THIS LONG CENTURY

— Here’s something: Two notebooks from 1995, my fifteenth year. 1995 was the first and last year I didn’t give a shit about what anybody thought about me. The year I dressed in polyester and spray-painted boots, novelty earrings and a corduroy sport coat. All summer I strode up and down Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz, taking in the scummy atmosphere crawling with lovable weirdos—my camera, my notebook and my friend Nickole in tow. We always had a notebook and a camera, and no money.

These aren’t sketchbooks, although there is the occasional drawing. They aren’t journals or diaries, because the writings were meant for public consumption, either snippets for a later story, or a screed to be pushed onto an unsuspecting family member, stranger or friend. These were our public writings, our laboratories for developing a nice blend of sleaze, toxic humor and absurdity. Naturally, since I carried it everywhere, my notebook also became a place for phone numbers, funny quotes, clippings, recipes, mix tape track listings and lists of various sorts. In them, now, twenty years later, I see (and am somewhat surprised by) the use of constraints, the obsessions, the easygoing attitude toward things that don’t make sense, often employing a confrontational style bordering on mock didacticism. Truth be told, we were just messing around, trying to push people’s buttons. It’s play, something I must never forget—play in writing.

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Grace Krilanovich is an author. She was born in 1979 in Santa Cruz, California. Her first book, THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2010. In 2010 she was also named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.

www.twodollarradio.com

— As a journalism student, I had a job on campus working at the newspaper morgue: a basement archive where newspaper clippings were kept for research. I used tiny, pointy scissors, to meticulously clip articles from The Christian Science Monitor or The Globe and Mail. The clippings were cataloged and put in folders with titles like, Crime: At Night. It was the beginning of my obsession with seeing the newspaper as a material.

Newspapers often inform my work. I self-published a newspaper series of graphic silhouettes called, copy, which I made on various regional printing presses. I did a lithograph edition of words re-photographed from headlines. I have a formidable collection of newspapers with production flaws. These are some examples. They are always a nice surprise, like accidental works of art. I can see Franz Kline, Warhol, and Christopher Wool. I also see the printing press working this process so hard, churning out huge runs of daily papers with a lucky few receiving the ones that got messed up.

I really should stop my New York Times delivery since I tend to read the paper on my phone these days but I can’t because I want to catch as many of these poetic aberrations as I can before newspapers are really gone.

October 10th, 2015

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Leah Singer was born in Winnipeg, moving east to Toronto, Montreal and Tokyo before settling in New York City. She is a visual artist and a writer. Her artist publications are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The live manipulated film and video performances she started doing in the early 1990s in collaboration with musicians, including husband Lee Ranaldo, have toured widely including to The Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Reykjavik Arts Festival, and the JUE music festival in Shanghai. She continues to develop site-specific video installations intended to exist both as static artworks and components to live music performances. She recently contributed video to the multi artist project, THE EXHIBITION OF A FILM, curated by Mathieu Copeland.

This is my collection of screen grabs of pics of Andy Warhol when he shows up on Instagram.

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Oliver Payne was born in London, in 1977. Solo exhibitions include Federico Vavassori (2015); Gavin Brown’s enterprise (2015); MOCAD (2015); 356 S. Mission Rd. (2014), Herald St. (2013) and Nanzuka Underground (2012).

www.gavinbrown.biz
www.heraldst.com

Here is my small collection of toilet hygiene inspection notices.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, 2014

Rompetrol Village Catalan/Motorway service station, France, 2014

The Star Ferry Company Ltd, Hong Kong, 2015

DFDS Dover to Calais Ferry, 2015

Park Skocjanske Jame Cave, Slovenia, 2015

Morrisons Supermarket, London, England, 2014
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Nigel Shafran was born in 1964, in England. He lives and works in London. He has had several books published including VISITOR FIGURES (2015); TEENAGE PRECINCT SHOPPERS (2013); RUTH ON THE PHONE (2012); COMPOST PICTURES 2008-9 (2010); FLOWERS FOR ____ (2008); EDITED PHOTOGRAPHS (2004); DAD’S OFFICE (1999); RUTHBOOK (1995). MACK Books will publish DARK ROOMS in 2016.

www.nigelshafran.com

— On the ground-level of the 70s hi-rise where I have been living since before the millennium runs a local drag of small shops; an optician, a funeral director, an Indian take-away and now FILET. The corner shop had been empty for a long while, and when next doors Drinkers Paradise got changed into a coffee/pizza joint, my neighbour Uta, from the 17th floor, and I decided to take on the vacant lot, and invite artists to make new works for the site. The first was Eva Stenram, whose libidinous photo-works and fabric loungers rendered the shop into the seedy studio of an x-rated photographer during the heydays of the parade.

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Rut Blees Luxemburg was born in 1967, in Trier, Germany. She now lives and works in London. Blees Luxemburg has been the subject of a monograph, COMMONSENSUAL, which details projects including the opera, LIEBESLIED/MY SUICIDES, a collaboration with the philosopher Alexander Garcia Düttmann, and documents public art installations such as CALIBAN TOWERS, with muf architects, and PICCADILLY’S PECCADILLOES in Heathrow Airport.

www.rutbleesluxemburg.com
www.filetfilet.uk