine Equi will present pieces from "Cinema Tarot," a poetic project she began by photographing images on her TV screen. Richard Kostelanetz will discuss his film Epiphanies, which he describes as "a large collection of single-sentence stories" And Dennis Tedlock will translate Mayan hieroglyphs contained in 2000 Years of Mayan Literature.
 
February 19, 7:30 p.m.
Bruce Andrews will relive his 2006 confrontation with Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, playing an "Outrage of the Week" video segment. Wayne Koestenbaum will offer a medley of poems and prose. Wendy Steiner will introduce her opera The Loathly Lady, based on Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale." And Reva Wolf will discuss theft and appropriation in the work of Ted Berrigan.
 
April 23, 7:30 p.m.
David Antin, returning to New York from San Diego, will improvise a talk-poem (a home grown medium in which he has worked for more than three decades). Charles Bernstein will read pieces from a forthcoming book of criticism. And Lynne Tillman will present old, middle and new work, mixing reflections on art with a story or two.
 
Other spring events include:
 

• Cultural Power: Art
  

• A new series of "Walk-By Movies," visible (and audible!) from the street only. The "walk-by" film series on view beginning in March attempts an urban variation on the drive-in theater, allows a rethinking of the problem of screening films in a gallery context, and exploits the extended hours available to a gallery visible from the street.
  

• An encore screening with Thomas Torres Cordova of his film, Everybody Loves the Sunshine.
  

• The presentation of Ed Ruscha's film, Premium, and a conversation  with writer/performer and longtime Ed Ruscha friend Mason Williams, whose 1964 story How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers was the basis for Ruscha's photo novel, Crackers, and the subsequent 1972, 16 mm film, Premium.